John to the seven churches that are in Asia: Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne, and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth. To him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. (Revelation 1:4-8)
In the modern world it is rare to get anything of great significance in the mail. And it is even less common to receive something where the way we are addressed and the way that the writer describes himself really matters.
In our world, one of the rare exceptions are the notes and cards that we receive from our grandchildren. Anything signed by our grandchildren and addressed to “Grandmama and Fritz” (my family nickname), signals a set of relationships, identifies our roles, and taps into a history of shared experiences that no other piece of mail can conjure up. Try as they may, there is no piece of mail from a time-share that can signal what I would call a life-defining set of relationships.
But in the ancient world – where written communication was rare – words mattered. And when writing to others, people used a series of descriptors to define themselves and the people to whom they wrote. Sometimes, in fact, the language used at the beginning or at the end of correspondence said as much about the message the writer wanted to convey as did anything between the beginning and the end of a letter.
That’s particularly true of the introduction to the Book of Revelation which we read this morning. The larger book isn’t a letter at all, of course. It is a vision which John the Elder describes for the seven churches in his care scattered across Asia Minor. But the vision that he describes would have been read out loud in those churches and that required an introduction not unlike those we find in Paul’s letters to his churches.
But – because the Book of Revelation is a vision or unveiling – there is also an important difference. John doesn’t introduce it as he might have if it had been a letter. Instead, he introduces the vision as a word spoken directly to John’s churches by Jesus himself. So, the way in which Jesus describes himself and the church say something of critical importance about Jesus, about the church, and about our relationship with him.
Jesus describes himself using three titles: “the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.” They are different descriptors of Jesus, but they are also related.
Jesus is the one whose witness to the coming of the Kingdom of God resulted in his crucifixion. He is the firstborn of the dead – the Resurrection was the vindication of that witness. And, as a result of his vindication, he is clearly “the ruler of the kings of the earth.” You hear echoes of this idea in our liturgy: “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.” There is no political order, no ruler, no social reality, no claims that any human being might make that transcend or outlast the claim made by the Resurrected Christ.
It is not surprising then, to find that John’s introduction to his vision describes Christians as those who are “loved”, “freed from their sins”, and have been made “a kingdom of priests”, who serve that living God. In the cross, God’s love for us is given its ultimate expression. His death and resurrection signal the forgiveness of our sins and our freedom from the power of death. And as members of the body of Christ we are called to be and to do what Adam and Eve were originally called to be and do: to be God’s priests, to care for one another and creation, to live into the image of God, to embody and live in a way that witnesses to the presence and power of God.
To put it another way, we are Resurrection people. But what does that look like?
The vision or visions that John describes in the Book of Revelation describes the Resurrection in vivid detail, but let me summarize the answer that the living Christ offers in three phrases. Resurrection people: are people who live with freedom, witness to the truth, and offer hope. Let me explain.
First, we are called to live with freedom.
It is easy to misunderstand what living with freedom means in the Christian tradition – in large part because the concept of freedom has been bastardized and trivialized by countless cultural influences.
For far too many, freedom connotes permission to do what we want, when we want to do it, without regard for others, and without limit. By contrast, the Christian tradition holds that we cannot live with freedom until we are freed from the power of sin, and we cannot practice a form of freedom that is life-giving for us and for others, until our love of God orders all of our other loves.
This conviction was shaped by a deep psychological and spiritual truth: Everyone serves a god. In John’s day the Roman empire demanded the worship of everyone who lived within the boundaries of its control. The emperor was considered a God, temples were erected in his honor, and taxes were paid as a form of tribute. Labor was marshaled in service to the empire. Those who were conquered were slaves to the empire.
The social and political dynamics are different in our own day, but there are multiple forces that exercise a less obvious, but in some ways an even more pervasive influence over our lives. We are targeted and defined by advertisers who tell us what will make us happy and what will give our lives meaning. Pundits and politicians use social media to define our lives in political categories, enlisting us as evangelists for views that now exercise a religious influence over people’s lives. And more recently we have been told that we can and do define our lives, which is the very definition of sin: the conviction that there is a god and we are it.
John’s vision reveals that the Resurrection has broken the power of these false gods, and now makes it possible to live with freedom. If you wonder how to shake the feeling that you are being socialized, recruited, and stampeded into a life that is at odds with the calling of God on your life, the message of the Resurrection is this: Anything – whether it is a role in society, an ideology, or simply the invitation to be your own god – anything that tries to claim your devotion is an imposter. Let the Resurrected Christ free you.
Second, we are called to witness to the truth.
