Revelation 1:4b-8 (NRSV)
Revelation 1:4-8 is the address to the reader, or possibly a second introduction. This introduction shares a familiar, predictable, structure in having a greeting, a confession of the triune God, and a doxology.[1] The cities would seem to have large Jewish populations. The Christology is richer here than in the rest of the book. It sets the tone for the rest of the book by lifting up the identity and activity of Jesus Christ. It does this through a series of triplets, which provide a rhythm that underscores the meaning of the message and the conviction with which it conveys it. In this book, Jesus Christ is the bringer of salvation, and as such places the book within the rest of the apostolic writings.[2]
We can feel overwhelmed. Our age may well specialize in feeling overwhelmed. Technology has particularly brought tragedy, heartbreak, and despair as regular diet on the evening news. My life has been much better since I stopped receiving a steady diet of it. In such a time, the time of feeling overwhelmed, we might find it difficult to look at matters honestly.
In Shakespeare's Hamlet, the young prince muses to himself, asking what he ought to do in response to the sin of his mother and his uncle who had killed his father and now have married one another. Young Hamlet wonders if it is better to take up the sword against "a seal of troubles," or whether it is better to pull the covers up over his head, to end his life, to sleep, perhaps even to dream, and end it all. A sea of troubles faces young Hamlet and they have become a veritable flood. He is overwhelmed.
John, who should have been overwhelmed by the great sea of troubles that faced him and his beloved churches, responds by an overwhelming affirmation of the grace and triumph of God in Christ. In Jesus Christ, God decisively enters the world and is busy reclaiming a lost world. Revelation begins with poetry that evokes images of invasion, of cosmic battles, then of decisive victory by Almighty God. John on the island of Patmos responded to the overwhelming presence of evil with affirmations of the overwhelming victory of God in Jesus Christ.
As I consider these opening verses of Revelation, reflect upon the basic truths to which John turns.
4 John to the seven churches that are in Asia. The text affirms John the apostle as the writer. The theology is John, but the language is not.
Grace to you and peace, Paul consistently opening his letters in a similar way. The first triplet identifies the source of grace and peace. From him who is and who was and who is to come. The triplet is an elaboration of Exodus 3:14, where the Lord says, “I am who I am,” or “I will be who I will be.” Greek author Pausanius in the second century AD says of Zeus, “Zeus was, Zeus is, Zeus will be.” Although Revelation will deal with the ordeal the churches now encounter, the author understands the struggles in light of eternity. Further, grace and peace come from the seven spirits who are before his throne, the number of completion. Some think they symbolize the wholeness or fullness of the activity of the Spirit. Zechariah 4 is the Old Testament basis for the imagery. In Isaiah 11:2, there are also seven designations of the Spirit. Yet, it seems more likely that it refers to seven angels who are in the presence of God.[3] It becomes an instance of the New Testament referring to angels as spirits. In fact, the reference to them as “ministering spirits” in Hebrews 1:14 may be a good way to define what an angel is. Any discussion of angels must focus on service.[4] Further still, grace and peace come 5 from Jesus Christ (Christos, messiah). We then have the second triplet. Christ is the faithful witness (martyr). Jesus bears a certain type of testimony to the truth concerning the way the world truly is. He sacrificed his life for the sake of faithfulness to God and truth. John will be urging the churches to remain faithful to the point of death (2:10). Christ is the firstborn of the dead, stressing the transition of Jesus into a new eschatological life. The firstborn had pride of place in the ancient family, largely because of the high death rate of infants and toddlers. The firstborn received the largest portion of whatever inheritance the head of the household might have. Thus, firstborn of the dead gave to Christ the pride of place and position from among those who have died. In the new eschatological life that is the destiny of humanity, Jesus of Nazareth will head the procession into that new event. Therefore, Christ is the ruler of the kings of the earth. It is an audacious phrase, considering what happened to Jesus at the hands of the Romans. They brutalized him: stripped him, beat him, threw a kingly cloak around his shoulders and jammed a crown of thorns down upon his brow. Then came the mockery. Soldiers derided him, bowing down before him and crying, "Hail, O King!" How can John refer to one such as him -- this weak and tortured man who, assailed by the world-consuming power of Rome, appears to be anything but kingly -- as "ruler of the kings of the earth"? Such titles have the intent of offering strength to those who undergo persecution. They encourage those who may have to experience martyrdom.
