Through Advent With The Apocalypse: 14/12 – (16) The Lake of Fire

Posted on December 14, 2020 by Bruce Bryant-Scott

This Advent, in the Year of the Great Pandemic 2020, it seems appropriate to look at The Apocalypse – that is, The Revelation of John. This is the sixteenth of twenty-six short reflections.

Some of the most judgemental passages in Revelation are about who gets thrown into the Lake of Fire:

20 And the beast was captured, and with it the false prophet who had performed in its presence the signs by which he deceived those who had received the mark of the beast and those who worshiped its image. These two were thrown alive into the lake of fire that burns with sulfur. Revelation 19:24

10 And the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever. Revelation 20:24

14Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire; 15 and anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire. Revelation 20:14-15.

8 But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the polluted, the murderers, the fornicators, the sorcerers, the idolaters, and all liars, their place will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death. Revelation 21:8

If you are like me, you begin to imagine whether or not whether your name is in the Book of Life, or whether we would qualify for the Lake under one or more of the categories in Revelation 21:8.

Interestingly, the Lake of Fire is one of the few images John comes up with on his own – there is nothing like it in the Hebrew Bible. There is Gehenna in the gospels, which appears to have been a garbage dump outside Jerusalem that was invariably on fire, and in Jewish writing was used to representto Hades, or Sheol, the shadowy underworld for the dead, but that is not quite the same thing. Apparently there is an Egyptian text more than a thousand years earlier than John that talks about a Lake of fire, but it is unlikely that he knew of it. So where did he get the idea of this lake and it being a kind of punishment?

In an essay from 2007 the Dutch New Testament scholar George H. van Kooten suggests that it goes back to Nero. Following the fire in Rome at which Nero (doubtfully) fiddled, but which he blamed on the Christians (likely), he seized a vast amount of land adjacent to the Forum. There, according to Suetonius, he built an imperial palace, whose

entrance hall was designed for a colossal statue, 120 ft high, bearing Nero’s head. So vast were the grounds, that triple colonnades ran for a mile. There was, too, an enormous lake, surrounded by buildings made to look like cities (Nero 31.1).

The lake is where the Colosseum was eventually erected, so it was quite central; indeed, the name “Colosseum” appears to have been derived from the Colossus of Nero, for the massive statue stood for centuries, long after the pond was drained. Van Kooten suggests that John believed that Nero (or some version of the returned Nero) would be punished, and this is symbolized by the Beast – Nero – being tossed into the lake whose creation was facilitated by the historic fire. From there it was a short jump to throwing Death, Hades, and all unrepentant evildoers into it as well.

But who gets to escape the Lake of Fire? We’ll discuss this tomorrow.

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Through Advent With The Apocalypse: 13/12 – (15) Judgement and Justice

Posted on December 13, 2020 by Bruce Bryant-Scott

This Advent, in the Year of the Great Pandemic 2020, it seems appropriate to look at The Apocalypse – that is, The Revelation of John. This is the fifteenth of twenty-six short reflections.

Daniel Hopfer‘s “the Parable of the Mote and the Beam” (c. 1530). Interior of the Church of Saint Katherine’s.

John the Divine gives the impression of being a pretty judgemental guy, and that’s because he is. He has little patience or toleration for those he disagrees with – you may remember that in chapters 2 and 3 he calls a prophet in Thyatira “Jezebel”, and a synagogue “the synagogue of Satan”. He has Jesus saying that he hates the Nicolaitans. Then there is the sheer number of people who seem to die of plagues, natural disasters, the destruction of Babylon (i.e. Rome), including the ten kings, various beasts, and merchants and sailors. That whole business of the lake of fire and the exclusion of sinners from the New Jerusalem again seems pretty harsh. Meanwhile the angels and martyrs are singing the praises of Jesus in victory over all these bad people. Where is God’s mercy?

And how does this sit with these well known passages from the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel according to Matthew:

7 1“Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. 2 For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. 3 Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? 4 Or how can you say to your neighbor, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while the log is in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye. – Matthew 7.1-5

6 12And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. – Matthew 6.12

538 “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ 39 But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; 40 and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; 41 and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. 42 Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.

43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. 46 For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? 47 And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? 48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. – Matthew 538-48

First of all, I think we need to recognise that John is angry, and rightfully so. He has seen other Christians suffer physically and be killed. Recognising that vengeance belongs to God, he has a vision of that vengeance. Having never suffered the way that John has suffered, it is not up to me to judge whether another person’s anger is unrighteous. The anger we see expressed in Black Lives Matter, or in Indigenous Rights movements such as Idle No More, is powerful, and propels an activism that calls for justice. Rarely does it escalate into violence, but through various actions of civil disobedience it challenges the “white” liberal call for “healing and reconciliation” to be more radical and transformative, rather than incremental.

Second, sometimes we are in positions of responsibility where we are called to make judgements. I had to do this when I was the Executive Officer of the Diocese of British Columbia, and to respond when clergy or laity were acting in ways that required discipline. In these cases the judgements need to be made on principles informed by the duty to act fairly. The story about the speck and the beam is about ensuring that you are not a hypocrite, dealing in one type of justice for one set of people and another type for others, or disciplining others when one is guilty of far greater evils. Am I prepared to be judged by the standard by which I judged others? I answer with a yes, and pray that I am sufficiently self-aware that I am always taking that log out so that I might help others.

Third, Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount addresses his followers about how one deals with oppression – and it is largely about breaking the cycle of violence. Chapter 5:38-42 is a central passage in civil disobedience, describing exactly what Martin Luther King and John Lewis acted on when challenging segregation in the American South in the 1960s. Listen to the preaching that went on at the time, and it is propelled less by hate of people than a higher righteousness grounded in Jesus that loves people even as they attack you.

Meeting violence with violence will sometimes work to stop the other side from oppression – that’s what war is, after all, and some wars are arguably just – but sometimes it fails to stop that cycle of violence. Wars have a bad habit of spinning out of control, World War One being the prime example (but see Vietnam, Afghanistan (for both the USSR and NATO), and Iraq). Europe has been mostly free of wars between nations since 1945 because the trauma of the Second World War has provided a real impetus to create a lasting peace, this being accomplished through the European Union and other international bodies. The Troubles in Northern Ireland, which seemed interminable, did not end because either side was winning, but because both sides recognised that violence was not getting either of them anywhere. Sure, sometimes sheer violent force accomplishes a goal – the Nazis were defeated in World War Two, the North Koreans were stopped in their tracks by the United Nations, and the Serbs stopped their genocidal war because of NATO bombing – but these victories came at great costs, with many unresolved issues. We should be wary of rolling the dice of violence, especially in this era of nuclear weapons. Civil disobedience, legal challenges, building political alliances, and negotiations are all preferable to the use of arms and violence. Patience is necessary; communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union was not overcome by war, but by containment and the patient waiting for the totalitarian system to finally fail on its own contradictions.

