Fourth Presbyterian Church: A Light in the City

May 8, 2022 | 10:00 a.m.

A Great Multitude

Nanette Sawyer
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 23
Revelation 7:9–17

Today we dare to enter the book of Revelation. It is a difficult book to read, difficult to understand, because it is filled with metaphors and dreams and visions. These visions were written in a different time and context from our own, which means we have to work even harder to grasp the intention behind the words. I can assure you that I am bringing you a different perspective than the one you will find in novels, which understand the visions and metaphors as literal events that will occur in some future time.

The book is also difficult to read because it takes up issues of violence, injustice, death, and martyrdom. These are painful issues to acknowledge or to dwell upon. God is represented as angry about injustice, which makes sense if you think about it. But the image of a wrathful God is also very triggering and has been misused in many ways in the history of Christian experience.

For all these reasons, we need help understanding the historical and social, political and religious context in which these visions were written down. I am relying a great deal on the landmark commentary on Revelation by Dr. Brian Blount, President and Professor of New Testament at Union Presbyterian Seminary.

When we read the Bible, one of the ways we discern how to apply it to our contemporary situation is by identifying the trajectory of the scripture within its original context, to the best of our knowledge, and then overlaying that trajectory on our current situation. The Bible story becomes a lens through which we consider our contemporary discipleship.

The book of Revelation has a strong trajectory based on the idea of testimony or witness. It begins in chapter 1, verse 1, like this: “The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place, and he [Jesus] made it known by sending his angel to his servant John [who is writing this down], [John] who testified to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, even to all that he saw.”

In other words, God gave a revelation to Christ, and Christ gave a testimony about that revelation, and now John is giving that same testimony to his readers. In verse 4 Christ is called “the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead [meaning “the resurrected”], and the ruler of the kings of earth.”

These first verses of the book tip us off to the important themes and intentions in the book. Jesus is the faithful witness. A witness is someone who gives a testimony. The Greek term for witness is martyr. In Roman courts the martyr testified to what they had seen and what they knew from personal experience.

Over the years the word martyr has grown to take on the connotations of someone who gives their life for a cause. This becomes true when a testimony is not well received by people in power. Jesus testified to the truth with Pilate and was executed at the hands of the Roman Empire.

The book of Revelation is about martyrs who testify to the truth of who God is and who Christ is, and as a result of their testimony, they lose their lives. This is not a passive giving up of life. This is a loss of life because of a very active, engaged testimony that threatens a status quo of domination, such as that exhibited by the Roman Empire in the time of Jesus.

Christ was the faithful witness, the first of the resurrected, and the ruler of the kings of earth. He’s described early in chapter 1: “The hair on his head was white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were like blazing fire. His feet were like bronze glowing in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of rushing waters.”

This description, by the way, was used as a reference for the large-scale painting of the Ascension, by Gerald Griffin, that you can see in the Gratz Commons.

The description goes on to say, “In his right hand he held seven stars [the angels of the churches], and coming out of his mouth was a sharp, double-edged sword. His face was like the sun shining in all its brilliance” (Revelation 1:16–17)

This double-edged sword coming out of his mouth is important, because it indicates that his weapon is what he says, his testimony. His weapon is not a sword in hand used to harm people. His testimony is what cuts. John repeats his testimony, and the Christ-followers also repeat it.

In fact, in chapter 12 it says that the Christ-followers conquer, conquer, evil and domination “by the word of their testimony, for they did not cling to life even in the face of death” (Revelation 12:11). Like Christ they did not let fear of death prevent them from telling the truth.

So while the book of Revelation is a vision about a future time when all injustices will be corrected and justice will prevail, it also has a strong message about life in the present. As Dr. Brian Blount puts it, “John’s focus is not on running away from the world but on changing the world by standing up to humankind’s most draconian impulses and tendencies and witnessing against them. Revelation is about resistance” (Brian K. Blount, Revelation: The New Testament Library, Preface).

By their testimony the Christ-followers conquered evil. Those who testified became a great multitude. They were dressed in dazzling white as a sign of victory, and they carried palm branches also as a sign of victory. These were symbols given to victors in competitions in Rome.

The great multitude gives us a clue as to God’s vision for humanity, God’s dreams for our future: “there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages” (Revelation 7:9).

This is as God created us to be. It’s an answer to God’s promises to Abraham that he would be the ancestor of peoples as innumerable as the sands of the sea and the stars of the heavens (Genesis 13:16, 15:5, 22:17, 26:4, 28:14, 32:12; cf. Hebrews 11:12.). Abraham and his descendants were blessed to be a blessing, as are we.

We long for the kind of unity described in this vision. And yet we fall prey to forces that would divide us. The world tells us that our peace and security come through worldly things, through money, through property, through possessions, through savings accounts and investment portfolios. The issue is not these things. These things can be used for good.

The issue is our relationship to these things. Do we give them ultimate power? Do we shape our lives around them? Do we allow these to divide us from other people? Do we use them to try to insulate ourselves from the vulnerability of our humanity? Maybe sometimes yes and sometimes no.