I’ve spent a bit of my free time over the last week or so, spending my more brain-dead moments watching the new BBC-PBS series, Rise of the Nazis. Two of the more mesmerizing and frightening episodes are the ones devoted to creation of the Hitler Youth.
Capitalizing on the rising popularity of the scouting movement in Britain, the Nazi party stumbled into the power of the movement to shape the minds of a younger generation. At first, they simply mimicked the summer camps that had become popular across Germany, each spoonsored by a variety of institutions. But it did not take Adolf Hitler long to recognize the power of such camps to capture and shape young minds from an early age. So, as it gained increasing control over life in Germany the Nazi party expanded the camps, outlawed all the others, and eventually made theirs mandatory, leveling criminal charges against families that refused to send their children.
In 1933, the movement included approximately 100,000 boys. By the end of the year it had 2 million members between the ages of 10 and 18. By 1937 the membership swelled to 5.4 million and by 1940 there were 7.2 million Hitler Youth or 82% of all youth, including girls.*
What is more frightening, however, is the way in which it swept along multiple generations of children, weakening the influence of parents, churches, teachers, and the church. They knew no other political reality than Nazism. They knew no other leader. Increasingly, Hitler became not just a political figure, but a father figure. And, as a result, they were easily mobilized, betraying their parents for anti-patriotic views and eventually taking the place of combatants late in the war as the Wehrmacht struggled to mount a fighting force.
John saw a similar distortion of the truth in his own day under the rule of the Roman Empire, and it may be hard for us to imagine that influence of this kind is possible in a democratic society. And perhaps it is, at least in the sense that our society does not speak with a single voice.
But the manipulation of social media has created an environment in which it is very easy to be drawn into countless, smaller realities that trap the minds of people and shape their perception of the world around them. This is the age of information. It is in no danger of being the age of wisdom.
The Resurrected Christ announces the end of every alternative truth that threatens to capture our minds, and he calls on us to witness to the truth.
Third, as Resurrection people we are called to offer hope.
I have a dear friend that I have been talking to on a frequent basis about the Christian life. He is kind, caring man, a loving husband and father. But, as he puts it, he finds it hard to believe, even though he has gone through periods in his life when he has been a regular church attender. He offers a lot of reasons for why he can’t quite bring himself to believe, but I am fairly sure that it is rooted in the death of one of his sons.
Recently, he was talking to a neighbor who told him that he needed to believe, so that he wouldn’t go to hell. My friend called, wanting to know what I thought of his neighbor’s reasoning. Tom, I told him, I certainly wouldn’t say that. For one thing, what happens to people on the other side of the grave is above my paygrade. And I wouldn’t claim to be able to judge the heart of another human being. All I know in that regard is that God is unfailingly loving, merciful, and good. But more to the point, the Christian faith is not about eternal fire insurance.
What I long for you to have is the gift of peace and hope now – all gifts that that come with the promise of the Resurrection: the confidence that our lives have meaning; the knowledge that we can live in ways that are open to the voice of God – the God who draws us into lives that are more loving, generous, and wise than we can imagine; the reassurance that nothing good in our lives is forever lost and that we will never be finally lost to those we love or that they will be lost to us.
That hope, my friends, is the promise of the Resurrected Christ. And that hope is the one out of which we live, and it is the hope that we are called to share.
In the world that John lived, hope was in short supply. Life expectancy was short. The peace of Rome was won at the point of a sword. And Christians were regularly martyred for their witness to the Christian faith. Their experience, in fact, was why the word, “martyr”, which means “witness” became closely associated with death and today is a synonym for someone who dies for witnessing to the truth.
In our climate-controlled lives, in which we many of us live at a distance from nature and daily reminders of our frailty, it might be hard to imagine just how much we still share in common with the Christians of first century Rome. Perhaps Covid-19, inflation, political unrest, and the war in Ukraine has drawn back the curtain a bit. If it has, we should pay attention, because security apart from God has always been an illusion.
But fear and despair are impostors as well. And as people of the Resurrection, we are called to be just as alert to the peril of living in fear, as we are to the impostors who call themselves god or invite us to be our own gods. Let us live with hope.
Faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, the ruler of the kings of the earth, hear our prayer. By the power of your Resurrection, give us that freedom that is only available in you. Lead us into your truth, which endures forever and which penetrates the fog of confusion, disinformation, denial, and deceit. And may our lives be mastered by that hope, which is only found in you. May we be led and strengthened by that hope, emboldened to let it shape our lives, and encouraged to share that hope with others. That together we might rest and rejoice in you and in the world to come, may we rejoice together in your presence. All this we ask, through your Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ, who with you and the Holy Spirit, reign one God, now and forever. Amen.
*https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/hitler-youth-2
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