Grace and Peace in an Age of Empire

A Sermon for Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church

27 July 2025

Series: Revelation: An Unveiling for Our Times

Revelation 1.4–8; John 8.13–20

Grace to you and peace from the one who is and who was and who is to come.

We begin this new preaching series on the Book of Revelation
            with the words that begin John’s own letter
            to the seven churches of Asia Minor.

Words that were meant to be read aloud in the gathered assembly,
            perhaps in a room not so different from this one: Grace and peace.

It’s a striking place to start.

Because if you asked people on the street today
            to describe the Book of Revelation in one phrase,
            I suspect most wouldn’t say “grace and peace.”

They might say “end of the world,” “apocalypse,” “doom,” or “judgment.”
            They might recall beasts and plagues, dragons and destruction.
Some might even remember being told
            that Revelation predicted specific events of our times
            —wars in the Middle East, European political unions,
                        microchips as the mark of the beast.

For many, Revelation has been a text of terror.

But John begins with “grace and peace.”

This is our first clue that we have often misread this extraordinary book.
            And it is our invitation, at the start of this new series, to ask:
            What if Revelation isn’t about escaping the world,
                        but seeing it more truly, and understanding it more deeply?

What if it is not an instruction manual for the end times,
            but a pastoral letter for difficult times?
What if it is not a code to be cracked, but a vision to be entered?

John’s first hearers lived in the shadow of an empire.

Rome dominated the Mediterranean world.
            Its armies enforced a peace that came at the price of subjugation.
Its emperors claimed divine honours.
            Its temples and markets and forums and statues
            shouted an unending propaganda campaign:
                        Rome is eternal. Caesar is Lord.

And yet John begins with ‘Grace and peace’?

For the Christians of Asia Minor—small, marginal communities,
            facing local hostility and the looming threat of imperial persecution
            —grace and peace were not cheap words.
They were not the marketing slogans of feel-good culture.

They were subversive.
            They were counter-imperial.
They proclaimed another Lord, another kingdom, another reality.

And so, John writes to these seven churches with the bold greeting:

“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.” (1.4)

Let’s listen carefully to that greeting.

John does something very deliberate here:
            he repurposes the form of a letter to speak a prophetic word.

You see, Revelation is not just a strange vision. It is a letter.

It is written to real communities
            —Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira,
            Sardis, Philadelphia, Laodicea.
Communities with real fears and real hopes.
            These are real places: Liz and I visited them a few years ago.

And John wants the real people in these real towns to know:
            This vision is for you.
            It is for your life.
            It is for your witness.

It is not an escape from history.
            It is an unveiling of its true shape.

And so, this phrase, grace and peace, is not just the opening flourish of a letter.
            It is a summons. A spiritual invitation.
            A rhythm to breathe into.

This afternoon, some of us will gather again here for our Breathing Space meeting.
            It’s a time when we slow down, turn again to scripture,
            and create space to listen—both to God and to one another.

And I wonder whether this same benediction, grace and peace,
            might shape that gathering, too.

To receive grace is to acknowledge our need,
            and to breathe in the unearned, unending love of God.

To receive peace is to release our fear, our urgency, our exhaustion,
            and to breathe out trust, courage, and stillness.

In a world that runs on violence and competition,
            Breathing Space becomes a quiet act of resistance.

It is, in its own way, a form of worship:
            not loud, not performative, but gently transformative.

A place where the Lamb reigns,
            not through force, but through presence.

So whether you join us later or not, I wonder:
            Where is grace making itself known in your life right now?
            Where might peace be quietly taking root in your spirit?

Interestingly, “Grace and peace” is how Paul begins his letters too.
            But here in the book of Revelation the source of that grace and peace
            is named with radical specificity.

It is not Caesar who gives peace.

It is not Rome that secures grace.

In John’s apocalyptic letter, Grace and Peace come from
            “the one who is and who was and who is to come.”
This is the God who transcends time.
            The God who is not caught in empire’s cycles of violence and revenge.
            The God who holds history in sovereign hands.

