Rethinking Revelation

One of the ironies about being raised in a churched environment is the impact of this on our engagement with the Bible.  Regular church goers who have always been regular church goers often think that they read the Bible objectively, rather than subjectively.  That is, that they are drawing their conclusions about its meaning from the words themselves and the words alone, rather than reading the text through interpretations of meaning that have been taught to them.  In fact, by the time that most church goers hit puberty, they have already been told what they are going to find when they read the Bible, the meaning and significance of the words that they are going to read, and even more dangerously, that there are particular texts that have greater meaning and significance than other texts.

An important task in our engagement with the Bible is to try to be aware of our subjectivity--the traditions of meaning that we have been taught, and to challenge these traditions of meaning when we read the text.  Most importantly, our discipleship requires that traditions of meaning be abandoned when we don't see any support for these traditions in the text.  Its not a problem to draw upon the resources of commentators who give advice about what a text means.  Its only a problem when we think that a particular way of reading a text is the only way to read a text simply because we have been taught to read the text in this way.

The season of Easter has a lot of lectionary readings in the Book of Revelation.  Churched Christians in America have been taught all sorts of things about the nature and significance of Revelation.  In particular, they have been taught that the primary focus of Revelation is about the end of the world, and a description of what will happen in the last generation.  Commentators have, generation after generation, saw in Revelation signs of things that they thought were happening in their own generation, and their commentary consisted of a theological connect the dots of current events to the symbols and images in the book.  Every generation, it goes without saying, has been wrong.

There is another way to read Revelation.  Rather than being about one single generation, it is a description of the nature of human society from the beginning.  The word revelation literally means an "unveiling".  It uses symbols and images to bring into focus who God is, the nature of the "principalities and powers" that have run the world from the beginning, and God's vision for what this world can become if we turn to God.  It is a scathing indictment of the kingdoms of this world, because it shows that while the principalities and powers of this world present themselves as being aligned with God and might even believe that they are, they are actually the source of the violence and suffering in this world.  It applies to every generation, and so every commentator who has believed that Revelation applied only to their generation has been both right and wrong.  However, Revelation is also a book of hope in the sense that God's vision for the world is to wipe away every tear and eradicate suffering and violence. 

Here is a suggestion for Easter: read Revelation for yourself and try to draw your own conclusions.  Draw upon commentary, but in the end, make up your own mind.  Recognize that any commentary is just that: its an interpretation of the text and not the text itself.

The Prodigal Son Revisited

After the crucifixion, the disciples are gathered, huddled in a little room, terrified of the Romans, the Jewish leaders, but mostly, terrified that God will seek retribution and vengeance.  After all, they abandoned Jesus when Jesus needed them most and turned away from their calling.  Peter even denied that he knew Jesus three times.

Perhaps as they were sitting in this little room, they figured that they had two choices: either beg God for forgiveness, or figure that God had given up on them and try to melt back into the crowd and go back to their lives before they began following Jesus.

At this point, the most remarkable thing happens: they experience the presence of the risen Christ in that room.  And Jesus does not demand repentance and forgiveness from them.  Instead, Jesus renews his call to the disciples to follow him and to continue in their relationship with him.  In Jesus, God does not arrive in that moment with vengeance or even with a demand that before the relationship can continue, that the disciples ask for forgiveness.  Instead, God seeks out the disciples with no thought in mind other than the relationship continuing.  God seeks out the disciples with nothing but reconciliation.

The nature of the God revealed in the Parable of the Prodigal Son is revealed again in this story.  The disciples, like the Prodigal Son, had done what they considered, rightly, to be irreparable harm to their relationship with God.  Their mistakes were so egregious that they figured that they had two choices, like the Prodigal Son--to prostrate themselves and seek forgiveness, or to figure that the relationship was irretrievably broken.  But God, like the father in the parable, isn't interested in contrition; only in the relationship continuing.  The only thing that will sever our relationship with God is when our guilt leads us to think that our acts and omissions have severed the relationship.  They can't, no matter what we have done or not done.  God will continue to show up in the little rooms where we hide from ourselves, others, and God, with no thought but that the relationship continue.  This is Easter.  This is new life.