Making Heads and Hands of the Mark of the Beast

If there is one aspect of Revelation that has been overused, abused and fallen prey to our constant temptation to make John’s first century letter a document that predicts the future it has to be the mark of the beast. What was the mark of the beast? What does 666 stand for?* There are many questions come up when we read passages like this.

When I read this I automatically gravitate to this unknown feature in the text. What are some of the things you have heard the Mark of Beast represented as?

Mikhail Gorbachev’s Birthmark, Obamacare, Enforced Sunday worship, One world government or The UN, Refers to a specific year, Verichip, Credit Cards

It raises a level of fascination that can be fun to imagine, but there is a problem with trying to figure out the mark: we don’t know the story behind the story. And when we don’t know the story behind the story we begin to read into it our own worldview, our own prejudices, and assumptions and this can really skew our reading and understanding of scripture. So it is essential that when we read this we remember that there is a story behind the story.

There are at least two problems with with trying to identify the eikon of the beast:

For one, John doesn’t describe it at all – so it was something that was most likely obvious to the people for whom this book was written. Second, if we read this with a future lens – as something meant to predict the future – then we begin trying to “find things that correlate,” which unfortunately leads us down a rabbit hole of totally missing the point of what is going on here.

And missed the point we have. We have been led to think that we are to always be on the lookout for some microchip, some barcode, somebody’s birthmark, so that when we find it we will know what to do and not do. Finally, once we have the mark, everything will be made clear because we will not who is bad and who is not – who is enemy of God and who is on the side of the lamb.

We have already seen two of the main sins of empire that John unmasks: the violence of empire that contrasted with the lamb that was slain, and the seduction of its “imperial religion,” which was like a siren song and meant to form people to be its subjects, rather than being subjects to the lamb. This leads us to a third sin of empire, the “eikon of the beast,” is the empire’s abusive economic practices (esp Rev. 18).

In other words, John reveals an economic system that succeeds by creating poles within society, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, and is based on some living in poverty and subjugation for the benefit of others. The Religion of Empire’s beastly economic system or structure is actually doing what it is supposed to do when there are some who are poor and some who are getting rich off of it.

Understanding Poverty

When I was in NYC one of the things that we talked about is the way that we understand poverty. There are at least four ways in which we understand that people become poor, and our understanding of how people become poor influences how we response (thoughts presented from Colleen Wessel-McCoy):

• Poverty as accident – economic cycles, disasters, politics, geography, racism. Poverty as accident assumes that the system is generally good and then sometimes bad things happen. Response: short-term assistance, plug the holes.

• Poverty as pathological – this is characterized by bad choices, bad choices, certain values that create poverty. You’ll hear words like “culture of poverty” used to describe this model. Response: Stigmatize poverty so the poor don’t want to make bad choices. One of the clearest examples of this was the belittling use of the phrase “welfare queens” that got its start in the 80s.

• Poverty as fate – poverty is desirable by God, some people are just going to be poor, it can be taken from a misunderstanding of Jesus’ phrase “the poor will be with you always,” or it is seen as “everything happening for a reason – God wanted me to bear this cross.” Response: is to accept ones lot in life, suck it up, and go about what you’re doing. “Stop complaining, at least you have a job.”

• Poverty as structural – in this understanding poverty and exploitation is not an accident, but actually the response of the outworkings of the system – the system is controlled and set up to benefit a certain, very small subset of society, while everyone else accepts their role and follows orders. Response: empower the poor to make the changes deemed necessary.

Martin Luther King, Jr. summed up this final point when he said, “What good does it do to be able to eat at a lunch counter if you can’t buy a hamburger.” He understood something very deep about our own country, that we can pay lip-service to “rights” while blocking equality in other spheres of our society.

From this perspective, it’s not good enough to have a “safety net” or simply to plug holes, instead we need to ask why there are holes to begin with, what is the safety net actually covering up? It’s not good enough to help pull people out of a river, we need to go upstream and find out who’s throwing them in to begin with.

Unveiling the Eikon of the Beast

This is, I believe, what John is trying to unveil for us to see. That inequity is not about accident, pathology or fate – it is a demonic “spirit” at work within the structures of society that create it.

John of Patmos is telling us from the first century that poverty is structural.

That there is a certain kind of beastly economics that has been at work in the world for a very long time – and if you don’t play by its rules you will not be able to “buy or sell” and it may get you killed – just as the people in Rev. 13.

Elisabeth Schussler-Fiorenza writes:

“Revelation consistently speaks of the power of Satan in national, political and cosmic terms. (13, 18 20). Satan deceives the nations and not merely individuals into sinful action (20:7-8). Revelation’s notion of ultimate evil is best understood today as systemic evil and structural sin” (87).

Let’s unpack this a little. Rev. 13 talks a lot about the “image or eikon of the beast.” This is significant because it stands in contrast to the “image of God,” which we see at the beginning of creation.

We can describe God’s creation of the world as structuring/ordering the world to work in a certain way that was largely based on taking care of the land, animals, sea and one another. We know from OT texts like Exodus 16, and Lev. 25 that God instructed people to take only what they need, so that there would be “enough daily bread” for everyone, and that they practiced something called jubilee, where every 49 years everyone’s debts would be cancels, and indentured servants were freed. As a part of jubilee, they let the land lie fallow every 7 years. Jesus, who is the completion of this Creation, shows humanity how to live this out in human relationships.

But in Rev 13. we see that the beast is involved in a counter-creation story. Listen to some of the wording:

• “makes the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast…”
• “it performs great signs”
• “it deceives the inhabitants of the earth, telling them to make an image for the beast…”
• “and it was allowed to give breath to the image of the beast…”
• “and those who would not worship the beast would kill…” (cf. Daniel 3:19)

So in this first portion of our text you get this sense of the beast as a counter-creation story, breathing life into the “image of the beast” (cf. Gen 1:26-27), an new god that emerges out of the ground — made by human hands — and has its own structuring/ordering of things.

As Crystal Hall (whose brilliant masters-thesis on Rev 13. I read in preparation for this sermon) points out, what is going on between these two contrasting “eikons” is that Revelation shows us that the beast seeks to recreates its followers in its image. To encompass and literally enslave all of humankind to its own greedy and violent ends.

Then it says:

“Also it causes all, both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave, to be marked [be given] on the right hand or the forehead, 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.” (Revelation 13:16–17)

Here we see that the eikon of the Beast symbolizes participation in the empire’s economy. In fact, the greek word for “Mark” (charagma) means to stamp or make an impression on something. It is used when referring to imperial coins which would have had the emperor’s face “marked” on the coin, an official seal for business contracts and the branding impressed upon prisoners, slaves and religious devotees of the Imperial religion. This “eikon” was important to form and shape its subjects as Wes Howard-Brook points out:

“The charagma [mark] of ancient Rome was not some esoteric symbol but a stamp used to certify deeds of sale, and the impress of the emperor’s head on the coinage. The imperial currency bore the image, name, year, and titles of the emperor. This made coinage an important means by which Roman myth was propagated. These coins were an affront to those who resisted empire. As far as Revelation is concerned it was not possible to denounce Rome as satanic and simultaneously use the empire’s medium of exchange – its currency” (WHB 175).

John writing about “the image of the beast” then is an attempt to unmask the true “spirit” behind the myth and structure of the empire – which would have told its people all kinds of things in order to keep them pacified.

Revelation is about crashing the beasts party of luxury and idolatry as John calls the people to “come out” of empire.

Come Out!

So what does it mean to come out from and resist this “eikon of the beast?” To be non-combatants, non-participants in a system that is opposed to the “image of God in creation” and the lamb that was slain.

Honestly, this is a much harder question and no easy answers are available – especially when we ourselves see the effects of this kind of system still in place today.

There is no wonder then why Christians have been tempted to find alternative readings that soften John’s critique or divert it altogether. I would much rather be let off the hook here then consider how I myself may be subject to a system that uses and abuses me and others. Or how I have helped to support that system.

In either case, this is a difficult word to us this morning.

But John tells his first churches, who were small in number and poor by the empire’s standards, not so they will be crushed with defeat, but so they will have no illusion, so that they will see these structures for what they are: affronts to the way of the lamb that was slain.

And I believe that our role as the church is to do our best to see through these illusions, to ask the penetrating questions, and to live as best as we can as a community grounded in the “eikon of the lamb” where there is no slave nor free, but “ multitudes of every nation, from all tribes and peoples, and languages…”

Instead of perpetuating inequity, or plugging its holes, we are to end it all together. We must challenge the systems that create inequity, hungry children, houseless people, unsecure and menial work that is often dehumanizing, and division between rich and poor, slave and free.

Recently there was a struggle that involved Hilton housekeepers in Vancouver who were working full-time and still making under the poverty level – this while employed by a multi-million dollar international corporation. They were constantly being asked to clean more rooms for less pay, and not given mops or other basic tools needed to do the job efficiently or effectively. Many of these women were single-moms, people with little education or immigrants who lived in section 8 housing and had to get groceries from food banks in order to feed their families and government assistance to pay for other basics. But as they grew frustrated enough, and began to find courage and their own voices, they began to challenge this system and ask the questions that needed asked. They were, after a year-long battle, able to get a little more pay, some basic equipment, and a cap on how many rooms they were expected to clean. And we know that this battle continues in many places and under many disguises throughout the world.

