Pentecost

Mark 1:25

Happy Pentecost! I know. It doesn’t quite carry the same ring as Merry Christmas or He is Risen does it? It’s too bad, really. Pentecost, the official birthday of the church, was celebrated as a Christian holy day long before Christmas ever made the rotation. Perhaps the tepid treatment Pentecost receives has something to do with Pentecost itself, what with its mighty wind, floating tongues of fire and subsequent miraculous speaking and hearing. Even though virgin births and resurrections are just as miraculous, for some reason they don’t seem quite as weird. Or maybe the Trinity’s third-person-second-class-treatment has something to do with the fact that the Holy Spirit is too, I don’t know, spiritual? It’s easy to conceptualize God as Father and Jesus as Savior, but how to conceptualize the Spirit? Up in the air? A bird? A flame? There’s also the historic, and ironic, dissention among Christians regarding the Holy Spirit—from the first major church spilt in 1054 between Catholics and Orthodox, all the way down to current squabbles over charismatic gifts and spiritual fruit. I’m sometimes asked what I would do if the Holy Spirit ever showed up during one of my sermons—assuming that what is meant by this question is what would I do if the Holy Spirit ever interrupted one of my sermons. OK, so I’d probably, I’d say something like: “Be quiet, I’m preaching!”

I do count on the Holy Spirit making an appearance earlier in the week. I tend to believe that stepping up to speak without being duly prepared is more a sign of foolishness than faith, but then again I may be trying to justify myself. After all, the apostle Peter was hardly prepared to preach when the Spirit blew open his mind and lit his tongue on fire. Peter ended up giving one of the more effective sermons in history. Not only did it get printed in the Bible, but some three thousand people joined the church that first Pentecost.

Of course joining the church back then was a much more hazardous proposition. Today, the scariest thing our new members had to do was stand up in front of the congregation. But back then, to claim Christ as Lord meant you claimed Caesar was not Lord—an act of treason punishable by death. Rome viciously squelched what it viewed as political resistance with crucifixion. It’s what Jesus meant when he said to follow him would require taking up a cross. But of course Jesus also changed the meaning of the cross. Whereas Rome used the cross to violently put down rebellion, Jesus used the cross to expose the futility of violence. And then, rising from the dead, he declared victory over oppression and injustice, while at the same time securing grace for the oppressor and the unjust. In his kingdom come, peace was made not by shedding his enemies’ blood, but by shedding his own.

Still, even the new meaning of the cross didn’t make death any less deadly. Victory still looked like defeat. It’s partly what makes obeying the words of Jesus so hard. And mostly why we need the Holy Spirit so much. Even after Jesus rose from the dead and appeared to his disciples, they still hid out for fear of the Romans and their religious conspirators. It’s wasn’t until God finally burned it into the disciples’ skulls that they found the courage to stand up and speak truth against evil, sin and injustice. No longer afraid to lose, they were no longer afraid of the Romans, the Pharisees or even the devil.

Which brings us to our passage for tonight. While there’s a lot left to say about the Holy Spirit, I’d like to say something about unholy spirits. Since Easter, I’ve been preaching from the red-letters of Mark’s gospel. For those of you with so-called red-letter Bibles, you know that the red ink represents the actual words of Jesus. I got the idea from a book entitled Red-Letter Christians by Tony Campolo. His book is mostly about faith and politics, while tonight’s passage about faith and demons, though maybe that’s not so different. I started this sermon series with Jesus’ own short sermon, “The time has come. The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!” Amen. Next came Jesus’ invitation to four fishermen to become fishers of men by sharing the good news with others.

In tonight’s third set of red-letters, Jesus heads over to the local synagogue to teach. We’re not told what Jesus taught, but I presume his sermon was the same: “The kingdom is near.” The people who heard were amazed, Mark writes, because this out-of-town Jesus taught them as one who had authority, not like their teachers, some of whom I presume were in the synagogue that day. I imagine folks running up to them and saying, “Wow, what a sermon! Have you ever heard anything so great in your life?” And I imagine the teachers’ response. I know how it feels when folks gush following a guest preacher’s sermon. The sting of envy. The resentment. The exasperation. “If I hear one more time how that guest preacher’s sermon was so spirit-filled. I mean, what, is the Spirit absent as I’m slaving over every sentence week after week? And for what? So that some fly-by pastor packing his best heat can waltz in and hog all the glory? Yeah, I can imagine my response, “What do you want with us, out-of-town preacher? Have you come to destroy me?” Which is almost how the demon-possessed man responded in verse 24.

Now let me assure you that I do not feel this way toward our guest preachers. Not usually. I offer it by way of illustration. Throughout Mark, among the most demonic were those assumed to be the most religious: the professional ministers, the scribes and Pharisees whom Jesus goes so far as to label “children of hell.” We’re not told that this demon-possessed man was a scribe, but we are told that the demon was sitting in church. And if you’ve been in many churches, you know it’s not hard for demons to get in here. This unholy Spirit interrupts Jesus’ sermon, or better, he disrupts it. He shouts out, “I know who you are, Holy One of God!” To which Jesus replies, not “Be quiet, I’m preaching,” but “Be quiet and come out.” Which the demon dutifully does, albeit kicking and screaming. The congregation erupted in further amazement, for they had never seen their teachers perform such authoritative feats: “Even the evil spirits obey him.” Which may have been Mark’s backhanded way of making another point: If the evil spirits obey Jesus, what does that say about you and me when we don’t?

If we speaking of the Holy Spirit can seem weird, talking about demons can be downright bizarre. These days, much of what used to get called demon possession now gets described in terms of chemical imbalance or as a consequence of genes or bad learning. A good therapist and medication can probably keep your demons in check. Still, there is evil in this world and in human behavior that surpasses anything we might blame on chemistry or even human volition. It’s the kind of evil that causes a father to drown his children to get back at his wife or teachers to abuse their students; the kind of evil that deforms political leaders into tyrants and infects entire nations resulting in the horrors of holocausts, world wars, genocides and terrorism. There’s the systemic or corporate evil that contaminates civilizations and institutions resulting in ecological upheaval, ecclesial crusades and global poverty. For such endemic evil the word demonic doesn’t seem so bizarre.

Jesus preached that the good news that his kingdom was near, which was bad news for evil. In shouting, “What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth?” this demon speaks up for demons everywhere. “Have you come to destroy us?” The answer is yes. Whereas in the presence of mere mortality demons feel free to lie and deceive, in the presence of Jesus they tremble with fear. They tell the truth too. “You are the holy one of God,” this terrified demon confessed. Jesus then rebuked the demon, which at first seems sort of odd. Why wouldn’t Jesus want people to know who he is? But then you realize that the last thing you need when you’re trying to get a world religion off the ground is a demonic endorsement. Jesus shuts the demon up and then shuts him down for good. In doing so Jesus demonstrates that the kingdom was more than near. It was here. No wonder the congregation was so amazed.

But for those in that congregation who followed Jesus’ career to its end, any amazement likely soured into disillusionment. How can a man able to conquer demons get crucified by Romans? If that was victory, it sure looks like defeat. Not only on earth, but in heaven too. In the book of Revelation, which I’ve been preaching through on my morning turns, the writer John wins a trip to heaven where he hears an angel announce the coming of the Lord. The angel introduces Jesus as the Lion of Judah and the Root of David. The “Root of David” comes from Isaiah where God’s Holy One is portrayed in warrior-king like fashion; one who “will give justice to the poor and decide with equity for the meek. One who will smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips slay the wicked.” The Lion of Judah was a throwback to Jacob’s blessing where Jacob tells Judah, his lionized son, how “the scepter shall not depart from him, nor the ruler’s staff from his descendents until tribute comes to whom it belongs; and with it the obedience of all peoples.”

Yet when John turns to look what he sees is not a ferocious King of the Beasts but a bleeding baby of beasts, a vulnerable lamb having been slain. Granted, Isaiah had predicted this too. The victorious heir of David was forecast as one to be “oppressed and afflicted, led like a lamb to the slaughter.” But what kind of King comes looking like a weak loser? The same kind of king who rises from the dead still wearing his scars. In the kingdom of God defeat is victory. A lion conquers by inflicting death, but the Lamb conquers by dying. And by eternally wearing the marks of his dying, Jesus shows that crucifixion is not some passing, one-and-done occurrence in the saga of salvation. Instead, crucifixion indelibly stamps its mark on the identity of God, and thus on the identity of God’s people. Which is how we are able to endure suffering and death ourselves. Whenever we’re defeated, we win.

And yet we struggle to believe this. Our models of faith generally remain models of success. The testimonies we hear tend to be told by accomplished people. Not that accomplishment indicates a lack of faith, but imagine if success was all that early Christians got to see and hear about. Condemned to suffer the brutality of political and religious persecution, their accomplishments looked more like failure and foolishness; more like suicide than anything approaching success. The God who would save them would not save them from suffering but through it. Their loss would be their gain. Their triumph over evil would be their submission to it.

