Author: John Drymon

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The book of Revelation has, since before the establishment of the New Testament Canon been among the most controversial inclusions in the bible, largely I think because it is so obscure, its imagery so prone to misinterpretation, that there is always a danger that wild theories might pop up from those not especially careful about poring through the treasure-house of historic interpretations by the great theologians of the church. Thus, even Cranmer, who crafted our first prayerbook in the mid-16th Century, in his lectionary for daily bible readings included everything (even the more dull genealogies and regulations in the Old Testament) with the exception of large passages from this book. Indeed, from medieval apocalyptic cults to the nineteenth century dispensationalism of John Nelson Darby still popular among fundamebntalist protestants (which I’ve mentioned from this pulpit before) to wildly irresponsible popular literature like The Late Great Planet Earth and the Left Behind series of novels, there has been no shortage of “bad takes” on what this book means.

I think this is because Revelation is in a sort of code language; it uses symbols to stand in for figures and events from the first century which were too politically dangerous to make explicit. There is a great deal about the anti-Christ and the number “666” and the beast from the sea and so forth which first-century Christians would have been able to understand as speaking about the Roman Empire and its leaders, particularly the Emperor Nero who was violently persecuting them, but which to pagan Romans would have just seemed like strange fever dream kinda stuff. So, that said, let’s look at the eery symbols in this morning’s reading. What might they stand for in John’s peculiar symbolic language?

First, the four beasts. In the previous chapter, John had described these living creatures in some detail. One was a lion, one an ox, one an eagle, and one a man. Traditionally, these have been seen as symbols of the four Gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John – and their writers. The problem with this interpretation is that there were not four canonical Gospels when revelation was written. In fact, there was at the time no New Testament Canon – no list of what books were in and out of the bible as we have received it today. I want to suggest, then, that the identification of the creatures and the evangelists is of later origin. It is certainly a part of the Church’s Tradition and worthy of consideration and appreciation, but it is not the only valid way of viewing the symbol.

Here is my interpretation of the symbolic nature of the beasts. It is based on centuries worth biblical scholarship, not just my own opinion, and I find it the most compelling explanation, but it is just one of many interpretations. The lion represents political authority. The lion had served as a symbol for the tribe of Judah throughout the Ancient Near East and was meant to highlight that tribe’s power, as it ruled in Jerusalem. Jesus himself is referred to the “Lion of Judah” in Revelation in relation to his status as King of Kings. We find lions in medieval heraldry for much the same reason.

The ox symbolizes cultural and religious authority. Oxen were important both to agriculture in the Ancient Near East (they plowed the land) and to the cult of the temple (they were sacrificed in religious rites). For the average Israelite, the political power had a great influence on life in the form of law and taxes, and the authority du jour was an occasionally beneficent (as in the case of the Persians) and often malevolent (in the case of the Assyrians, Babylonians, Greeks, and Romans) determinant of wellbeing. The religious power was just as important. They levied their own taxes, ruled on issues of orthodoxy, and promised either redemption or condemnation based on the quality of sacrifices made at the temple. It’s notable that the chief priest and his advisers were as instrumental as Herod and Pilate in Jesus’ execution.

Then we have the eagle and the man, which I believe to be symbols respectively of human potential and the reality of human frailty. We try and sometimes succeed in accomplishing great things on our own steam. But the greatest of us are eventually brought low, by death if by nothing else.

So we’ve got the two greatest sorts of authority humanity experiences on the macro level (political and religious authority) and the two prevailing aspects of the human experience on the micro level (potential and limitedness).

Then we have twenty-four elders. Again, we are told in the preceding chapter that they are clothed in white (a symbol of purity) and that they are seated on thrones (a symbol of rule). These represent the Church as a whole. All have been made clean in Baptism and all have been made kings and priests, as the apostle tells us. Perhaps there are twenty-four of them as a symbol of the unity of and equality between Jews and Gentiles in the Church. There were twelve tribes of Israel, and the inclusion of non-Israelites doubled the size church (though eventually there were far more Gentiles than Jews in the Church as the Good News spread swiftly throughout the known world).

Finally, we see the Lamb standing as though it had been slain. This is a lot easier to interpret. Revelation is, as I said earlier, rarely explicit, but this image is hard for a Christian to miss. The lamb is Jesus himself, who was slain but now stands.

