A sermon given at Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church
Remembrance Sunday 10 November 2019
Revelation 20.1-10
Daniel 7.9-14
Listen to this sermon here:
The capacity of humans to give their lives for something
they believe in
is both
glorious and terrifying.
Jesus himself said,
‘No one has
greater love than this,
to lay down
one’s life for one’s friends.’ (Jn15.13)
And the willingness of people to put their own lives at
risk,
or to
knowingly pay the ultimate price,
for the love of their fellow humans,
is quality
that echoes the sacrificial death of Jesus on the cross.
This much is a glory of humanity.
But the other side of the coin:
the person
who dies to kill, to maim, and to scar,
the
terrorist suicide bomber, for example,
is as
terrifying as the other example is glorious.
And so it is that today, on Remembrance Sunday,
as we
recall the sacrifices and victims of war,
we come to consider heaven’s perspective on martyrdom.
And as we do so we need to tease out something important
in what we
mean by martyrdom.
You see, I do not believe that the terrorist suicide bomber
is a martyr.
They may
think that they are, and others may claim it of them,
but I want
to resist that label.
Martyrs are those who stand up for their beliefs
to the
point where others take their lives from them;
they are not those who take the lives of others
in the
pursuit of their cause.
When Liz and I are travelling, we enjoy visiting local
churches,
and
particularly looking at the artwork on the walls
and around
the various altars and chapels.
And often we find that the devotional focus,
particularly
in Roman Catholic Churches, is an act of martyrdom.
So some saint is depicted holding his own severed head,
or with her
eyes on a plate,
indicating the manner of their martyrdom for the name of
Christ.
Of course, martyrdom - giving one’s life for Christ,
goes right
back to the early years of Christianity;
think of the stoning of Stephen,
or of
Saul’s murderous campaign against the early Christians before his conversion.
As Christianity spread through the Roman Empire
in the
middle decades of the first century,
largely due to Paul’s post-persecution missionary
activities,
the Roman
state quickly became the chief agent of Christian martyrdom.
Probably the most famous and notorious example
is that of
the Emperor Nero, who in 64, just thirty years after Jesus,
ordered
Christians to be rounded up and torn apart by dogs,
or
burnt alive to light his gardens at night.
It is almost certainly this persecution by Nero,
and the
ongoing sporadic martyrdoms that followed it,
which lie behind our reading this morning from the book of
Revelation.
Now, I’m well aware that these ten verses
are some of
the most controversial in the whole of the Bible.
I once wrote a 70,000 word thesis on their interpretation,
but I
promise not to go through all of that this morning.
The word ‘millennium’ is one of those ‘hot topic’ catch-phrases
which
people often associate with the book of Revelation.
This is one of those words
which has
acquired something of a life of its own
which has
taken it far beyond the pages of the book where it started.
In contemporary culture, the ‘millennium’
has come to
mean a dawning thousand-year golden age,
such as the
‘Age of Aquarius’ or even the ‘Third Reich’ of Nazi Germany
For some Christians, the ‘coming millennium’
is regarded
as the key to understanding the whole book of Revelation,
with
endless discussions about whether Jesus will return to the earth
before
or after the millennium.
But this morning I’m not going to talk at length about pre,
post, or a millennialism.
I’m not
going to lecture on partial rapture dispensationalism.
and
how this particular interpretation of these verses
can be seen as directly influencing
Donald Trump’s withdrawal
from
the Paris Climate Accord,
because
those Christians who are Trump’s power base
don’t
believe that it is a human responsibility
to
work for the good of creation.
Instead, I’m going to talk about how these verses
address the
pastoral problem of martyrdom.
After all, today is a day when we are remembering those
who have
paid the ultimate price for their beliefs.
Within the book of Revelation itself,
the
‘thousand years’ of the millennium has a primarily pastoral function.
As we’ve seen, Revelation is written to those who have faced
dreadful persecution,
and who
have heard stories or even personally witnessed
Christians
being executed for their faith.
And the thing is, from the point of view
of the
first century recipients of the book of Revelation,
those attending the seven churches
of Asia Minor,
the death
of a believer through martyrdom
would have appeared to be
the
ultimate victory for the satanic beast of the empire.
However, John wants his readers to realize
that when
viewed from heaven’s perspective,
martyrdom
is not a defeat but a victory,
and so he describes those who have been martyred
for their
testimony to Jesus
as reigning
with Christ for a ‘thousand years’ (20.4).
As we delve into this passage in a bit more depth now,
I’d like us
to keep clear in our minds that, as far as John is concerned,
this
is an image of great comfort,
it’s
seeking to assure those reading it that when seen from above,
the
martyrdom of the faithful believer
is the precise opposite of what it
appears when seen from below.
An emperor might reign for a decade or two,
but Christ
reigns, and all the martyrs with him, for a thousand years!
I think it’s probably helpful at this stage to outline
how the image
of a ‘thousand years’ functions within the passage:
An angel comes from heaven and binds the dragon,
throwing
him into the pit and locking it over him,
and Satan is therefore unable to deceive the nations for a thousand
years.