It is “the seven spirits before his throne” (1.4)
            —a symbol of the fullness of the Spirit of God.

And it is “Jesus Christ.”

Now John slows down. He can’t just mention Jesus in passing.
            He has to describe him.

“Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead,
            and the ruler of the kings of the earth.” (1.5)

This threefold title is the key to everything that follows.

The first part of the title describes Jesus as the faithful witness.

In Greek, the word here is martys,
            which is the root of our word martyr, and it means, literally, ‘witness’.

Jesus is the one who bore witness to God’s truth even to the point of death.
            He did not compromise.
            He did not accommodate to empire.
Rather, he faithfully testified to the kingdom of God.

And for that, he was executed by imperial power.

So to confess Jesus as faithful witness
            is to remember that truth-telling can be dangerous.

It is to acknowledge that the gospel is not neutral.
            It is not simply “good advice” for living better.

It is good news that challenges the lies of empire.

Rome proclaimed: Caesar is Lord.
            John proclaims: Jesus is Lord.

Rome promised peace through military victory.
            John proclaims peace through the violence of the cross.

Rome demanded loyalty even to death.
            John proclaims Christ who remained loyal even unto death, for our freedom.

And so we come to the second title used for Jesus,
            describing him as the firstborn of the dead.

Jesus was killed—but God raised him.
            At the resurrection, Rome’s ultimate weapon—death itself—was defeated.

For John’s hearers, living in fear of persecution,
            this was no abstract theology. It was hope.

If Christ has been raised, so will those who remain faithful,
            even to the point of martyrdom.
If Christ lives, then Caesar’s threats are empty.

And this brings us to the third of the opening titles used for Jesus,
            describing him as the ruler of the kings of the earth.

This is breathtaking.

This is not saying that Jesus will be ruler one day.
            Nor is it saying that his reign is in spiritual terms.

But rather, the claim John is making here
            is that Jesus is now the ruler of the kings of the earth.

John wants his readers to see the present
            in light of God’s ultimate reality.

It doesn’t look like Jesus rules.
            It looks like Caesar does.
It looks like violence wins, wealth triumphs, and oppression is unchallenged.

But Revelation says: look again.

Look from heaven’s perspective.
            See who really reigns.
See whose kingdom will endure.

John then breaks into doxology, into thanksgiving:

“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…” (1.5-6)

This is the gospel in miniature.

Jesus loves us.
            Jesus frees us.
Jesus makes us into something new.

Not a people waiting passively for heaven.
            Not a people resigned to empire’s rule.
But a kingdom of priests.

Think about that.

A kingdom—but not like Rome.
            A kingdom not built on violence, but on love.
A kingdom not ruled by coercion,
            but by the Lamb who was slain.

And priests—people who mediate God’s presence in the world.
            People who stand between God and neighbour,
            interceding, serving, and blessing.

John’s vision is not escapist.
It is transformational.

And it is deeply political, in the best sense.

It unveils the false promises of empire.
            It unmasks the claims of absolute power.
It calls the church to live as an alternative community
            of truth, peace, justice, and mercy.

John continues:

“Look! He is coming with the clouds; every eye will see him, even those who pierced him; and on his account all the tribes of the earth will wail.” (1.7)

This is a quotation from Daniel 7,
            where the Son of Man comes with the clouds
            to receive authority and dominion.

It is not describing a secret rapture or a timetable of end-times events.
            It is describing the public vindication of Christ.

The empire tried to silence him.
            But God raised him.
And God will reveal him to all.

So every eye will see.
            Even those who opposed him will know.

This is both promise and warning.
            A promise to the persecuted: your Lord is coming.
            A warning to the powerful: your reign is temporary.

Finally, God speaks:

“I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.” (1.8)

Alpha and Omega—the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet.

God is the beginning and the end,
            the A-Z of history.

By this understanding, history is not a random cycle of violence.
            It is not controlled by the whims of tyrants.
Rather, it has a direction.
            It has a goal.
And that goal is God.

Friends, this is the vision John wants us to see.

Revelation is not meant to confuse us.
            It is meant to unveil the truth.