How does one love one’s neighbour who may be an enemy? In my experience, it begins by praying for them. I continue by working to establish a relationship despite the differences. I try to find common ground,

Of course, in some situations the person is so damaged that they cannot negotiate. They may be a psychopath, spouting lies, using and abusing others, and refusing to acknowledge facts (see the current American president). They may not be able to help themselves. In some cases we cannot help them much. A disloyal employee probably needs to be terminated, but the termination must be done in a compassionate and just way, as the power difference between the employer and employee is usually significant. A murderer or someone convicted of sexual assault needs to be removed from society, not only so that they can no longer do harm to others, but so that they might have access to opportunities to try and understand the damage they have done.

But coming back to John the Divine and Revelation, his judgement and the tone of his language can be disturbing. However, sometimes it inspires others to radical justice of a kind that I find agreeable with the instructions Jesus gives in the Sermon on the Mount. More on that tomorrow.

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Perfect Freedom

Posted on December 13, 2020 by Bruce Bryant-Scott

A Sermon Preached Online on
The Third Sunday of Advent, December 13, 2020
With the People of The Anglican Church of St. Thomas the Apostle, Kefalas, Crete

The readings used were Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11, Psalm 126, and John 1:6-8, 19-28.

A detail from The Freedom Sculpture in Philadelphia PA by the American sculptor Zenos Frudakis

The Two Berlins

In the gospel reading today we read of how the priests and Levites from Jerusalem wanted to know just who John the Baptist thought he was. There were a little confused about his identity. Was he the Messiah? No. Was he Elijah? No. Are you the prophet? No.

This is a more recent story about a confusion of identity, involving Winston Churchill.

This occurred in the spring of 1944 – I should say February or March. What happened actually was this.

Mrs Churchill said to Winston:”Irving Berlin is in town, he has been very generous to us” – he’d given a large sum of money to – a war charity, I don’t know which, with which she was connected. “If you meet him, do tell him we are very pleased with him.”
Mr Churchill said,”I want him to come to lunch.”
She said, No, no, no, I did not mean that. I mean, if you meet him in the Churchill Club, just pat him on the shoulder and say we are very grateful to him.”
“I want him to come to lunch,” he said, but she couldn’t understand why.

Well, Irving Berlin sat next to Winston Churchill, who said to him, “Mr Berlin, what is the most important piece of work you have done for us lately, in your opinion?“
Poor Berlin obviously couldn’t quite make out what this man had said. After some hesitation,”I don’t know, it should be A White Christmas, I guess.”
And Winston said, “Are you an American?“- there was this thick American accent.
Berlin said, “What? Why? Why? Yes.”
Then Winston again turned to Mr Berlin and he said, “Do you think Roosevelt will be re-elected this year?“
Irving said, “Well, in the past I have voted for him myself, this year I am not so sure.”
At this point Mr Churchill became rather gloomy, he couldn’t understand who he was dealing with. He still thought it was me (Isaiah Berlin, an Oxford Don who was working during the war in the British Embassy in Washington, and writing perceptive reports on American politics that the Prime Minister eagerly read). Obviously my despatches were quite coherent, but he obviously had an idiot before him.
Finally Winston said, “Mr Berlin, when do you think the European War is going to end?“
Berlin said, “Sir, I shall never forget this moment. When I go back to my own country I shall tell my children and my children’s children that in the spring of 1944 the Prime Minister of Great Britain asked me when the European War was going to end.“

Winston was very displeased about this: he really more or less lost his temper, got up – lunch was over.
Poor Irving Berlin went off to the Savoy, where he was sharing rooms with Sir Alexander Korda, and he said to Korda,
[Eventually somebody explained that there were two Berlins – Irving Berlin the songwriter, and Isaiah Berlin the Oxford don and political philosopher). Winston immediately went to a Cabinet meeting, after lunch, told them the story with the greatest pleasure.

Negative Liberty and Positive Liberty

Isaiah Berlin, (later Sir Isaiah Berlin) who told this story on Desert Island Discs and many other occasions, may be less popular than Irving Berlin and White Christmas, but he is very well known among philosophers and political scientists. He wrote an essay in 1958 describing two kinds of freedom, positive liberty and negative liberty. Now, freedoms are guaranteed in a number of ways – from time immemorial by English common law, in the past century by international law, and enshrined in constitutions, such as the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in Canada, and the Bill of Rights in the USA. Here in Greece they are governed by the European Convention on Human Rights and enshrined in the Constitution.

Negative liberty is expressed in restrictions on governments, forbidding them from encroaching on the liberty of individual. Positive liberty is the freedom to do things as individuals and collectives, things which one might want to do but need not.

Thus, among the “freedoms from” there are:

  • freedom from torture;
  • freedom from discrimination according to sex, race, colour, language, religion, political or other opinions, national or social origin, association with a national minority, property, birth or other status;
  • freedom from slavery; and
  • freedom from detainment of imprisonment, except when accused according to due process of law and convicted in fair trials.

Among the “freedoms to” are:

  • the freedom of religion – to have a particular faith and to be able to practice it, or none at all;
  • the freedom to marry;
  • the freedom of expression; and
  • the freedom to associate and assemble, including the freedom to form trade unions;

Freedom for Isaiah and John the Baptist

In this morning’s readings we hear from the Book of Isaiah – the original one, not Isaiah Berlin:

The spirit of the Lord God is upon me,
because the Lord has anointed me;
he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed,
to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and release to the prisoners;
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour,
and the day of vengeance of our God;
to comfort all who mourn;

For Isaiah the freedom is quite literal – freedom from being a conquered people, transported and treated as slaves, by the waters of Babylon. It is a freedom to return to Jerusalem and Judea, to rebuild the Temple and the walls of the city. It is good news that heals broken hearts, shows God’s favour, forces those who have done wrong to deal with the consequences of their actions, and comforts those who have done wrong.

And, of course, as you no doubt remember, in the Gospel according to Luke, chapter 4, in what is portrayed as Jesus’s first day on the job, Jesus reads this passage in the synagogue in Nazareth, and then delivers a one line sermon: Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing. Jesus is called to heal and to proclaim liberty to the people who are suffering, and to cast out the evil that besets us.

John the Baptist also proclaimed a message of freedom. By repentance and baptism people were freed from their sins. By doing so in the wilderness, by the river Jordan, he was proclaiming a freedom from the compromised religious hierarchy in Jerusalem. He did this, we are told, to prepare the way of the one who will baptise with the Holy Spirit, Jesus.