John then describes a judgement scene,
with those
seated on the thrones being given authority to judge,
and,
without elaborating this any further,
he moves on
to depict those who have been beheaded
for
their testimony to Jesus.
These martyrs are raised to life
and reign
with Christ for ‘a thousand years’.
Then, at the end of this millennium Satan is released,
rampages on
the earth for a while,
and tries
unsuccessfully to overpower the faithful saints.
Those who have followed Satan are then consumed by fire from
heaven,
and the
Devil is thrown into the lake of fire for ever.
At this point the second resurrection and the final
judgement take place.
I think this little cameo scene raises a number of questions
for us,
which if we
can come to an answer to them,
will help
us better understand what John is doing here.
The first question is,
Question 1: Why a thousand years?
Is there any clue in the choice of this particular number
that can
aid our interpretation of the passage?
The two main biblical texts
that
provide the background to the thousand years are
Psalm 90.4: ‘For a thousand years in your sight are like
yesterday when it is past, or like a watch in the night’,
and 2 Peter 3.8, ‘with the Lord one day is like a thousand
years, and a thousand years are like one day.’
The passage from 2 Peter,
which is in
essence a kind of commentary on Ps. 90.4,
represents a strand of thought
present
within first century Judaism
whereby some believed that the course of the world’s history
could be
found paralleled in the seven days of creation.
By this understanding history would run
for six
thousand years from creation,
and then
would be followed by a thousand year sabbath age.
Some of you will have come across this in Christian teaching
about the end times as well,
and I can
remember some wonderful charts
dividing
human history into six different ‘ages’
all
culminating in the thousand year period of glorious rest.
But what we can take from this
is that
John is drawing on an already established tradition in Judaism
of
a thousand year golden age,
when he
speaks of the martyrs reigning with Christ for a millennium.
On to our next question
Question 2: Why is the last judgement split by the millennium?
The millennium passage separates the beginning of the last
judgement (20.4)
from its
conclusion (20.11–15)
What it looks like John is doing here,
is
reworking the passage we had read earlier from the Book of Daniel (7.9–14)
Both Revelation and Daniel contain descriptions of
thrones
(Rev. 20.4; Dan. 7.9),
open books
(Rev. 20.10; Dan. 7.10),
a beast
that is destroyed (Rev. 19.11–21; Dan. 7.11–12),
and a
kingdom that is handed over to the ‘son of man’ (Rev. 20.4–6; Dan. 7.13–14).
What John does, however, is alter the ordering of these
items
from the
way they appear in the book of Daniel
in order to
make a theological point.
And what John achieves by altering Daniel’s ordering is, in
effect,
a
commentary on the final judgement.
John separates the initial stages of the final judgement
from its conclusion,
by inserting
the millennium, the thousand year reign of the martyrs.
And this allows John to use the millennium
as a
metaphor for the vindication of the martyrs
What this means is that the millennium is not something
that will be
worked out in human history at all,
rather it is purely a theological and pastoral metaphor.
As we’ve seen, martyrdom forms a significant part of the
backdrop
to the book
of Revelation.
John was writing to those who may have seen friends and
family martyred,
and who may
have feared that they would face
the
possibility of martyrdom themselves.
Understood from an earthly perspective,
the killing
of a believer represents the ultimate triumph of evil over good,
but what John achieves in this passage
is to
convey the message that from a heavenly perspective,
at the very instant the beast creates martyrs by putting
believers to death,
the
destruction of the beast and the vindication of the martyrs is assured.
The situation facing the recipients of Revelation is
therefore utterly reversed.
If they go to their deaths for their faith,
they do so
demonstrating not the victory of the beast,
but rather as those whose witness through martyrdom
will assure
the destruction of the beast,
and as those who will themselves be vindicated.
The New Testament scholar Richard Bauckham comments:
This shows that the theological point of the millennium
is solely to
demonstrate the triumph of the martyrs:
that those whom the beast put to death
are those who will
truly live…
and that those who contested [the beast’s] right to rule and suffered
for it
are those who will in
the end rule as universally as he
- and for much longer:
a thousand years![i]
In this way, the millennium functions as a kind of
hyperbole,
an
overstatement for dramatic effect.
Within John’s visionary framework,
it
represents the period of time during which the beast is bound
and during
which the martyrs rule with Christ.
However, this is not to suggest that John intends it
as
predictive prophecy for the distant future,
or as being worked out in a temporal sense
during the
course of human history.
Rather, it is best understood as a metaphor
for the
scale and magnitude of the vindication
of those
who suffer and die for the kingdom
of God
So, on to our next question:
It’s weird, isn’t it?
Why is Satan let out of the pit again at the end of the
thousand years,
to make war
on the saints,
before finally being destroyed a bit later in the story?
I think that, just like the image of the millennium,
this also needs
to be understood
in terms of John’s overriding
pastoral concern
to provide
his recipients with a new perspective on martyrdom.
So in the same way that the millennium functions
metaphorically,
so too does
the release of Satan.