From people being burned alive in a Bangladeshi clothing factory, to Agro-Business that sells “terminator” seeds that self-destruct so third-world farmers go into deeper and deeper debt buying more seeds from that same company, to the eroding away of basic worker-rights within our own country, the eikon of the beast is still at work in our world today.

It just doesn’t look like a barcode and it won’t be showing up as a pill anytime soon.

Footnote:

Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza says that there are three basic possibilities for 666 which most scholars believe either a) it was a numeric spelling of the name Nero, b) it was a numeric abbreviation of domitian, or c) it was an exaggeration of the number 6 which means imperfection.

“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.” (Revelation 12:11)

The work of the People

One of the signs of a true artist is a willingness to work patiently and lovingly with even the most inferior materials. -David James Duncan

David James Duncan’s novel “The Brother’s K,” is about a family that lives in Camas. Papa is a paper mill worker who has gone semi-professional in Baseball and does fairly well until he has his thumb crushed in an accident at the mill. Consequently he falls into depression and begins to abuse substances. So in an attempt to regain ground and find life his healing he build a shed.

I read [page 105-106] & [117-188] from the book, excerpts of which can be read here.

What is striking about this is:

The materials he uses for his hand-built shed are inferior, just as his thumb. And the persistence with which he goes out night after night throwing that baseball around in such a wild manner. He didn’t do this with the hope that someday he would become pro again, but because he hoped his lost dignity would be found, that the muscle memory of throwing a ball would return to his once well-trained arm, and that he could create something out of those pitch-turned prayers that might bring life back to him.

I’d like to suggest to you that the building of this shed and the persistent practice of throwing those wild pitches was for Papa a kind of liturgy. He took what inferior materials he had and he turned it into beautiful art that was less about what he knew and more about what he worked to create.

Too often those of us in evangelical churches believe that “liturgy” or “ritual” is dead and meaningless, but Papa shows us something quite the opposite. There is nothing dead about Papa’s pitching, because what he creates is a new story for himself one pitch at a time.

Two Liturgies

In Revelation 12 we see not one, but two kinds of liturgy at work. Our passage falls right in the middle of three scenes of worship that take place between chapters 11-15. With a dramatic conflict symbolized by a dragon and a woman, Michael and angels, and then two beasts in chapter 13, John is us that the two religions in conflict both have their own respective liturgies.

Wes Howard-Brook writes:

This war took the form of ritual crucifixions, arena contests with lions, and other public spectacles of execution. John’s insight is that these are not merely “political” acts, but liturgical acts as well…[Even] “the courtrooms with the robed magistrates, the choreographed rising and sittings, collective responses and other ritual acts” are all a part of this “liturgical demeanor” (WHB 211).

In other words, the empire’s religion of temples, statutes, decrees, ordinances, and symbols, are for John a kind of liturgy that dulls the hearts and minds of its subjects.

Let’s define liturgy as a practice that is meant to form the worshipping community in a particular way.
Or as Quaker Ben Pink Dandelion, describes it in Liturgies of Quakerism – Liturgy is the work of the people. It is something that is done, acted upon or performed.

And therefore liturgy can be used for positive or negative formation. it dulls their hearts, stunts their imaginations, and makes them content with the way things are, or worse, leads them to believe that the way things are is divinely ordained but by the wrong god.

John’s Revelation is written to a second-generation church struggling with compromise and apathy, which has plateaued, lost steam and direction – I think it is a letter meant to spark their imaginations, reshape their liturgy, inspire hope, and, like Papa in BK, help them find life again before it is too late!

So John couching these conflicts of the great red dragon and the pregnant woman within the context of worship tells us something very important: Christian worship is a counter-political act.

If the liturgy of the empire is a “public spectacles of execution” then the liturgy of the lamb is the exact opposite, a “public spectacles of life, care-giving, and transformation.”

When I say worship is a political act, I don’t mean that worship is about politics in the way we often think about it today. Worship is not about having a platform to espouse certain ideals, whether Libertarian, Republican, Democrat, or Napoleon (Vote for Pedro). I know there are plenty of churches and preachers in the news on a daily basis who use their pulpit to push certain political agendas – this isn’t what I mean.

However, worship is not neutral either. What we do in worship does have an impact in how we live and interact with the world.

• Worship is political in that the very act of a group of people gathering together to tell thousand-year-old stories about goodness and evil, peace and war, God and wickedness is a practice meant to shape the very core of our hearts, minds and and our actions.

• Worship is political in that we as a group of people proclaim the lamb that was slain to be the victor and the one true God, over every other idol and power in society.

• Worship is political because it unveils the illusions of the empire. It shows the exploitation and the spectacles of death that it creates for what they are. (Tells a certain story).

• Worship is political in that it seeks to build a movement that brings about the kind of world that God intended, “heaven on earth,” or as we will see in a couple weeks the “new Jerusalem” coming down out of heaven at the end of Revelation.

In other words, John frames the conflict of the dragon and the woman with words of worship because he knows that the only way we can perceive the heart of the real struggle, and understand ourselves in relationship to it is through the liturgy of the lamb.

Something happens to us when we worship.

Whether we know or understand what that is, something happens when we worship.
Seeds are planted in the soil of our hearts, our imaginations are sharpened with new images, new stories, we are given new language for understanding the world when we worship.

Hearts are broken open toward the poor, the strangers, the enemies of the world when we worship.
When we worship, something happens; our love is deepened and our understanding and critique of the “religion of empire” is crystallized. We side with the woman of life who is on the run, and fortify ourselves against the red dragon of death.

This is John’s message:

Church, if you are to survive, if you are to see through the incessant demands of the empire, then you must worship, you must be formed by the liturgy of the lamb.

And here is the crux of our passage today — worship is not aimed at something that might happen someday, if we are good enough. Worship is the active participation in creating that different story right now.

In Chapter 11, worship breaks out from “loud voices” saying:

“The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah, and he will reign forever and ever.”” (Revelation 11:15)

And in 12 loud voices proclaim:

“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. 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.” (Revelation 12:10–11)

All of this is active. It is happening now. We conquer through the nonviolence of the lamb, and the witness or testimony of our lives in this world. Those are our tools, our weapons so to speak. And they find their origin in the Christian liturgy of the lamb that was slain.

When we worship something happens because when we worship we are creating something entirely new — we are, in fact, the woman, who symbolizes the church, giving birth to the baby Jesus in the world.

What Are We Creating?

So, Camas Friends, what are we creating with our lives? What are we creating when we worship together? How are we allowing our Quaker liturgies to be the shed where we practice over and over again in the hopes of forming our lives in a particular direction?

Because it’s not that Quakers don’t have a liturgy, it’s that we have a different kind of liturgy ours are based in: silence, discernment, listening, prayers, scripture reading, giving of what we have to sustain this community, consensus building, treating all people with dignity because they are children of God and singing the new song of the lamb?

• There is a world out there, in fact just down the street, of people living in destitute poverty.
  *There is a world out there struck by fear, caught in cycles of violence, exploited by an economic system that benefits some while building on the backs of others.
• There is a world out there of people who are hurt and in need of healing, care-giving, or someone just to offer them a little bit of dignity.
• There are people who deeply long to hear the new song of the lamb sung to them, and to be asked to join the chorus.
• There are people who have not yet experienced the power and the freedom that comes when we gather in silence and follow Jesus as teacher and friend.

Our concern and care for the least of these, for those who want to come and be at this table, who are in need of a community who conquer by the lamb that was slain and the word of their testimony is our liturgy, it is our political act, it is our artistic creation – even if we feel that we are sometimes starting with inferior materials.

I want to close with a quote from Howard Thurman who once wrote (Deep is the Hunger, 20-21):

“The simplest definition of art is that it is the activity by which [people] realize their ideals…We are all artists in the sense that we are all engaged in some kind of activity by which we are realizing our ideals. What kind of ideas are you realizing? There is no neutrality here. Everybody is engaged in this activity. Is what you are realizing worthy of you, or are you engaged in the realization of ideals of which you are ashamed, and before which you stand condemned in your own sight? Long, long ago, it was said by a very wise and understanding friend, “By their fruits ye shall know them…”

When we come together. When we actively participate and receive the formation that comes from being shaped by the liturgy of the lamb. When we read these stories from scripture. When live out the word of our testimony by practicing hospitality, peacemaking, simple-living, truthfulness and the proclaiming of dignity of every human being – we realize the ideals that Revelation calls us too.

Something happens when we worship. Let us enter into silence.

Ever More Precise

Let’s begin with a poem called Claritas by Denise Levertov:

The All-Day bird, the artist,
whitethroated sparrow,
striving
in hope and
good faith to make his notes
ever more precise, closer
to what he knows.

I love this line:

Striving in hope and good faith to make his notes ever more precise, closer to what he knows.

Isn’t this beautiful? I love this image of the bird struggling to find the right notes, “closer to what he knows.”