Now, if the removal of sin is accomplished through repentance and baptism, we might see this as a “freedom from” – a freedom from sin. The baptism with the Holy Spirit, which as Anglicans we hold may be coincident with Christian baptism, but may also happen apart from it – this baptism is more like a “freedom to”, so that we might do the things that God calls us to do.

Christian Freedom

There is a prayer in the Book of Common Prayer, the second collect in Morning Prayer, that starts:

O God, who art the author of peace and lover of concord, in knowledge of whom standeth our eternal life, whose service is perfect freedom . . .

The idea that God’s service – working for God – is perfect freedom, is one of those parodoxical ideas. We are freed from sin so that we might truly serve God. But we do not do it by compulsion, but gladly, by choice, knowing that this is what we have been called to do.

As Christians we are called to be like Christ, proclaiming liberty, healing the sick, and casting out all the evil around us. We do this by upholding the dignity of every human being. And so, in practical terms:

  • We care for the sick, the infirm, the housebound, the elderly, and call for equitable care for everybody, and the resources to do it.
  • We seek to empower young people and marginalized persons through education and skills training.
  • We provide tools and capital to the impoverished so that individuals and communities can create wealth and development.
  • We provide assistance and refuge for those fleeing wars and natural disasters.
  • We speak truth to power, not seeking to replace those in power, but to challenge them to rule for the common good, and not merely a sector of the population, or for the one percent.
  • We challenge abuses around the world – the imprisonment and enslavement of of Uyghers in western China; the discrimination against the Rohinga in Myanmar; the genocide and attempts at assimilation of Indigenous peoples; the attempts to crush democracy in Thailand, Belarus, Turkey, and Hong Kong; and the racism we know exists here and in our home countries.

We have hope, light in the midst of darkness, that God will make all things right, that the darkness will not overcome the light, that the arc of history tends towards justice and righteousness, and that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is but the beginning of God’s recreation of a new heaven and a new earth. As citizens of New Jerusalem, who know that we have been freed from sin and are free to serve God, our hymn is that of Isaiah:

I will greatly rejoice in the LORD,
my whole being shall exult in my God;
for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation,
he has covered me with the robe of righteousness,
as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland,
and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.
For as the earth brings forth its shoots,
and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up,
so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise
to spring up before all the nations.

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Through Advent With The Apocalypse: 12/12 – (14) The Idea of Justice

Posted on December 12, 2020 by Bruce Bryant-Scott

This Advent, in the Year of the Great Pandemic 2020, it seems appropriate to look at The Apocalypse – that is, The Revelation of John. This is the fourteenth of twenty-six short reflections.

Professor Michael Sandel inside Sanders Theatre at Harvard University, teaching his course on Justice. (Cambridge, MA – September 15, 2008)

Michael Sandel is a political philosopher at Harvard University, and annually teaches an introductory course on justice. In 2007 over 1000 students enrolled in it. It has been filmed and broadcast on public television, and the book version (which I have read but no longer seem to have) has been translated into at least thirteen languages. In both the course and the book he runs through a variety of approaches which have all had their proponents over the ages:

  • Justice is the greatest happiness for the most people. (Utilitarianism)
  • Justice is achieved by the maximum autonomy for the individual with the greatest freedom from interference from the state or any other external agent. (Libertarianism)
  • Justice is best achieved in the free market of ideas, or, actually, in any kind of market, and governments should refrain from limiting free speech and the regulation of the market place for goods and services. (Free Market Economics)
  • Justice is achieved by following carefully considered rules, such as the categorical imperative. (Kantian deontology)
  • Justice as fairness. (John Rawls)
  • Justice as achieved through the acquisition of virtues. (Aristotle & MacIntyre – Virtue Ethics)
  • Justice as being mainly loyal to ones family, friends, clan, and community. (Communal self-interest against outsiders)
  • Justice as a communal value, achieved through the best of virtue ethics, utilitarianism, deontology modified by circumstances, and managed markets (Sandel’s own approach)

This is not an exhaustive list of approaches by any means. Amartya Sen, who won the Nobel Prize in economics for his studies on the causes of famines, has developed what is known as the “capability approach” to ethics, essentially arguing that most of the approaches listed by Sandel do not mean much to individuals in extreme poverty, as they do not have the capabilities to develop anything other than survival as an approach to life. Thus, justice is that which first addresses the development of capabilities of human beings. This has since been developed by Martha Nussbaum, and I think it is an important corrective on Western political philosophy.

Another approach might be:

  • Justice is whatever God says it is.

Of course, this begs the question that what God says justice is can actually be determined. For some God’s justice means that access to abortion must be limited or made impossible. In other cases it involves genocide. The Catholic Church says that God’s justice demands that capital punishment be abolished. Others argue that God’s justice is about helping the poor and marginalized. Some see justice as something only derivable from scripture, others have a tradition of natural law that complements and orders scriptural injunctions.

The concept of justice has its limits. Certain legal scholars, for example, (some of them sitting on the Supreme Court of the United States) seem to think that justice in terms of legal practice means that one just has to read the text and interpret it the way the original writers thought about it. But that is a hopeless exercise – as if the original writers had a single idea of what the words meant, or as if the meaning was clear in their own minds. Being politicians, they booted many issues down the decades by being deliberately vague or brief. I suppose I am too much of a deconstructionist to believe that words have single, stable meanings; language really does subvert itself.

As well, the values that seem to be contained in any idea of justice are not themselves necessarily commensurable with each other (as Isaiah Berlin pointed out); when push comes to shove, our deeply held values themselves may be in conflict. What is more important, my religious commitment to pacifism, or the value of patriotism? The idea of justice itself may be inherently unstable, something that changes and is renegotiated in each generation, and never quite reaching the ideal we think it ought to be.

John the Divine had a certain idea of justice. He certainly thought that Rome and the Roman Empire was unjust. He thought that God’s wrath would be poured out on it, and correctly so. In chapter 21.8 he states that

the cowardly, the faithless, the polluted, the murderers, the fornicators, the sorcerers, the idolaters, and all liars, their place will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death

and, further, in 22.15, that

15 Outside are the dogs and sorcerers and fornicators and murderers and idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood.

which is a bit grim. John is certainly into divine punishment.

In chapter 18 he condemns all the merchants and those who trade with Rome. He condemns those who are responsible for the deaths of God’s holy people, the saints and the apostles.