These are both metaphors to help John’s readers
understand
the problem of martyrdom.
Those to whom John was writing
were not
only those who feared they might themselves face martyrdom,
but those
who had survived seeing their fellow Christians martyred.
In spite of John’s assurance that martyrdom was actually
victory over the beast,
their
present experience was one
where
evil continued to be experienced as rampant in the land.
It could appear to them
that the
victory of the martyrs was short-lived to say the least.
By depicting Satan rampant in the land again,
even after
the vindication of the martyrs,
and then showing his unsuccessful attempts
to re-take
the kingdom of the righteous,
John was providing assurance to his recipients
that martyrdom
was not in vain.
Satan is defeated even though he is still rampant in the
land;
his fate
has been sealed by the victory of Christ
and the
evidence of the blood of the martyrs.[ii]
Which brings me to my final question:
Throughout the book of Revelation,
as we have
seen in previous weeks,
John is constantly encouraging his readers to locate
themselves within the text.
Those reading the work are invited not only
to identify
themselves as various characters within the narrative,
but also to find their circumstances reflected
in the
imagery that John constructs.
So John’s first audience could equate their own experiences
of
suffering and martyrdom
with those
of Jesus the slain Lamb,
while finding their hope of resurrection
expressed
through the continued existence of the Lamb on the throne.
Some of John’s audience may have found themselves
suffering
the betrayal of Maundy Thursday,
or
the fear of Good Friday morning,
or they may
have seen others join Jesus on the cross
through
suffering a martyrs death.
In its invitation to identify with Jesus,
Revelation
therefore encourages its readers
to interpret their own lives
according
to the lived example of Jesus himself,
with the
events of the cross becoming real in their lives.
A helpful way to understand John’s imagery
of the
millennium and the subsequent release of Satan
is therefore
to read it in the light of the crucifixion story.
Readers of Revelation are invited
to locate
themselves in the space of Easter Saturday,
awaiting
resurrection and restoration,
confidently
hopeful,
but
still living with the present pain of Friday’s grief and horror.
By this reading, the martyrs have departed the present life
of suffering
and gone to
vindication (20.1–7),
and Satan’s hold on the world has been broken
through the
sacrificial deaths of both Jesus and the martyrs.
However, in the present experience of John’s audience,
Satan is
still loose in the world
making war
on the dwelling places of the saints.
In this way, the Easter weekend can be seen as a paradigm
for reading
the story of the Church as presented in our passage for this morning.
The following table expresses these correspondences:
The interpretation of the millennium I’ve been offering here
is based on
an understanding of the millennium as a metaphor.
Few contemporary academic interpreters
would claim
to interpret the millennium literally
so that it
describes a period of exactly one thousand years,
when
those martyred will be raised
to
reign over the nations of the earth alongside Christ.
However, many interpreters who hold the millennium as
symbolic
continue to
interpret it as a symbol of the outworking of God in history
in
a temporal sense.
Many of the readings of the millennium
that most
of us have encountered in Church over the years
still take the sequence of events in the passage literally,
even if the
number one thousand is taken as symbolic,
and people end up assigning great importance
to the
precise order in which things occur.
Whilst on the one hand, people reject any expectation
that the
events described by John will really happen in history,
on the other hand they still treat the text as if John thinks he is describing events
that will
happen in history.
What I’ve been trying to do this morning
is offer an
interpretation of the millennium passage as a metaphor
in order to
avoid these difficulties.
Once it is accepted that John was consciously writing using
metaphor,
any
compulsion to reconcile the temporal difficulties within the text is relieved,
and we are freed to concentrate on the theological meaning
of the passage.
So I’m suggesting that John uses the metaphor of the
millennium
for a very
specific function;
to provide his audience with the perspective they need
to
understand the relationship between martyrdom and victory in Christ.
Thus the millennium functions for John
as a
metaphor which provides a perspective
on the very
real human experience of martyrdom.
And one of the tragedies of the last two thousand years,
is that
again and again, the beast has continued to take the lives of the saints.
Down to this present day,
people have
suffered and died for their faith.
From the Christians being thrown to the lions
in the
amphitheatres of the Roman empire,
to the Anabaptist martyrs of the sixteenth century,
to the – on
average – eleven Christians who will be killed today for their faith.
The martyrdom of the faithful is real,
and the
power of the beast is not yet ended in our world.
We live in the shadow of the cross,
and the
beast stalks our world, taking victims wherever it can.
So, I would suggest,
the message
of Revelation that death is not the end,
that
death is not defeat,
is a
message we need to hear and proclaim and live into being in our lives.
The martyrs are not lost to God,
they reign
with Christ.
And every unjust death of martyr and victim
is another
nail in the eternal coffin of the beast.
So today, on Remembrance Sunday,
as we
remember the victims of war,
and the
sacrifices made by so many,
let us not despair,
but rather
let us rejoice
that God
holds the innocent in an eternal embrace of love.
And let us pray for an end to violence in our world.
No comments:
Post a Comment