Of course to submit to evil is not to do evil. The weapons of evil are violence, hatred and abusive power. The kingdom fights back with weapons of patient endurance, love and peace-making—obedience to the words of Jesus. Read on in the book of Revelation and these are the weapons that work. The crucified Lamb morphs into a white rider of justice who wields a sword with which he eradicates wickedness and slices up the devil and his minions before dumping them into a lake of fire. Yet the sword that the rider wields protrudes from his mouth. And unless you’re willing to think that somehow Jesus jousts with his enemies with some wacky projectile sticking out from between his teeth, then you realize that Jesus’ sword is the sword of his word. He speaks truth to power and kills it, which is how the demon here in Mark knew he was doomed. The kingdom was more than near. It was here.

Dawn and I had the privilege of attending a talk on Friday given by a former Park Street member, Chris Seiple, who is involved in what he calls “faith-based diplomacy.” Funded by concerned Christians, he and his colleagues engage the most strident of Muslim leaders, convinced that to make peace, faith must speak to faith. When you stop and think about militant Muslims, one of the things that strikes you is how much like committed Christians they are in some ways. They have a deep passion for God and possess a willingness to die for what they believe, which actually gives Chris and his colleagues a invaluable entry point. In Washington DC, Chris, president of a group called the Institute for Global Engagement, became acquainted with a conservative Muslim who served as a high-ranking Pakistani official. Chris had this man and his family over to dinner, and even cleared space for them to pray on the floor in his house. In Muslim culture, hospitality is an inviolable value. Eat dinner with someone and they are your friend for life.

I hope to tell you more about Chris and his work, but suffice for tonight, Chris’ relationship with this man was a relationship shaped by Chris’ faith. Whereas most would never break bread with an enemy who believes that America is Satan, Chris follows Jesus who said to love your enemies and did that. Some months later, Chris traveled to the most dangerous parts of Pakistan where this official reciprocated the hospitality. Chris would be safe from harm since in Pakistan to be a guest is to be guarded by the life of your host. Having discovered a shared intensity of faith, if not a shared content of faith, the Muslim official was eager to meet other passionate believers in his district. Chris showed up for a dinner the official arranged, and not only were other Christians seated at this Muslim man’s table, but Hindus and Sikhs too, which is huge when you remember the heated conflict that roils on between Muslims and Hindus over the province of Kashmir. Chris could not tell us how many Muslims had converted to Jesus as a result of this faith-based diplomacy. He didn’t know if there were any yet. But he could tell us about a new church and a new Christian school in Pakistan, the cornerstones for both laid by this passionately Muslim Pakistani official.

What was particularly striking about the presentation was how amazed the presenters were (former military men who knew the power of literal swords) that the teachings of Jesus—love your enemies, be peacemakers—that these words actually worked. These words had authority. They worked for Peter and the rest of the disciples at Pentecost. They worked for the persecuted Christians Revelation addresses. They work for all against the best the devil can dish out. Writing a few hundred years after Pentecost, Athanasius insisted that any Christian worth his salt could cast out a demon. Martin Luther concurred when he said, or better sang, “The Prince of Darkness grim, we tremble not for him; his rage we can endure, for lo, his doom is sure; one little word shall fell him.”

I sometimes get accused by my more charismatic brethren of not giving the devil his due. If this is true, it’s only because the devil is doomed. If the Bible teaches us anything, it teaches us that any evil power we confront on earth is always a beaten power—no matter how contrary it may seem to our experience. The kingdom is not only near, it is here. With our Spirit-infused forebears, we can stand up and endure whatever the devil dishes out. When through the Holy Spirit you’re no longer afraid to lose, no longer afraid even to lose your life, what can anybody do to you?

Wine Pressed (Thoughts on Hell)

Revelation 14

I had the honor of conducting the funeral of a war veteran not too long ago and was captivated by the solemnity and honor with which service people are buried. The ritual posture of respect, the dress uniforms, the twenty-one gun salute, the presentation of the flag—all of it designed to pay rightful tribute to those who make the supreme sacrifice. I was duly moved by the ceremony and wondered whether I would be willing to die for my country. I read of American servicemen and women in Iraq who actually oppose the cause for which they risk their lives. For them their willingness to die is for their friends, their fellow soldiers, and not for Iraqi freedom or American foreign policy. Would I be willing to die for my friends? How strong is the self-preservation instinct? I stroll my daughter Violet across a busy intersection, morosely imagining some unyielding car careening toward us. Would I sacrifice my life to save hers? Or would self-preservation reflexes take over instead, accustomed as I am to looking out for myself? How about my faith? Would I give up my life for Jesus? We speak of the gospel in terms of saving your life, but Jesus was clear that believing in him means losing your life first. Would I do that?

At that veteran’s graveside I read from Revelation 14: “‘Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.’ ‘Yes,’ says the Spirit, ‘they will rest from their labors, for their deeds will follow them.’” The promise of eternal rest in God’s presence eases the pain of loss and the fear that sacrifice inflicts. Yet while I presume the soldier we buried would have died for his country, and maybe even for his faith, he did neither. He lived deep into his eighties and died a quiet death, his faith never a cause for personal endangerment. That’s the way it is for most of us. “Lose your life for Jesus?” Sure, we say, knowing that likely we’ll never literally have to do that. For most of us, bearing a cross is little more than bearing some loss of reputation among those who consider religion to be idiotic. You may have to put up with not getting invited out to drinks after work, or getting left out of conversations on occasion or maybe getting mildly ridiculed. But then only if you have the courage to admit you’re a Christian.

For John’s congregation here in Revelation, believing in Jesus was much more of a grave proposition. To be a Christian in first century Rome was to be an outlaw, a criminal, a traitor to the Empire. To take up your cross would get you strung up on one. There was no Lord but Caesar, and to confess otherwise bought you an automatic death sentence. It was Jesus or your country back then. Naturally, the self-preservation instinct being what it is, many who stepped forward to accept Jesus stepped backwards once the government turned up the heat. Threatened with execution, there were those among the faithful who readily renounced their faith to save their lives. And thus the graveside words of Revelation 14 were not so much for post-mortem comfort as for pre-mortem conviction. In order to steel the wavering faithful for the deadly realities of cross-bearing, chapter 14 paints a portrait of heavenly reward. The Lamb of God slain stands triumphant atop Mount Zion, the enduring 144,000 alongside, representing all faithful people, each marked with the name of the Lamb and the Father, each set to enjoy their eternal rest.

The redeemed are described as “those who did not defile themselves with women,” which is just another way to say they did not give in to the “maddening adulteries of Fallen Babylon” mentioned in verse 8. They did not succumb to the wiles of the beast or to the lies of the false prophet that we looked at last month. Moreover, these redeemed “follow the Lamb wherever he goes,” which meant they go all the way to the cross since that is where the crucified Lamb went. They are called “firstfruits” and “blameless,” which, if you recall my Leviticus sermons, are words that denote sacrifice. These redeemed are those who lost their lives for Jesus. Their reward would be eternal rest from their labors. To them Jesus says, “Well done good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of your master.”

For many, such promise of rest and joy proved sufficient motivation to stand unashamed of the gospel against Roman oppression and injustice. But for others, visions of kicking back and singing songs to God forever just didn’t do the trick. Picturing heaven as a fluffy hilltop with strumming harps sounded so boring, why would anyone die to get in there? For these, Revelation paints another portrait, one that warrants the label “fire and brimstone” since that’s how the word “burning sulfur” in verse 10 used to get translated. We read, “Whoever worships the beast and his image and receives his mark [understood in that day as compromising to Roman culture and worshipping the idols of empire power], they will drink of the wine of God’s fury, which has been poured undiluted into the cup of his wrath. They will be tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment rises forever and ever. There is no rest day or night for those who worship the beast and his image.”

Now you’ve heard such language ranting from the lips of who some would consider deranged preachers who scream on the Boston Common or who wear T-shirts ablaze with images of doom and damnation. As in Revelation, threats of hellfire are supposed to scare you back toward God’s mercy, if that’s what it takes. However, seeing the way most passersby give these fiery messengers wide berth testifies to their ineffectiveness. Ironically, in our day, the threat of hell ranks up there as a chief reason for not believing in God. It’s why you don’t hear many preachers preach hellfire and brimstone anymore, not even here at Brimstone Corner. Critics of Christianity cite passages such as Revelation 14 as evidence of a violent God who gets his righteous jollies out of eternally scorching those who scorn him. As one young man put it to popular New York pastor Tim Keller, “You’ve said that if we do not believe in Christ, we are lost and condemned. I’m sorry, I just cannot buy that. I work with some fine people who aren’t Christians. I cannot believe they are going to hell just because they don’t believe in Jesus. In fact, I cannot reconcile the very idea of hell with a loving God—even if he is holy too.”