I think this image connects to something deep within all of us, it certainly does with me. One of the things I desire more than anything else is that the notes, the song that is within here — my head and my heart — can become the notes that I sing with my life.

I want the song of my heart to the be the song that is sung through my work, my play, my preaching, my care-giving, my fathering, and like this little bird, I want it to be a beautiful song.

But it isn’t always easy to line up head and heart, life and song. I remember when I was told that to become a minister was a worthless pursuit and something I would regret later in life by someone I looked up to and loved. Sometimes those we love, those we look up too, try to keep us from singing the songs of our hearts.

Often when we try to sing our song, like this All-Day Bird, there are others who tell us that we can’t sing, that our song is no good, that we are singing life in the wrong way.

Last week we focused on the central image of Revelation – the lamb that was slain – and about the religion of the lamb that was based in nonviolence. I described nonviolence as:

Nonviolence is a commitment to act in every situation in ways that honor the soul.

In other words, if this little bird is to learn his or her tune, if it is to make it more precise then it needs the conditions, the support, the community in order to exercise its little whistle.

The world that the young Jesus movement was born into was a world, the world that John’s revelation pierces into, is not one where the conditions were not perfect or safe, it was not a warm and welcoming environment for a little song bird’s new song. And so John’s message this morning is that if we want to sing our new song about the lamb, then we will need to recognize that it is going to go against the grain and that we are going to need help to do it because there are those who do not want it sung.

Sirens

As we saw last week, Revelation describes two kinds of religions in conflict, the religion of empire and the religion of the lamb that was slain. The religion of empire is rooted in fear, control, suspicion of others, and violence. The religion of the lamb is rooted in courage, patience, love of stranger, and nonviolence.

Each of these religions also have its own hymns. The Empire’s song is something like the Sirens in Homer’s Odyssey – The sirens were dangerous and beautiful creatures – a cross between bird and woman – and lured nearby sailors with their enchanting music and voices to shipwreck on the rocky coast of their island.”

Image from Tobee

This siren song sounds beautiful but if heeded the outcome will be disastrous. John’s vision is writing against a siren song that will stop at nothing until the whole world is left ship shipwrecked. John tells us what the empire’s siren song, its hymnal for worship, sounds like – four horses:

It is like a white horse, wearing a bow and crown, that “conquers to conquer” by thriving on international conflict and war.

It is like the red horse bearing a great sword that breeds civil war, and other internal conflict within its own people based on suspicion, estrangement and alienation.

It is like the black horse carrying a pair of scales that represents an economic system that not only strips the earth of its resources but is based on exploitation of the poor.

And it is like a pale green who is accompanied by death that will stop at nothing to become the song that lulls humanity into the lie that death and violence and fear are the final word for this life. That our imaginations, our hearts, our very lives should be limited by death.

The empire will stop at nothing usurp God’s song. If it has its own way, it will never permit this All-Day bird to sing its most faithful and honest tune (WHB Unveiling Empire, 141).

But there is are other singers who sing a counter-song, in fact seven times throughout revelation John doesn’t tell us that there is worship happening, John shows us what those singing the song of the lamb looks like. Revelation 5:9 calls it a new song, and you can see why it is new because it is a song that Pharaoh in egypt, and Domitian in Rome does not want sung.

The New Song of the Lamb

This new song of the lamb that was slain has an entirely different tune, and not only does it undo empire, it works to bring about a new creation under the guidance of the lamb.

This song is different and new because it is sung by imperfect voices, courageous voices, and voices that have been told not to sing.

It a song sung by many voices, heard in the marketplaces and in the corners of empire.

It can only be heard by those who pay close attention, by those who have ears, and those whose imaginations aren’t already marked by death.

Maybe those who sing this new song are a little like Odysseus’ crew who first have to put beeswax in their ears, so that they are not wooed by the siren song.

When John asks who can within stand the four horses of empire, it is this great multitude singing this new song that he sees.

This new song of the lamb is different because rather than scattering, sorting and creating suspicion, this is a song that gathers us together in “a great multitude of people that no one can count from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages standing before the lamb” (7:9).

This is a song that expands and includes. This is a song that invites you to lift up your voice and sing and to make that song becomes the song of your heart so that it is more precise, more rooted and grounded in this alternative way that the Lamb lays out before us.

John knows that those who sing this song will know that they are going against the grain and will need help. To sing this song his parishioners in his seven little churches could get killed.

This song has been sung in times since: when the department store workers, housewives, auto-mechanics, preachers, school teachers and others involved in the bloody sunday marched from Selma to Montgomery songs like “We Shall Not Be Moved” were heard ringing out.

To sing the song of the lamb is to march against the grain of this world. It is to make a break with those under the siren song of empire – and as history tells us, it is sometimes those in the church, as much as those on the outside who have succombed to that misguided tune.

It is possible that singing this song may get you disapproval from our fathers and mothers, from our bosses, our teachers, our pastors and other loved ones. But John at the end of Chapter 7 John reveals the lamb as a shepherd, guiding his people and tending to their needs.

Those who have made the break, who have learned to sing what is truly in their hearts, are the participants in a new community, singing a new song alongside the lamb of God who is our shepherd.

There will be tears in our song and “God will wipe those tears away” but this isn’t the about the warm-fuzzy wiping away of tears, these are the tears of real transformation by a people whose very lives, reputations, whose very song is on the line.

These are the tears of birthing a new creation into an old one, and the conflict and clash that ensures. This is a comforting message to those diverse group of people living out a different vision of the world. An alternative story that is not marked by a siren song of death, but by the life giving, soul-honoring, people gathering, courageous song of new creation.

Queries:

• Are we willing to shed tears for the transformation that is required? Are we ready and willing to sing this song and to march against the grain if that is where the lamb takes us?

• What would it take for us to learn this song as our own?

• What would it look like for us to be like the All-Day bird whose precision rests on hope and good faith, development, and working the fine tuning necessary to make ones song of life truly reflect the beauty and truth that is buried within our souls?

[Painting by Francisco de Zurbarán — “Agnus Dei”]

Fear, Desire for control and Violence are some of the main qualities that tend to show themselves when our lives feel like they are spinning out of control.

When we first learned about our daughter’s allergies I felt all three of these responses. I was afraid because I didn’t know what it meant for our family. What changes would we have to make? What kinds of things would L. miss out on as a kid? How might this affect her emotionally, psychologically, spiritually? What if she was accidentally given peanuts when she was out of view or away from home: could we lose our child to something like a peanut allergy?

Then as a reaction to fear – a desire for control sets in. How do we control this? How do we manage it, so that we can ensure that nothing bad happens to her? Even if we know it is misguided, we still as parents desire to control the situation as much as possible.

Finally, violence can often come into play. It is easy to lose patience and “fly off the handle” because the stress of a situation that induces fear. Blaming and scapegoating are also violent responses because they demean the soul of another. Many families have been ripped apart because of unstable and chaotic issues: diseases, the loss of a child, the stress of an unstable financial situation.

When things become rickety and unstable, or we find ourselves in times of wilderness, I think it is our first response as people that we get afraid, we try to control the situation, and violence & scapegoating crop up.

Two Religions

Revelation addresses these same issues of fear, control and violence in its portrayal of the “two religions:” the religion of empire and the religion of creation, that is the religion of the lamb that was slain (Cf. Wes Howard Brook “Come Out my People“).

One religion is based on violence, coercion, suspicion, and fear.

The other religion, the religion of the lamb that was slain is, the one that proclaims that Jesus, who was killed, is alive and that victory cannot be guaranteed but only discovered and experienced through courage, patient resistance, sacrificial love and nonviolence (these are the three contrasting elements to the three offered above).

In Rev. 5, John the seer finds himself having an apocalyptic vision of God seated on the throne. The question is raised, who is worthy to open the scroll of their sacred text. It dawns on John that no one on heaven or on earth is worthy to open, to handle, or to even read the sacred story of God’s people.

No human hands, no special techniques, no amount of orthodox belief, right living, power or economic status qualifies anyone
to break open the scroll.

All of the ways I mentioned earlier that we try to “manage” do not work on the divine. They are utterly useless here.

Just as we all weep when we realize our own brokenness, our own incapabilities, our own powerlessness, John also weeps.

He is confronted with his own lack of power, he realizes that the pivot point of the universe is not us and is not in our control, that there are mysteries bigger than his understanding and in this experience he is humbled by that mystery.

“Then one of the elders said to me, “Do not weep. See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.”” (Revelation 5:5 NRSV)

Now I think when John hears these words: Lion, David, Conquered…he hears something like: “there is to come a great mighty warrior who is stronger than any empire, and any emperor and he will crush God’s enemies.”

But what John hears the elders saying, and what he sees with his eyes do not match up.

“Then I saw between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders a Lamb standing as if it had been slaughtered…” (Revelation 5:6)

John hears the elders say there is a powerful lion, a warrior like David, but what he “surprised” to see a slaughtered lamb.

We cannot downplay the shock and irony John would have experienced receive by seeing and hearing this juxtaposition. To see a slain lamb, alive standing by the throne of God is sheer bafflement.

The religion of Empire is rooted in fear, control and violence. It waits for powerful heroes.