And now, at last, we get to the point. The lamb is in the center of the scene and the beasts and the elders bow down and worship, burning incense which is described as being “the prayers of the saints.” The lamb, Christ Jesus, is the only one deemed worthy to open the scroll which holds within it the things to come. Earthly kings cannot do it, nor can some high priest. No human effort can change the course of things, neither can human frailty cause the divine plan to fail. Even the Church, that gift from God which is the Body of Christ here on earth, cannot determine the course of human history. Only Jesus can, and all any of us can do is acknowledge his supremacy.

This is very good news, indeed! There are scary and disappointing things in the world right now, as there always have been. Who knows what on earth Russia’s endgame is? The experience of pandemic has laid bare some of the pernicious problems we have in this country, both culturally and institutionally. We’re ever on the precipice of climate catastrophe. Things seem awfully bleak. But in terms of eternity, we can have hope.

Humanity’s inherent goodness and humanity’s inclination toward wickedness have made micro-loans to peasants and poisoned their water sources. Humanity has educated girls in Afghanistan and now permitted their progress to be rolled back. We’ve set up charity clinics and we’ve made it even harder for the poorest among us to receive medical care. But in terms of eternity, we can have hope.

We cannot use our hope for justice in eternity as an excuse for the evil we do and the evil which is done on our behalf now. But we can give thanks that all the powers of this world have got nothing on Jesus Christ. We can give thanks that while we will be called to account for our actions in this life, the fate of our world is in the hands of the all-merciful. We can give thanks that all things will be subjected to the rule of him who is the first and the last and the living one, who will, on that glorious day, put all things to rights for us and for those whom we have wronged. Thanks be to God who gives us and our neighbors and our enemies and the stranger the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

We get the story of our risen Lord appearing to St. Thomas and the apostle’s doubt on this Sunday every year, and I’ve noted before that we miss the point of the story if we turn Thomas into a charicature – the icon of incredulity – whether we lambaste his doubting ways or affirm them as the saint par excellence of modernity and scientism. His life as a whole and his response to this Risen Lord in particular is more rich and nuanced than that straw Thomas.

This year I want to focus not on the doubt itself, but what grew out of it- viz., a stronger belief and a commitment to living out that belief as an apostle after the Resurrection. The more I consider doubt as a part of the believer’s life, the less ready I am to make a normative judgment about it. This goes both ways, you might say. Some would reckon doubt of any sort a serious moral failing. I don’t think I’ve ever been of that opinion. Unequivocally denouncing all who would question their own beliefs can lead to a shallow sort of faith or, even worse, to the kind of unquestioning obedience to a set of beliefs and actions which strikes me as an element of cults rather than true religion.

On the other hand, there are those who would elevate doubt itself to a kind of article of faith, as ironic as that may sound. Such an approach might hold that one must question everything to come to any kind of certainty about anything. Now, I love wrestling with hard questions (it’s the philosophy major in me, I guess) and I think new insights often depend on our being open to admitting we were mistaken about some article of faith. That said, if doubt is the primary mode of religious imagination, it seems to me we’ll never be able to find our footing. We’ll be captive, it seems, to infinite regress. What’s more, such an approach is helplessly individualistic, finding no recourse to the community of the faithful, the communion of saints of which we are a part, and, thus, more-than-a-little arrogant. No, it seems, if we’re to have any foundation at all, it must be upon convictions which have by some process and at least to some extent been inoculated against doubt.

What if, however, we didn’t view doubt and faith as moral antipodes, but rather as spiritual givens? Each, no doubt, abides alongside the other. Thus the father of the epileptic boy in Mark’s Gospel can without self-contradiction proclaim, “Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.”

The blessedness (or happiness to use the more literal translation of the Greek Μακάριος) of those who have not seen and yet believe, then, does not make them morally superior to Thomas, but simply spiritually better off in the moment. It is what is done by that small seed of faith, no matter the concomitant doubt and fear, by which we are judged. That mustard seed of faith was enough to raise Thomas from doubt and despair to a heroic life spent, even to the last, in service of the Gospel.

Even so must we acknowledge our misgivings, our uncertainties, our lack of perfect confidence and ask the God of all confidence to give us the strength to persevere in belief and in trust that he will not leave us comfortless. We’ll not be on the wrong path so long as we keep praying for that assurance, so long as we can honestly say, “Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.”

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Back when I was in seminary a friend of mine had gone on a mission trip to Brazil, working with the Church in that country, and when he had returned, I asked him what his experience was like. I was expecting to hear that he saw a great deal of reason for hope, knowing that the church in Brazil had been very active in development work. In fact, the Anglican Episcopal Church in Brazil had met with some moderate success in alleviating the poverty of many families who lived in the slums of Rio de Janeiro.