It is not written to terrify us.
            It is written to give us hope.

It does not call us to escape the world.
            It calls us to see the world differently, and to live accordingly.

And so, as we begin this series together at Bloomsbury,
            I want to invite us to let this vision shape us.

We live in our own age of empire.
An empire not of legions and Caesars,
            but of global capital, of militarised borders,
            of manufactured scarcity, of relentless consumption, of systemic injustice.

We live in a world that tells us to accept things as they are.
            That worships power and wealth.
That silences truth-tellers.

Revelation invites us to see through the propaganda.
            To unmask the lies.
To refuse to bow to idols.
            To remain faithful witnesses.

But what does this really mean for us, here and now?

We might think that talk of “empire” is ancient history
            —something about Rome and Caesar,
            a problem for those first-century churches but not for us.

Yet empire has many faces.

Today it wears the suit of corporate boardrooms
            that value profit over people.

It wraps itself in flags and anthems that promise security
            while building walls to keep out the desperate.

It speaks through advertising that convinces us our worth lies in what we own,
            what we achieve, how we appear.

It is embedded in systems that privilege some while oppressing others,
            that extract wealth from the poor to enrich the powerful,
            that destroy the earth for short-term gain.

We are told this is just “how the world works.”
            We are urged not to question it.
We are warned that to resist is naïve, idealistic, even dangerous.

But Revelation calls that bluff.

It says: See it for what it is.
            It is Babylon, drunk on its own excess.
It is the beast that demands allegiance.
            It is the false prophet that sells us comforting lies.

And Revelation says to us: Come out of her, my people.
            Refuse her mark.
Worship the Lamb not the beast,
            worship Christ not the empire.

This is not a call to physical withdrawal.
            We are not told to abandon the world,
            to retreat into gated communities of the saved.

Rather, we are called to be a counter-community within the world.
            A city on a hill.
            A lamp on a stand.
            A kingdom of priests.

We are called to bear witness to another reality:
            That love is stronger than hate.
That peace is not made by violence but by justice.
            That the last shall be first and the least shall be greatest.
That Christ is Lord, and Caesar is not.

Friends, this is our vocation.

To read Revelation is to ask ourselves:
            Where do we see empire at work in our city?
            What idols tempt our loyalty?
            How will we choose to witness to the Lamb who was slain?

And sometimes, witnessing to the Lamb
            means speaking uncomfortable truths in the face of real-world injustice.

This week, our Baptist Union issued a bold and timely statement [1]
            calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and the release of hostages,
but also going further:
            denouncing the illegal occupation of Palestine,
            calling for an end to UK arms sales to Israel,
and advocating for a future rooted in justice, safety, and equal rights for all.

This is not political partisanship. It is Christian witness.

It is what happens when the church remembers that Caesar is not Lord,
            that violence is not peace,
and that the God we worship stands always with the wounded,
            the marginalised, and the oppressed.

John’s vision in Revelation reminds us
            that the powers of this world are not ultimate.
That God’s justice will not be silenced.
            And that grace and peace must be more than words:
            they must be lived.

This is the kind of witness we are called to.

To stand in solidarity with the suffering.
            To speak where others remain silent.
To name injustice clearly, and to hope courageously.
            To proclaim, still, that Jesus is Lord.
Not empire. Not violence. Not fear.

This is not easy work.
            It will cost us.
But it will also set us free.
            Free to live truthfully.
            Free to love boldly.
            Free to be, even now, citizens of God’s new creation.

This is why our companion text from John’s gospel matters today.

In John 8, Jesus says:

“Even if I testify on my own behalf, my testimony is valid, for I know where I came from and where I am going.” (8.14)

He speaks with authority because he knows his origin and his destiny.

Revelation calls us to root our own identity in Christ’s.
            To know where we come from: a God of grace and peace.
            To know where we are going: toward the Alpha and Omega.

Bloomsbury, we are called to be a kingdom of priests.

A community that mediates God’s grace in London.
            A people who tell the truth about empire.
A congregation that refuses to be co-opted.
            A church that welcomes the outcast, confronts injustice,
            proclaims Christ crucified and risen.