By way of response, in the tradition of CS Lewis, Keller describes hell as “simply one’s freely chosen identity apart from God on a trajectory into infinity.” God doesn’t send you to hell. You send yourself. As CS Lewis wrote, “There are only two kinds of people—those who say ‘Thy will be done’ to God or those to whom God in the end says, ‘thy will be done.’ All that are in hell choose it. Without that self-choice it wouldn’t be Hell.” But what about the fire and brimstone? Who would ever choose that? Keller writes, “Fire disintegrates. Even in this life we can see the kind of soul disintegration that self-centeredness creates. We know how selfishness and self-absorption leads to piercing bitterness, nauseating envy, paralyzing anxiety, paranoid thoughts and the mental denials and distortions that accompany them. Now ask the question: ‘What if when we die we don’t end, but instead our lives extend into eternity?’ Hell, then, is the trajectory of the soul, living a self-absorbed, self-centered life, going on and on forever.”

I like CS Lewis and Tim Keller here, if for no other reason than they debunk the whole identity of God as a violent and capricious tyrant. But I also like that they take away some of the guilt I feel when I fail to speak about my faith to others. It’s one thing if keeping quiet means leaving a person to burn in hell for eternity. It’s another if keeping quiet only means an eternity of self-absorption and self-centeredness. That’s not so bad. It’s like driving a Lexus SUV. To the righteous person driving a Prius, a Lexus is a clear sign of self-absorption, one that masks the misery and anxiety that no doubt tortures the Lexus driver, trapped as they are into assuaging their envy and finding their happiness in a fancy car that not only advertises their blatant insecurity and paranoia but ruins the environment too. But hey, it’s a Lexus. The only problem is that when you talk to the Lexus driver they seem genuinely happy. They usually have a lot of other cool stuff too. Self-absorption has its upside. So much so that some Prius owners might start to have second thoughts about their own choices.

It might be better to use another contemporary analogy for hell. Employing the language of relationship, hell can be described as eternal “separation from God.” The horrific epitome of this separation was experienced by Jesus who in his sin-drenched self cried out on the cross, “My God, my God why have you forsaken me?” If you’ve ever had an acquaintance forsake you, you know that can hurt. If a good friend does the same—that hurts far worse. However, if your spouse walks out on you, that is devastating beyond comparison. The longer, deeper, and more intimate the relationship, the more torturous the separation. It truly hurts like hell. But there’s a problem here too. Hell as “separation from God” rightly presumes sinful humans as the ones who walk away from God. However, as any of us know, the one who walks away suffers much less hellishness than the one who’s betrayed and left behind.

Yet maybe there’s something to this. If when Jesus stood outside Jerusalem and wept over his people’s pending betrayal and abandonment of him, representative of our own sinful rejection, it ironically steeled him to go through with the only thing that would ultimately bring us back. While at that point it would have been understandable for Jesus to call down some fire and brimstone and be done with us, he chose instead to bring down fire and brimstone on himself for us and subsequently to suffer abandonment by his Father too. The apostle Paul puts it this way: “God demonstrates his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.” In God’s eyes you are more wicked than you could ever imagine. But in Christ God loves you more than you could ever hope.

If you have ever loved someone, then you know love’s sheer power. You know the pleasure, the rapture that comes with giving yourself gladly and unashamedly to someone else and watching their glowing responsiveness. You know that palatable happiness that comes with making someone else happy. That thrill in doing good and sweet things unexpectedly just because you want to. That impish inner grin you get when you realize others envy your joy. Loving someone makes the surrounding air lighter, the colors of your world more vivid, it even makes your food taste better. You smile more, you laugh more. I get the biggest kick out of romantic couples in premarital counseling as they sit close on the couch holding hands, giggling and goo-gooing. And though I wobble between chuckling and upchucking, deep down I am honored to be in the presence of love. It affirms what is good and right about being human. I see the same in friends who teetered on life’s multiple edges the last time we talked, but who now dance with sanguine hope along those very same edges all because they met somebody special. Troubles dissipate in the face of love with a gladness that cascades over you and cleanses away despair, loneliness and fear. Poets praise it. Singers revel in it. Writers exalt it. We all crave it. When push comes to shove, when it gets down to brass tacks and bottom lines, whatever cliché you prefer—the greatest of these is love.

If you have ever loved, you know how absolutely wonderful it can be. And if you have ever loved, you also know how horrible it can become. How horrible it is when you discover the betrayal, when you read the note, when you get floored with the abandonment and the rejection. You know the initial incredulity that resounds with the question: How could you? How could you? If you’ve ever loved and been betrayed and abandoned, you’ve known the rawness that hollows out your insides. You know how the overwhelming heaviness that makes it so that you can hardly breathe. You try to make sense but you can’t and start to think you’ve gone mad, but then you get mad. The jealousy kicks in. The rage. If you have ever loved, you know how horrible love can become. And you can see how it is that a loving God can be a God of wrath. And you begin to understand how hell is possible. God passes sentence on sinful humanity with the jealous fury of a husband scorned. As my wife Dawn astutely observed, hell is not the losing your relationship with God, hell is getting into a really bad relationship with God. “Jealousy arouses a husband’s fury,” the Proverbs declare, “and he shows no restraint when he takes revenge.” In Ezekiel, the Lord roars “I will bring blood upon you in jealous fury. I will hand you over to your lovers, and they will destroy your pagan altars and your lofty shrines. They will strip you of your clothes and take your fine jewelry and leave you ashamed. They will incite a mob against you who will stone you and hack you to pieces with their swords.”

Here in verse 6 John witnesses an angel mid-flight, proclaiming an “eternal gospel,” the only time that the word gospel appears in Revelation. Only here the invitation is no longer “love God,” but “fear God because the hour of his judgment has come.” This warning is followed by pronouncements of doom not just for those individuals who have forsaken the Lamb, but for wicked systems and oppressive governments too, all of which get summed up in the doom of “Babylon the Great,” the sum total of evil who coerced and enticed the damned into drinking her lies and adulteries. After that there’s one riding on clouds, a “son of man” crowned with gold, and wielding a sharp sickle with which to harvest the earth of its wheat and chaff, followed by another grim reaper who effectively “tramples out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored.” The blood poured from the great winepress of God’s wrath flows as high as a horse’s bridle, a river of blood stretching two hundred miles. And all this on top of the fire and brimstone that burns an infinitely rising torment of smoke forever.

The temptation may be to write off all this violent imagery as the wacky genre of Revelation, but do that and you’re still left with Isaiah and Daniel, Joel, John the Baptist and Jesus himself from whence Revelation gets all its imagery. Daniel is the one who first sees the son of man riding on the clouds in final judgment. Isaiah is the source of the winepress. Joel ramps it up with the sickle and the reaper. And this without even mentioning Ezekiel and Jeremiah, Amos and Micah and the rest of the Old Testament. John the Baptist said, “I baptize you with water. But one more powerful than I will come, who will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” He’s in the New Testament. And of course there’s Jesus who names himself as “the Son of Man who comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, who will sit on his throne in heavenly glory and judge all people before him like a shepherd separates sheep and goats. The sheep will inherit eternal life, while the goats, aka the weeds, the chaff, the lazy servant and the hypocrites all suffer eternal punishment, weeping and gnashing of teeth and being bundled and burned.

It’s intense stuff. It’s extreme. And frankly, it’s offensive too. But honestly, it’s not unfamiliar. If you have ever loved and had that love rejected, you’re acquainted with the offensiveness. You know the intensity of emotion and the extremity of the jealousy and the revenge and the fury. If you have ever loved and had that love rejected, then you can answer how it is that a loving God could send somebody to hell, you can identify with wrath. But you know, when the Bible describes the jealous fury of the Lord, it’s not really interested in having you identify—with God. It’s pretty impossible to do that. No, here in Revelation and elsewhere, the goal is not to see yourself as the lover wronged, but as the one who commits the wrong—the one who’s walked out.

Yale theologian Miroslav Volf puts it like this: God’s wrath falls on those who deserve it—not because God gives people what they deserve, but because some people refuse to receive what no one deserves. “Underlying the theology of judgment is the assumption that nothing is strong enough to change those who insist on remaining beasts and false prophets. We must not shrink back from the unpleasant and deeply tragic possibility that there are those human beings created in God’s image who through their immersion in evil have immunized themselves from God’s grace.” God cannot remain indifferent toward evil and still be a good God. Nevertheless, I do want to explain away the violence somehow, or at least mitigate it a bit. Like by noting how all the violent imagery is actually agricultural. Weeding and harvesting and pressing, these all have as their ultimate goal flourishing growth, right? Dawn told me how lame that sounded. God as “Old MacDonald had a farm.” An Old MacDonald God cannot survive in war-ravaged places like Iraq or Afghanistan, or in Sudan or Zimbabwe or even New York, Los Angeles and Boston. It can’t survive for people whose cities and villages have been plundered then burned and leveled to the ground. It can’t survive for people whose daughters and sisters have been raped, for wives who have been beaten and abused, for brothers and sons who’ve had their heads blown off for no reason.

