Second Sunday of Easter
Acts 5:27-32
Psalm 118:14-29
Revelation 1:4-8
John 20:19-31
Sermon by Pastor Nelson
I had my sermon mostly finished last Monday and then we heard the news of Pope Francis’ death. So I want to say a few words about him. I look at myself, as I hope you all do as catholic, but not Roman Catholic.
I am fortunate to have started my ministry in the time of John XXIII and now at 85 to end my ministry influenced by Francis. Pope Francis wanted us as pastors/shepherds to be among the people, “to have the smell of the sheep.” He did not want a fur cape, nor red slippers and he rode around in a small fiat and will be buried in a pine box.
Yes he was a humble person who literally said, “he just wanted to be known as a good guy.” How does that compare to the leader in the USA who wants to be the strongman? Pope Francis’ trip to Canada to apologize to the indigenous people was “one of a kind.” There will be an election of a new pope, please read the book or watch the movie “conclave.” I am told it gives us a good idea of what will take place.
Now let us get to my sermon. Last Sunday was Easter. Your pastor and you were full of vim and vigour, it was a grand day. Today, the Sunday after Easter is always, if not a downer, certainly a “low” Sunday. Your pastor “got out of dodge,” and you are stuck with an 85-year-old “Chester,” who was delivering the times-colonist in his 11th floor apartment building at 3 am this morning, and now needs a nap, and tomorrow we have an election, one of the most important elections in our lifetime. I wish we had John A here, even though he was a conservative, with all of his faults, because he beat back the Americans who wanted to put tariffs on us way back then. Incidentally, at one time, he represented Victoria and he never came out to Victoria. Among other things he also got a railroad going east to west across our great country. Keeping up with the theme, for this Sunday, “a downer,” the second lesson from Revelation jumps out at me today. Revelation will be used for six weeks and I will try to concentrate on revelation for today and next week and in my own sermons for the rest of the easter season.
It will probably drive me and you crazy but after tomorrow’s election, we may all feel a little crazy. Remember Martin Luther did not want Revelation in the Canon but he did not want James either. But I have enjoyed James, so let us try Revelation. The language from Revelation is as vivid as it is mysterious. “It requires of its readers confident, steady intonation which will more than adequately convey a sense of value.” So says a guide to how to read Revelation on a Sunday morning. Revelation is apocalyptic literature, like Daniel. Sorry, if that ruins your Daniel in the lion’s den story. Apocalyptic literature frequently reflects a negative view of the world and expresses the hope for salvation in a new creation or in another life. Someway, it was/is supposed to comfort faithful people in difficult times. The word apocalyptic means, disclosure or ‘revelation.’ The book of revelation definitely should not be translated literally. But, of course, the “right wing religious nuts” do it all the time. I am sorry but “I calls them as I sees them.”
There are several lessons that we can draw from this first chapter of revelation used in our lectionary today.
- First, we are not the intended audience, we are not the seven churches.
- Revelation was not written for you and me.
- It was not written to predict our time or represent our world.
When we make it about us and about predicting our time, we not only miss the whole point of the book, but we get caught up in “paranoid fantasies.”
Elisabeth Schussler Florenza, a Krister Stendahl professor at Harvard, puts it this way, “something very strange happens when this text is appropriated by readers in a comfortable, powerful, majority community: It becomes a gold mine for paranoid fantasies and for those who want to preach revenge and destruction.” Like I said, “right wing religious nuts.” Florenza is Roman Catholic and Stendahl was a Swedish Lutheran. You cannot get any better than that. The author, who we call John, wrote Revelation about 95 AD. Christians who refused to call the Emperor of Rome, “lord and god” were being killed or exiled. Thus this John was writing to them not us. We, as preachers, must write/preach to people here and now, and not to some far-off nether land.
“We must smell like our sheep.” -> Remember, “it is where you live and work and play, that is where god is.” John’s churches were made up of a persecuted minority, people who were indigenous to the area, a mix of Jewish and Gentile, all following the testimony of Jesus, while living under Roman occupation. They were on the margins of the empire, poor and religiously persecuted by Rome. Sad to say we have the like in Victoria and Ottawa as well. I wish I could say it will change after tomorrow’s election.