The book of Revelation is a call to testify to God’s ultimate power. Its claim can cause us to ask ourselves some of these questions.

I believe that we long for the kind of unity we see in the description of the great multitude. But sometimes we fall prey to the belief that we need to compete for our survival. We can become self-focused to the exception of caring for/protecting/defending others. We may find ourselves participating in a system that marginalizes some and lifts up others.

These are some of the complications of living as disciples of Jesus in this time. We have not yet achieved the unity that John of Patmos describes. We have allowed ourselves to become segregated by racist housing policies (as we have learned about in some of our recent adult education classes and small groups).

When we allow ourselves to become segregated, either by racism or other systems of prejudice and misused power, or even by market segmentation that seeks to profit from our vulnerabilities, we become weaker.

When we allow ourselves to be segregated in any of these ways, we become weaker (as a society). We become further separated from God and from the truth of our shared identity as God’s beloved children.

When we have access to power or resources, we may think independence and accrual will protect us, and we may forget or not realize that interdependence can make us stronger. Independence easily becomes isolation, and we suffer the loss of community and the loss of God’s vision for us.

When we ourselves are marginalized, we can be tempted to give up the power that we do have and become passive within the system that marginalizes us. But the book of Revelation is a call to action. It’s a call to nonviolent resistance.

As Dr. Blount has also said, “For modern readers, the book of Revelation remains a call to nonviolent arms against any and every human person or people who would position themselves as lord over the destinies of others” (Brian K. Blount, Revelation, Preface).

The question for us as followers of Christ is, who or what is the lord of our lives? Who or what is it that gives us a sense of security and peace?

John reports that the great multitude in his vision “cried out in a loud voice, saying, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne and to the Lamb!’” Salvation belongs to God, but it isn’t something that God does to us. According to Revelation, salvation is something we participate in. Evil was conquered, in part, by the testimony of the multitude.

God, of course, is always at work. We can’t save the world without God, and God can’t save the world without us. We have to populate God’s dream for humanity. We have to participate with our own salvation. And to participate, we have to trust in God and God’s plan. We have to have faith and commit to follow the Way of Christ.

We don’t have to do it perfectly. And we don’t have to know how it’s all going to unfold. Discipleship is a discipline, a perseverance supported by love and hope and trust. And when we are running low on those ingredients, we can turn again to God’s steadfast love and compassion and pray for faith, pray for trust, pray for hope. We might need to do that often.

John of Patmos calls himself our brother in this effort. He begins his letter to the churches with, “I, John, your brother and companion in the suffering and kingdom and patient endurance that are ours in Jesus” (Revelation 1:9, NIV). Some translations replace “suffering” with “persecution.” Some translations omit the word “patient” as a descriptor of “endurance.”

Translation matters very much, of course, and I want to talk about this word “endurance,” or “patient endurance.” This translation gives the connotation of passivity, in a way similar to how the word martyr could be understood to be a passive giving up of one’s life.

But some scholars say that a better translation of “patient endurance” would be “persistent resistance” to anything that undermines life and wholeness and unity and love. Dr. Blount quotes one scholar who writes that, “It is in fact closer to absolute intransigence, unbending determination, an iron will, the capacity to endure persecution, torture, and death without yielding one’s faith. It is one of the fundamental attributes of nonviolent resistance” (Blount, p. 254).

Dr. Blount then calls it “obstinate faith in God’s direction of human history” and notes that this was an important part of the nonviolent civil rights movement in the United States, as people responded to God’s call. They worked for, or testified to, God’s vision for the world.

Blount reminds us that, “many leaders and followers of the movement endured social ostracism, political persecution, police brutality, and even death with a resolve born of faith to continue the fight against segregation no matter the consequences because of their belief that ultimately God, not the beast of racism, was Lord” (Blount, p. 255).

We rightly quote Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., from his powerful speech at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963, but other speeches were given that day as well. The Honorable John Lewis of blessed memory was also there and gave a call to action.

He said, “We all recognize the fact that if any radical social, political, and economic changes are to take place in our society, the people, the masses, must bring them about. In the struggle, we must seek more than civil rights; we must work for the community of love, peace, and true brotherhood. Our minds, souls, and hearts cannot rest until freedom and justice exist for all people” (John Lewis, sourced at “Two Versions of John Lewis’s Speech,” billmoyers.com)

Today’s scripture portion says that the Lamb becomes the shepherd. Through Jesus’ earthly life, he showed us how to act, even if it results in suffering and death. And through his resurrection, he shows us that all will be well in the end.

The suffering isn’t what saves us. God does not want us to suffer. What saves us is holding on to that vision of the great multitude and following in their footsteps, testifying to the power and the ultimacy of God.

What saves us is trusting in God’s creation and God’s vision of a community and a unity of people from every nation, from all tribes and people and languages being together.

What saves us is letting Christ, the Lamb of God, be our shepherd and our guide. Following him we begin to conquer injustice by nonviolent means. Following him our very lives become a witness to his love, his capacity, his power, his trust. When we follow him, all the angels may join their voices with ours, singing blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might to our God forever and ever! Amen.