And yet Revelation’s dire warnings are not weapons to be wielded against your enemies. The Bible asserts that it’s because of God’s wrath, it’s because justice and righteous vengeance belong to him only, that we are free to love our enemies, that we can say “God have mercy on you” and truly mean it. It was while we were yet sinners that Christ died for us. It is while your enemies are still your enemies that Christ commands you love them. To refuse to love your enemy actually turns you into God’s enemy. To this end, Revelation 14 is not so much about the fate of outsiders as it is a warning to insiders who ponder the question, “Is it such a terrible thing to compromise to the culture and have a few idols in my life? Is it so bad to withhold love and to be quiet about my beliefs? Is it so terrible to look out for myself and to guard my life and despise my enemies and ignore the poor?” To which John answers yes, it is more terrible than you think. There is a fate worse than death. And our proper response is not to explain it away, but to repent and believe, to fear God and follow the Lamb wherever he goes.

Working the Anglers

Mark 1:17

I began a sermon series on Red-Letter Christianity last Sunday—“red-letter” being a reference to those Bibles that print the words of Jesus in red ink. There is a group of people who have taken to calling themselves “red-letter Christians” meaning that they follow these words of Jesus, particularly in regard to his concern for the poor and the marginalized. Inasmuch as Christians of every-color letter follow the words of Jesus, I thought it worthwhile to take another look at what he had to say, specifically in Mark’s gospel, if for no other reason than Mark is the earliest gospel and therefore a source for the others.

Last Sunday Jesus said “The time has come. The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!” For Jesus’ original audience, Galilean Jews chafing under brutal Roman oppression, to hear that “the kingdom of God is near” could only mean that the kingdom of Rome was on the ropes. The prophet Daniel predicted as much. He foresaw that “a kingdom never to be destroyed that would crush all other kingdoms and bring them to an end.” Jews in Jesus’ day presumed this never-ending Kingdom to be Israel led by a reconstituted, glorious King David who would arrive to reign on the clouds of heaven. But here instead was this humble Jesus, standing on flat ground and not looking like much of a kingdom-crusher. He had no army. No political power. His weapon of victory was Rome’s weapon of humiliation. Rome used crosses to expose the futility of political resistance and to execute a sentence of death on rebels. But Jesus used the cross to expose the futility of Roman violence and execute a sentence of forgiveness on his crucifiers. Christ accepts rejection and injustice and responds with resurrection. He rules not through the shedding of his enemies’ blood, but by the shedding of his own. In this context, for Jesus to say repent was to call to conversion those who understood kingdom only in terms of ruling power. “If anyone would come after me,” Jesus would later say, “he must take up a cross.”

However in tonight’s passage, Jesus invitation to follow is not yet about taking up a cross, but about dropping down your nets—both literally and metaphorically. Jesus invites four fishermen to drop their literal fishing nets and start dropping metaphorical nets on people. If you’ve been a Christian long, you likely dread sermons from this verse because they’re usually sermons about the E-word. Evangelism. Talking about your faith to non-Christian friends. Catching heathen for the kingdom. Granted, dropping a net on unbelieving and unsuspecting friends usually comes off more like dropping a bomb. I know that whenever I tell people I attend church, never mind that I work at one, the responses I get usually range from quizzical curiosity (you look normal) to outright hostility. Of course, Jesus did say that’s how it would be.

Though it is ironic that we would interpret this verse in terms of evangelism since to catch a fish is to kill it (taking for granted that first century fishing was not yet into fishing as sport). OK, so maybe I’m taking the metaphor too literally, but if you turn over to the red-letter verses in Matthew 13, you read Jesus saying that to catch fish means death for some of them. “The kingdom of God is like a net that was let down into the lake and caught all kinds of fish. When it was full, the fishermen pulled it up on the shore. Then they sat down and collected the good fish in baskets, but threw the bad away. This is how it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come and separate the wicked from the righteous and throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

So it’s not so ironic. Fishing is tied to death. To catch people is to snatch them from death, from the grill fires of hell. Believe in Jesus and stay out of that fiery furnace. But then you turn to the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah, from whence Jesus likely got his fishing allusion, and there you read that the bad people getting caught aren’t heathen unbelievers, but the chosen people themselves. In Jeremiah 16, God says through the prophet regarding his own people, “I will send many enemies who will catch these people like fishermen. After that I will send others who will hunt them out like hunters from all the mountains, all the hills, and the crevices in the rocks. For I see everything they do. Their wicked ways are not hidden from me. Their sin is not hidden away where I cannot see it. Before I restore them I will punish them in full for their sins and the wrongs they have done. For they have polluted my land with the lifeless statues of their disgusting idols.”

Putting all this together, it may be that what Jesus had in mind when he made these literal fishermen into metaphorical fishers of men was to first pronounce judgment on those who thought themselves safe and call them back to a true relationship with God. Tie this to the idea that to repent in verse 15 was to repent from wrong ideas about God’s kingdom, and what you have is something that looks like the need to get your own faith in order before you go sharing it with anybody.

In a recent study entitled Unchristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks About Christianity, the authors argue that younger Americans by and large perceive Christianity to be not Christ-like but unchristian. They write that the church is in danger of losing younger generations, who see modern Christianity as not only irrelevant but hostile to their identity. In the words of one respondent: “Christianity has become bloated with blind followers who would rather repeat slogans than actually feel true compassion and care. Christianity has become marketed and streamlined into a juggernaut of fear-mongering that has lost its own heart.” Author Brian McLaren, a self-described red-letter Christian, cites a young South African healthcare worker who likewise critiques modern Christianity for its specialization in afterlife destinations to the exclusion of addressing significant social injustices in this life. Such a Christianity sequesters the gospel into the realm of the personalized and the private, distorting the good news into a product designed for maximum personal benefit with minimal obligation. All you have to do is believe it and you’re set for eternity, regardless of how you live your life here. In this vein, evangelism becomes a salvation sales pitch rather than a radical call to transform the world. But without evidence of the gospel’s world-changing power in the here and now, it’s hard to get excited about its power in the sweet by and by. As a result, those on the outside find fewer and fewer Christians enthusiastic about their faith, and thus find less and less reason to accept or even consider it for themselves—apart from the threats of hell that is, which lose their effect when those making the threats come off as defensive, deranged or embarrassed about their faith.

You’d think that a gospel that is supposed to be the best news ever would be doing better than this. Why is it that the good news seems so unattractive to so many? Here you have a gospel that offers a relationship with a God who loves you enough to die for your sins and give you a brand new start at life. A gospel that instills joy and hope amidst adversity. A gospel that redeems suffering and pain. A gospel that promotes compassion and care for individuals, societies and the planet itself. A gospel that makes peace between people, their world and their Creator. The problem is that to get to that gospel, you have to get through all the gunk with which the gospel has become encrusted. Ask most who sit outside Christian faith to describe it, and what you hear are words such as culturally intolerant, scientifically ignorant and politically divisive. Shoot, many who sit on the inside use the same adjectives. Is it any wonder we’re ashamed to share it? Maybe Jesus was right that before we can catch people for the kingdom we need to first fish out the trash that’s ruining our nets.

Some of you may recall a story I told in the morning last fall from Donald Miller’s popular book from a few years back, Blue Like Jazz (which I read is actually being made into a movie). In it he recounts a time as a zealous college student during an annual drunken festival when he and his fellow Christians decided to do some evangelism. Donald Miller proposed they set up a confession booth so that the partying students could repent of the many sins they would clearly be committing. Since faith begins by first admitting you’re a sinner, what better way to get the faith process rolling than by setting up a big confession booth smack in the middle of the campus drunk-fest? Donald Miller admitted he made his proposal tongue in cheek. He was just kidding. If they were going to share their faith, there was no need to be jerks about it. But Tony, the leader of the campus Christian group, thought a confession booth was brilliant—which Donald said scared the crap out of him because suddenly he sensed that Tony was really going to go through with it.

“Only here’s the catch,” Tony said. “We are not actually going to accept confessions. We are going to make confessions. We are going to confess that as followers of Jesus, we have not been very loving; we have been bitter, and for that we are sorry. We will apologize for the Crusades and Columbus, we will apologize for the televangelists and the politicians, we will apologize for neglecting the poor and the lonely. We will apologize for being judgmental. We will ask people to forgive us and we will tell them that in our selfishness we have misrepresented Jesus on this campus and that we are sorry.”