So let us hear John’s greeting afresh:

            Grace to you, Bloomsbury.
            Peace to you, beloved community.

Not from any earthly power.
            Not from any political program.
But from the one who is and who was and who is to come.
            From the sevenfold Spirit before his throne.

And from Jesus Christ: the faithful witness,
            the firstborn of the dead, the ruler of the kings of the earth.

To him be glory and dominion forever and ever.

Amen.

---

[1] https://www.baptist.org.uk/Groups/447734/Statement.aspx

The Covenant of Knowing

A Sermon for Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church

20 July 2025

 

 
Jeremiah 33.14–18; 31.31–34
John 17.1–8
 
“The days are surely coming, says the Lord…” (Jeremiah 33:14)
 
It’s a phrase we’ve heard before.
            A declaration from Jeremiah,
            the prophet who saw the destruction of all he held dear
            and still dared to imagine a better future.
 
“The days are surely coming…”
 
For Jeremiah, this was not a pious platitude;
            it was a cry of defiant hope against the crushing weight of exile and despair.
 
Jeremiah lived through the disintegration
            of everything that defined his world:
the fall of Jerusalem, the destruction of the temple,
            the exile of the people.
 
He watched the collapse of monarchy, the failure of religion,
            the betrayal of neighbour.
 
And yet, from the ashes of that ruin,
            he did not call simply for repair.
 
He envisioned something deeper:
            not a return to the old ways, but the revelation of something new.
 
Not nostalgia for what was lost, but covenant reborn.
 
And so Jeremiah gives us two visions
            —closely connected, yet profoundly radical in their own right.
 
The first is the promise of just leadership:
            “a righteous Branch to spring up for David” (Jer. 33:15),
            one who will enact justice and righteousness.
 
The second is the promise of a new covenant:
            not written on tablets of stone, not mediated by kings or priests,
            but inscribed on the heart—written within each person.
 
These are not simply parallel ideas
            —they are two dimensions of the same divine promise.
 
For justice to flourish outwardly,
            it must be rooted inwardly.
 
And for the heart to be transformed inwardly,
            there must be a community shaped by righteousness.
 
The days that are surely coming, according to Jeremiah,
            are days when the personal and political are reconciled;
            when knowledge of God is not the property of the elite,
            but the birthright of all.
 
But to grasp the full power of Jeremiah’s vision,
            we must not rush too quickly to its fulfilment.
Rather, we must dwell for a moment in the grief that precedes it.
 
Jeremiah’s prophecies, you see, emerge amid devastation.
            The monarchy, which was supposed to embody divine justice,
                        had become corrupt.
            The temple, which was supposed to house divine presence,
                        had become a symbol of privilege and exclusion.
            The covenant, once forged on Sinai,
                        had been broken again and again.
 
This is no distant history.
            In our world too, systems have failed.
Leaders have exploited. Religion has wounded.
            Power has corrupted.
 
And the human cost
            —measured in lives displaced, rights denied, dignity destroyed—
            cries out to heaven.
 
Into such a moment, Jeremiah speaks
            —not to deny the pain, but to imagine its transformation.
 
The answer to faith betrayed is not cynicism.
            The answer to collapse is not despair.
The answer is promise—a new thing,
            born of the old, but surpassing it in every way.
 
Jeremiah 31 offers one of the most striking theological reimaginings
            in the whole of Scripture:
“I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts…
            They shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest”
            (Jer. 31:33–34).
 
It’s a reversal of everything that had gone before.
            The covenant was no longer mediated by priests or scrolls or institutions.
It would not rely on compliance to external rules.
            It would not be enforced by fear or shame.
Instead, it would be written within.
 
What Jeremiah sees is a shift
            from religion as something imposed,
            to faith as something internalised.
 
A relationship with God not filtered through hierarchy or ritual,
            but encountered directly, intimately, inwardly.
 
It is a deeply democratic vision:
            “from the least to the greatest.”
 
