Last week I promised or perhaps warned you that we would be focusing on the texts out of Revelation for the next month or so. Before we embark on this journey through the weirdest book of the Bible I need to explain to you the approach we are going to take, and we will begin by thinking about dreams. Have you ever had an incredibly vivid dream, one that was either so wonderful or so terrifying you had to tell someone about it? So over breakfast you try to explain the dream to a member of your family. You start to describe the events and then get all confused about what happened, first this happened, no wait that happened before, no it happened after. You realise that the normal rules of time don’t apply to your dream and then as you try to make your listener understand you realise that your vivid and oh so real dream doesn’t make much sense at all. What you can describe however is the way the dream made you feel and perhaps a few of the scenes.

John of Patmos vision or revelation to be more precise, is way more than just a dream, however the rules of time, past, present, and future do not make sense in this apocalyptic vision. In this book all time points to one central truth, God is in control and Christ’s victory over death and all evil forces has been, will be, and is complete. Bible commentators tell us that the language and symbols John employs in Revelation would have made perfect sense to his original audience, it would have filled them with joy and hope for the future, it gave them the courage and inspiration to hang in there, to follow Jesus in an empire dominated by imperial rule under the false god Caesar. We as the modern-day audience can also receive the same shot in the arm, a boost to our confidence in Christ and a reason to continue our lives of witness, worship, and service, but we do not live under the oppression of the false god Caesar, or do we?  I will park that question there momentarily as we dive into today’s text.

Apart from the amazing vision of billions of living things praising the One who is worthy, something really extraordinary takes place in today’s four verses. For the first time in his letter John describes Jesus Christ as the Lamb that was slain. This is a very unusual image for a victorious, glorious king, someone who is receiving praise from every single creature. So what is going here? At the beginning of this chapter John described Jesus as the lion of Judah, harking back to the times of Israel’s’ royal monarchy and the gospel account of Jesus line of ancestry, that is his descendance from the tribe of Judah.  The lion of Judah sounds much more king- like, proud, fierce, full of integrity, courage, power, and strength, but a lamb, not even a particularly healthy-looking lamb apparently, biblical scholars tell us that in the John’s original language he describes a tiny lamb. Just as Revelation pins all time at one central point, John describes Jesus as two things at the same time, both lion and lamb. William Loader describes this scene as “an extraordinary violation of the norms of power and dignity”.[1] This Jesus who we follow, turns the ways of the world and its assumptions upside down and so this brings us back to my earlier question, do we live under the oppression of false gods and worldly Caesar’s today? What does this look like in ordinary everyday life?

I have two examples both of which I took note of as I watched the morning news. The first is a sad picture of how war like humans are, we are like rogue lions, fierce in tooth and claw. One of our politicians during the week stated that “The only way you can preserve peace is to prepare for war and to be strong as a country. Not to cower or be on bended knee or be weak. That’s the reality.” Let me be clear here, I am not repeating this as a bias political view. I am a dreamer and a realist too and there may well be some truth in the statement, however what stands out a mile is the contrast between what we humans regard as strength and the strength of the Lamb that was slain, an apparently weak, tender, and passive victor. I will leave it to you to ponder how the Lamb that was slain, speaks into world politics and political posturing but I encourage you all in your day-to-day battles to consider approaching every encounter with another person like the Lamb because this is the Jesus we follow. A moment to clarify that, I don’t mean be weak, or a pushover. It’s more about being confident in God’s love and presence, so confident that we don’t have to win the argument, or make out that we are worthy, or pretend to be something we are not or get anxious when things aren’t going the way we want them to. We answer to a higher power, a God who wants us to be as loving, compassionate, and trusting as Christ, the one who shows us how to be both human and divine.

My second example is the way the word ‘economy’ is being tossed about in the media at the moment. I confess I am treading on slippery ground here because my knowledge of the economy and how our monetary systems work is poor, but I do try to take note of how it impacts our Christian journey. A Christian economist once observed that we treat the economy as if it were a living thing, some kind of beast that needs to be tamed and fed and controlled. I observed this week that when our politicians talk about the economy they are always promoting growth, more jobs, more production, more work, more spending, bigger, better, shinier, newer, faster, this is the capitalist way. This Jesus, this lion and lamb that we follow tells us not to store up wealth, this Jesus that we follow tells us not to worry about what we will wear or eat; not really a capitalist is he?

Perhaps the biggest battle, the greatest war we face as Christians living in a wealthy nation is to not to fall under the oppression or perhaps I should say the seduction of wealth, of having more and getting more. On an individual, internal level our biggest battle has always been to destroy the savage self, to deny that part of ourselves that always wants to win, that wants to have the last say, have a bigger piece of the pie, more things, more power, more respect, more status. What does the Lamb that was slain say, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily (Luke 9:23).

At the very end of today’s gospel reading we hear Jesus say, “Follow me.” Jesus is worth following, as Revelation so vividly proclaims, he is the One who has won the victory over death and all evil, yet the path of discipleship is not easy, particularly when we can be so blind to the way the world sneakily corrupts us.  When Jesus calls and we follow we are blessed to have the Holy Spirit, our constant companion to keep us safe from conforming to the ways of the world and bowing down to false gods and modern-day Caesars.

[1] https://billloader.com/CEpEaster3.htm