Isaiah 61.1-4, 8-end, John 1.6-8, 19-28 (though read the entire section vv.1-28)
Third Sunday of Advent, 17th December 2017, Corton Denham
John Chapter One Verse Nine, which is missing from today’s gospel reading, describes Jesus as ‘The true light that gives light to everyone.’ John continues with a sobering observation, saying,
He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognise him. He came to his own, but his own did not receive him.
There is a note of caution, in that, a word of warning, for us. Do we recognise the real Jesus? The true Jesus who comes to us, who are his own, do we, or do we not, receive him? Or have we instead been taken in by teachings which falsify Jesus and his message?
Last week, president Donald Trump’s controversial decision to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, was greeted enthusiastically by many of his Christian supporters - specifically because they believe that this move will hasten on the biblical end times.
Addressing a rally in Pensacola, Florida, Republican state Senator Doug Broxson raised cheers and great applause when he said, “Now, where the King of Kings - where our soon coming King is coming back to Jerusalem, it is because President Trump declared Jerusalem to be capital of Israel.” [1]
Many evangelical Christians believe that Trump is unfolding God’s purpose, that “he is God’s instrument to move us closer to the Rapture, the Judgment, and the End, the beginning of their reward and heavenly bliss. They’ve been waiting for this, praying for this,” says U.S. theologian Dr. Diana Butler Bass. “They want war in the Middle East. The Battle of Armageddon, at which time Jesus Christ will return to the Earth and vanquish all God’s enemies. This … news of Jerusalem, these people [regard as] the fulfilment of biblical prophecy. Donald Trump is not only acting on a campaign promise, but enacting a theological one.” [2]
Now, this Jesus - whose kingdom will not come until this world has been destroyed and replaced, as the millenarian believers expect - is this a Jesus you recognise?
This Jesus - whose return can be hastened by the actions of political leaders and military strategists - is this a Jesus you believe?
Or is the Jesus you recognise One whose kingdom has already come - when he arrived as a child and overcame death on a cross and sowed the mustard seeds which have grown and continue to grow in our world throughout all these centuries? [3] Does your understanding of God’s activity in the world arise from what Jesus did and said whilst here on earth, what he passed on as a living legacy for his followers to continue, through his Holy Spirit?
The way we understand Jesus depends on where we go to form our ideas about him. Surely the start and end point has to be the Gospels: for there are the fullest accounts of the life and teachings of Jesus; secondary to those, but important, are the letters of Paul, some of them older than the Gospels, with his essential teachings about Jesus.
For believers possessed by the End Times the key New Testament book is Revelation, an apocalyptic work which reveals truth about Christ in highly symbolic and imaginative language. Written to be read aloud to congregations in one sitting, The Revelation of Jesus Christ to John is a drama in the form of a letter to the seven churches of Asia Minor (modern day Turkey) around 95A.D. These were embattled communities of believers at that time, suffering persecution. John wanted to encourage these churches to continue in their faith through suffering, to be assured of the final victory of God and of the return of Jesus, the Lamb of God, whose death and resurrection and ascension has brought about the victory in the battle between the fallen and sinful powers that rule the world, and the angels and spiritual powers that reign in heaven. [4]
The war of the lamb brings about a peaceable victory. Through the cross and in the resurrection the world has been redeemed, and the kingdom of God is already present in history. Therefore Christians do not need to try to control history’s outcome. Christ is 'alpha and omega’, the beginning and the end of the world; time stood still on the cross and was redeemed on the third day, and the power of evil and of death itself are overcome in the resurrection. This was the secret that the writer of the Christian Apocalypse revealed to his readers. [5]
It is vital to understand Revelation as having been written for a specific audience addressing the circumstances of their particular time. In part it is influenced by the revenge fantasies of Jewish Christian believers suffering under Rome. Revelation is not a literary text to be dissected for signs of significant social-political activity in our present day. The scenes it enacts are not to be mimicked.
In July 1944, in response to the millennial claims of Adolf Hitler in his attempt to implement a thousand-year-reign, the Third Reich, The Vatican saw fit to issue ‘an official statement that millennial claims could not be safely taught and that the related scriptures in Revelation should be understood spiritually’ - the teaching of the church then as now, is that “St. John gives a spiritual recapitulation of the activity of Satan, and the spiritual reign of the saints with Christ in heaven and in His Church on earth.” [6]
Theologian Michael Northcott has focussed his scholarly attention on American apocalyptic religion and its influence on U.S. politics and foreign policy. He makes the helpful observation that
The Christian apocalypse does not indicate the end of the world in a mighty conflagration called Armageddon, nor the resettling of the land of Israel as Zionists would have it. On the contrary:
Simply stated, “apocalypse” is shorthand for Jesus Christ. In the New Testament, in particular for Paul, all apocalyptic reflection and hope comes to this, that God has acted critically, decisively, and finally for Israel, all the peoples of the earth, and the entire cosmos, in the life, death, resurrection, and coming again of Jesus, in such a way that God’s purposes for Israel, all humanity, and all creation, is critically, decisively, and finally disclosed and effected in the history of Jesus Christ. [7]
Once Jesus was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming, and he answered, ‘The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; nor will they say, “Look, here it is!” or “There it is!” For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you.’ [8]
And the kingdom of God is among us now; so Christ does not require us to spend our days gazing anxiously into the skies awaiting the cosmic action of a fiery judgmental God; rather, he invites us to daily share in the joyful liberation of the resurrected life, in the here and now; he wants us to look out for signs of his activity in our lives and the life of the world today, and when we recognise them, to join in.