He now offers a doxology in the form of another triplet that delineates what Christ has done for and with the faithful. Usually, Paul would work a prayer of thanksgiving into this portion of his letter. Yet, he sometimes substituted a doxology. To him who loves us, the only reference to the love of Jesus in the book, and freed us from our sins by his blood, a reference to baptism and the Lord’s Supper, 6 and made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. The images go back to the Old Testament, adopt some of the titles given to Israel, and apply them to the church. In particular, Exodus 19:5-6 is suggestive, “you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed, the whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation.” Martin Luther used this passage to support the notion of the priesthood of all believers. Vatican II recognized the validity of the basic concept. Unfortunately, for the point Luther wanted to make, the writer clearly does not have in view the notion of a priesthood of all believers that has its own direct relation to God. The church shares the priestly role of Jesus, connecting it to the redemptive purpose of God for the church. Note that the author stresses that election in Christ, and Christ receiving equal honor with the Father. The language is similar to that of I Peter 2:9, “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” Such language in Revelation means that things are not as they appear. They are already kings and priests; yet, the reality is not yet public.[5]
He now offers a fourth set of triplets that depict those who fear the impending judgment that accompanies the return of Christ. The Christ who will come is already present. The author combines Daniel 7:13 and Zechariah 12:10. 7 Look! He is coming with the clouds; every eye will see him, even those who pierced him; and on his account, all the tribes of the earth will wail. So it is to be. Amen. Pantokrator” is an intentional contrast with the Roman Emperor. The verse may suggest knowledge of the “I am” saying of John. 8 “I am the Alpha and the Omega,’ says the Lord God. Thus, the exalted Lord shares the life of the Father that embraces all ages.[6] Considering the notion of “first and last,” God is not restricted to being first or last. God stands above the alternative of beginning and end and is Lord of both. One of the challenges of a theology of creation is to express the way in which the eternal God embraces the beginning and end of the creaturely world by not only bringing forth time as the form of existence for creation but by having the divine life enter the created world in way that preserves it and rules it.[7] Further, the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty (Παντοκράτωρ). It concludes with the Almighty, from the beginning to end, from the past into the future, God is the one who has the power. Though the times are uncertain, John is sounding a classic apocalyptic message: This God controls the past, present and future and can be a source of comfort. God is eternal. Unchanging. The same yesterday, today and tomorrow.
Hegel stated that God is the “rose in the cross of the present.” The tragic sense of every human life comes through in such a statement. The harsh reality of human life is the presence of so much evil and suffering in human life and history. If we focus upon these realities, we ought to wonder what is the meaning, purpose, and direction of it all. As Moses saw in his vision of God in the burning bush, “I am who I am” becomes a place to stand in the midst of the uncertain realities of human life. Yet, as John also points out, God is one who is, one who was, and one who is to come. I cannot imagine human life without some way of talking about hope for the future.
When the church directs its praise and thanksgiving to God in music, it expresses hope for the future. Such singing does not ignore the realities of uncertainty and suffering that surround much of human life. However, music does direct our gaze from us and toward God, who is the source of life and hope. Human life is far from easy. Some persons bear a larger and heavier cross in life than others do. Yet, suffering, pain, uncertainty, and evil, touch every human life to some degree. If we are to bear it with some sense of joy, meaning, and purpose, it will be because we have found a reason to find a rose in the midst of the ambiguities of life.
Mark Twain said that, if heaven is one endless choir rehearsal, he did not think he would bother to try for it. Yet, the Book of Revelation is saying that God created you and me for praise! God has made us, from the first beating of our hearts, to join in creation’s great song of praise to the One in whom we live, move, and have our being. One day, on that day, all those things that keep us from singing – the pain, the heartache, the shame, the oppression, all that which attempts to keep people quiet – God will defeat. The lamb, the one whose birth caused the angels of heaven to break forth in song, will enable the entire world to sing. God will heal the rift between the singer and the song, saints on earth and saints in heaven will lift up their voices in unison. Our restless hearts shall know why they have been restless, because God has created each of us for no better purpose than to praise God with all that we are, to give God, in our work and our worship, honor, power, glory, and blessing forever, singing, “To him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.”
We offer praise and thanksgiving, in part because of what is, but even more because of what God promises for the future. Let us be a people who sing, praise, and offer thanksgiving.
I have wrestled much with the notion of time. Theology and philosophy reflect upon the topic in a way that often confuses me. However, since this passage opens the door for such reflection, I invite you to ponder the notion of time with me. In particular, I want to reflect upon the relationship between God and time.
If one can translate Exodus 3:13-14 as “I shall be that I shall be” or “I shall exist as I shall exist,” it will suggest a particular emphasis on the relation of present and future. This passage may interpret what Exodus says. It declares that now, after the fulfilled time, recollection adds to expectation as a category not yet belonging to the Old Testament or at least not yet customary.[8] The verse shows that divine eternity means readiness for time. We have good reason to give clear emphasis to this truth. The Christian message of creation, reconciliation, and redemption as the revelation of human existence as consummated by God, which also means the revelation of the meaning of creation by God, is the word of truth and not a myth of the pious self-consciousness. The eternity of God has temporality. The content of the message depends on the fact that God was, is, and is to be, our existence stands under the sign of a divine past, present, and future. Without the complete temporality of God, the content of the Christian message has no shape. Everything depends on whether the temporality of God is the truth that has its basis in God. Barth develops the notions of God as pre-temporal, supra-temporal, and post-temporal to describe this dimension of God.[9]
When the passage speaks of the being of Jesus in time, it implies much more than that time has a beginning, duration, and end. The use of “alpha and omega” does not speak of timelessness. The risen Lord ascribes to himself a being in time, just as the letters alpha and omega in the Greek alphabet are part of the alphabet. Further, the introduction stresses that the life of Christ embraces a present, past, and future. Here is a strictly temporal being, though it differs from all other temporal being. Again, note the connection to Exodus 3:14, “I am that I am.” The passage speaks of a being in time, but the reference is to the divine coming. It means something like, “I am all this simultaneously. I, the same, am; I was as the same; and I will come again as the same.”