John’s message to them during their time was “patient endurance,” and resist assimilation into the ideology of the empire. I wonder if any of our forefathers told this message to the indigenous people of turtle island?
What is most important as we read Revelation is, because of the historical, contextual and experiential difference between the first readers of John’s writings and us, we cannot assume to understand all of the symbolism and allegory taking place in the text. [Which many of our fellow Christians do not understand and continually misinterpret revelation.] Many preachers love fiction mysteries, and so do I. This writing from John, surely is a mystery. John is smuggling notes out from Patmos to those churches, using biblical language, images, and symbolism that the Roman readers would not automatically understand. This is one way to pass notes under the nose of the authorities without getting caught. [this happened many times in the second world war.]
Marianne Maye Thompson called Revelation a kind of political cartoon, “until we are well-acquainted with the people and the events it was written for and about, the joke is lost on us.” Basically then this writing in Revelation, is not about us. This is a letter from a pastor to people in the midst of great suffering and challenge, he was a shepherd for his sheep, shaping their imaginations by “the lamb that was slain.” By recognizing the distance between us and these first readers/hearers, we “may,” find our own way into this text of faith today. I mentioned our indigenous brothers and sisters hearing these words. I tried to say these words to the horn honkers of a couple of years ago and I would think these words would have meaning to the Ukrainians as well, if they had time to listen. This writing from this John is not an end time prediction [as again so many preachers try to make it] but an apocalyptic unmasking. Let us then see what lies underneath the surface. Yes, I would like to make Russia the bear of revelation as many have done, but this is not a book of prophecy. I am sure the John of Patmos was smart but not that smart. What the book of revelation is, is a prophetic book from Jesus through John, speaking as all biblical prophets do, against superpowers that oppress the most vulnerable and seek to take the place of God. Sounds like down south, eh? The writer of revelation is trying to awaken his audience to the presence of marginalized forces otherwise unnamed and unchallenged. The struggle against the powers for John’s congregations was in the now, and so it must be for us. John writes to those who are suffering at the hands of the powerful. His vision of Jesus is meant to unmask what is really going on so that they are able to see things in context and to understand the larger picture and how to sustain and resist. How can I not compare President Zelenskyy against Putin or Trump or even worse Canada to the USA.
But please recognize John of Patmos did not have that kind of foresight, but we can learn from him. John had connections to those churches, he was imprisoned on the Island of Patmos. John’s scathing critique of Rome would be enough to land him in trouble and just like now, his communications were continually being looked at. John was/is setting up the reader to emulate the resistance of Jesus when he says, “Jesus the Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.” This Jesus who proclaimed release to the captives, liberation for the oppressed and was himself crushed by the empire, He is the faithful one.
You see revelation sees Jesus as the firstborn of the dead, inaugurating a new creation, a new social order, a new ethic, a new way of relating not only to one another but to the imperial powers. That is easter!
So, we have not a book that says the end of the world is near, as many preachers would like it to say, but as a letter or handbook for how the early church resisted the empire and something we can learn from. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote a letter from a ‘Birmingham jail.’ He called the church to be faithful and not to assimilate with the empire. Michael Coren called this to our attention again in ‘The Globe and Mail’, April 18, 2025, when he pleaded with the ‘Christian’ administration of the USA which turns out to be the most ‘unchristian’ administration of all times.
Coren rightfully said, “they are obsessed with the end times. But they do not understand, ‘it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the Kingdom of God.’ They do not understand, ‘what must I do to obtain eternal life, sell everything and give the money to the poor.’” Recently, they even had the Vice President lecturing the Pope. The Pope died the next day, can you imagine? Trump and his gang understand to be a Christian, means you never apologize and you slander the messenger. What religious playbook does all that come from? That is why we are voting tomorrow. Can we in 2025 find ways to be faithful to the message of Jesus against the empire that challenges our own comforts and the positions we may have to take tomorrow? Can we read Revelation not as a book that has scared children for generations and the “left behind” series who turned revelation into a pop-cultural icon and cash cow, featuring eternal torture and punishment for many, while a few of God’s chosen get to experience all the luxuries of heaven? I do not know about you but it all sounds like Trump’s Christianity to me.
