Easter 4C

Revelation 7:9-17

⁹After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands. ¹⁰They cried out in a loud voice, saying, "Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!" ¹¹And all the angels stood around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, ¹²singing, "Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen."

¹³Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, "Who are these, robed in white, and where have they come from?" ¹⁴I said to him, "Sir, you are the one that knows." Then he said to me, "These are they who have come out [who are (still) coming out] of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. ¹⁵For this reason they are before the throne of God, and worship him day and night within his temple, and the one who is seated on the throne will shelter them. ¹⁶They will hunger no more, and thirst no more; the sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat; ¹⁷for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes."

Easter is Fifty Days / Good Shepherd Sunday

Easter is a week of weeks: 7 times 7. In all three lectionary years, Easter 4 always is Good Shepherd Sunday. That means the responsive psalm is…23. In this second reading from Revelation, the Lamb is the Shepherd; the Shepherd is the Lamb.


Revelation I

• Last Sunday's Easter 3 blog

Genesis 1 and 2 are the first books in the biblical canon. A garden (not a city!) with a tree of life and a river of life comes with the original creation. Revelation is the last book in the bible. Revelation reveals the new creation with the garden of resurrection grown into a city, the "new Jerusalem" that like the old city of Jerusalem forms an axis mundi to connect earth and heaven. This city has life-giving trees and a river of life but unlike the old Jerusalem, it has no temple.

Long tradition says the yet unidentified author "John" wrote from the Roman prison island of Patmos in present-day Turkey, though recent scholarship suggests John could have been an itinerant preacher who made Patmos a regular stop on his circuit. Revelation's author very definitely is not John the Evangelist whose community brought us the 4th gospel. To help discern authorship we look at internal evidence such as grammar, sentence structure, vocabulary, references to people, places, events.

We're previously mentioned apocalyptic means uncovering, unveiling, revealing—the book of Revelation even begins with the author telling us it's an apocalypse.


Revelation II

Revelation is not an indecipherable collection of strange sayings or predictions of events future to when John the Revelator recorded it. Just as with much literature and a lot of human conversations, it includes symbols, code words, and figures of speech.

Mainline Catholic and Protestant Christians have been very very cautious about public reading and interpretation of this book. Somewhere I read that Orthodox Churches don't include Revelation in their lectionary schedule of scripture readings. Continental European Reformers Martin Luther and Ulrich Zwingli famously did not believe Revelation belonged in the bible; John Calvin wrote a commentary on every NT book except Revelation. On that always there other hand, you've likely heard of the Left Behind and Late Great Planet Earth books that flooded best seller lists a few decades ago and still have currency and clout in certain circles.


Revelation III

Written during the reign of Roman Caesar Domitian, Revelation shows us how empires operate and provides subversive, counter cultural ways to resist. Rome was one in a long series of empires that continues globally through this year 2022. Revelation is a liturgical, political, counter-imperial text, a guidebook and a map for living out our baptism into Jesus' death and resurrection as an alternative to imperial violence and death.

"This is the Feast," the hymn of praise we sing in the liturgy many Sundays comes from Revelation 7:12. It brings us seven (the number of completion and perfection) words of praise to God and to the Lamb:

1. Blessing 2. glory 3. wisdom 4. thanksgiving 5. honor 6. power 7. might

These words make anti-imperial claims that only God is Lord. Not caesar. Not even the elected president or prime minister of any democratic nation. Not anything else or anyone else.

Although the hymn of praise in the liturgy announces, "This is the Feast of Victory for our God," Revelation 7:10 proclaims God's salvation and not victory. Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza reminds us in that culture the concept of salvation (brought by a Savior, of course) was synonymous with the fullness of God's reign described in this passage as no hunger or thirst, no scorching heat (or icy cold), no sorrow or tears—essentially Shalom. She also points out how close this was to the supposed Pax Romana of the Roman emperor that instead dealt out cruelty, death, and devastation.


Today's Scripture

"After this" at this start of today's text beginning at verse 9 refers to verses 4-8 and their description of the 144,000 plus tribes of Israel along with people, ethnicities, nations, languages, cultures, everywhere that fulfill God's promise to Abram of faithful descendants greater in number than stars in the sky, more than grains of sand. Some of those faithful descendants include us, the church with Jesus Christ as ultimate authority under the cross of Calvary. Please note these people still stand solidly on earth and have not been raptured.

7:14 Those who have come out of the mega ordeal—in the Greek—still are coming out. The church lives out its baptismal call and identity in Jesus' death and resurrection alongside the pain and suffering in the world. God in the Spirit calls and enables us to be a counter-force to the deadly violence of empire.

7:15 The Shepherd-Lamb on the throne will shelter us with a dwelling, booth, tent, tabernacle. Same word as in John 1:14 that tells us the pre-existent word became flesh and lived in our midst, literally "pitched a tent," a portable structure (¿¡ramada?!) that would go with us wherever we journeyed. You can read more about God's presence in the Ark of the Covenant and the Festival of Booths / Succoth.