Sermon Briefs: Revelation 1:4b-8 Part 2

"The Christian apocalyptic preacher proclaims the crucified, resurrected, and enthroned Jesus," writes Larry P. Jones and Jerry L. Sumney in their recent work, Preaching Apocalyptic Texts.¹ Many things in Revelation may not be clear, assert Jones and Sumney, but this is: The Lamb was slain, crucified. The fact that the Lamb now stands in heaven makes it obvious that he was resurrected as well, and the rest of the book makes it equally clear that God entrusted the control of history to this Lamb. The Jesus of Revelation is crucified, resurrected, and enthroned. The authors suggest that this is the theological center of apocalyptic thought for the Christian preacher. For the church's celebration of Christ the King this Sunday, the following sermons cling to this theological center.

Not Alone,² by Earl Palmer, is the first in a series of sermons that look at people in the Old and New Testament—how God meets them; how God uses people in the Bible, and how God uses them in the lives of other people. More, through the lens of biblical personalities, Palmer invites his congregation to see how God meets us and uses our lives to touch other lives, and how God uses other people's lives in our lives.

"God knows us very well," Palmer begins. He knows what makes us tick; God made us. One thing God knows about us is that we should not be alone too long. This truth is disclosed in the second chapter of Genesis: that God saw man and realized it was not good that he should be alone. This was one of the first statements in the Bible about us. When God saw that it was not good that we should be alone, God made a helpmate for man—woman. What follows in Palmer's sermon is a cascade of illustrations and images that crystallizes his assertion that God sends people into our lives to encourage us, to be in relationship with us that we may live not alone. Yet, Palmer seeks to do more. Holding to the theological center identified by Jones and Sumney, Palmer points to the "one like the Son of Man" who is in the midst of the lampstands (seven churches) to say that Jesus Christ walks among us; that God is the first encourager.

Palmer helps his congregation to discover that the first thing John does after greeting his readers is to remember the good news about Jesus Christ. "To him who loved us and has freed us from our sins by his blood and made us a kingdom, priest to his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen." Remembering positive things like the good news of the gospel is a good thing to do when you are alone, says Palmer. Christ the King Sunday, therefore, is the church's celebration that God gives boundaries to everything—the Alpha and Omega—and in the midst of all is the one who not only died and was raised for us but who reigns.

In an untitled sermon on this passage, William H. Willimon³ invites his congregation to discover that the worst of times, history shows, are paradoxically, the best of times, times when some new and better age is breaking forth. Such is the time that is read today from Revelation. Here, the Church, the "New Israel," is suffering persecution at the hands of the Emperor, many Christians are falling away into apostasy, many are paying for their faith with their lives. "Is there any hope in such a terrible time?" many asked.

Willimon suggests that we may be living in similar desperate times. He points to the Jonestown suicides, the dangers to our health in the various foods we eat and the continuing rumors of wars and life in the shadow of "the mushroom cloud." This sermon was prepared in 1979. Were he to preach it today, Willimon would certainly point to the bombing in Oklahoma City and the high school shootings in Colorado as further examples. We are trapped between wild utopian visions for the future and dismal doomsday visions of an imminent end.

Yet, cautions Willimon, before we read ourselves to easily into Revelation, we should remind ourselves that this book was written, not to a contented, successful, affluent, mildly discomforted church like ours, but to an Israel and to a church suffering under great persecution. Persecution is not a problem for the American, established church. But it is a very real problem for the church in many parts of the world. So perhaps we should let these suffering, persecuted churches read today's text and take hope, not us. Apostasy, observes Willimon, that vast, disinterested, disheartened falling away from the faith, may be more our church's problem than forbearance under persecution.

Willimon has dismissed this text as having anything to say to the American church. The congregation now anticipating the closing hymn, Willimon surprises us by walking over to the text for a second look. We have overlooked an important consideration; there were apostates in Israel and in the church during Revelation as well. Difficult times, says Willimon, produce not only Christians who are glorious martyrs but also Christians who are unfaithful cowards. These texts address both groups of Christians. To the one is promised judgment and reckoning. In others words, to both groups of Christians is promised the coming and near presence of God.

This sermon announces that bold, decisive, transforming action has been, is being, and will be taken—not by us, not by political powers, not by the oppressed or the oppressors—but by God almighty. On this last Sunday of a dying Church Year, the Advent of Christ's coming among us offers a confident, expectant word that God yet rules, God's purposes will yet be fulfilled, the difficult present is but a prelude to the glorious coming of God.

Doug Hood

NOTES

1. Larry Paul Jones and Jerry L. Sumney, Preaching Apocalyptic Texts (St. Louis, Missouri: Chalice Press, 1999), pp. 34-35. 2. Earl Palmer, "Not Alone," The Library of Distinctive Sermons, ed. Gary W. Klingsporn (Sisters, Oregon: Questar Publishers, 1996). 3. William H. Willimon, Seasons of Preaching, ed. John M. Rottman & Paul Scott Wilson (New Berlin, WI: 1996), pp. 257-258.