Sunday, May 5, 2019 ~ Third Sunday of Easter

Dr. John Tamilio III, Pastor

 Sermon: “That Scary Book”

New Testament Lesson: Revelation 5:11-14

© 2019, Dr. Tamilio

I’ve always wanted to meet [pause] the Queen of England.  There’s something about the royals that Americans love — not all Americans, of course, but I’m one of the ones who does love them.  Sometimes I wish I was a British citizen and that I did something absolutely spectacular so that I could be knighted.  That would be a trip!  Kneeling before Queen Elizabeth II in Buckingham Palace.  Being touched by a sword on both shoulders and hearing her (in her perfect British accent) say, “Rise, Sir John Tamilio III.  Join the ranks of Sir Richard James I and guard the castle.”

I’ve also wondered what it would be like to be a fly on the wall in the Oval Office when the President of the United States meets with some other world leader to work on some international treaty or trade deal.

It would be just as cool to attend the United Nations when they are in executive session and the members of the G8 discuss an issue of global importance.

Ah!  To get a glimpse into the corridors of power.  The truth is — we’ve all gotten such a glimpse today in our New Testament reading.  We’ve see a vision of the Throne Room of God in the Revelation of John.

This has to be the book that most mainline churches shy away from.  This is due to numerous factors.  One being that it is all about the end times, the apocalypse, the ultimate battle between God and the forces of darkness.  We find that to be quite scary.  We prefer the stories of the loving Jesus who bounces toddlers on his lap and says, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these” (Matt. 19:14).  We like the peaceful, forgiving, turn the other cheek Jesus better than the wrathful, judgmental one who comes “on the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory” (Matt. 24:30).

A second reason why we avoid the Book of Revelation is because we often associate it with people who use it as a scarce tactic.  “Jesus is coming,” the street corner evangelist shouts.  “Repent or face the eternal lake of fire!”  Mind you, this is not a whole lot different from some of the sermons you would hear in the early days of the Congregational Church.  Since the late seventeenth century, though, we’ve changed our focus a bit.  We preach that God is love — that Jesus loves us, this we know, for the Bible tells us so.  We leave the Eschatological Jesus to the Fundamentalists.

But there is a third, and probably more accurate reason why we steer clear of the last book in the New Testament.  We don’t understand it.  It’s filled with images of lampstands, stars, and seals; different colored horses with ominous riders; a goat with an abnormal number of horns.  How are we to make heads or tails of this story?

John was imprisoned on the island of Patmos when he wrote this book.  It is a vision: some say of what is to come; others of what was happening to Christians at the time it was written, those who were persecuted under the leadership of Nero.  Revelation includes the first appearance of Jesus since the Book of Acts.  It is his return: a vision of the Second Coming that he said would occur.  In it, he gives instructions to seven churches.  John is then given a vision of a great judgment.  Seals are opened.  Trumpets bellow.  There are angels and plagues.  There is a time of tribulation and a thousand year reign.  This brings us to the climatic chapters: 21 and 22.  The defeat of Satan and the forces of evil ushers in a new heaven and a new earth.  Eden is restored.

If you sit with the text and try to decipher exactly what will occur and when, you will drive yourself crazy, especially since many scholars feel that the Book of Revelation was written as an image of hope, of liberation for Christians being persecuted at the end of the first century.  New Testament scholar M. Eugene Boring writes, “Christians in John’s time and place were…often subject to social and economic discrimination, to more or less constant tensions and harassment (resulting from trying to be Christians in a pagan culture), and sometimes subject to the kind of unofficial mob violence described in” parts of the Letter to the Hebrews and the First Letter of Peter.[1]  This quote is interesting, and it gives contemporary Christians a great deal to consider.

One of the reasons why the mainline Church is in a state of decline is that we live in a post-Christian society.  Church, let alone faith in God, let alone Christian ethics, are not as important to people as they used to be.  Maybe this is why some people want the prayer of invocation taken out of the Canton High School commencement ceremony.  Maybe this is why some Massachusetts state legislators want to remove “so help me God” from the oath of office.  A recent bill, proposed by Mindy Domb, the freshman Representative from Amherst, seeks to replace “so help me God” with the phrase “This I do under the pains and penalties of perjury.”  Don’t worry.  There will be other such bills, I am sure.  There are already those in the United States who want to remove “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance.  I’m sure that our currency will be under attack, too.  After all, it does say “In God We Trust” on it.  (I’ve said before and I’ll say it again: anyone who is offended by having “In God We Trust” on their money can send it to me.  I’ll be happy to take it off your hands.)

Secularism is winning.  Well, put it this way, it is winning battles across the board, but, if I have anything to say about it, it will not win the war.

I know, I know the atheist’s argument: “the First Amendment to the United States Constitution says that there should be a strict separation between Church and state.”  Actually, it doesn’t.  It says that there should be no state-sanctioned religion, which I agree with.  I don’t want to live in a theocracy.  But it also says that the government cannot interfere with the free exercise of religion.  Being a country that was founded on Judeo-Christian principles, taking public oaths (whether it is an oath of office or an oath when one is taking the witness stand in a court of law) taking an oath in which we state that we are accountable to God is pertinent.  Most Americans believe in God.  I, for one, am more apt “to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” if I have to make this promise to God rather than some nebulous, secular “pains and penalties of perjury.”

If nothing else, the Revelation of John shows us that there is nothing new under the sun.  Publics have always tried to limit the reach of the Church, which is nothing short of the body of Christ on earth.  Like John, we can say no.  We can say that not only do we answer to a higher authority, but that this God of ours is in the midst of establishing a new heaven and a new earth.  Do you not perceive it?

In the end, I have no problem rendering unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, but you can be darn well sure that I am going to render God the things that are God’s first.  Amen.

[1] M. Eugene Boring, Revelation (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1989), 11.