Fr Peter Helman

"Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them; those who are being tortured, as though you yourselves were being tortured." (Hebrews 13:3)

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There are four lessons appointed for Morning and Evening Prayer today:Psalm 25(Morning Prayer),Psalm 9 & 15(Evening Prayer),Ecclesiasticus 4:20—5:7,Revelation 7:1-8, andLuke 9:51-62.

And I thought we might jump into the deep end and reflect on the Revelation, or Apocalypse, to John.

The book enjoys a reputation. American Christians of a certain ilk construe its content and fashion a vision of the “end times,” of heaven and hell and their respective populaces, that diverges from any recognizably ancient biblical hermeneutic. I was raised in this vein of churches, though. We were always asking about the final judgement and how we would know it was upon us. We turned to the Revelation for a meticulous historical roadmap of the latter days and combed the oracles it contains for decipherable clues.

Despite how very differently I might read the book today, I sympathize with a fixation on the end times. The consummation of history. Cataclysm and conflagration. I’m not a millenarian, and I don’t presume any longer to have a heaven or hell to send anyone to, but I’m fascinated with questions of what will be and how it will all end. These days, especially, with projections of the impacts of climate change and the even more extreme predictions that circulate about imminent human extinction, we face questions of the origins and end of our species.

Sadly, the Revelation has much less to say about the general meaning and culmination of history as an exactly prophesied plan, and more about the response of particular Christian communities in the ancient Mediterranean world to experiences of persecution and martyrdom. The book stands as a plea for vindication and release from Satan and the concrete representation of demonic power, the Roman Empire. Only when God reigns on earth, the book proclaims, will salvation finally be possible. Only then will a more humanized world be created by God in which there will no longer be weeping and mourning, hunger and thirst, pain and death. And so, the recipients of the Revelation shout, “Come Lord Jesus,” maranatha.

The passage appointed this morning is as peculiar as any we'll find in the book. We read of four angels of God, standing at the four corners of the earth, restraining the four terrestrial winds “so that no wind could blow on earth or sea or against any tree.” We read of another angel, possessing the seal of the living God and ascending from the dawning of the sun, and it calls to the four angels at the ends of the earth not to damage the earth or the sea or the trees, “until we have marked the servants of our God with a seal on their foreheads.” We read finally of the one hundred and forty-four thousand people marked and sealed, those from the twelve tribes of Israel.

What do we make of this vision and the meaning it conveys?

Read in light of the entire book, the passage reiterates the authority of divine promise. John sees a vast multitude of people, marked and sealed, who stand for the fullness and totality of God’s people saved from tribulation. They are sealed and set apart and thus reassured of the vindication that, if fact, awaits them. Nothing can separate them from the love of God, neither hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword. Whatever comes, there is one who experienced death and rose victorious from the grave, Jesus Christ the righteous, and he stands upon the face of the earth and has overcome the world. He will not permit the power of death to have the final word. The world and all who dwell therein belong, at last, to God. In a curious turn, then, the experience of tribulation has become, in Christ, the very sign that the reign of death on earth has been shattered by the victory of Christ over death.

We who live with relative comfort, security, and religious freedom read the Revelation to John very differently than hundreds of thousands of Christians the world over--in more than 60 countries--who live today with the experience of persecution and martyrdom for the faith and love of Jesus they profess. They are our sisters and brothers, and "if one member suffers, all suffer together with it" (1 Corinthians 12:26).

Today will you join me in offering prayers for our persecuted sisters and brothers around the world, for their deliverance and safekeeping, for courage and peace in the face of violence, and in all things for the coming of God's reign finally to create a world in which there is no longer any weeping and mourning, hunger and thirst, pain and death?

God bless you today.

Yours in Christ,

Peter+