Pastor Hugh's Monthly Meditation
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REVELATION: GOD'S PROMISE OF HOPE AND COMFORT
IN A HOSTILE AND ALIEN WORLD
OK. Let’s admit one thing from the get-go. Lutherans have never been that cozy with the book of Revelation. First of all, it’s confusing. And, frankly, most of the “popular” books that have been written about it are...dare I say, garbage.
Click on image to see a larger view of St. Paul’s “Seven Seals of Revelation” Window, in a separate window.
Contrary to what you might have heard, especially from our more fundamental sisters and brothers, Revelation—and, by the way, it’s singular, without an “s” at the end—is not about predicting a future time when the good will be snatched from our midst and the bad will be left to fight it out in a bloody, apocalyptic and chaotic war. John the Elder was not peering thousands of years into the future trying to warn future generations about some final battle between good and evil. He was trying to bring a word of hope to a people who were living through that “battle” in his day and time.
Why bring this up now? Because, as we continue our journey through our stained glass windows, we come to a strange one containing a book with what look like seven bookmarks sticking out of it. (You’ll find this window on the north wall of the church. It’s the one that is second from the right as you come from the narthex.) These aren’t book marks, they are seals. And the book is the book of Revelation.
In chapters 4 through 9 of Revelation, we are introduced to a heavenly scene where surrounding the throne of God is arrayed a gathering of celestial beings. In the right hand of God, “One whose appearance had a gem like sparkle as of jasper and carnelian,” is a scroll sealed with seven seals. A question rings out, “Who is worthy to open the scroll and break it’s seals?” Only the Lamb of God is. The Lamb of God is none other than Jesus, who, like a sacrificial lamb, has been offered on our behalf to take away the sin of the world—our sin, that is.
As the Lamb of God breaks open each of the seven seals, various visions of wars, earthquakes, plagues and other untold suffering unfold before us. It is easy for us, as many have done, to think of these terrible visions as future events that are to come. But here is where we get it wrong. For these are events that the faithful people of God, John’s spiritual ancestors and contemporaries, have already lived through. They are the consequence of sin and the rift that exists between God and humanity. While that rift continues to exist today and manifests itself in a variety of forms—war, injustice, poverty, natural disasters, and the like—the power and point of the book of Revelation is found not in looking back to these calamities, nor is it in looking forward to their return, but it is in the word of hope, encouragement and promise that it offers God’s people as they live by faith in an alien and hostile world. The broken seals remind us of the profound challenges that have come to God’s people in the past and that still may await us as we seek to live faithful lives dedicated to God.
This reminder, however, rests within an even bigger context (the the real point of the story). For the whole of Revelation promises us that God is with us in our struggles—wiping away our tears with the gentle hand of a parent, making all things new again, giving water to those who thirst as a “gift from the springs of the water of life,” and promising, “I will be [your] God and [you] will be my children.” (Rev. 21:1-7)
I guess it’s not such a strange window after all.
Hugh R. B. Haffenreffer
Pastor
February 2008
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