There is no spiritual elite here.
            No insiders and outsiders. No sacred and profane.
            All are included. All are known. All are called.
 
And crucially, all are forgiven.
            “For I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.”
 
In the heart of the covenant is mercy.
            The newness does not come through perfection, but through grace.
The future does not emerge by erasing the past, but by redeeming it.
 
If Jeremiah 31 speaks of the inward transformation of the covenant,
            Jeremiah 33 speaks of its outward embodiment.
 
A “righteous Branch” from David’s line.
            A leader who will execute justice and righteousness in the land.
 
It’s tempting to hear this as a messianic promise, fulfilled in Jesus
            —and of course, Christian tradition has read it that way.
But before we rush to that conclusion,
            let’s hear what this text meant in its own time.
 
In Jeremiah’s world, kings were meant to guarantee justice.
            Their failure was not just political—it was theological.
A corrupt king was not simply a bad ruler;
            he was an offence to the very covenant he represented.
 
So Jeremiah’s vision of a new king
            is not nostalgic longing for monarchy,
            but radical hope that power might yet serve the good.
 
Whether in ancient Judah or modern Britain,
            this vision calls us to imagine leadership not as domination, but as service;
            not as spectacle, but as integrity.
 
The righteous branch is not just an individual
            —it’s a principle, a pattern, a possibility.
It names a world where power is exercised for the sake of the vulnerable,
            and justice is made visible in public life.
 
Which brings us to John’s Gospel.
            In chapter 17, on the night before his arrest, Jesus prays.
And he speaks these words:
            “I have glorified you on earth
            by finishing the work that you gave me to do.”
 
What is that work?
            It is not spectacle. Not conquest. Not even religious revival.
            It is the quiet, difficult, costly work of making God known.
 
Jesus says, “I have made your name known
            to those whom you gave me…”
In other words, Jesus has enacted
            the very covenant Jeremiah foretold.
 
He has embodied a relationship with God
            not built on exclusion or hierarchy,
            but on intimacy, justice, mercy, and love.
 
And this knowing is not simply intellectual.
            It is participatory. It is lived.
 
In Jesus, the law is not only written on the heart
            —it takes flesh in human life.
 
The covenant becomes a person.
            The justice becomes a presence.
            The knowledge of God becomes a community shaped by grace.
 
But what does it mean to know God?
 
In both Hebrew and Johannine theology,
            knowing is never abstract.
 
It is not simply about having correct beliefs
            or assenting to doctrinal statements.
 
The Hebrew word for “know”—yada—
            is the same word used for the deepest of human intimacy.
 
“Adam knew Eve…” it says in Genesis, and she bore a child.
 
To know, in this sense, is not to observe from a distance
            but to enter into relationship.
 
It is to be shaped, changed,
            and even created anew through encounter.
 
This is the knowing that Jeremiah imagines in the new covenant.
            “They shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest.”
 
This is not a command to master information about God.
            It is an invitation to participate in the life of God.
 
And it is offered equally to all
            —no matter their education, their background, their place in society.
 
From the prisoner in exile to the scribe in the palace,
            from the street sweeper to the synagogue elder:
            all are addressed, all are embraced.
 
And in John’s Gospel, this knowing takes on flesh.
 
In Jesus, the name of God—the character of God—is made visible and personal.
            Jesus doesn’t just talk about God. He shows God.
 
He heals the outcast, welcomes the sinner,
            breaks bread with the poor.
 
In Jesus, to know God is to encounter justice embodied in mercy,
            holiness embodied in hospitality,
            truth embodied in love.
 
And that same knowing
            is what Jesus prays will continue through his disciples.
 
“They have kept your word,” he says.
            Not in the sense of rote obedience,
                        but in the sense of abiding relationship.
            The Word has abided in them. They have lived it.
 
And that Word, that covenant, is not a burden to bear,
            but a joy to share
—a transformation from within
            that leads outward into acts of liberation and love.
 
This has profound implications for how we understand discipleship today.
            If knowing God means entering into covenantal intimacy,
            then spiritual growth is not about
                        accumulating theological knowledge
                        or perfecting moral performance.
 