So Donald Miller and his friends built their confession booth and Donald took his turn inside first and waited and waited as the raucous partying went on outside. Nobody came in. “What a stupid idea,” Donald thought. “Obviously this was not God’s idea. There is nothing relevant about Christianity. Is it even true?” Just then the door swung open. A guy named Jake stepped in and laughed, “So what is this? I’m supposed to tell you all the juicy gossip from the partying that’s been going on? Want me to confess my sins?” “Not exactly,” Donald replied. “You see, we’re a group of Christians on campus who’ve come to realize that we haven’t been very good at following Jesus. In fact, a lot of Christians haven’t. Anyway, we wanted to confess that and our other sins and shortcomings as Christians to you.” “You’re serious,” Jake said, his amusement replaced by shock. “I’ll keep it short,” Donald said. “Jesus said to feed the poor and heal the sick. I’ve never done very much about that. Jesus said to love those who persecute me. I tend to lash out. I know that a lot of people can’t listen to me when I talk about my faith because I’m judgmental and I tend to carry an agenda into the conversation instead of letting the message of Jesus speak for itself. I am sorry for all of that and a whole lot more.”

Donald Miller goes on to describe how Jake forgave him and how bowled over Jake was by the gesture and how even though he wasn’t really interested in becoming a Christian, he was curious what it was that Christians were supposed to believe. So Miller went on to explain about sin and God and the cross and faith. Jake left to think about it and another person was waiting. Donald wrote how he ended up confessing to over thirty people that night. It went on for several hours. He wrote, “All of the people who visited the booth were grateful and gracious. And I was being changed through the process. I went in with doubts and came out believing so strongly in Jesus I was ready to die and be with him.”

To authentically share the gospel you first have to authentically experience the gospel. Authentic witnesses are not authentic because they are flawless, but because they are honest. Their lives match their speech even when they fail miserably to love God and their neighbors as themselves, because it’s then that they exhibit repentance and redemption. Christians are called to be people of compassion and love but also people of firsthand grace—screw ups who fall down and get up due to God’s mercy and are therefore eager to show God’s mercy. Grace, compassion and love are not lofty theological ideals but earthy, ethical practicalities. The gospel is shared in the concrete things people do to, with and for other people. Salvation’s goal is not merely a ticket to heaven, but a life lived on earth that looks like it will in heaven. Such a life can prove catchy to outsiders (in keeping with the fishing metaphor), because it looks like Jesus.

“Come, follow me, I will make you fishers of people,” Jesus said. Mark informs us that the fishermen dropped their nets at once. There was something about this humble carpenter that proved too compelling to resist. Reading their story is to read of spectacular failure, and of spectacular redemption, of spectacular love and faith, of sacrifice, bravery and world changing power both here and for eternity. Their story is the story of every disciple who has ever dropped their net to take up a cross. May it be your story too. May the Jesus who lives in you and through you likewise prove too compelling to resist.

Red Letter Christianity

Mark 1:15

Fans of the Colbert Report may recall the Super Tuesday eve episode where the parodying Colbert characteristically went off on the huge role conservative Christians would play in presidential primary outcomes. “As a candidate,” he said, “you either have to appease evangelicals or get out of their way!” Colbert stressed that in addition to Barack Obama (who is a radical Islamic terrorist) and Hillary Clinton (who is Hillary Clinton) John McCain was going to have a particularly hard time. Eight years ago he called Pat Roberson and Jerry Falwell “agents of intolerance” and “as we all know,” Colbert deadpanned, “Christians do not forgive. It’s not in their nature.” Ha-ha. Colbert then introduced his evangelical guest for that night, Tony Campolo. The erstwhile sociologist and popular speaker for years has pushed to bring issues of social justice back into the evangelical mainstream. During the self-indulgent eighties, he made headlines on the Christian conference circuit for asserting that driving a BMW is a sin. Lately he’s back in the headlines with a book entitled “Red Letter Christians.” Baited by Colbert, Campolo remarked that unlike the media stereotype, he was an evangelical who was not anti-environment and was not pro-war … at which point Colbert interrupted. But wasn’t Jesus pro-war? Did the Lord himself not say, “I have not come to bring peace to the earth, but a sword!”? Ha-ha. OK, so Jesus did say that. But not about war. Campolo retorted that Jesus also said, “love your enemies” which he interpreted to mean “don’t shoot them.”

Campolo is both passionate and prolific. In one of his blog posts he wonders whether in fact evangelicals are not only losing any moral authority we once had, but whether we are also “losing our opportunity to carry out what we believe is our Biblical imperative to preach the whole Gospel to the whole world. One of the distinguishing traits of we Evangelicals has been our zeal to carry the good news of Christ’s salvation to every nation. Sadly, one of the consequences of our support of our nation’s foreign policies is that the doors for missionary work are being shut. Because Christianity, throughout the Muslim world, is associated with America, anti-Americanism has heated up anger against Christians in many parts of the Islamic world. Tens of thousands of Christians have fled Iraq under a siege of discrimination and even persecution. Churches are being burned down in Baghdad for the first time. There is little doubt that evangelism, which ironically was allowed by the evil dictator America drove from power, will be curtailed under this new government which we helped establish.”

While I tend to wonder similar things, my particular interest for the sake of this sermon, and the ones that follow, are these red-letters of the New Testament that Campolo has chosen to rally around. If you have a “red-letter” Bible, then you know that it as the words of Jesus printed in red ink. In his book, Campolo argues that to be a red-letter Christian is to have a high view of Scripture, to believe that Jesus is alive and salvation can be had through faith in him, and to have a passionate commitment to social justice which inevitably leads to an intense involvement in politics. Inasmuch as this is an election year and politics are front and center everywhere you look, I thought it worthwhile to remind ourselves again of what Jesus said and how obedience to his sayings informs not just our personal piety, but public and civic engagement. Now so-called “Red-Letter Christians” tend to be Democrats (ironic given that the letters are red). I myself am a registered Republican. But as far as I can tell Jesus was neither. Thus to look at his words is not to seek support for a particular political platform (though we do that all the time), but hopefully to better understand whether and how what he said may have political implications.

Take tonight’s passage for instance. “The time has come. The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!” On the one hand, you read this and interpret it as Jesus speaking primarily about heaven and salvation and personal faith in him. But then you look more closely, especially at the word near, and you discover that it’s a word that could also be translated as at hand, or even right here. Suddenly you wonder whether Jesus is speaking about something other than heaven out there, or even heaven in your heart. For his original audience here in Mark, Galilean Jews chafing under brutal Roman rule, to hear that the rule of God had arrived could not have been construed as anything other than a radical denouncement of Roman rule. This is what made it such good news. And what made it political. Jesus proclaims that Rome’s time is up. God’s kingdom has come.

It’s just what the prophet Daniel had predicted. In Daniel 2 we read, “The God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people. It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever.” And then in Daniel’s vision of chapter 7, “As I watched, a ferocious fourth beast waged war against the saints and defeated them, until the Ancient of Days came and pronounced judgment in favor of the saints of the Most High, and the time came when they possessed the kingdom.” Their rescue would come by one “given authority, glory and sovereign power; all peoples, nations and men of every language will worship him.” Jews understood the fourth beast to be Rome. The “one given authority” was the Son of Man himself. For oppressed Jews to hear Jesus say that “God’s kingdom had come” meant that God’s justice had come too and that the power to rule would soon be theirs. Never mind that the one standing before them making this pronouncement was an unemployed, homeless carpenter—and not much of a Messiah.

Mark doesn’t tell us how Jesus’ first sermon was received (though I imagine some people probably thought, “wow that was short!”). However in Luke, you’ll remember, when Jesus announced the arrival of God’s justice in his home church, folks there came close to throwing him off a cliff. Why? I used to think it was because they thought Jesus was mocking their faith. How dare some vagabond homeboy declare himself the anticipated bringer of God’s justice! It’s like Ralph Nader declaring his candidacy for president again. Who can take that seriously? But on second thought, I don’t think it was Jesus’ appearance, social status, lack of experience or outrageous assertions that proved so offensive. I think the thing that would have gotten everybody’s goat in this short sermon would have been another word repent. Think about it. You’re the victim. You’re the one who’s been run over and abused by a tyrannical government. You’re the one who needs rescue and justice. And here’s Jesus telling you to repent? You’re like, “What did I do?”