The religion of the lamb is in complete contrast to this. And it is, I believe the central, controlling image of the book of revelation – the phrase appears 28 times. Everything else can be understood and interpreted through the lamb that was slain as a filter.

It is not afraid or suspicious of “the world,” “enemies,” and strangers. Instead of forcing people into labels, ghettos, and into hiding, the religion of the lamb is about turning strangers into neighbors, and extending a hand to enemies.

The religion of the lamb knows that it cannot force victory, it cannot predetermine outcomes, but instead through patient endurance, a constant refrain throughout Revelation, we are called to be patient in faithfulness rather than effective at all cost.

The power of the lamb comes not through a show of power but of nonviolence and sacrificial love – that the lamb was first killed enabled him to unveil the lie that might equals right and reverse our understanding of what God wants from all people.

The lamb that was slain is God’s revelation to us that God is in fact not the violent God of empire but the nonviolent God who is revealed in Jesus Christ. All of the militaristic imagery and violence of revelation is a result of the violence of the empire that crushed and silenced much of humankind at the expense of its own survival. The lamb of God gives us an alternative vision of how the world was meant to look.

The fact that it is an image of sheer irony and bafflement should capture our imaginations and draw us toward the second religion.

Nonviolence and the Dignity of Humanity

The Mennonite John Howard Yoder, writing on this passage, says:

“The lamb that was slain is worthy to receive power! John is here saying, not as an inscrutable paradox but as a meaningful affirmation, that the cross and not the sword, suffering and not brute power determines the meaning of history. The key to obedience of God’s people is not their effectiveness but their patience (cf. Rev. 13:10).” 232

If Yoder is right about the cross here then “the cross is not about getting ones way,” which I take to be at the root of the empire of religion. If the cross is not about getting our way then we have less to fear, there would be far less for us to control, and no need for violence within society.

If the lamb is central to our Christian imaginations then our entire orientation toward one another and the world shifts.

Jesus demonstrated that the cross is in fact about giving up the right to control the outcomes, to die to our own personal causes, and to force others to accept our positions on things. This is why we usually use words like “surrender” and “sacrifice” when we talk about the cross.

• What would it look like for us to surrender or sacrifice in long-standing family feuds?
• What would it look like for us to give up the need to control the outcomes in our dealings at work?
• What might it look like for us to not try and get our own way when it comes to how we conduct ourselves as a church?

If the cross is about practicing this kind of nonviolent love, which I believe it is, then it isn’t primarily just about renouncing physical violence, but something far deeper and insidious:

“The compulsiveness of purpose that leads the strong to violate the dignity of others.” 237

And Parker Palmer puts it this way:

Violence is any way we have of violating the identity and integrity of another person.

Nonviolence is a commitment to act in every situation in ways that honor the soul.

How do our fears, our desire for control get manifested in compulsions that violated the dignity of those under our care, those in our family, and those with whom we interact at work, in the public and as a nation?

Can this blood-stained image of the lamb that was slain baffle us enough to radically transform our imagination as the church, radically shift our orientation toward one another and the world in ways that reflect not the religion of empire, but the religion of the lamb?

Closing Queries:

• How might we live, interact with, adjust our expectations, even ask questions in ways that better honor one another’s soul?

• How might we strengthen our commitment to being a fellowship where everyone is safe enough for their soul to show up?

• How might we live in such a way that we affirm our belief that every soul has that of God within them and is worthy of honor?

The Lampstands in the Darkness

This past week the American consciousness has been tilted towards the East Coast. Every news source, every line posted to social media, and many of the prayers offered up have been on behalf of those who were injured, killed and/or traumatized on Monday in the Boston marathon bombing.

You may have been like some and couldn’t get enough of the news. Or maybe you felt like you just wanted to get away from it. I swung back and forth between these poles. Although I have to say it’s thrilling conclusion on Friday evening was captivating.

One of the things that Monday did for all of us who live in America was remind us of the simple fact that darkness is all around us. We don’t have to know the motives of the brothers, or whether they were helped by some terrorist network to know that these two young men were draw into a seductive darkness that is far more overwhelming than they clearly understood.

This darkness is seductive because it can pull even the most unsuspecting people into its influence and service.

And this darkness ebbs and flows. Sometimes there is a little breathing room, a moment of relative calm, sometimes it feels like everything is caving in around you.

Monday was just one more reminder that in America, just as in the rest of the world, we are surrounded by a darkness that we don’t always understand and that has seductive powers to draw people into its service.

If we were in the first century we would call this darkness the “Roman empire” and we would talk about those who were seduced by its ways of idolatry with imperialistic gods, ambivalence in faith, and participation in the empire’s economy. For John’s seven churches, we find that the letters are less about dealing with extreme persecution – although there is some present – and more about dealing with the seductive powers of the empire’s darkness.

As I see it there were at least two ways to end the Christian movement: one was to kill them all off, which the previous emperor Nero tried to do, and if that doesn’t work, seduce them into participation of the religion, economics and ways of life of the empire.

If you can kill the radical heart of the Christian movement, then you don’t need to actually kill Christians. And so this does seem to be the tactic that is making progress with early Christians.

Unfortunately, these tactics are still at play in our world today and there are many ways in which we to can find ourselves seduced and drawn as churches away from the light and life of Jesus and towards darkness. There are many ways that we all see this take place but when events like Monday happen we are given a new opportunities to gauge our hearts.

If we are seduced we may be given to hatred, and not just feelings of revenge but actually seeking revenge. We will forget that central to Christianity is love of neighbor and enemy, and the practice of forgiveness.

If we are seduced we may be given to ambivalence. You were neither hot nor cold. This is for those who fall asleep, even though they are awake, those who have the appearance of being alive but are dead.

And finally, fear is another way we can be seduced. Fear that we can do nothing to change the world. Fear of one another. Fear works against what Jesus has called for his disciples because he has called us out into the world to love, make peace, and offer mercy to those in our world.

Jesus is at the door

John’s “apocalyptic” letter is written into a situation like this, but even more grave. It is a situation where all hope is lost. It is a letter written after the news of the iceberg reaches the captain of the titanic.

Given the geographical area and the order of the churches in Chap. 2-3 it is clear that this letter was read aloud in each church and had a circuit throughout Asia Minor. E. Peterson points out that all of the letters offer direction affirmation, correction and motivation (E. Peterson).

Which does make me wonder what it must have been like to be Sardis or Laodicea who had nothing good said about them, and whose state were read aloud to everyone. It probably had the similar effect of your sixth grade teacher finding a note you’d written to you significant other only to read it in front of the whole class!

John’s letters are meant to offer some way forward for these communities in a world that was unstable and unpredictable.

As Howard Thurman once wrote:

Much of life involves us in actions grown out of decisions that work out their fulfillment through many months and often years. It is a simple but terrible truth that, in most fundamental decisions we make, we must act on evidence that is not quite conclusive. We must decide and act on our decision without having a complete knowledge even of the facts that are involved. -Howard Thurman

Jesus’ words to each church embrace their situation, the things they struggle with, the challenges of their time and tries to help them grapple with the fact that they are called out into the world despite the fact that things aren’t perfect or the way they would like.

As these communities lean into their own challenges and seductions John offers guiderails to them by drawing out the areas of light and life-giving forces already at work in their midsts.

You probably noticed that there is a pattern that arises in John’s letters – they each begin with an image or phrase from the initial vision of Jesus in chapter 1 — which suggests that there is a piece of Jesus in each community and then it goes on to give a description of the good and the correctives in the community, it offers encouragements and then a motivating promise — “To the victor I will give…”

But it is important that John focuses on the strengths of each community that is already present there: to Thyatira, “I know your words, your love, faith, service and patient endurance;” to Ephesus, “I know your deeds, labor, endurance. I know you cannot tolerate evildoers;” to Smyrna, “I know your affliction and your poverty even though you are rich…” In all but two of the letters John opens by name the life-giving force of that particular community, and even the two he doesn’t do that for, Sardis and Laodicea, he still opens with an image drawn from Jesus in chapter 1 (suggesting again that even in their waywardness the image of Jesus is still imprinted in their spirits).

The key point here is that each church must draw on the graces and the life-giving forces that it already has within it. It cannot go elsewhere, for Jesus stands among them and is present to them. If they are to resist the darkness and have “patient endurance” as they are repeatedly called to then they are to draw on the core of that grace (Branson 51-52).

John reminds Sardis, “Remember then what you received and heard; obey it, and repent;” and Ephesus, “Remember then from what you have fallen.”

By refocusing these communities around powerful images connected to the vision of Jesus in Chp. 1 and drawing out their strengths, John is able to help reorient these communities around light and life that is already present. This can give them the courage and wear withal to move out into the darkness.

It is as Rumi once wrote:

There’s an image of God deep in your heart. You don’t need to look in some other direction. What He can subtly bestow is limitless; It will help you live within the world’s limits. -Rumi (The Egg of the Body)

So how do we find the courage and the decisiveness to act on evidence that is not quite conclusive, and to step out into a world of darkness, and suffering? I believe it is to draw on these mutually generative, life-giving places we share together.