It is about becoming ever more open
            to the movement of grace in our lives.
 
It is about letting the law of love be written on our hearts
            —until justice becomes instinct, mercy becomes habit,
            and hope becomes second nature.
 
This is why we gather as a church
            —not to preserve tradition for its own sake,
            but to become a living community of covenant.
 
A people who know God by living God’s justice.
            A people who enact the Word
                        by becoming a sanctuary for the wounded
                        and a sign of hope for the weary.
 
A people in whom, somehow, someone else might come to know
            that they, too, are known and loved by the divine.
 
So where does this leave us,
            at Bloomsbury, in 2025?
 
We, too, are people living amid the fractures of our age.
            The collapse of trust in institutions.
            The failure of leadership.
            The loss of a shared moral vision.
 
We see inequality deepening,
            climate crisis accelerating,
            war and violence multiplying.
 
We know what it is to feel exiled
            from a world that once seemed more secure.
 

But into this, Jeremiah speaks still. 

“The days are surely coming…” he dares to proclaim…

And we live in a world crying out for a new covenant. 

In the face of political failure, ecological crisis,

systemic injustice, and rising despair, 

the old scripts no longer serve. 

We do not need more empty promises or louder slogans

—we need hearts transformed by justice, 

communities shaped by mercy, 

and a church courageous enough 

to live as if God’s law of love is already written within us. 

The days are surely coming

—but God is daring us to act as though they have already arrived.

And so our calling is to live as if they are already here.

 

To embody the covenant written on the heart:
            a community not built on conformity, but on compassion.
 
A people not defined by doctrine, but by justice.
            A church where knowing God means acting for the good of others.
 
We are called to be branches of the righteous tree:
            to lead not from the top down, but from the margins in.
 
To resist the temptations of domination
            and embrace the power of service.
 
To proclaim the reign of God not in triumphalism,
            but in tenderness, truth, and solidarity.
 
The days are surely coming
            —and indeed, they are already here:
in every act of mercy, every movement for justice,
            every heart opened to the knowing love of God.
 
And maybe the most important truth is this:
            covenantal hope isn’t abstract.
 
It’s not just about nations or movements
            —it’s about you.
 
God’s new covenant is written on hearts,
            including yours, including mine.
 
Which means our story matters.
            Our longing, our doubts, our wounds, our joys
—they are not marginal to our faith;
            they are the very soil in which the covenant is planted.
 
You don’t have to be perfect to carry the promise.
            You don’t have to have all the answers to know God.
 
You don’t have to wait for some future time
            when you’ll have more faith or less fear.
 
The days are surely coming, yes
            —but the day is also now.
 
Today is the moment for grace.
            Today is the day God remembers your sin no more,
            and instead remembers only your belovedness.
 
Let me tell you a story.
 
A member of a church—not here, but a place like this—
            had grown up in a faith where shame was preached more often than grace.
 
They knew the Bible backwards,
            but had never been told they were loved.
 
After decades of trying to “get it right,”
            they finally stopped going to church.
 
It just felt like too much.
            Too heavy. Too hard.
 
Years later, they found their way into a small congregation
            —one that wasn’t flashy, or loud, or particularly large.
 
What it had, though, was warmth.
            No one quizzed them at the door.
            No one checked their theological credentials.
 
Someone just said:
            “You’re welcome here. We’re glad you’ve come.”
 
And it changed everything.
 
Because in that space,
            they encountered something they’d never known before:
            the God Jeremiah describes.
 
The God who writes on hearts, not scorecards.
            The God who says: “You are mine. You are known. And you are loved.”
 
That church didn’t give them all the answers.
            But it gave them something more precious: a community of grace.
            A glimpse of the covenant alive in people’s lives.
 
Friends, this is who we are called to be.
 
A church where justice and mercy meet.
            A place where covenant lives in the love we show one another.
 
A people whose lives proclaim:
            the days are surely coming
            —and by the grace of God, they are already here.
 
So let us be people of the promise.
            People of the covenant.
 
People of the Christ who makes God known.
Amen.