But he also condemns people within the church, as can be seen in chapters 2 and 3: he criticises those “those who say that they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan”, “some . . . who hold to the teaching of Balaam,” “that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophet and is teaching and beguiling my servants to practice fornication and to eat food sacrificed to idols,” and those who “say, ‘I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing.’” I get the feeling that if you were on the wrong side of John he would he quite scathing.

In this he is simply following in the path of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and other prophets who spoke truth to power and condemned those leaders who failed to care for the orphans and widows, who compromised the worship of YHWH with idols and other gods, and who sought to enrich themselves and live in luxury.

So what do we do with the judgementalism of John the Divine, which seems to characterise the whole of the book? Well, again, I do several things.

My own approach is to say that we need to be eclectic. The concept of justice as revealed in scripture needs to be in dialogue with our experience and histories of how different societies have understood justice. The ultimate example of justice is to be found in Jesus Christ.

So, first, I read the book in dialogue with other parts of the New Testament, especially the gospels and the picture of Jesus that is described in it. Second, I consider how this passage has been read over the past 1900 years. And, third, I also see it in dialogue with the present day. John lived in a very different age and circumstances from me. History has unfolded in ways inconceivable to him.

So, taking all that into consideration, what are the insights and values that we find meaningful now? I will continue this tomorrow.

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Resources for Worship on Advent III 2020

Posted on December 11, 2020 by Bruce Bryant-Scott

These are resources for the Third Sunday of Advent on December 13, 2020. The resources are gathered from a variety of sources and, while assembled mainly for The Anglican Church of St Thomas the Apostle, Kefalas, on the island of Crete in Greece, others may find them useful.

The Freedom Sculpture by the American sculptor Zenos Frudakis (yes, his parents are Greek, probably from Crete).

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The government of Greece released new directions yesterday (Friday, December 11). We will remain in lockdown until and including January 6, 2021, at least. We are not allowed to meet in person, except on Christmas Day, Friday December 25, and Epiphany, Wednesday January 6, 2021. We are limited to nine person in church on those days. So . . .

We will have two services of Holy Communion on Christmas Day, at 9:15 am and 11:00 am. If you wish to attend you must register in advance. To register please contact Pat Worsley by phone at +30 28257 71001 or by email at peter.worsley@btinternet.com; registration will be on a first come, first served basis.

If there is greater demand than can be accommodated by these two services, I am open to having more celebration of Holy Communion on that day.

The 11:00 am service will be on Zoom for those who do not wish to attend in person. We will definitely be singing hymns at that service! The 9:15 service will be a traditional Book of Common Prayer service of Holy Communion, with the 16th century Tudor English that many of you grew up with.

This Sunday, The Third Sunday of Advent, we will be on Zoom for a Service of the Word at 11:00 am EET (9:00 am GMT). You can join us by clicking this link or by entering the following into your Zoom application: Meeting ID: 850 4483 9927 Passcode: 010209.

Read

The readings we will be using this Sunday are Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11, Psalm 126, and John 1:6-8, 19-28; many congregations will also use as a second reading 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24.

Reflect

I suspect that I will be preaching on the passage from Isaiah 61:

The spirit of the Lord God is upon me,
    because the Lord has anointed me;
he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed,
    to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
    and release to the prisoners . . .

Pray

Collect

O Lord Jesus Christ,
who at your first coming sent your messenger
to prepare your way before you:
grant that the ministers and stewards of your mysteries
may likewise so prepare and make ready your way
by turning the hearts of the disobedient to the wisdom of the just,
that at your second coming to judge the world
we may be found an acceptable people in your sight;
for you are alive and reign with the Father
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.

(or)

God for whom we watch and wait,
you sent John the Baptist to prepare the way of your Son:
give us courage to speak the truth,
to hunger for justice,
and to suffer for the cause of right,
with Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Biddings
I bid your prayers for the leaders and people of the nations; especially

  • Katerini Sakellaropoulou, President of Greece, and
  • Elizabeth, Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and her other realms, and also in her role as Governor of the Church of England;
  • In the European Union,
    • Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission;
    • Charles Michel, President of the European Council; and
    • Josep Borrell, High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs & Security Policy;
  • for the closing negotiations around Brexit;
  • for the peoples of the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland facing uncertainty over the fate of the Good Friday Accord;
  • the peoples of Belarus, Hong Kong, Nigeria, Peru, and Thailand as they continue to demonstrate for democracy and justice;
  • for the maintaining of peace between Azerbaijan and Armenia, and between Russia and Ukraine, Palestinians and Israelis, North and South Korea, and for a final, just resolution to their conflicts;
  • for the President-elect and peoples of the United States;
  • for advocates of Indigenous rights and the adoption and implementation of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples;
  • prisoners and captives, especially the over one million Uygers being held in detention in China;
  • the over 79.5 million refugees and nearly 4 million stateless person, remembering especially the crucial situation of Greece, and the work of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (“UNHCR”);
  • for a lessening of tensions between Turkey and Greece; and
  • for peace in Yemen, Libya, Afghanistan, Syria, and Ethiopia.

I bid your prayers for the sick and suffering and all who minister to their needs;

  • remembering the 20 million active cases of the novel coronavirus, and mourning with the families of the 1.6 million who have died in the pandemic;
  • for the 1.8 million people in the UK who have had covid-19 or are recovering from it, the over 63,000 who have died of it there, and the over 121,000 active cases here in Greece, and the families of the over 3370 dead here;
  • remembering those ill with other diseases, and those whose operations have been postponed;
  • all those having issues with mental health;
  • those suffering from addiction, and those in recovery;
  • those who have been affected severely by the economic effects of the pandemic, especially in food services and tourism;
  • and giving thanks for the efforts of researchers in finding vaccines, and the rollout of vaccines across the world.

I bid your prayers for the Church:

Intercessions
In joyful expectation of his coming to our aid we pray to Jesus.

Come to your Church as Lord and judge.
Help us to live in the light of your coming
and give us a longing for your kingdom.
Maranatha: Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.

Come to your world as King of the nations.
Before you rulers will stand in silence.
Maranatha: Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.

Come to the suffering as Saviour and comforter.
Break into our lives,
where we struggle with sickness and distress,
and set us free to serve you for ever.
Maranatha: Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.

Come to us as shepherd and guardian of our souls.
Give us with all the faithful departed
a share in your victory over evil and death.
Maranatha: Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.

Come from heaven, Lord Jesus, with power and great glory.
Lift us up to meet you,
that with Isaiah, John the Baptist, Thomas our patron and the rest of the Twelve, Paul, Mary of Magdala, Mary your mother, and all your saints and angels,
we may live and reign with you in your new creation.
Maranatha: Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.

Silence is kept.