To my surprise, my friend had come back rather disappointed. He said that in a generation he could envision a relatively successful social service organization bearing the name of the Episcopal Church, but that he suspected that fewer and fewer people would realize that there was once a worshiping community bearing that name in their country. The Church had established offices with large staffs to address the temporal needs of the people of Brazil, but had been derelict in recognizing that the Church could do more, that the church could—indeed that it had been commissioned by Christ himself to—address the spiritual needs of the people.

This is much like the argument that takes place in this morning’s Gospel. Judas’ motives were most certainly selfish, yet were we to distance his complaint from his thieving intentions, he seems to make a pretty good point: “Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence, and given to the poor?” Why not, indeed? In fact our translation might lead us to underestimate just how valuable this ointment was. What we have as “three hundred pence” is actually “three hundred denarii”, which would have been nearly a year’s wages for a laborer. This is not pocket change! We could imagine the Judas’ complaint coming from a more trustworthy source, one who hadn’t meant to steal from the common purse of the Apostles, and perhaps see some merit in the grievance.

Jesus’ response was not to call out Judas for the charlatan he was, but to respond to the complaint on its own terms. And Jesus’ response might seem shocking at first: “The poor always ye have with you; but me ye have not always.” What does Jesus mean by this apparently callous claim.

I think we’re well off the mark if we think this gets us off the hook from helping the poor among us. Jesus preached extensively about the Good News he came to bring to the poor and the oppressed. Open up your bible to Matthew sometime and read the Sermon on the Mount. Or, spend a couple years with the Daily Office Lectionary (it’s in the back of your prayerbooks) and note how often God’s care for and our responsibility to the poor and needy shows up in both the Old Testament and the New. Jesus being a faithful Jew knew well the implications of the Law with regard to the poor, and he had surely heard or read the fifteenth chapter of Deuteronomy, which states quite explicitly “there should be no poor among you.”

I’m not often compelled to bring up cable news presenters in a sermon, because I dislike politics in the pulpit as much as anyone else. I can usually see both sides in the divisive political climate of our day, and I don’t want to be another source of division. Even so, I do feel compelled to mention a claim made by one talk show host I heard some time ago, who said, and I quote:

I beg you look for the words social justice or economic justice on your church Web site. If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words. … Am I advising people to leave their church? Yes! …If you have a priest that is pushing social justice, go find another parish. Go alert your bishop and tell them… And if they say, ‘Yeah, we’re all in on this social justice thing,’ [you are] in the wrong place.

I was pleased when Christian leaders from all political and religious persuasions called this particular television presenter to task by pointing out that a thorough reading of scripture would show that, in fact, Jesus cared deeply about the plight of the poor and desired his disciples to care about them too, and to work to lift them out of their distress. This isn’t Bolshevism; it’s Christian charity.

All of this is to say that Jesus’ response to Judas is not a normative claim about our responsibility to the poor; it’s not a loophole to the ethical expectations of the rest of scripture. Rather, it’s a reminder that we have other responsibilities as well. Our chief responsibility is to love both God and our neighbor, and to do so properly means that we cannot be simply a social service dispensary with a cross on the sign. We’ve also got to be concerned with worshiping our risen Lord, with anointing his feet with perfume as Mary had done, and with bringing others into a relationship of worship and of faith.

This is why we don’t sell the church building off and distribute the funds. We’ve got something more than money to give. We are quite right to give of our time and treasure for the relief of the poor, as I think we do relatively successfully in this parish, but we’ve also got the bread of heaven and the cup of salvation to offer to all, rich and poor alike, who desire to approach the altar. As some of you know, I use the rector’s discretionary fund to help needy people who come looking for financial assistance, but I always try to make sure that accompanying that financial support is at least the offer of relational support, of the support which naturally comes when one is part of a loving community which gathers week in and week out to worship the God of love.

My friend who came back from Brazil discouraged about what he saw was right to reckon that the Church could be more than an ambulance driver for the state, indeed that the Church had to be more in order to live up to its commission. For all the good that we can and should do in meeting the very immediate, physical needs of Christ’s poor, we must remember that there is a gift which surpasses anything that we can do in this regard. As Saint Paul wrote in his letter to the Philippians: “I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” Let us not hesitate to reach out to those in temporal need, helping them to the degree that we are able; but let us also be mindful that all are in spiritual need, all need to know Christ Jesus our Lord, and this relationship is something that we, as the Church and individually members of it, can offer which nobody else can.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.