The answer may be found by taking another look at yet another word, this time the politically charged word kingdom. Then as now, to say kingdom is to imply power, and specifically, the power to control. In regard to Rome, kingdom power meant military power, control by brute force. Historians may describe Pax Romana as a time of world peace, but the peace of the Roman Empire was a peace by way of war, extortion and the elimination of enemies. Roman apologists naturally called such imperial domination good news, which it was as long as you weren’t an enemy of the state, a slave, an immigrant, a woman, poor or Jewish. For the Jews of Jesus’ day, good news was not Caesar’s rule, but his downfall. That God promised to bring this about fueled their own audacity of hope. But they’d been hoping for a long time. Too long for some. Among the Jews were those called Zealots, people who believed that they needed to hurry God’s kingdom and that the only way to do that was through open revolt. Meet violence with violence. Others, known as Pharisees, opted for a cultural war. Bring on God’s kingdom by righteous legislation. Follow all the rules and compel God to reward. Scapegoat the sinners and shame society into submission. The Sadducees, on the other hand, figured that if God was going to take his time they might as well take advantage. Cozy up to the Romans and reap the benefits of proximity to political power, even if it means hiding your faith under a basket for a while, or even redefining it altogether.

For each of these groups—Zealots, Pharisees and Sadducees—kingdom-come still meant ruling power. Whether through violence, legislation or accommodation, the end game was all about getting your hands on the reins. It’s a narrative that’s played out through church history too. From the Crusades to witch trials to Northern Irish violence and Rwandan genocides, Christians have long used God’s name to sanction state violence. From indulgences to prohibition, money and marriage, ongoing attempts at legislating Christian morality without the accompanying Christian faith constantly founder, too often due to the exposed hypocrisy and immorality of the legislation’s proponents. Moreover, cozying up to political power never works either. It only dilutes Christian faith into a civil religion not worth its salt. All of these efforts fail because in the end, governments are not God. Governments lie and therefore cannot be trusted. Only God can be trusted. Therefore trust God.

For Jesus to say repent in this context is to call to conversion those who understood kingdom only in terms of ruling power. As theologian NT Wright puts it, in Jesus, “God was issuing a fresh challenge to Israel, echoing back to his promises to Abraham: Israel is indeed the light of the world, but its present policies have been putting that light under a bucket. It’s time for drastic action. Instead of the usual military revolt, it was time to show the pagans what the true God was really like, not by fighting and violence but by loving one’s enemies, turning the other cheek and going the second mile.” Nowhere is this more evident than in Christianity’s calling card. Rome viciously squelched insurrection and political resistance with crucifixion. Rome used crosses to expose the futility of political resistance and execute the death sentence on rebels. But by contrast, Jesus uses the cross to expose the futility of Roman violence and religious complicity with it, while executing a sentence of forgiveness on his crucifiers. Christ accepts rejection and injustice and responds with resurrection. In his kingdom, peace is not made and kept through the shedding of enemies’ blood, but by the king shedding his own blood. God’s kingdom makes and keeps peace by way of nonviolent suffering, humility, grace, reconciliation, generosity and love.

Just as Jesus said trust God rather than public applause when it comes to practicing your piety, and trust God instead of money when it comes to storing up your treasure, here he says trust God rather than governmental power when it comes to the kingdom. “Repent and believe my version of good news instead,” he said. Granted, for Jesus’ followers, viewing crucifixion as good news was not an easy thing to do. Not even after Jesus rose from the dead. It really wasn’t until Pentecost and the Spirit burned it into their heads that they finally got that to follow Jesus by carrying a cross was a right thing to do. Popularity, moral accomplishments, monetary achievement, political influence and status—none of these went with crucifixion. To carry a cross was to become poor and powerless, to recognize that to such belonged the kingdom of God. As the apostle James wrote, “God has chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him.”

To be poor is not to be pitied. To be poor to be free of the enticements of wealth, free from the delusions of power. Study after study indicates that happiness has an inverse relationship to personal possessions; that those who are poor who are more generous toward others than those who are rich. Personal experience teaches that to be without engenders more faith. The poor trust God because they have no other choice. Little wonder, then, that to be poor is to be happier and more generous (which of course helps keep you poor and happy). Last Sunday our church collected over $30,000 to support the work of World Relief, serving the poor through the work of the church in Sudan, China and elsewhere. Many of you have signed up for our Love Boston Day this coming Saturday where we will spread out all over the city cleaning up trash, feeding and clothing the homeless and befriending the aged (You can still sign up on the church website). Next month a number of you will participate in the Boston Faith and Justice Network’s World Fair Trade Day, also supported by our church, where you will learn to support economic policies and products that do not exploit working farmers and that empower low-income neighborhood businesses.

And many of you will vote in November. One of the things we love about America is that our democracy not only invites but expects our participation. And Colbert was right: Christians do vote. Campolo says that for Red-Letter Christians, voting is an obligation (though I’m not sure where Jesus said that unless somehow you count “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s”). While we do not put our trust in princes, we do express our faith when we vote for candidates whose policies at least approximate kingdom values rather than oppose them (beyond merely professing faith in Jesus—candidates always do that). I read how US military expenditures run some 21 times larger than diplomacy and foreign aid combined. Our country remains dead last among developed nations in foreign aid as a percentage of gross national product. One-half of one percent of the US Military budget, if reinvested in foreign aid and development, would cut hunger in Africa in half by 2015. Ten percent could nearly eradicate current global poverty. I can’t help but believe that America did that, if we voted for candidates who supported that, we could do more to eliminate our enemies than all the bombs we’ve heretofore dropped.

Personally, I possess no postmillennial hope of humanity doing anything but eventually sinking under the deluge of persistent human evil and greed. For me to trust God is ultimately to hold out for the Biblical vision of a brand new earth once Christ returns. But this does not mean I can just sit back and wait in the meantime. Until our prayers are finally answered and God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven, the church floats on as a counter-cultural Noah’s ark—defying the status quo through its sacrificial faith and life. Historically whenever the church has borne its cross, that’s when it taps into its resurrection energy. “The kingdom of God is at hand,” Jesus said. “Repent and believe the gospel.” And then follow where it leads us.

666

Revelation 13

This sermon title has a familiar if ominous ring. Even people who know nothing about the book of Revelation know about the mark of the beast. We read, “If anyone has insight, let him calculate the number of the beast, for it is man’s number. His number is 666.” In ancient times each letter of the alphabet had a numeric value (akin to Roman numerals). Deciphering a number from a name was simple. But deciphering a name from a number remains downright impossible. This explains why 2000 years later we’re still guessing at the identity of the beast.

Most scholars believe that John, the presumed writer of Revelation, was referring to the ruthless Roman emperor Nero. The only problem is that for Nero Caesar to add up to 666 requires a Hebrew transliteration of the Greek form of a Latin name—and that with a defective spelling. The normal spelling of Nero produces the number 616, which is the area code for Grand Rapids, MI. Bad news for Calvin College and numerous Christian publishing houses. Mathematical finessing of the numeric 666 has produced all sorts of candidates. After Roman persecution of Christians ended, some early church fathers thought the beast to be an apostate Jew from the tribe of Dan, since Dan is missing from the tribal list in Revelation 7. The later Middle Ages turned their attention back to Rome and to the corrupt occupants of the Papacy. By the Reformation, every occupant of the Vatican was suspect. The 1646 Westminster Confession read: “The Pope of Rome is that Antichrist, that man of sin, that son of perdition, who exalteth himself in the church, against all that is called God.” Of course on the other side, Roman Catholics also had a name for the Antichrist: they called him Martin Luther. Hitler, Stalin, Ayatollah Khomeini, Prince Charles and Ronald Reagan have all made the list too. As have American Airlines, Microsoft and Mastercard.

The possibilities remain endless. The erstwhile children’s television character Barney the Dinosaur has been linked to 666. As a dinosaur, Barney is clearly a beast, albeit a cute one. Take the phrase CUTE PURPLE DINOSAUR, change the U’s to V’s, extract all remaining Roman numerals in the phrase, convert them to Arabic, add and you get six-hundred sixty-six. My first name has six letters. Slide just one letter from my last name over to my middle name and you get a sequential 666 (not a surprise to some of you).

If 666 referred to a specific individual, we assume that John and his persecuted readers knew the name. Thus 666 may be not so much about deciphering an identity as about describing that identity. Throughout Revelation the number 7 symbolizes perfection and completion. Revelation’s seventh seal, seventh bowl and seventh trumpet all herald the kingdom of God, the abode of the faithful. By contrast, the sixth seal, the sixth bowl and the sixth trumpet all herald God’s judgment and wrath, the destiny of evil.

We took a detour from Revelation last month to look at the book of Leviticus (a book that ranks right up there with Revelation in terms of incomprehensibility). It was Christmas, therefore, when last I preached from Revelation. Chapter 12, you may remember, offered an interesting twist on Christmas: A mother gives birth to a child destined to rule the nations. An evil adversary seeks to devour this threat to his power. But rather than some small-time tyrant, the adversary of Revelation 12 is a serpent, a dragon, the very devil of hell.