Come, Lord Jesus, do not delay;
give new courage to your people,
who trust in your love.
By your coming, raise us to share in the joy of your kingdom
on earth as in heaven,
where you live and reign with the Father and the Spirit,
one God for ever and ever. Amen.

Sing

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Through Advent With The Apocalypse: 11/12 – (13) “What Have the Romans Ever Done For Us?”

Posted on December 11, 2020 by Bruce Bryant-Scott

This Advent, in the Year of the Great Pandemic 2020, it seems appropriate to look at The Apocalypse – that is, The Revelation of John. This is the thirteenth of twenty-six short reflections.

Edward Gibbon begins his The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (published in 1776) by singing the praises of the Empire at its height (bolding added by me):

In the second century of the Christian Era, the empire of Rome comprehended the fairest part of the earth, and the most civilized portion of mankind. The frontiers of that extensive monarchy were guarded by ancient renown and disciplined valor. The gentle but powerful influence of laws and manners had gradually cemented the union of the provinces. Their peaceful inhabitants enjoyed and abused the advantages of wealth and luxury. The image of a free constitution was preserved with decent reverence: the Roman senate appeared to possess the sovereign authority, and devolved on the emperors all the executive powers of government. During a happy period of more than fourscore years, the public administration was conducted by the virtue and abilities of Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, and the two Antonines. It is the design of this, and of the two succeeding chapters, to describe the prosperous condition of their empire; and afterwards, from the death of Marcus Antoninus, to deduce the most important circumstances of its decline and fall; a revolution which will ever be remembered, and is still felt by the nations of the earth.

As the bolding suggests, Gibbon saw the second century CE as a golden age – prosperous, well managed, a model for the future government of the United States with a separation between the legislative body of the Senate and the executive power of the Emperors, a gentle but powerful set of laws, and free travel from the north of Brittania to Upper Egypt, a freedom from piracy on the Mediterranean Sea, over a fair and civilized land. And, as the video from Monty Python from yesterday’s post pointed out, they did not do badly building aqueducts, urban sanitation, roads, and irrigation, and bringing medicine, education, wine, public baths, safety, order, and peace.

Of course, the video is less a claim to definitive Roman history than a parody of left-wing radicals in the UK who disparage the benefits of democracy and the market economy; these were the sorts of people they met while at university in the UK and advocated for Trotsky and Mao.

Back to Gibbon. He was a brilliant historian, an 18th century Thucydides, who did extensive research and set the standard for historiography for another century or two. However, he was a creature of his times – the Enlightenment and the era of the rise of the British Empire. As a child of the landed gentry, he was a part of the upper 5% of the population of Great Britain, and as a backbench Member of Parliament he naturally identified with the ruling classes in the Roman era. He was raised on the untranslated writings of the Greek and Latin authors, and believed that the Roman Empire was the height of civilization from which Europe fell precipitously into the Dark Ages, giving way to barbarians and superstition, and from which the world had only recovered in his time. And he blamed Christianity.

Despite a conversion to Catholicism in his adolescence, and a return to some form of reformed faith a year and a half later, Gibbon was most influences by the Philosophes of pre-Revolutionary France. He came to believe that, after Constantine, the Christian faith diverted Imperial funds into large basilicas and unproductive clergy and monastics, funds that should have been used for defense and economic investment. Christian values seemed to be contrary to the proud, virile values of the Roman Republic and Empire, and so the question was not so much why Rome fell, but why it lasted so long, until 1453, in that vestige of Byzantium. While still influential, his views have been much challenged. The quality of his prose, on the other hand, is still brilliant, and influenced another upper-class historian-politician, Winston S. Churchill.

I suspect that if Gibbon had actually lived in the Roman Empire he might have had a different view. Julius Caesar, like most of the conquering generals of Rome, was responsible for the death of perhaps a million Gauls during his conquest of what is now France. Despite being a patrician, he was essentially bankrupt when he became governor of Cisalpine Gaul, and he built his wealth off of the capture and sale of hundreds of thousands of slaves. The elite of the Empire, some 1.5% of the population, owned half of all the slaves, and roughly half were working in agriculture and the other half in towns and cities; perhaps up to 40% of the population were enslaved. Slaves were considered non-persons, the property of their owners, and there was nothing extraordinary in the use and abuse of slaves for sexual gratification.

Perhaps 25% of the total population of the Empire were citizens, but up until the 3rd Century CE the vast majority of them were on the Italian peninsula. Citizenship suggests to us the right to vote, but the system of the Roman Republic was rigged in favour of the aristocracy, and one had to be physically present in Rome on voting day in order to be counted, anyway. And, of course, half the citizenry, being female, were disenfranchised anyway. After Caesar even the aristocracy lost their political rights, as the emperors were quite literally dictators.

The subject peoples of the Empire did not care for Roman rule, as is evident from frequent rebellions by in Italy, Gaul, Britannia, Egypt, Mauretania, Africa (the province, not the continent), and, of course, Judea. Even when a province became inured to Roman domination they Empire was plagued with the reality that the Romans never quite figured out how to handle the succession of emperors. Thus, Roman history seems to be a never-ending series of civil wars or military revolts, with a dizzying turnstile of short reigns or pretenders, and large parts of the Empire separating for decades and generations before being reunited.

Then there are the taxes. Among the most hated persons in the gospels are the tax collectors. Tax collection was farmed out to subcontractors, and they had a “mark-up” on what was to be collected, so that they might enrich themselves. The taxes required bore little relation to the ability of the province to produce, and so in some places the economy became depressed and the land, quite literally, suffered. Thus, it appears that Galilee in the time of Jesus was in an economic crisis as many families failed to pay their taxes, lost their land, and became unrooted brigands in order to survive.

Life expectancy in the Roman Empire appears to have been low in comparison with other pre-industrial societies. Mortality was especially high in the early years, and the Romans also practiced infanticide and exposure. It has been argued that

Mortality on this scale: (1) discourages investment in human capital, hindering productivity growth (adolescent mortality rates in Rome were two-thirds higher than in early modern Britain); (2) creates large numbers of dependent widows and orphans; and (3) hinders long-term economic planning.

Medical care in Roman society was very much “every man for himself”. Rodney Stark suggests that one of the reasons Christianity grew was that Christians, being enjoined to care for each other and to visit the sick, had, even with the minimal medical care available at the time, a somewhat higher survival rate than their non-Christian neighbours. This growth was compounded by the non-Christian neighbours seeing that more Christians survived plagues and ordinary diseases. This, combined with the Christian prohibition against infanticide and exposure, meant that over its first three centuries, the Christian population grew as a proportion of the population, despite recurrent persecution by the Empire.