May we read revelation as a book which talks to people who are oppressed by an empire and see at least some of the early church who actually understood what the liberating message of the resurrection really was/is. The Rev. Daniel berrigan wrote, “was this John of Patmos a kook? We ask the question because it seemed as though the early church was facing the same question, at least by implication. No, he was not a kook, he suffered for Jesus and thus for the faith.” The seven churches also had this same vision of John, welcomed it, and believed it. In other words, the vision is for the community and not just for john or the seven churches.” It is for us also. Thus, each year, the readings for this Sunday provide us with a literary window through which we revisit the early church, and find what should be. John the gospel writer reminds us that we belong to a community founded on the peace of Christ.
Following the John of Patmos and the John of the Gospel, we find the strength to endure every difficulty because the story of Jesus is a pledge to us. We will hear of a vine with many branches, a living member, likened to a body and again and again as a community brought together by a faith and a communion open to all. Does that always happen? No. But through it all we hear the word shalom [peace] and we receive it, and share it, forgiveness that is, ‘the peace that passes all understanding.’ I am not sure what the resurrection means but I can begin to know what peace and forgiveness mean. For some reason, those who found Thomas on another day, were not capable of communicating the whole message to him. But they did get him to join them a week later. In reality the other disciples had not fully caught on either. Thomas grasped what none of them had grasped; we are not exempt from suffering. But God’s forgiveness expresses a love as vulnerable as human beings and more powerful than evil. Thomas did not, does not stand back in awe. Thomas found that evil as horrendous as it was, was not omnipotent. Thomas’ faith did not come easy, but for that reason it would become unshakeable. With Thomas we can understand that God forgives us in our freely chosen vulnerability. But with Thomas we realize that the God who suffered and still suffers in the world’s victims, invites us into a history-changing transformation. Thomas reminds us that honestly facing our doubts can open us to greater faith. Thomas allowed God to reveal god’s face in a new and fuller way. Thomas shows us that god frees us to forgive and be forgiven.
Finally let me say, it is inspiring to look at the early church, through the scriptures. Hopefully it will give us an impetus for the present and the future. Centuries from now, will our descendants in the faith be looking back at us and seeing a vision of faith, a vision of forgiveness, and above all a vision love? This is the word of God for us today even when the symbolism of revelation baffles us. This is the word of God for us today in a world marked by the raw exercise of political power. The shadow of the roman empire would have fallen mightily on the earliest readers of Revelation. This is the word of God for us today, not tomorrow. Revelation is a text about the present, not about the future. These stories today are about a hope in a God we can trust and an expectation for a future that god has crafted. This is a word about god for us today.
Jesus says, “he is the Alpha and the Omega, the A and the Z, the beginning and the end, the dawn of the world and its dusk.” Revelation is not a road map to the end of the days. It is fundamentally about the character of God. It is about how we relate to God and to one another. Revelation is not about bold predictions about days yet to come. Revelation is about seeing the work of God in the ordinary, unremarkable moments that fill our lives. Revelation warns us about complacency. That has never been as true as it is today. In all of this we might just see our own struggles and successes reflected back to us. But revelation reminds God’s faithful that God is in control but god does not act alone. We need to be awake and aware of the evil that ‘The Empire’ still maintains.
AND WE SAY
OF THE FATHER’S LOVE BEGOTTEN
ERE THE WORLDS BEGAN TO BE,
HE IS ALPHA AND OMEGA,
HE THE SOURCE, THE ENDING HE,
OF THINGS THAT ARE,
THAT HAVE BEEN,
AND THAT FUTURE YEARS SHALL SEE,
EVERMORE AND EVERMORE.
[ELW 295]
AND WE HEAR
“GO, MY CHILDREN, WITH MY BLESSING,
NEVER ALONE.
GO, MY CHILDREN, WITH MY BLESSING,
YOU ARE MY OWN.”
[ELW 543]
AMEN.