The battle lines between drawn are long established ones. God said to the serpent in the Garden: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers, he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.” Throughout Israel’s history her enemies all were portrayed as serpents: the Egyptians, the Assyrians the Babylonians. It is no surprise that a serpent shows up in the final book of the Bible. He’s here to finish what he started in Genesis. The dragon knows the Genesis curse as well as anyone, which is why he crouches in wait to make a meal of the newborn king before the king crushes him. Yet like Herod in the Christmas story, God foils the dragon. The child gets snatched up to heaven while the dragon gets hurled down from heaven. Satan falls to earth eliciting cheers from above. “Now has come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Christ,” we read, “for the accuser of our brothers and sisters has been thrown down.”

Unfortunately the news on the ground is not so upbeat. Chapter 12 continues, “Woe to you, O earth and sea, for the devil has come down to you filled with fury.” Some commentators try to wrangle the Greek to make it read as if only unbelievers are subject to Satan’s fury. But an authentic rendering and common experience both teach that the devil has the church in his crosshairs too. He’s mad because God has tossed him out of heaven. And he’s mad because God has numbered his days. That he would take out his anger on God’s people should be expected. That God lets him do it presents a perennial problem, but that is not Revelation’s problem. For John, Satan’s fall to earth is ironic good news since it represents the first step in a two-step demotion. In chapter 20 the devil will be hurled the rest of the way down into an eternal lake of fire.

Yet in the meantime, like any frustrated predator, his fury is stoked by his being so dismissively kicked to the ground. Therefore, upon landing on earth, the dragon lunges after the mother, chasing her into the desert. But as with the Israelites of the Exodus, God rescues the woman and evil is thwarted, which is what always happens to Satan in the desert (Jesus defied the devil there too). So the dragon turns to take on the rest of the mother’s offspring, those faithful Christians “who obey God’s commandments and hold to the testimony of Jesus.”

For the early Christians, persecuted and martyred as they were by the Romans, this explained everything. Though they had been saved by the blood of the lamb, they nevertheless suffered like sheep led to slaughter because they were not ashamed of the gospel. The vengeful dragon was still on the loose. Only now he recruits henchmen. Chapter 13 opens with the dragon looking out on the sea, the domicile of potent evil. From it ascends another monster, a beast with ten horns and seven heads. Note the family resemblance. Both dragon and beast have seven heads and ten horns, perfect and complete numbers that here emphasize perfect and complete wickedness. Old Testament readers will also recognize the resemblance to Daniel’s vision of four beasts, which here John rolls into one ferocious fiend. In verse 3 we read that one of the heads of the beast seemed to have a “fatal wound that had been healed.” At first you think: “Genesis head-crushing curse.” But a more literal rendering of verse 3 has the beast looking “as if it had been slain,” which on second thought is the exact same expression used to describe Christ the crucified Lamb in chapter 5. Suddenly you realize that the beast from the sea is a demonic parody of Jesus, a genuine anti-Christ. Toss in the dragon who grants his power and authority to the beast, as well as the second beast-to-come who inspires the world to worship the antichrist, and what you really have is a complete anti-Trinity.

The contrasts are clear. God in heaven sent Christ the lamb to suffer and die for others. Satan who is kicked out of heaven sends the beast to make others suffer. God grants His power to the Lamb who abjures its violent use. The dragon grants his power to the beast who violently wields it. The Lamb endures death for people from every tribe, language and nation. The beast inflicts death on people from every tribe, language and nation. The Lamb establishes a heavenly kingdom to bless God’s people. The Beast operates behind worldly kingdoms to oppress God’s people. Like Daniel’s beasts that represented historic earthly regimes hostile to God, there is little doubt that for John the beast was manifest in the tyrannical Roman Empire which claimed religious sanction for its gross injustices. Caesar decreed that he alone was “Lord and God.” This was the ultimate blasphemy. The Bible may command obedience to governments, but once the state oversteps its bounds and demands worship of itself, Christians must refuse to submit.

Nevertheless, verse 10 commands that Christians who refuse to submit to the state must still submit to the punishments the state lays down for noncompliance. John writes, citing Jeremiah, “If anyone is to go into captivity, into captivity he will go. If anyone is to be killed with the sword, with the sword he will be killed.’ The citation seems odd. In Jeremiah, God allows Israel’s captivity and death as punishment for their unfaithfulness. Are we to understand that God allows the same punishment here for the faithful? Ironically, yes. Such is way of the cross. The captive suffering Israel suffered as punishment for their sin gets redeemed by the cross into the voluntary suffering Christians suffer for their faith. John calls it the endurance and faith of the saints. Paul experienced it as strength made perfect through weakness. Jesus said, “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven.”

How this operates has been evidenced no better than in the Civil Rights struggles of the 1960s. “We’ve come to see the power of nonviolence [and endurance],” Martin Luther King Jr. once preached. “We’ve come to see that this method is not a weak method, for it’s the strong man who can stand up amid opposition, who can stand up amid violence being inflicted upon him and not retaliate with violence. You see, this method has a way of disarming the opponent. It exposes his moral defenses. It weakens his morale, and at the same time it works on his conscience, and he just doesn’t know what to do. If he doesn’t beat you, wonderful. If he beats you, you develop the quiet courage of accepting blows without retaliating. If he doesn’t put you in jail, wonderful. Nobody with any sense likes to go to jail. But if he puts you in jail, you go in that jail and transform it from a dungeon of shame into a haven of freedom and human dignity. And even if he tries to kill you, you’ll develop the inner conviction that there are some things so dear, some things so precious, some things so eternally true, that they are worth dying for.”

I get convicted by these words. They scare me too. So much so that I often will reduce my own faith down to matters of my own personal salvation and my own personal comfort. It makes following Jesus easier to manage. Best not to think too much, or at least too seriously, about everything else Jesus requires of me—be it evangelizing the world, eliminating injustice, making peace, promoting life or just plain feeding the poor.

Author Brian McLaren writes recently of a meeting of ministers he attended in Cape Town, South Africa. As the pastors discussed their ministries to the poor, a healthcare worker also in attendance grew agitated. Eventually he blurted out, “You pastors are causing such destruction, it reaches to the skies. I know you mean well, but you don’t realize the that you cause devastation in the lives of the people among whom I work. You come to the slums every Sunday and you set up your tents, which is good, but then you only preach three things: be healed, be saved and tithe. You tell people that they can be healed of their HIV and some of them believe so they stop taking their medications. But when they stop, they develop new resistant strains of the disease and they spread these tougher infections to other people, leaving them much sicker than they were before. You tell people they need to be born again, but after they’re born again on Sunday, they’re still unemployed on Monday. If they’re unemployed, they’re going to be caught in the poverty web of substance abuse, crime and gangs, domestic violence and HIV. And then you tell them to tithe. You tell them to sow financial seed into your ministries and they will receive a hundredfold return. But you’re the only ones who get a return.

“You could be helping so much. Who else loves the poor and forgotten people of the townships? You could motivate them to learn employable skills, you could teach them how to be friends without having sex, you could help them find things to do—sports or music—or better, teach them the necessity of getting up and showing up and keeping your word and working hard and being honest. You could network through your churches and other contacts to start businesses so the people could get jobs.”

Naturally the pastors on the receiving end of this rebuke got defensive—and furious. They denounced this fellow Christian healthcare worker as a heretic. Did he not know that getting saved, getting healed and tithing were biblical? But of course, so are economic justice, friendship and honest work. We believe in Jesus, yet so often we reduce that belief down to matters of our own personal salvation and our own personal comfort. It makes following Jesus easier to manage. It also makes our faith “a benign and passive chaplaincy to a failing and dysfunctional culture” [McLaren], rather than a force for societal transformation.

John would have recognized this dilution of the gospel as the perverse work of the second beast from the earth, the last member of the unholy trinity. This second beast will get labeled “the false prophet” by the time we get to chapter 16. He also has horns like a lamb, but the reference is more literal here. The lamblike appearance of the second beast denotes gentleness and harmlessness, the kind of false prophet Jesus warned comes as a ravenous wolf in sheep’s clothing. The second beast speaks like the dragon, yet his voice is not a fire-breathing rant; it is the slithering and deceptive whisper of the serpent. This false prophet performs great and miraculous signs, verse 13, “even making fire come down from heaven to earth in the sight of all people.” But Jesus warned about that too. He said, “False christs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders, so as to deceive even the elect—if that were possible.”

By adding if that were possible, Jesus assures against the believer’s deception. “My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me,” he said. “No one can snatch them out of my hand.” These sheep are the same elect Revelation describes in chapter 9 as having the mark of God on their foreheads. Yet if you’ll remember back to chapter 9 you’ll remember that these marks hearken back to Ezekiel and the forehead marks there on those who expressed remorse for Jerusalem’s ruin—a ruin for which they were to blame. The Ezekiel passage has a definite Passover feel to it. Just as the angel of God passed over those in Egypt whose doorposts were marked with the blood of the lamb, so in Ezekiel’s Jerusalem, those who were marked with the mark of God likewise were passed over when judgment arrived. So many years hence, this same judgment has been understood as doom for all who refuse to repent and heed Christ as the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Jesus rescues us from the final judgment Revelation portends.

