The Reverend Max Lynn, Pastor

 Scripture Readings: Rev 7:9-17, 13:11-18,17:1-6

Today I want to look at the main antagonists in Revelation, the four primary evil forces: the Dragon, the Beast of the Sea, the Beast of the Earth, and the Great Prostitute. From a look at who the antagonists are we get an idea for what resistance means.

          If you were here last week you will remember the rough organization of Revelation follows four series of seven: seven churches, seven seals, seven trumpets, and seven bowls of plague.

          By chapter 7, the sixth seal has been broken. We anticipate the opening of the seventh seal and the final intervention of God and the Lamb. But first we get the Church.

          In verses 1 - 8 the servants of the living God receive a seal on their foreheads. This is in direct contrast to the mark of the beast in our second reading this morning in chapter 13.

          The great multitude in white robes crying out to the Lamb, we are told, are the ones who have come out of the great tribulation. The clear message is that the people of God will be helped through but not kept from the tribulation. The mark of the living God doesn't keep us from the pain of life. It helps us endure and persevere. Chapter 13 comes as part of the action of the seventh trumpet, the end of the third series of seven. At the blowing of the seventh trumpet we are introduced to a pregnant woman, about to give birth. A dragon (the devil or Satan) waits in anticipation of devouring the child. The child is born and the mother escapes into the desert. It seems fairly clear that the mother is Mary, the mother of Jesus and the mother of the Church, who gives birth to Jesus and flees with Joseph to Egypt. Angry at the mother's escape, the dragon makes war on the rest of her offspring, the faithful. But Michael and his angels fight against the dragon (the devil) and his angels (the dragon) and his angels lose and are cast down to earth to lead the whole world astray. What we see here, from a cosmic view, is that those in the hierarchy above us are not necessarily there because they are good, and they may be out of place. Watch out which angelic figures we follow.

          Next we meet the beast of the sea who has ten horns and seven heads. The beast takes over every tribe, people, language and nation. This beast seems to have political power. Then, from this morning's reading beginning at 13:11, we meet the beast of the earth. The beast from the earth exercises authority on behalf of the beast from the sea. This is a clue of John's location. Our problem is that we don't know with which emperor John starts counting. Some scholars argue that Trajan was the seventh emperor, since Trajan was designated emperor shortly before Nerva's death. Nerva would have been the sixth emperor in the series. This puts the writing of Revelation around 97-98 CE, shortly after the murder of Domitian. Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza notes that the Greek word for "they have fallen" speaks of the preceding emperors as having suffered violent deaths. (Fiorenza, Elizabeth, Revelation: a vision of the just world, 1991, p. 98) These emperors are Caesar, Caligula, Nero and Domitian.

          Fiorenza continues, "The enigmatic information that the beast was one of the seven, others argue, may allude to the legend that Nero would return or be resurrected. With the help of the Parthians he would avenge himself and destroy Rome.

It is interesting to note that the destruction of Rome comes from within. Evil, while it destroys the innocent, also destroys itself. While we hear of the Pax Romana, of how the power of Rome stabilized the world, for Christians, and for the competitors for Roman power themselves, there was anything but peace. Family members who were rivals to the throne were highly likely to be murdered. The history of Roman imperial families is filled with great victories and orgies, gold, purple silk and wine, but also reads like a nightmare of intrigue, back-biting, murder, rape, incest, fear and arrogance on a cosmic scale.

          The powerful empire is extremely attractive to kings, merchants, and seafarers, who seek economic and political gain. The empire lures people in with her beauty and luxurious living. What we see basically is people selling out for material and political power, paying the whore to drink of her luxuries, worshiping the goddess and the emperors to be brought into their economic and political game. Many reap the benefit.

          But as always, while the provincial elite, the merchants and ship owners, reaped the pleasure of orgy with the great prostitute, her fee was paid by the taxes on the masses of poor.

          John's apocalypse envisions a God who sides with the poor and those willing to hold onto their faith with integrity. Christians in Asia Minor are under social, economic and violent pressure to compromise their integrity of faith in Christ to worship the very state and emperors who oppress them. "You have been sealed by the living God," he says. "Stay faithful and in the end, you will win."

          While it is clear that John was writing about events in the world his audience understood, and therefore he was not predicting events in our time. This does not mean we cannot glean a message from God for our time.

          Certainly one of the great challenges in life, both personally and politically is the maintenance of integrity in the face of potential social and economic gain or loss. We want to belong and we want to prosper. We like to be connected to popular and powerful people. We want to maintain our popularity and power. We usually experience the mob mentality in school, where popular mean kids pick on the unpopular kid, and far from helping the unpopular one, kids become like a pack of wolves.

          In school we are pressured by a desire for popularity to have sex, to drink and do drugs, to have all the popular clothes and technology. Certainly part of our job as the church is to tell and show kids that there is another kind of self-esteem that comes not from the mob, not from power over another, but from the living God.

          In early adult life we are drawn into the economic life of society. How easy it is to get overly focused on the luxury and power of those who dominate the market, and to follow their lead in our life's journey.

          And sooner or later, most of us are faced with the temptation to lie, or cheat, to manipulate or conspire to keep or gain power or wealth. We have to decide we will compromise our faith and integrity or will stand strong. When we hold strong, when we do what is right despite the consequences, we get a taste of power John is talking about, a power that goes beyond the violence and manipulations in this world.