First, the today of Jesus does not cancel his yesterday. The presence of Jesus impels toward His future. He who comes again in glory is identical with the one proclaimed by the history of yesterday and the one present today. The thorough-going eschatology for which the interim between now and one day necessarily seems to be a time of emptiness, futility, and lack only an “unspiritual” community could tolerate such a view. The fact that Jesus will be includes the fact that He is. The fact that He is does not exclude that He is not yet. When this verse says “I am he that is,” the present in which there is real recollection of the man Jesus and the particular and preliminary revelation accomplished in Christ, and real expectation of this man and the final and general revelation of God with Him, this present “between the times” is His own time, the time of the man Jesus.
Second, Jesus not only is. He has also been. The passage directs our gaze backward from the present. What do we see? Of course, we see the pre-crucifixion time of Jesus, but we also “see” the Easter Jesus and the apostolic presentation of him. His “yesterday” includes the prophetic time and history of the people of Israel. As we find in this passage, we can sum it up as “I am – which was.”
This same Jesus existed in space and time as an historical reality some 2,000 years ago. When he was born to a young woman living in Nazareth in Galilee, he was given a name: Jesus. So, Jesus was … a baby with a mom and dad. Jesus was … a toddler, a neighborhood kid, a precocious preteen sharing his views to the priests of the temple, a young man working in his father’s shop.
Sometimes, critics will refer to the fact that there is very little extra-canonical mention of the historical Jesus. Yes, Josephus, Pliny and Tacitus — writing 60 or more years after Jesus died —mention Jesus directly or tangentially.
There is also the problem about the archaeological evidence — there is none. This is not surprising, says Lawrence Mykytiuk, an associate professor of library science at Purdue University and author of a 2015 Biblical Archaeology Review article on the extra-biblical evidence of Jesus. “There’s nothing conclusive, nor would I expect there to be,” he says. “Peasants don’t normally leave an archaeological trail.” Even Bart Ehrman, notorious atheist and professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, sneers at the idea that Jesus was not a historical figure. “The reality is that we don’t have archaeological records for virtually anyone who lived in Jesus’s time and place,” he says. “The lack of evidence does not mean a person at the time didn’t exist. It means that she or he, like 99.99% of the rest of the world at the time, made no impact on the archaeological record.”
We can have assurance that Jesus was. He was a man with a mission whom followers would call the Messiah or the Christ, the fulfillment of the promises of the Lord to the House of David and therefore to Israel.
Third, the being of Jesus in time is a being in the future, a coming being. From the standpoint of the apostles and their communities, we must also say, and with no less reality and truth, that He comes. Christians live in expectation, as well as in recollection and presence. The message of the church is eschatological as well as soteriological and pneumatological. The message involves proclamation of his future and the approaching end of time than of the past in which time has found its beginning and center, or of the present in which we move from that beginning and center to the end of time. If all that we had was past and present, we could look forward to a progressive immanent development of the new life opened up by the resurrection. Entire periods of history have had this view of the church. Such a notion is utopian fabrication. Yet, the New Testament does not contain evidence to support this view. Such a view can do without Jesus. The last time, the consummation, is the time of Jesus, the time of His being. The New Testament is the coming of the Lord in a definitive and general revelation. The Christian community gathers in this hope. He who comes is the same as He who was and who is. The consciousness of time is inherent in the phrase “I am … which is to come.” The future to which we look forward from the past of the man Jesus, is, like this present itself, and the past that lies behind it, His time, the time of the man Jesus.[10]
For us, the past is the time that we live and are in no longer. The future is the time that we do not yet have but perhaps will have. The real nature of our being in time is most obscure of all at the very point where it ought to be clear, namely, at the moment that we regard as our present. Here, where midway between the vanished past, and which we have largely forgotten or only dimly remember, and the unknown future that awaits us, or perhaps does not await us we think we can take our ease and enjoy in impregnable security our being and having, and our identity with ourselves, we find that we are insecure. This is our “being in time.”[11]
[1] Ford, Anchor Bible Commentary.
[2] Grundmann (TDNT, Volume 9, 573)
[3] Murphy
[4]
[5] Murphy
[6]
[7]
[8]
[9]
[10] Barth, Church Dogmatics (III.1, [47.1]
[11] Barth, Church Dogmatics (III.1, 47.2)
No comments:
Post a Comment