There is a light

While it may be true that there is darkness, the Gospel of John reveals a counter-story about a light that is not overcome by darkness. And in Revelation we are told about ordinary believers in tiny, powerless communities within the Roman Empire who are “lamp stands.” They are not themselves the light, but they are the bright spots, the gathering points, the training ground for acts of love, peace, and mercy in the world.

Revelation teaches us that what promotes God’s work in the world is what receives commendation. Regardless of where it comes from. This is the light at work in the darkness.

And this past monday we saw light and life.

Danielle Elizabeth Tumminio wrote:

There are ordinary people who step out into danger, into darkness, to shine a light. On the day of the marathon bombings, bystanders who could have protected themselves rushed to help the injured . Doctors, nurses, and their assistants worked overtime to make sure that those affected received the care they deserved, while law enforcement officials sought justice on the city’s behalf. Bostonians came out to offer marathoners juice and a bathroom, even as officials told them to stay indoors . A nearby restaurant called El Pelon Taqueria gave out free food, drinks, cell phone charger outlets, and the 9-year old daughter of the owner, Addison Hoben , decorated to-go bags with the words, “It’s going to be alright” and “We’re not afraid.”

Revelation reminds us that while the darkness will not conquer the Light, we have our own role to play in the whole thing.
We must draw on our strengths, our successes, the light that is already at work among us and “step out into danger” even if the evidence is inconclusive. And I believe that we will find more light gathered, more helpers, more lamp stands along the way.

Bafflement

During the retreat I was on last weekend with other young leaders led by Parker Palmer and Marcy Jackson, Parker mentioned that he never writes books about things he knows, he only writes on things that baffle him.

You know the difference?

You never google the stuff you are sure of, it’s only the stuff where there is a little bit of a question or uncertainty that prompts you to look something up. But it’s more than that too: I think he means that those things that come easy for you. The things that you could do in your sleep. Aren’t they often the things that have little life in them? The easy stuff doesn’t really energize us.

It’s the challenging stuff that wakes you up and leaves us laying in bed all night mulling them over. Those things that baffle you, that confuse you, that you can’t quite get a grip on, there’s life in that. It might sometimes feel stressful, it might not always be clear the solution, but I have found at least for myself that it is usually in this bafflement that I come alive.

Here are some other words for baffle: puzzle, bewilder, mystify, bemuse, confuse, confound, disconcert; informal flummox, faze, stump, make someone scratch their head, be all Greek to, floor, discombobulate.

We need things that baffle us and in our spiritual lives especially. This is why the focus of the messages over the next two months is going to be The book of Revelation.

In fact many of the words for baffle above are the same words we might use for Revelation.

Friedrich Nietzsche considered Revelation to be “the most rabid outburst of vindictiveness in all recorded history.”

And another person has called it a “script for a horror movie.”

There is no other book of the Bible that baffles me more than Revelation. Even thought I have been studying the bible academically and as a minister since 1997, a lot of this baffles me still and yet this is part of what I love so much about it.

And so of course, after hearing Parker Palmer talk about the importance of bafflement I knew right away that this was the direction we were supposed to take.

I am convinced – and I hope to convince you – that the Bible is not a book to use or to extrapolate information out of but rather a book that is meant to help us listen to God.

Revelation is of course a perfect test case for bafflement – what if instead of avoiding what challenges us we met the challenge with imagination and curiosity? I think that by reflecting and listening to these texts over the next few weeks we will be helped in our listening to God and in our own relationship to scripture.

We were not the intended audience of Revelation

So the first observation I want to make about the book of revelation is very simple: it wasn’t written first and foremost for you and me. It’s not our book. It’s not meant to predict the future. It doesn’t represent our world. At least not at first. And we have a lot of work to do if we are to get to the bottom of what is going on in this book.

Read 1:3-8: “Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of the prophecy, and blessed are those who hear and who keep what is written in it; for the time is near. John to the seven churches that are in Asia…”

“We were not the intended audience of Revelation” as Eric Barreto, a NT professor, puts it.

This is to say that when John was imprisoned on the island of Patmos and had this divinely inspired day dream, what he wrote down was first and foremost for the churches he was a pastor of in Asia Minor.

The biblical text is always first and foremost a localized, historical work. The bible teaches us that God always speaks directly to the people where they are at, what they are facing, their fears and their celebrations.

Where you live, where you pray is essential to who God is and reveals himself to be (E. Peterson).

We have often treated the Revelation as a code that is to be broken as though it were a math formula to solve our problems. This matches this, that matches that and whallah Jimmy Carter is the Anti-Christ.

We should not be tricked into this way of reading any of the bible – as though it holds a secret or that it is detached from the people who it was written for (Luke 12:2). As much as I love math – Faith is not a math formula. As we read through these passages let me encourage you to avoid the revelation as code approach.

And yet we have to recognize that when we read it not only are we are not the intended audience for this book but that its meanings are not easy to get at.

One of my professors in seminary liked to talk about Revelation as a kind of political cartoon. Until we are well-acquainted with the people and the times it was written to the joke will be lost on us (Reading Facebook in 2000 years).

Of central importance is knowing that John wrote a letter from prison to a several tiny, powerless communities, that were minorities in their culture and were being harassed and even killed by the powers of empire. Much to the contrary of what we have often been taught, Revelation’s sympathies lie with the marginalized and the persecuted within the dominant Roman empire (181). The original hearers of the Revelation were not unlike the Hebrew people in Exodus, or early Anabaptists in Germany, or Early Quakers in England, or African-Americans prior to emancipation and civil rights, and we could go on…

John’s letter is similar to Martin Luther King’s Letter from Birmingham prison, smuggled out on napkins, aimed to encourage a minority people to not give up hope in the struggle for peace through nonviolence. In fact, that is the basic overall message of Revelation.

Don’t give up, do not fight back, follow the way of the slaughtered lamb.

For (NT Scholar) Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza says:

Something very strange happens when happens when this text is appropriated by readers in a comfortable, powerful, majority community: it becomes a gold mine for paranoid fantasies and for those who want to preach revenge and destruction.

Feeling adequately baffled yet?

One lesson I am able to take away from this

We have to be careful that we don’t confuse reading the bible with understanding the bible. We have to be careful how we interpret what these words say and who we think they apply to. We have to be extra cautious about assuming that what we read on face-value has direct correlations to society today.

So the question for us is what did the original hearers hear and how does this work in the community of believers of which we are a part?

Imagination

In fact, Revelation, if we allow it, can sharpen and enliven our imaginations.

John begins by saying “I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day,” which to me sounds a lot like when we talk about being fully yielded to God’s spirit, fully aligned within our inner and outer selves so that we are able to listen and hear God’s word to us?

Revelation revels God’s concern for his people who are crushed and marginalized by those in power. It shows who God sides with.

It is a letter of hope and courage to a people whose way of life and understanding of God was the cause of cruelty, imprisonment, and hatred.

It is a letter meant to spark the imagination of nonviolent resistance. The central image that forms the Christian imagination is the “Lamb that was slain,” the lamb who did not fight back, who was slain, and who God honored as the innocent victim. This is a total reversal from humanity’s constant effort to project on and blame the scapegoat.

These are the words being smuggled on napkins to small bands of Christians taking on a force more powerful and terrifying than anything they could imagine.

They call its readers to be in solidarity with one another no matter how distressing the situation becomes. And to know that the time of Jesus present with us is at hand.

Eugene Peterson says this:

I do not read the Revelation to get additional information about the life of faith in Christ. I have read it all before in the law and prophet, in gospel and epistle. Everything in the Revelation can be found in the previous sixty-five books of the Bible. The Revelation adds nothing of substance to what we already know. The truth of the gospel is already complete, revealed in Christ. There is nothing new to say on the subject. But there is a new way to say it. I read the Revelation not to get more information but to revive my imagination (xii-xii). It is not a question of what does this mean, but rather how does this work in our community of believers? It is not a code to be broken but a book meant to evoke our wonder (xiii).

Revelation teaches us that the remedy for Bafflement is wonder. I hope that you will allow this time of reflecting on Revelation to evoke wonder in you and to help shape your imagination for the ways in which God can move and change us.

Unless we are dead we are on a journey. Our journeys might be more inward focused at the moment, they might be more about outward changes, but either way life is filled with journeys.

But the best kind of journeys are the ones that cost us something: where risk is involved, where we are stretched to or beyond our capacity, where we are made alive in the the process of change.

In August 2003 Emily and I packed had one of these life-changing journeys when we moved from Ohio to someplace called Pasadena where there is a little old lady who owns a new shiny red Super Stock Dodge.

See we got married in Ohio in 2001 and by 2003 we were ready for change. Emily had finished a degree in middle-childhood education – she was drawn to teach english to poor kids in public school. I was youth pastoring at a Friends church and began feeling the itch to get my masters degree.

We labored with this decision for at least a year. We prayed. We talked to every sage we knew. We even made honorary sages just so we had more people to talk to about it. We argued. We cried. To be honest, we were afraid. The thought of such a huge risk with so few resources and no friends or connections on the other side of the country was both exhilarating and terrifying.