We are, of course, impressed by the engineering feats of the Romans. Their buildings, such as the Pantheon in Rome, are astonishing achievements. Some of the aqueducts are still in use, if only as bridges. The roads, built mainly for the movement of armies, contributed to the unity and economic growth of the Empire. Appropriating Greek culture they preserved the classics of Greek history, literature, and drama, as well as philosophy. As a basic substrate of elite medieval European culture, the Romans were held up as the ideal throughout the Renaissance and up into the 20th century.

But I suspect that if any one of us were in the place of our ancestors in the time of John the Divine, circa 69 CE (or 90 CE), we would generally find that life was nasty, brutish, and short. There is a good chance we would have been slaves, used and abused by our owners, and even if free, then without any rights as a citizen, and literally taxed to death. John the Divine experienced exile and persecution, and saw Rome as a tool of Satan, not benefiting its peoples by overbearing in its dominion. He could not imagine any natural alternative to this reiteration of hated Babylon, and so looked towards the intervention of God in the person of Jesus Christ returning as the Son of Man to judge the world.

So, is this justice? Is this something to which we in the 21st century can subscribe? That’s for tomorrow.

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Through Advent With The Apocalypse: 10/12 – (12) Babylon

Posted on December 10, 2020 by Bruce Bryant-Scott

This Advent, in the Year of the Great Pandemic 2020, it seems appropriate to look at The Apocalypse – that is, The Revelation of John. This is the twelfth of twenty-six short reflections.

The Magna Mater, or “Great Mother”, who was originally the Anatolian goddess Cybele. She is very much a fertility god. Here she is seated on a throne, with lion, cornucopia, and a crown that is like a wall. This was made by a Roman artisan from marble around 50 CE. It is now in the Getty Museum in Los Angeles.

In chapter 17 we are introduced to a woman who is riding the first beast, the one from the sea, who is worshiped by the second beast and who I have in previous posts identified as the Roman Empire. John writes:

[The angel] carried me away in the spirit into a wilderness, and I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was full of blasphemous names, and it had seven heads and ten horns. 4 The woman was clothed in purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold and jewels and pearls, holding in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the impurities of her fornication; 5 and on her forehead was written a name, a mystery: “Babylon the great, mother of whores and of earth’s abominations.” 6 And I saw that the woman was drunk with the blood of the saints and the blood of the witnesses to Jesus.

Verse 17 of chapter 17 makes it very clear who the woman is:

18 The woman you saw is the great city that rules over the kings of the earth.”

The word translated as “whore” is πόρνης, which etymologically is associated with the ancient Greek work for “to sell”; it remains the common word in Standard Modern Greek for a prostitute or sex worker. However, the focus here is not on sex, as such, but the multiplicity of gods and demigods, foreign and local, that were worshiped in the city; this is compared to the gaudy promiscuity of the woman. In the same way that the prophet Hosea eight centuries earlier in Israel probably did not marry a sex worker, but simply someone who worshipped a God other than YHWH, so the woman on the scarlet beast is a metaphor for the tremendous idolatry and religious depravity of Rome.

As discussed earlier, John then explains who the beast is:

9 “This calls for a mind that has wisdom: the seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman is seated; also, they are seven kings, 10 of whom five have fallen, one is living, and the other has not yet come; and when he comes, he must remain only a little while. 11 As for the beast that was and is not, it is an eighth but it belongs to the seven, and it goes to destruction. 12 And the ten horns that you saw are ten kings who have not yet received a kingdom, but they are to receive authority as kings for one hour, together with the beast. 13 These are united in yielding their power and authority to the beast; 14 they will make war on the Lamb

There are several was of trying to understand this. First, John had the vision and wrote it down immediately. Thus, John had his vision in the time of Nero, had witnessed the rise and fall of Galba, and was awaiting some form of Nero to return. Or, perhaps he wrote it down sometime later, and while awaiting the rise of the new Nero, stayed true to the vision, even though several emperors had come and gone.

The key point is that they are making war on the Lamb – and by the Lamb, we also mean the church. John the Divine was writing at a time of persecution, and looked to the return of Jesus to make things right. And this is what happens in chapter 18:

18 After this I saw another angel coming down from heaven, having great authority; and the earth was made bright with his splendor. 2 He called out with a mighty voice,

“Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great!
    It has become a dwelling place of demons,
a haunt of every foul spirit,
    a haunt of every foul bird,
    a haunt of every foul and hateful beast.
3 For all the nations have drunk
    of the wine of the wrath of her fornication,
and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her,
    and the merchants of the earth have grown rich from the power of her luxury.”

9 And the kings of the earth, who committed fornication and lived in luxury with her, will weep and wail over her when they see the smoke of her burning; 10 they will stand far off, in fear of her torment, and say,

“Alas, alas, the great city,
    Babylon, the mighty city!
For in one hour your judgment has come.”

This is the central message, then, of the Book of Revelation: the Roman Empire is evil, and it will be judged and destroyed by God.

But was it that evil? As this passage from Monty Python’s Life of Brian suggests, maybe they actually did a lot of good.

Was Rome really deserving of destruction? Was John the Divine just a grumpy, blood thirsty fanatic, or did he have good reason to hate Rome? We will get to that in the next post.

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Through Advent With The Apocalypse: 09/12 – (11) The Second Beast, with Horns Like a Lamb

Posted on December 9, 2020 by Bruce Bryant-Scott

This Advent, in the Year of the Great Pandemic 2020, it seems appropriate to look at The Apocalypse – that is, The Revelation of John. This is the eleventh of twenty-six short reflections.

A fierce creature

Yesterday I talked about the beast with ten horns and seven heads, the beast from the sea. There is another beast, but this one emerges from the earth. In chapter 13 we read:

11 Then I saw another beast that rose out of the earth; it had two horns like a lamb and it spoke like a dragon. 12 It exercises all the authority of the first beast on its behalf, and it makes the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast, whose mortal wound had been healed. 13 It performs great signs, even making fire come down from heaven to earth in the sight of all; 14 and by the signs that it is allowed to perform on behalf of the beast, it deceives the inhabitants of earth, telling them to make an image for the beast that had been wounded by the sword and yet lived; 15 and it was allowed to give breath to the image of the beast so that the image of the beast could even speak and cause those who would not worship the image of the beast to be killed. 16 Also it causes all, both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave, to be marked on the right hand or the forehead, 17 so that no one can buy or sell who does not have the mark, that is, the name of the beast or the number of its name. 18 This calls for wisdom: let anyone with understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a person. Its number is six hundred sixty-six.

So what is going on here? Who or what is this beast from the earth?