What are the signs of his kingdom we should look out for? When Jesus stood in his home-town synagogue and recited Isaiah 61, he framed the work of his kingdom in terms of bringing good news to the poor, of binding up the brokenhearted, of freeing the captives and releasing the imprisoned, of proclaiming the year of the Lord’s favour, a time when all debts would be erased and the dispossessed would be restored to their lands. These, he was saying, are the signs of God’s kingdom at work in the world. When you see them happening, when you take part in these activities, there you are, working with God. Note the stark contrast between these signs and the methods of presidents and freedom-fighters in their aggressive pursuit of worldly power.
Significantly, Jesus omitted to quote one line of Isaiah’s: the one which described “the day of vengeance of our God”. By this omission, Jesus made it clear - there is no place for vengeance in God’s peaceable kingdom. No need for Christians to take history into our own hands to wage war on God’s behalf, for the ultimate battle between good and evil has already been fought and won in the death and resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ. [9]
For three centuries the first Christians embraced this ethic of peace so fully that it was deemed impossible to be a Christian and in the military. The Christian life was as described in the Acts of the Apostles, a life of small communities offering mutual care and support, vulnerable to the attacks of the authorities who felt threatened by their focus on Jesus as their Lord and guide.
It was only after the Roman Emperor Constantine assimilated the Christian faith early in the Fourth Century that the idea began to emerge that Christ’s “everlasting kingdom of love and peace” could be brought about through conventional power politics. [10]
The idea that human beings could be induced into the kingdom of heaven by force led to the corruption of Christianity by the growth of a culture of violence which provoked the Crusades, led to the Pilgrim Fathers occupying and subduing the so-called ‘virgin’ lands of America and its first inhabitants, and arguably has influenced many aggressive forms of missionary activity and the brutality and exploitation of some Church schooling which has only recently began to be brought to light and challenged. [11]
The word ‘Apocalyptic’ literally means ‘a revealing’. A bringing to light. How much we need the light to show us the path through life today.
“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it,” reveals the Gospel writer John the disciple, son of Zebedee. John the Baptist revealed Jesus as “the light of all mankind, … so that through him all might believe.”
Now, we can choose to read the Apocalypse of St John of Patmos as a justification of the power politics of our times. Or we can view it as an indispensable source of the enlightening knowledge that while empires will pass away, the Lamb of God holds the world in love, and invites us to live our days with him, in the forgiving and reconciling activities of the kingdom of God’s peace. [12]
Notes
[1] Sarak K. Burris, Theological scholar explains horrifying reason Trump’s supporters celebrated Armageddon in Pensacola. RawStory, 8 December 2017.
[2] Sarak K. Burris, Theological scholar explains horrifying reason Trump’s supporters celebrated Armageddon in Pensacola. RawStory, 8 December 2017.
[3] Mark 4.31
[4] Wikipedia: Apocalyptic Literature; The Book of Revelation and Apocalypses in John Bowker, The Complete Bible Handbook: An Illustrated Companion, p.468-71.
[5] Michael Northcott, An Angel Directs the Storm: Apocalyptic Religion and American Empire, p.140.
[6] Wikipedia: Millennialism; Nazism. Citing LeFrois, Bernard J. Eschatological Interpretation of the Apocalypse. The Catholic Biblical Quarterly, Vol. XIII, pp. 17–20; Cited in Culleton RG. The Reign of Antichrist, 1951. Reprint TAN Books, Rockford (IL), 1974, p. 9. My italics.
[7] Michael Northcott, An Angel Directs the Storm: Apocalyptic Religion and American Empire, p.127-8, quoting Douglas Harink, Paul Among the Postliberals: Pauline Theology Beyond Christendom and Modernity, p.68.
[8] Luke 17.20-21.
[9] Michael Northcott, An Angel Directs the Storm: Apocalyptic Religion and American Empire, p.127-8. See also my Advent 3 sermon of 2014, Christmas is Really for the Children? with its use of the writing of Fred Niedner on Jesus’ reworking of Isaiah 61.
[10] Marcus Peter Rempel, Life at the End of Us Versus Them: Cross Culture Stories, p.13, 19ff.
[11] Michael Northcott, An Angel Directs the Storm: Apocalyptic Religion and American Empire, p.119. / Marcus Peter Rempel, Life at the End of Us Versus Them: Cross Culture Stories, p.13. Rempel engages with Ivan Illich's writings on "the troubled legacy of Christendom ... the terrible perversion that comes of love and truth when these are underwritten by institutional power." (p.12)
[12] Michael Northcott, An Angel Directs the Storm: Apocalyptic Religion and American Empire, p.121.
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