What would it be like to move across the country from the only home I’d ever known? (I had up until that point always lived within a 25 mile radius of where I was born in Canton Ohio.) Would we fail? Would we make friends? What would living in So.Cal be like? Could Emily find a job? Looking out across the map of the United States we were filled with equal amounts of hope and fear of the unknown.

Should we take the safe route or take the leap into the unknown?

There were good reasons to stay and good reasons to go, there were challenges with both. But I have to say that part of our decision what that when I thought about staying I felt like something in me would die if we did that.

So that August we threw the dice and took a gamble, packed up the U-haul and hoped that it would meet us where we were headed to. Emily and I set out on a 5-day across the US in our little Mitsubishi Sedan.

Driving across Kansas I wasn’t sure we’d make the trip. When we got to the Rockies I felt we’d finally seen where God resides. And driving through Arizona and Nevada we literally jammed cardboard in the windows to block the August Sun.

I remember when the 210 freeway – the main highway through Pasadena – opened up into a 6 lane highway (on each side). We had arrived, but where on earth had we come to? What had we done?

That summer we both experienced “little deaths” and in the following 6 years of our life together in So. Cal. we experienced an aliveness and new birth we’d never felt. But it started with a leap into the darkness, a huge risk, and the willingness to cross a threshold that had terrified both of us.

It reminds me of what Howard Thurman says:

“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs, ask yourself what makes you come alive, and then go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” –Howard Thurman

By staking out into the unknown, passing through what felt like a kind of death not only drew us closer to one another, it drew us closer to Jesus. As we crossed over a threshold of death to our old lives I am helped in understand the meaning of the cross and the empty tomb on Easter morning.

Passing through the Cross

Jesus’ death on the cross has held different meanings for Christians throughout history. Sometimes we stress the outward meaning — the liberation from oppressive structures, the defeating of death, the victory of nonviolence. Sometime we emphasize the inward — the freedom from sin and brokenness, the call to discipleship, forgiveness and reconciliation with God and one another.

If I were to ask all of you “what is the meaning of the cross?” I know given our diverse make-up and experiences that we would have many varied and rich ideas about it.

The beauty of the Cross is that our questions and yearnings are met with the vastness and mercy of God’s love wherever we are at.

In a similar way to our road-trip across the country offered both hope and mystery, the cross holds the tension of both hope and mystery, of both reality and new possibility.

*We can face any journey, no matter how challenging and scary it might be if we accept the cross as a paradigm for our inner and outer lives.

Jesus showed that despite our fears and anxieties related to death, to pass through the experience of the cross is something that we must each do.

Jim Miller put it this way:

We tend to keep the cross over there at a safe distance, but we need to be put on the cross.

*The truth of the cross is that there is life on the other side of the journey, even when death and change are a part it and that is where God wants to take us.

Christ’s experience of the cross is not meant to be “for us” passively – like “thanks chief for taking one for the team” or “better him than me.”

I believe that it is a revealing of the movement towards fullness in God. That we must be put on the cross, everything: our fears, our ego, our broken families, our back stories, our beliefs about religion, our complicity in the systems of the world, our addictions, our self-loathing, all of the things that we cling-to as the old world slips away.

The cross stands for a stripping away of all mediators, all obstacles, everything that stands between you and your neighbor, and you and your savior.

Now we don’t have to get up on the cross. If the old world has worked for you, then you may find no need for Jesus to create a new world of possibility.

We don’t have to get up on the cross – the fear it evokes, the facing of our own death of self, and death to what is comfortable, norma, predictable is justifiable.

But if the old world has not worked for you – then it is time to be put on the cross.

If keeping things the say within your inner and outer self feels like a kind of death and you long for new life – then it is time to get up on the cross.

If liberation is what you seek then follow Jesus and he will liberate you, but not first without you have to surrender your very life.

Only then can we be broken open into a the hope of resurrection.

Resurrection Doubt

[Ill. One part of the story I left out was that I wanted to go to school because I had given up on ministry. I decided to go a different path. But it was while in seminary that Jesus broke me open again and renewed my call to ministry. A result I was not expecting.]

Because Jesus rose from the dead, because he “came back” Easter is not about escaping this world and going somewhere else – it is about constantly called back to the divine present.

Easter is not about avoiding the difficulty and conflict of living life. It is about learning how to die and live anew within this reality. It is about witnessing where God is already at work within the world – in the places we expect God and and in the places were we may have been running from God.

This is why the accent mark for the Quaker church is not on the cross, it is on the empty tomb.

The reason we continue to remember Easter is because we can “cross over” into a new life of freedom, love and celebration in this life.

But let’s face it no one expects resurrection! We never do!

If you’ll notice the first people to witness the resurrection – in every Gospel story – suffers from what we might call resurrection doubt. They did not believe their own eyes.

And this is because Resurrection is unbelievable. Or as David Lose puts it,

“If It’s Not Hard to Believe, You’re Probably Not Paying Attention!”

And that seems about right.

Even the fact that Jesus told his followers this would happen, they still were confused and thought it was an “idle tale.”

No one slaps their knee and says “I knew it! Good one, Jesus.”

Why is it that we tend to expect the worst, we anticipate the far more pain and the gloomiest endings, when we are told in plain Scripture:

“Why do you look for the living among the dead?”

In other words – why do you look for the dead ends, when you could be looking for all the ways in which God can transform you through these moments and difficult times?

Even though we know that we can pass through these challenging situations, conflict, and fear – we too suffer from resurrection doubt.

But if we are to get to the part where we are, as Thurman said, “people who have come alive,” we must first be carried into the tomb.

Whether the tomb stands for a move to a wholly new place and experience as it did for Emily and I, or the tomb is a letting go of control, or the tomb is a turning with a new sense of surrender to Jesus, we must, like Jesus, be carried into the tomb.

If we allow ourselves to pass through the cross and enter the tomb with Jesus we too will find ourselves on the other side of hope and freedom. We will find that in Christ all things are possible.

I can’t imagine what our life would be like had we not set out on the journey 10 years ago. I know we would be vastly different people. I know I would not know any of you and that my life would not be as alive as it is now. I know that through it all Christ has walked with us.

This Easter – Let resurrection break in on you in a new way.

A dinner party

When I look at this text I see a very unusual and meaningful dinner party. It is nothing like a dinner party at the White House, or what we might find on Downton Abbey – the mixed company of this group wouldn’t allow for it.

It is far more like the dinners that happen in the servants quarters downstairs.

This is because Jesus’ disciples were a very interesting and strange lot to have over for dinner. Many of whom were not people who would ever be “invited upstairs” to have dinner with the Lord of the manor. They were all a part of the poor working class of their day. Others were hungry to follow him but lacked the theological understanding or appropriate degrees. There were at least a couple of whom said they were his friends to his face but loyalty to them was rather fair-weather and flimsy. Some came from riddled pasts, broken and suffering from what others had done to them or choices they made along the way.

In a way it was a lot like Mad Hatter’s tea party in Alice in Wonderland.

And today we don’t have to look very far to see people who could make up our own rather mishmashed dinner group.

We don’t have to look very far to find people who aren’t normally invited over to other people’s homes for dinner.

We don’t have to look too far to find brokenness and suffering in the world or to find people who have been mistreated, unloved and rejected by others.

We don’t have to look too far to find people in this church and in our community who are poor and only one pay check or two away from being without a home or food to eat.

We don’t have to look too far to find those who hunger and thirst for connection and understanding but who lack the community or confidence to learn.

On the other hand, we do have to look pretty hard to find where such a mix of people are all invited to eat together and be together in the same place today.

Jesus’ Table Fellowship

Luke’s Gospel written was written to an economically diverse group of people. Matthew and Mark’s Gospel are poor people writing for poor people. Luke’s Gospel is one that is written for a community that had both rich and poor located within it (via Aaron Scott).

This is important to note because, for those of you who know your bible well, know that Bread – and more generally food – features significantly in Luke’s Gospel. In fact, if I was forced to sum up Luke’s Gospel I might say the word “Eat.”

I had a professor in Seminary who said that Jesus’ table fellowship is so essential to the overall theology of Luke that he had always been tempting to write a book called “Eating your way through the Gospel of Luke.”

‘Who ate with who’ was highly symbolic as it can be still today. Think of all the hub-bub in the news when the President invites someone to the White House for dinner. Or think of the stress involved in knowing who to invite over for thanksgiving dinner, “do we invite cousin-so-and-so over, you know they all talk about X during dinner.”

For religious leaders of Jesus’ time “table fellowship rules” were something you took very seriously. It was not only a matter of being potentially ritually unclean, but it was a statement about your social class, and who were your people/disciples.

In other words, if you’re a popular high school student, you would never be caught sitting at a table filled with the JR High nerd herd. That would wreck you street-cred instantly.

But it’s about more than just credibility too. In the first century – if you are a religious leader who eats with you is counted as an equal, or at least someone who is acceptable in your eyes and in the eyes of God.

So when Jesus ate with women, fishermen, prostitutes, tax collectors, soldiers, zealots, people with disabilities, drunkards, pharisees, he broke all kinds of rules.

If you’ve watched any British TV at all you know that the chauffeur is not supposed to sit down and eat with the Lord of the manor!