The first thing to note is that it has horns like a lamb, although it talks like a dragon. The second beast is essentially a parody of Jesus as the lamb of God; it claims to be divine, but is not. This is similar and the reverse of what the gospels do, which is to use terms related to the imperial cult of emperor worship for Jesus, phrases such as such as ευαγγέλιον “good news”, παρουσία “coming” or “advent”, Υιός Θεού “Son of God”, βασιλεύς “king”, and so forth. When Jesus enters Jerusalem riding on a humble donkey he is mocking the Romans who proudly enter on their horses. So the lamb, this second beast who comes from the earth, is the opposite of Christ – an anti-Christ, if you will.

And what about the number of the beast? This seems to refer to the first beast “who had been wounded by the sword and yet lived”. This may be a reference to the persistent idea that Nero died, but did not die, and would return to claim the Empire. There is a practice in Judaism called gemmatria, which involves assigning number values to letters in a word, phrase, or name, and then adding up the individual numbers to make a sum that is supposedly connected to whatever was originally spelled; this continues to be important in the Jewish wisdom known as Kabbalah. The good folks at Wikipedia have put together a helpful graph that suggests that the number of the beast, 666, represents Nero Caesar (see below).

The number of the beast shows up in some very ancient manuscripts as 616, so any gemmatria would have to account for that. The name Neron Caesar is transliterated into Hebrew. Hebrew does not always bother with vowels, and Neron might also just end Nero. Thus we get the Hebrew equivalent of Nron Qsr or Nro Qsr.

This suggests that John had his vision in the time of Nero, who appeared to kill himself by the sword. I suspect that the visions did not get written immediately, though. Thus the second beast comes, who treats its predecessors as deified beings worthy of worship. I suspect that the second beast represents the Flavian dynasty, and in particular, Vespasian and his son Titus who came after, who might be represented by the two horns. Titus only ruled two years and was succeeded by his younger brother Domitian, under whom Christians were persecuted, the first time since Nero did the same back in 66. So perhaps the horns, if they represent anything, are the two generations of the Flavians.

The mark of the beast may not be a mark, as such, but simply be the use of coins with Nero’s image on it (or that of any other emperor). If you do not “have the mark” – if you do not use coins – then buying and selling things would be difficult indeed.

This is all a bit confusing. Perhaps it was not all perfectly coherent in the mind of John the Divine. But it seems to me blindingly obvious that the Beast is the Roman Empire that he knew, and which had killed Jesus, and had exiled him to Patmos. Tomorrow I’ll talk about the third piece in this puzzle, and arguably the most transparent.

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Through Advent With The Apocalypse: 08/12 – (10) “What Year Is This?”

Posted on December 8, 2020 by Bruce Bryant-Scott

This Advent, in the Year of the Great Pandemic 2020, it seems appropriate to look at The Apocalypse – that is, The Revelation of John. This is the tenth of twenty-six short reflections.

What year is this?

When did John the Divine think he was writing about? The future, for the most part, yes, but whose future? His, only, the era around 90 to 100 CE, or ours, too, some 1900 years later?

The answer is that the visions refer not to his distant future, a future that we share with him, but rather to a future that was particular to his time and circumstances. In other words, in his visions he was seeing the end of the Roman Empire by the direct intervention of God. This is the consensus view of most mainstream scholars.

Why do they say that? The clues are all over the place. John references would have been very obvious to those who first read and heard Revelation. Revelation 13 describes a beast from the sea:

13 1 And I saw a beast rising out of the sea, having ten horns and seven heads; and on its horns were ten diadems, and on its heads were blasphemous names. 2 And the beast that I saw was like a leopard, its feet were like a bear’s, and its mouth was like a lion’s mouth. And the dragon gave it his power and his throne and great authority. 3 One of its heads seemed to have received a death-blow, but its mortal wound had been healed. In amazement the whole earth followed the beast. 4 They worshiped the dragon, for he had given his authority to the beast, and they worshiped the beast, saying, “Who is like the beast, and who can fight against it?”

The beast is the Roman Empire. The explanation is given in chapter 17.

9 “This calls for a mind that has wisdom: the seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman is seated; also, they are seven kings, 10 of whom five have fallen, one is living, and the other has not yet come; and when he comes, he must remain only a little while. 11 As for the beast that was and is not, it is an eighth but it belongs to the seven, and it goes to destruction. 12 And the ten horns that you saw are ten kings who have not yet received a kingdom, but they are to receive authority as kings for one hour, together with the beast. 13 These are united in yielding their power and authority to the beast

The seven heads correspond to the seven hills on which Rome was built, but also they represent the seven emperors:

  • 1) Julius Caesar,
  • 2) Caesar Augustus,
  • 3) Caesar Tiberius Augustus,
  • 4) Gaius Caesar Augustus Germanicus (better known as Caligula),
  • 5) Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus,
  • 6) Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, and
  • 7) Servius Galba Caesar Augustus.

The head that appeared to have received a death blow is Nero – after his suicide in 68 CE it was believed that he was in hiding in Parthia – and within twenty years of Nero’s death there were at least three imposters claiming to be Nero. As late as the time of Augustine of Hippo in the 5th century this belief was still held by some. The worship that is being offered to the beast is the worship offered to the Emperor; while initially downplayed in the Latin speaking western part of the Empire by the first emperors, by the time of Caligula and Claudius it was being encouraged in the Greek speaking eastern. Indeed, Caligula sought to set up his own image in the Temple precincts of Jerusalem. And, of course, the Empire was seemingly invincible – it had conquered all the civilized world, it seemed. Rather than explain it by their superior military tactics or ruthless administration, John sees their great power coming from the power given to it by the dragon mentioned in chapter 12.

I am not sure who the kings are that the ten horns represent. Perhaps they are a restatement of the number of emperors. Number Seven, Galba, did not last long – a little over eight months. Whereas all the previous emperors belonged to the Julio-Claudian family, Galba was a general of a noble family, and someone who took advantage of a rebellion in Gaul to take over the leadership of the Empire in June 68. The Praetorian guard overthrew him in favour of a more popular general, Otho in mid-January. The troops of Vitellius, a general on the important frontier of the Rhine, declared him Emperor, and Vitellius marched into Italy and defeated Otho, becoming Emperor in March. Meanwhile, in the eastern part of the Empire, a Roman general named Vespasian was putting down the Jewish Revolt in Jerusalem and Judea. His troops proclaimed him emperor, and with his allies he began to make his way towards Rome. Virellius, after losing a battle with one of the armies supporting Vespasian, tried to abdicate, but his own troops would not let him. Ultimately Vespasian’s armies gained control of Rome, Vitellius was found, and executed. 69 CE, as it was later known, was known as The Year of the Four Emperors.