Yet as I mentioned on Maundy Thursday, there’s a problem when you turn to the apostle Paul. Paul writes to the Corinthians, “We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad.” Paul’s pronouncement of final Christian judgment tacitly indicts that ancient tendency believers have always had to take God’s grace for granted and to treat the doctrine of election as unchallenged incumbency. We read “Jesus loves me just as I am” as permission to stay that way. It is the gospel truth that just as you can do nothing to earn God’s grace, you can do nothing to lose it either. But at the same time, you must do something to show you’ve received it. Revelation labels the faithful as those “who obey God’s commandments and hold to the testimony of Jesus.” “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom,” Jesus said, “but only those who do the will of my Father.” “My sheep listen to my voice and they follow me.”

“They will not follow a stranger,” Jesus said, “but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.” This may be why the false prophet chooses familiar language. He constructs an impressive talking idol of the first beast, a foreshadow, perhaps, of the technologies in our own day that so effortlessly entertain and distract. He yanks an economic leash, an acknowledgment perhaps, to money’s own pull to which we so readily succumb. The beast may be a parody of Jesus, but sometimes we prefer the parody: A Jesus we construct in our own image. I’ve mentioned before a book from a few years back by BU religion professor Stephen Prothero entitled, American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon. Professor Prothero resourced sermons and theological works, but also movies, novels, news media and popular music in order to show how “Americans of all stripes have cast the man from Nazareth in their own image.” Democrats portray Jesus as a democrat, Republicans have him resembling republicans. Jesus comes off as a radical for the radicals and a corporate CEO for business types. Not so surprisingly, a New York Times reviewer pointed out that by the end of his book, Professor Prothero’s own portrayal had Jesus looking a lot like an urban university religion professor. Chances are that if you were asked to describe Jesus in your own words, the description wouldn’t be a long shot from how you see yourself—with the same friends and the same enemies as you have.

In the end, there is support for understanding 666 as a generic symbol of imperfect and incomplete humanity. People marked with the mark of the beast are people devoid of endurance and devoid of faith: both faith in Christ and faith like Christ. Martin Luther King Jr. was right: “There are some things so precious, some things so eternally true, that they are worth dying for. And I submit to you that if a man has not discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.”

The Last Leviticus Sermon and Easter Video

Happy Easter and Jubilee
Leviticus 25
(the video appears at the bottom)

For my last sermon in Leviticus, I turn to chapter 25 and a remarkable practice mandated by God called the Year of Jubilee. Every 50 years, a trumpet sounded (jubilee means blow the horn) to announce a wholesale overhaul of economic and social conditions. Jubilee signaled a new beginning, a time when all who had failed at life and work were given a do-over, and when all who had benefitted from others’ failures let go of their gains. Land reverted back to its original ownership, debts were forgiven, slaves set free the score set back to zero. As a year-long extension of the Sabbath, everyone took a year off to enjoy, stress-free, the fruits of their labor with thanksgiving. Of course in a predominantly agrarian society, the question undoubtedly arose as to how you would eat if you didn’t work your land for a year. God assured everybody by announcing “I will send you such a blessing in the year before that the land will yield enough for three years.” Even the earth needed a break. Jubilee represented Old Testament environmentalism at its best.

It represented Old Testament economic justice at its best too. Jubilee prevented the amassing of wealth into the hands of a privileged few. Every fifty years accounts were squared and equality was reestablished. Jubilee curtailed the human desire to accumulate more and more by yanking down social and corporate ladders. Greed got checked. The rich were kept humble and the poor were made hopeful. Everybody understood that we are but tenants on this earth and not owners. All things ultimately belong to God. People were not allowed to take advantage of each other in life or business because to do so was to take advantage of God.

This Levitical vision proves so captivating that a movement is currently afoot called Jubilee USA. Its purpose, supported by many churches, is to promote passage of House Resolution 2634, entitled the Jubilee Act. In the world’s most impoverished nations, the majority of the population do not have access to clean water, adequate housing or basic health care. These countries are paying debt service to wealthy nations and institutions at the expense of providing these basic services to their citizens. The United Nations Development Program estimates that 30,000 children die each day due to preventable diseases. Debt service payments take resources that impoverished countries could use to cure preventable diseases. The Jubilee Act mandates debt cancellation for these countries. Ironically, these nations have already paid back their debts time and again. The crisis set in once interest rates rose and compound interest made repayment impossible. It explains why the Hebrew word for interest is literally the verb “to bite.”

It may be that you’ve felt bitten yourself of late. Many assert that the United States itself is descending quickly into economic recession, in large part due to the subprime mortgage crisis. Mortgages packaged as investments grew riskier as expectations of return grew higher. Since real estate in America had always been a good bet, people figured the sky was the limit. But even the sky has its limits. The inevitable nationwide default on ever riskier housing loans crunched credit on Wall Street and on Main Street. The government has been forced to intervene with huge infusions of cash to keep the whole house of cards from crashing down—cash for which the government has had to go further into debt itself to pay.

The crises of Leviticus 25 read like the subprime mortgage mess. A farmer fails at farming, defaults on a loan and loses his land but not his obligation to his creditors. It reminds me of a time I stumbled on the credit card bills of a family member I had agreed to help through school. I thought she was counting her pennies and being a good steward of my generosity, but it turned out that she had run up extraneous debt to the tune of $30,000. Because I had chosen to financially expose myself for her sake, I ended up with the bill which meant refinancing my house to pay it. Had I been living by Leviticus back then, chapter 25 would have allowed me to enslave this family member until she worked off the debt. This may sound like sweet revenge, only Leviticus prohibits any harsh treatment of a person indebted to you. I would have had to restructure payments according to her ability, and if the year of Jubilee arrived before she fully paid me back, her entire debt would be forgiven. Which sounds unfair until you realize that the bank which held my mortgage would forgive my debt too. Of course that just sounds unrealistic.

So unrealistic in fact that there is no evidence that Jubilee was ever observed. Though commanded by God, it never happened. Maybe it was deemed too impractical. Or maybe it just took too much faith to do it. Or maybe those who’d made it to the top were too unwilling to let loose of their achievements. For whatever reason, Israel’s unwillingness to follow the law led to their downfall. Redeemed from their slavery in Egypt, delivered into a rich promised land, God’s people took advantage of his goodness. So much so that they lost their land and their freedom. If you’ve read the story, you know that the Babylonians ransacked Israel and drove its population into captivity. Nevertheless, because God has a thing for sinners, he announced through the prophet Isaiah another shot a Jubilee. Speaking of the Messiah to come, Isaiah said, “The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor.” This is the Jubilee language.

But again, if you’ve read the story you know that this Jubilee likewise went unfulfilled. True, by God’s grace, the Israelites were rescued from their captivity, but human nature being what it is, things quickly reverted back and the people found themselves in captivity again, this time to the Romans, with no hope on the horizon. But again, God has his thing for sinners. So he sent Jesus who walked into his local synagogue, dusted off the book of Isaiah and read those Jubilee promises again. “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” The congregation might have appreciated Jesus’ attempts to restore their hope had he not gone on and audaciously added, “Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” Excuse me? In Luke chapter 4, Jesus announced that he, an unemployed carpenter from Nazareth, was the bringer of Jubilee. He was their Messiah. So offended was the congregation by what seemed like a mockery of their plight, that the Bible says “they got up, ran Jesus out of the town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, and tried to throw him off the cliff.”

Jesus slipped away that time, but it was a temporary escape. Before long he’d be strung up on a cross; executed as a criminal and a blasphemer. However, the New Testament imports an image from Leviticus to show what really happened on the cross. Once a year in Leviticus, the Jewish high priest would take a goat and would symbolically transfer all the sins of the people onto it and would then chase this scapegoat out of town to die. Later Judaism would go so far as to throw this so-called scapegoat off a cliff to assure its demise. The apostle Paul writes of Jesus, “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us.” Jesus is our scapegoat.

Because it is Easter, you know how the story turns out. Jesus rises from the dead and in doing so, he establishes justice and yanks down the ladders. He squares our accounts with God. He settles our debts. The poor are exalted and the weak lifted up. The last are first and the lost are found. Death proves the way to victory. Sinners get a do-over. A new start. “Jesus died for all,” Paul writes, “so that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again. …If anyone is in Christ, you are a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” And not just for this life. But for eternity. Paul writes, “We will not all die, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. The trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.” “So blow the trumpet loud and long,” Leviticus sings, “proclaim freedom in the land for all its inhabitants, this will be your Jubilee!”