          On the national level, on the level of empire, I have to admit Revelation makes me a bit nervous, for we are an empire. We are Rome. We are Babylon. With this recognition, it is of ultimate importance that we do not place our God in bed with the State or commerce. The separation of Church and State is not to protect the State, but the Church and people whose God speaks differently from the state. The idea that we are somehow protecting the Christian nation, the Christian way of life by preemptive war and torture is nothing short of blasphemy, as if we were claiming Jesus had chosen to sleep with the whore of Babylon. Recently a church in southern California was threatened by the IRS when the pastor spoke out against the war in Iraq. The preacher, they claimed, had crossed the line from the religious into the political. We could also make the opposite claim, that those who don't speak out against war are political, compromising the integrity of their faith and letting the beast be idolized in the temple.

          Christian charity can never be limited by citizenship in this or any nation. While the state may give us numbers and claim that those without numbers are not eligible to participate in the economic life of the nation, as Christians we are called to be a sanctuary here on earth, a borderless empire of love and non-violence, where people of every nation, tribe, people and language sing out together, "Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne and to the Lamb." For as Christians we are all resident aliens, strangers in a foreign land, living in the world, but citizens of God's kingdom.

          Yes, it is the kings of earth who flock to our nation, intoxicated by the power of Washington and Wall Street, a Disneyland vision of manufactured happiness, the Hollywood vision of beauty, and Las Vegas lust for immediate, continuous, ostentatious pleasure. As our lust for power and pleasure continue, the poor of nations worldwide, the earth and sea, and all that is in it suffer. We should always be cautious of claiming natural disaster is God's judgment, especially upon particular individuals or communities. On the other hand, in a moral universe there will be consequences to our actions. If, when given the scientific knowledge that our gluttonous consumption is going beyond the carrying capacity of earth's ecosystems, we shut our eyes to the truth and only seek to justify increased consumption, and the wars and destruction of earth's ecosystems to maintain it, then environmental plagues, self destructing murderous youth and rampant anxiety and unhappiness begin to look a lot like divine justice.

          Yet, as in John's day, the suffering that results from evil power continues to fall most heavily on the poor, powerless and faithful. John's letter is a response to those who would claim the current world order reflects divine blessing, as if that blessing justifies whatever it takes to maintain it. The poor and suffering are loved by God, and if they remain faithful, in the end and in the present, divine reward is theirs.

          The question arises, what are we to do? Who are we to be? We have several options.

1) Compromise. Go with the flow. Pledge allegiance to the State and to God. A little Jesus and a little torture; a little Jesus and a little Vegas; a little Jesus and a little prejudice; a little Jesus and a little addiction. We will drive a gas-guzzler, but put a bumper sticker on it that says, "Jesus saves." We'll experience God's grace but refrain from telling our story with our intellectual friends.

2) We can work from within to change the system. This is where most of us think we are. With a middle class mentality we have hope we can change the way things are. We can recognize the gray in life and the need for compromise. We see many great things in our nation's culture and commerce and yet we still recognize it falls far short of the glory of God. We see the importance of moral integrity, but don't see the end of the world in a little fun from time to time. We don't want war, but believe that sometimes evil must be resisted with force and so we hop and work for wise decisions in our defense. We find this perspective both in the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, but this is not John's perspective. John is speaking for the powerless and alienated. They see no good in Rome.

3) We can give up hope and become apathetic and nihilistic, not caring much one way or the other about ourselves, our bodies, minds, souls, the nation or the world, because we can't have an impact or find any real meaning. I have often been struck by the similarity of visible result from the nihilist and the hedonist; the depressed and the narcissistic often share the same forms of destructive self-indulgence. If nothing matters, use it without concern.

4) We can seek violent revolution.

5) We can resist the culture, including the culture of violence, and remain true to the Lamb.

Here is the big difference between John's vision for the Church and those who would bomb abortion clinics or drive airplanes into buildings. The difference between radical John and radical Muslims is not the level of anger at the idolatry, immorality and injustice, or the lack of hope in reform, or the sense that one has been chosen to fight for God against culture. The difference is not even in the idea that it can be honorable to give up one's life for God. The difference is that John worships the Lamb, the Christ who sacrificed his life in a radical non-violent love. The difference is not even in the invocation of a certain name for God; we can say we worship Christ while at the same time join our Christ to the whore of Babylon. The difference is that John recognizes that the mother of violence gives birth to violence. As Christians, John calls us, if need be, not to become suicide bombers but suicide lovers.

          The Kingdom of God of which John speaks is within us, even as it is yet to come. It is already and not yet. Speaking the truth and doing the right thing, living love is its own reward. It demonstrates power in the here and now. Gandhi's moral authority and power were triumphant even before the British gave India independence, regardless of violence between Muslims and Hindus.

Martin Luther King Jr., in Remaining Awake through the Great Revolution preached,

"On some positions, cowardice asks the question, is it expedient? And then expedience comes along and asks the question - is it politic? Vanity asks the question - is it popular? Conscience asks the question - is it right? There comes a time when one must take the position that it is neither safe nor politic nor popular, but he must do it because conscience tells him it is right. I believe today that there is need for all people of good will to come with a massive act of conscience and say in the words of the old Negro spiritual, 'We ain't goin to study war no more.'

We are going to win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of the almighty God are embodied in our echoing demands. And so, however dark it is, however deep the angry feelings are, and however violent explosions are, I can still sing "We Shall Overcome."

If we remain faithful, we will come out of the great tribulation in springs of living water. God will wipe away every tear from our eyes. Never again will we hunger or thirst. Amen! Praise and glory and wisdom and thanks and honor and power and strength be to our God forever and ever. Amen!