So the problem with Jesus isn’t that he ate with people, it’s who he ate with. Jesus invited all the “wrong” people to be his dinner guests.

This is because he wanted to redefine who was to be welcomed in the kingdom of God, who was to be cared for, and who would become the central leaders and participants of his growing movement.

Inward/Outward

Besides this blending and transgressing of social boundaries that happens when Jesus sits down to eat with – here are a two others things I think are important to take away from Jesus’ last meal with his disciples that can help frame our own inward/outward journey as a church.

1. Suffering servant: The entire meal is couched both within the context of passover as well as the looming threat of his own arrest and death. Jesus takes on the posture of a suffering servant – the one who is prepared to die at the hands of the Roman Empire rather than fight his way free, doing so in service to his own people and on their behalf.

“He said to them, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer…” (Luke 22:15)

Passover is a powerful time in Israel’s history. It was a reminder of God’s faithfulness in time of deep suffering and darkness. The passover was the promise of liberation and rescue out of the oppressive Egyptian empire. Both liberation and rescue are really good biblical words for “salvation.” In Exodus we read how YHWH rescued the Hebrew people by liberating them out of Egypt.

Jesus is saying that this posture of servanthood is essential to the shape of how his disciples are to be towards one another and the world. Our eating and fellowshipping together should reflect these values.

We are not happy because we are unforgiving, and we are unforgiving because we feel superior to others. Mercy is the fruit of the highest degree of love, because love creates equals, and a greater love makes us inferior. -Carlo Carretto

Jesus’ suffering servanthood was not meant to help us avoid ours or others suffering, or make us superior to others – instead – it is an invitation into both suffering and being servants in the world.

1. Shared Distribution – In Jesus last supper Luke goes to great lengths to stress the everyday material elements present. There is a the loaf of bread and a cup of wine. Jesus follows the standard ritual any Jew would follow and gave thanks for what the had. And then he passes the food around to his disciples.

He says:

“Take this and divide it among yourselves…Then he took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” (Luke 22:17–19)

What I think Jesus is doing here is connecting the everyday act of eating together and saying that this kind of sharing should be “broken open” and poured out for the world. The word divide literally means “distribute.” And there is a similar feel with breaking and giving.

At the heart of the church should be this act of generous distribution and sharing what we have with one another. Often we feel like we cannot give or share or extend ourselves until we have more than enough, until we are finally in control of our lives, etc. But Jesus’ example here is to take the everyday simple things and share them. The act of sharing is the breaking and giving that Jesus tells us to do here.

Another part of this is that by attaching everyday things that all people do – like eating a common meal together – to himself “this is my body, this is my blood” I believe that he was suggesting that there is a priority of the of knowing and serving God together in community.

Jesus’ bread and wine is meant to bind our spirituality not only to him, but to one another. It means that God will always be found within the body of Christ and that very real and tangible should be met by that same body of people. These are some of the ways that the inward and outward needs we have are to be met.

The lasting Supper (Remembering…)

Finally, Jesus says Do this in remembrance of me. In other words, make this way of eating together, make this servanthood, make this generous sharing with others, the thing you remember to do as you gather in my name. Do it in my honor.

This was not meant to be a “last supper,” but instead a “lasting supper” where all people are welcome and real needs are met continually. This is not something that happened once, or that some churches may do during Sunday morning worship, but rather an entire way of life.

Both the inward and the outward are to be cared for by each of us, directed at one another and the world.

We show our faithfulness and our commitment to Jesus by how we remember this.

And this lasting supper gives us a picture of what a real Jesus-inspired dinner party can look like.

The lasting supper is one in which people are invited to share meals together and those invited are not always the usual suspects but those who are unsuspecting and uninvited.

The lasting supper is a supper where we are the servants of others, where we assume a posture of humility, and where we are willing to not only help, but forgive, and show mercy to anyone.

The lasting supper breaks down barriers that keep people away from the “table of the Lord.” AS the church we can create opportunities where real needs are actually met and real boundaries are actually broken.

The lasting supper reminds us that God is found within the everyday acts of sharing and in the gathered community. We need to find more and better opportunities for this to happen and organize our lives in such a way that these things take precedence in our lives.

If we were invited to a dinner party of this nature would we be willing to go? And are we willing to live into and let the lasting supper shape the way we live our lives?

Holding the Tension

This past weekend I had the chance to go to Philadelphia to participate in a consultation with a Quaker foundation. Not only did I learn a lot by participating in the foundation but I got to see a little of downtown Philly and enjoy the sites. I got to see Friend Mary Dyer, William Penn, some old Friends, see a couple meetinghouses and make some new friends too.

Our Saturday meeting was great. There were 15 young friends invited and the goal was to draw on the excitement and creativity of these Friends to help the Shoemaker Foundation in their discernment about where to invest their money for the future.

One of the things that stood out to me about our time together was the many tensions that have to be held when a group of Quakers get together.

When you get that many Quakers together you are going to have different views of God expressed, different religious experiences and often very different language about how to talk about those things, and yet from the moment I arrived I had this very distinct sense of being in a safe space and welcomed by community. I remember feeling instantly connected to these Friends, many of whom I hadn’t met before. I had this sense that “these are my people.” I love that feeling.

Another tension is related to some of the responses we came up with to the various queries. One that really stuck with me was in response to #question 2 above:

“Quakerism is open to all people, but it isn’t whatever you want it to be.”

How do we hold these differences together?

It means that while we are open to all no one individual has the power to decided or control the direction of the group. It takes a process of listening and coming to clearness before God before we move on anything. We believe that only Jesus, who is living and present, gets to be our teacher, final word, and guiding light.

As we all well know, the difficult part is to actually live this tension out in our meetings. And not only is it true that our faith communities are filled with tensions, but so is the rest of life.

• Some of the tensions we find are in our relationships, Jobs, kids, aging and health and injustices within society.

All of these tensions we are faced with are the gap between reality and new possibility.

So I like the statement: “Quakerism is open to all people, but it isn’t whatever you want it to be.” Because it reminds us that it is human and a deeply spiritual practice to actually be able to hold things in tension.

Of course this is no easy task and the reality is often far different from this. It is much easier to withdrawal and avoid these tension, refraining from saying what you feel led to say or feeling like any discussion on a difficult matter is simply a waste of time are common feelings. But they won’t help us grow or change.

Umwelt

• [In her book E. O'Connor writes about] The biologist Esther Harding argues that all of nature even humans have a very limited awareness of the inward and outward world. In her study of nature she has found that every creature, both great and small, only sees and hears what concerns itself – every thing else it ignores (12-13).

Harding suggests that each animal lives in a world of its own or an Umwelt. Umwelt basically means environment or surrounding. It can be translated “self-centered world.” Every creature has its own Umwelt that it responds to while ignoring everything else.

Harding gives the example of the wood tick which needs blood from a warm-blooded animal in order to reproduce. When the wood tick is ready to reproduce it attaches itself to a tree and waits for a deer or some other warm-blooded animal to walk by with its thumb out hoping for a little carpool. Because there are so many wood ticks in the forest and not enough warm-blooded animals to go around – Harding says that some wood ticks have stood around waiting for a ride for as long as 17 years! They apparently had a pretty open calendar. It is so fixed on its own situation that it will not change trees, move around, or find an alternative. It is an animal unable to hold the tension between reality and possibility.

This kind of stubborn limitedness works for us as well. Many times we find ourselves in need of making adjustments, changing our expectations, learning how to do something new, or interact with new people and yet we will just hang on that same darn tree for 17 years refusing to budge. It is easy to be like the wood tick and only focus on what concerns us, to live in a self-centered world, while being blind to others’ realities.

[Slide] > The life task of each person is to enlarge his [or her] own narrow umwelt, or to grow in awareness – “Awake, O sleeper, and Christ will give you light.” E. O’Connor (13).

Hearts Break Open

The broader our Umwelts, the easier it is for us to be able to hold the tensions of reality and possibility, the more capable we will be of growing and moving past those stuck places in our spiritual and emotional places of life, the more readily we will be able to accept the differences of those around us and the new possibilities that break upon us by God’s good grace.

We might define grace as God’s help expanding each of our Umwelts. I believe that this is the kind of work that Jesus was constantly engaged in as was Paul and the prophets in the OT.

In Isaiah 43 the people are invited to have their umwelts broken open so that they can be ready for the new thing that God is about to do. This was written most likely in the late sixth century when the Hebrew people were exiled in Babylon. There was a lot of suffering in this time, the people felt the weight of oppression from their Babylonian captors.

The first part of the passage is to remind the people of their foundational narrative of the Exodus and the power of God who has worked to save them who “makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters.” The author drums up their collective memory and reminds the people that God is capable of delivering them and that Babylon is no match for YHWH. No matter how difficult their situation is, how much of an impasse they believe they are in, or how afraid they are – this is the God who “brings out chariot and horse, army and warrior, and extinguishes them” just as happened at the Reed Sea with Moses and Pharaoh’s army.

When times are difficult we are to draw on our collective memory of the many ways in which God has helped us, redeemed us and walked us through the valley of death in the past.

But then something even more interesting happens. Isaiah says:

Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing: now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?