This takes us up to ten emperors, which may be what the ten horns suggest:

  • 8) Otho
  • 9) Vitellius
  • 10) Vespasian

Alternatively, perhaps John just saw a succession of emperors, some contending for power at the same time, generals whose troops proclaimed them emperor in a bid for power and wealth. This was an unsettled time, and not just for the Emperors and the people of Rome. While Vespasian went to Rome, his son Titus continued the reduction of the rebels in Judea, Samaria, and Galilee, which by that time amounted to a siege at Jerusalem. When the walls were breached, the inhabitants were slaughtered, and the Temple was destroyed. As a Jew (or a Christian) this would have been a traumatic event, like having 9/11 take place at the Vatican. Tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, would have died. Was this the suffering that was to come before the Day of the Lord?

So perhaps John had his vision in 68 or 69 CE, around the Year of the Four Emperors and the conclusion of the Jewish Revolt, with the death of Nero and the chaos that followed. However, he may have taken some years to write the text, just as Julian of Norwich took some years to write down her Revelations of Divine Love. This may have given him time to develop and elaborate it. I will take up what may have been his elaboration tomorrow.

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Through Advent With The Apocalypse: 07/12 – (9) Time

Posted on December 7, 2020 by Bruce Bryant-Scott

This Advent, in the Year of the Great Pandemic 2020, it seems appropriate to look at The Apocalypse – that is, The Revelation of John. This is the ninth of twenty-six short reflections.

We are used to thinking about time in a few ways. One is as duration, the time that is subjectively passing. We understand it as something in which the present becomes the past and the future the present – and yet the past, relative to this present moment, is unchangeable and the future ever inaccessible.

We construct the past. We know our own past, but particular things stand out in our memories. I remember the Berlin Wall falling and the great wave of optimism that swept the world as the Eastern bloc in Europe and South American nations shifted from totalitarianism and dictatorships to liberal democracies and open economies. I still am somewhat in wonder that it, like the Good Friday Agreement and the transition from Apartheid in South Africa, was all so peaceful. I remember smallpox vaccinations. Some of the folk in the congregation at St Thomas, Kefalas remember the end of World War II. Some things were told to us. My paternal grandfather fought in World War I, and I have his diary. My maternal grandmother remembered when Pluto was discovered by Clyde Tomabaugh.

We imagine the future. 2020 is not what I thought it would be in 1980, when I started university. I never thought I would live in Greece. I was sure I would keep climbing the cursus honorum of the Anglican Church of Canada. I sure never expected a pandemic, or climate change, or the stagnation in incomes. I was brought up to expect progress, but now we have . . . challenges.

There is clock time, which is “objective time”. Then there is time in Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. I have forgotten all my high school calculus, but one thing we did in Grade 12 Physics was work through the equations for special relativity, which demonstrated that, yes, time was relative, and clocks would measure the same events differently if they were in different inertial frames.

Then there is history. I love reading history, but I have read enough to know that histories are subjective and selective. I have read all of Winston Churchill’s volumes on the Second World War, but I know that he left much out, such as the breaking of the Enigma codes, or the decision to allow a famine in Bengal.

The Revelation of John approaches time in none of these ways. In Revelation the past, present, and future are sometimes all present in a single vision, sometimes two of them together. It can all get a bit complex. Jesus in chapter1, verse 19 says to John:

Now write what you have seen, what is, and what is to take place after this.

This captures the past, present, and future aspect of the visions, and that time is all jumbled together.

John’s initial vision is of the throne of God in heaven.

42 At once I was in the spirit, and there in heaven stood a throne, with one seated on the throne! 3 And the one seated there looks like jasper and carnelian, and around the throne is a rainbow that looks like an emerald. 4 Around the throne are twenty-four thrones, and seated on the thrones are twenty-four elders, dressed in white robes, with golden crowns on their heads . . . 56 Then I saw between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders a Lamb standing as if it had been slaughtered, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth. 7 He went and took the scroll from the right hand of the one who was seated on the throne.

This is, of course, to be read symbolically, not literally. Jesus is symbolically the lamb of God, not a real sheep, whether on earth or in heaven. This is also one freaky lamb, which again should persuade us not to take this literally. But the truth is that this is Jesus, the one who has died and is now resurrected and ascended, and who is to come to judge the living and the dead. So Jesus takes the scroll, and breaks the seals.

Most of what happens with the breaking of the seals, the blowing of trumpets, presumably is in the future – but John sees it in the present. In chapter 12 we read:

121A great portent appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. 2 She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pangs, in the agony of giving birth. 3 Then another portent appeared in heaven: a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and seven diadems on his heads. 4 His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth. Then the dragon stood before the woman who was about to bear a child, so that he might devour her child as soon as it was born. 5 And she gave birth to a son, a male child, who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron. But her child was snatched away and taken to God and to his throne; 6 and the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, so that there she can be nourished for one thousand two hundred sixty days.

Is this a reference to Jesus being born of Mary? Probably, as he “is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron”, but the description is in very symbolic language. The confrontations of Satan with Jesus – in the wilderness, in the exorcisms, and finally at the cross – are reduced to the challenge of the dragon before the woman and the threat to eat her new born child. The child is swept up to heaven – his resurrection and ascension. The woman, who then seems to be a metaphor for the church, escapes into the wilderness. In historical terms, the church was mainly in the cities, but they functioned like wildernesses. The chapter continues:

7 And war broke out in heaven; Michael and his angels fought against the dragon. The dragon and his angels fought back, 8 but they were defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. 9 The great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.

10 Then I heard a loud voice in heaven, proclaiming,
“Now have come the salvation and the power
    and the kingdom of our God
    and the authority of his Messiah,
for the accuser of our comrades has been thrown down,
    who accuses them day and night before our God.
11 But they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb
    and by the word of their testimony,
for they did not cling to life even in the face of death.

When was there war in heaven? Is this at the time when the “blood of the Lamb” was shed – which is to say, somewhere around 30 CE? Or was it, as John Milton has it in Paradise Lost, something that took place before the creation of the material world? Or is the defeat of Satan something yet to come, or something that is ongoing? It is not at all clear; the answer to all of this could be, “Yes, all of these.”

Thus, while much of Revelation is dealing with future events, it is also dealing with the meaning of Christ’s death and resurrection, events that have already happened but which are made present by the Holy Spirit in the lives of God’s people and in the sacraments. Time is, as I said, “wonky.”

But what is the future for John the Divine? Was he imagining these symbols and metaphors to refer to things in our future as well, or did he think it would all come to pass soon, and very soon? That will be tomorrow’s discussion.

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