What the author is saying is not to forget your tradition and your history, but instead not to be limited by it. Don’t let it become the binding umwelt. Instead, be ready for it to be expanded. Even if you are the wood tick and every time up until now hanging out on this old tree really worked for you, maybe there’s a new way to do it. Maybe there is a new thing that is arising, a new possibility and if you’re stuck with the same-old tree you’re going to miss it.

“Do not Remember…” is the prophet’s way of saying don’t get stuck waxing nostalgic about the “good old days.” Callie Plunket-Brewton says:

The prophet aims to create an imaginative space in the minds of the people so that their conception of the past can transform their understanding of the present and, thus, the future: “I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” In a seemingly hopeless situation, the prophet calls on the people not to lose heart but to look with anticipation for the signs of God’s approaching redemption, for the “new thing” that is coming.

In what ways does our own grappling the “good ol’ days” and a limited umwelt play out in our own spiritual lives? Is there a new thing God is working among us now?

I love that Isa 43 names the tensions between reality and the possibility of something new that God is about to do with his people. It is meant to be a surprise, a kind of shattering of what we expect so that the hearers might have a new capacity to hear something new.

Broken Hearts – [ILL - Slide] “There is an old Hasidic tale that tells us how such things happen. The pupil comes to the rebbe and asks, “Why does the Torah tell us to ‘place these words upon your hears?’ Why does it not tell us to place these holy words in our hearts?’ The rebbe answers, ‘It is because as we are, our hearts are closed, and we cannot place the holy words in our hearts. So we place them on top of our hearts. And there they stay until, one day, the heart breaks, and the words call in.” (Parker Palmer – A Hidden Wholeness, 181)

We are often afraid to enter into the difficult space of holding tensions and allowing our imaginations to be opened up for fear that our hearts will be broken. It is very possible that we will discover we have been wrong about something. We may find that others have legitimate and deeply held beliefs and experiences that are different from our own. We may hear stories that are too painful to bear, or find ourselves powerless in the face of tragedy we have no power over. It is always possible that entering a difficult space and in seeking to hold tensions that we may experience a loss, but if it is grounded by God’s grace then that brokenness can bring us into a new capacity to love, listen and care for one another.

Prayer: Break open my heart, guide my thoughts, help me to hold the tensions around me. And those places I dare go, provide a path for me to enter in.

It is not only possible but desirable to be broken into a new capacity. Just as the Hebrew people would come to desire that new thing God would do in their midst – even if it meant leaning into the difficult and scary unknowns of the wilderness they would do it.

It is not only possible but desirable to hold the tensions of life. Jesus’ ministry was filled with tensions, with people who knew they wanted to follow him, but didn’t always understand or do what he taught. The point was never to rid the church of tension, but to create a community that could hold those tensions while being rooted and centered in Jesus.

I believe that it is possible to live with a greater capacity for acceptance and love, but it will not be easy and our hearts may be broken in the process. We can only pray they are not shattered but broken open into a new capacity.

We can actually honor our collective memory and our past experiences while at the same time accepting the new thing that God is doing in our midst. Sitting with our worshipping community and working through our differences is one of the most powerful ways to do this.

As we grow in depth of relationship with those whose values and experiences are different from ours, the horizons of our little worlds are pushed back – our Umwelts are enlarged. Life comes to have a variety and a richness that was not there before. (E. O’Connor 25)

Illustration by Joel Stewart

On Sunday we did a reader’s theater of the Hans Christen Andersen’s fable “The Emperor’s New Suit.” That helped set the stage for the rest of the discussion that followed.

Idols Create a false sense of self

During Lent, Michaela Bruzzese, says that “we are offered a unique opportunity to discard [our] false idols.”

Idols in our time can be anything that creates a false-self, layers us behind walls of protection, keeps us holding onto something so strong that inner change is unable to occur, or is an investment into “goods” that distract us from deeper and more meaningful ways of living in the world.

For the emperor his false idols were his ego and his vanity. For you and I it may be something different. We are all aware of those parts of our lives that can operate in the capacity of idols, none of us are beyond the reach of the Emperor’s story – even if that story is an extreme.

You are dust

What we do share, I believe, is a need to pass through the experience of what we might call “little deaths” from time to time, just as the emperor experienced a little death at the hand of some swindlers and a child.

This is not the “great death” that we all have no choice over.

Parker Palmer says that Little deaths are those experiences that “deepen our appreciation for life” and have the capacity to help move us towards a more undivided life.

A number of years ago when Emily and I were still attending Pasadena Mennonite Church we decided to attend an Ash Wednesday service. Mennonites tend to be more liturgical than Quakers and so we went as a good learning experience. It was much more than that for me. When the time came to spread the ashes on the forehead Jennifer, our pastor, called everyone to line up. And then one by one she spread a little ash on my forehead and said “Wess, Remember that you are Dust!”

Now I didn’t take this as a self-deprecatory statement. It didn’t encourage me into self-loathing, nor did it induce a feeling of guilt.

This little statement “Remember you are dust” is a description. It names reality.

I am made of earth and to earth I shall return.

I took this as an invitation to enter into a “little death” before I arrive at the great big one. It was an invitation to allow Christ to work in me a new kind of beauty and wholeness that will constantly evade me if I try to live as though I were a man made of steel, ageless, tireless; a machine without limits.

When death comes will I have produced with my life the kind of fruit I hope to leave behind?

Mary Oliver : When death comes

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
to buy me, and snaps his purse shut;
when death comes like the measle-pox;
when death comes like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering;
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

[And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,
and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,
and each name a comfortable music in the mouth
tending as all music does, toward silence,
and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.]

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened
or full of argument.
I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

I love that she says “when death comes like an iceberg between the shoulder blades, I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering; what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?”

And –

“When it’s over, I want to say: all my life. I was a bride married to amazement. I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.”

Little deaths can help to facilitate this kind of deep awareness and appreciation for life. They can, if we allow them, move us deeper into an undivided life.

Luke 13

In Luke 13 Jesus tells a parable about a fig tree that sheds light on both the Emperor’s New Suite and this movement of passing through “little deaths” to bearing new fruit in life.

Questions: What do you hear in this parable that resonates? What is the little death here?

This parable focuses on the sterility of the tree. The owner has had a enough. After three years of walking out to his vineyard in hopes of finding some tasty figs to put on his morning cereal he finds nothing at all!

This is a fig tree that makes no figs! What good is that? He says it’s worthless and should be cut down.

But here’s the interesting part.

The gardener disagrees with the owner. He says, “leave it alone. Give it another shot. I think you are wrong about this tree. If it gets a little more tending, if it drinks the right water, and eats the right food, it will begin to produce fruit.”

The gardener see that something is beautiful about the tree, something is still possible. That it can become a fruit-bearing tree despite its sterile past. But it needs some time, some effort and some care. It needs to confront its own “little death.”

Isn’t this true for us? We can find ourselves in a place where we feel we need a second lease on life. A second chance before God. This parable is about God being a God of second chances and Jesus as the gardener who sees the beauty of a tree that appears to be all but dead.

It is about the tree embracing a little death and I’d like to think that it goes on to produce fruit of its own in the coming years.

Like all of us it needs a little pruning, tending and the rich conditions, good food that produces an authentic and undivided life.

I think this telling of the parable is meant to open us up and make us reflect – do we choose life or death? Will we allow ourselves to be pruned, or will our destructive coarse lead only to further heartache and a divided life? Jesus invites his hearers to enter into a vulnerability.

Barbara Brown Taylor says about this text:

“It is not a bad thing for them to feel the full fragility of their lives. It is not a bad thing for them to count their breaths in the dark — not if it makes them turn toward the light.

“It is that turning he wants for them, which is why he tweaks their fear,” she writes. ” . . . That torn place your fear has opened up inside of you is a holy place. Look around while you are there. Pay attention to what you feel. It may hurt you to stay there and it may hurt you to see, but it is not the kind of hurt that leads to death. It is the kind that leads to life.

A New Story

I’d like to close with a re-writing of the Emperor’s story.

What if we were to re-write the story about the emperor and instead of the tailors being criminals they were Quakers who wanted to help strip the king of his falsehoods and help him facilitate an honest look at his life and what he was investing himself in?

What if in the story nakedness is a good thing, it represents a kind of integrity, transparency, a wholeness that we long for?

Our Quaker tailors were working to invite the King into a kind of “little death” to which he might move from sterility to fecundity.

The Child was the first to help him see it for himself because children are often able to see the inner beauty of others. They are able to see beyond the veil of lies, falsehoods and the “wisdom of the crowds.”

And instead of the king running off as soon as he found himself naked — as I would have done — he continues to march on in his birthday suite.

But in our story he doesn’t keep walking in order to keep up appearances, instead he walks because in that moment he had in fact entered fully into his own nakedness.

He accepted the little death, or George Fox’s once said, he passed through the flaming sword and into the paradise of God.

He was able to parade around in a new kind of naked beauty of the wholeness. He was able to enter that holy and torn place:

Look around while you are there. Pay attention to what you feel. It may hurt you to stay there and it may hurt you to see, but it is not the kind of hurt that leads to death. It is the kind that leads to life.

Open Worship