John told me I didn’t have to start writing his till this morning. After all, if the end of the world were to have happened mid-week, I’d be off the hook. Though, it’s been pointed out that after this summer I may now be a bit of an expert on those left behind. And who better to talk about Armageddon and calamity and the end of the world than the youth pastor?
But what I want to focus on today first are maybe some of the things we dwell on a bit too much… and misconceptions we may have. What do you think of when you hear the term “Armageddon?” Do you think of fire and brimstone? Skies as dark as sackcloth and the moon as red as blood? Maybe the four horsemen of the apocalypse? Or even the 1990’s box office hit that was filmed at a time when oil drillers could play the team of unlikely protagonists saving the world from an asteroid?
John of Patmos relates a fairly intense and highly descriptive vision as recorded in the book of Revelation. It’s full of wildly popular imagery of death and destruction and animals and beasts and bowls and horns. Interestingly… the term “Armageddon” appears only once in the entirety of John’s book and there is great debate over what it even means. Some scholars think it’s a mountain, while others think it comes from ancient Hebrew words for “attack” or a “destroying mountain” referenced in other parts of the Old Testament. Regardless, both this word, Armageddon and the other vocabulary seem to play only a small part in his vision and yet so many of us know it. Armageddon, tribulation, rapture. There’s even a company, run by atheists, who provide a post-rapture pet care service so that you are insured someone will care for fluffy and spot when you are taken.
The vocabulary is all about our experience and familiarity as we glean from pop-culture. When I was a little kid, on rare special occasions, my father would drag his guitar out of the attic and play it. There were only a few songs he knew how to play that held any interest for me and my sister at our young age. At the age of four I walked by his guitar once in the hallway, saw it and remarked to myself in hearing range of my mother, “oh, Puff the Magic Dragon.” To me, that’s what a guitar was. It was an instrument that played a sad song about a dragon… not unlike the limited view many of us have of the book of Revelation.
I could just as easily have said the guitar was an octopus’s garden or secret agent man, as my father played those as well, but the point is that my understanding of a guitar and my understanding my father was limited by the experiences with which I was most familiar and had heard repeated the most. The artwork, the sermons, the book series and so forth about the book of Revelation all tend to focus on the sensational and gory parts of John’s revelation. The end times, the tribulation, the woes, the destruction, the Antichrist, and so on. But so much of what is contained in this book is different, and so much of it contains a vision of unity and peace and of hope.
Our passage today might not strike fear into your heart, but it should be incredibly inspiring and hopeful. I’d like to focus on three things in this passage that stand out. Firstly, how many believers stood before the throne… secondly, who was there… and lastly, what they are promised. How many? Who? What were they promised? To begin with… how many? The passage indicates that there were too many to count. For a man who could keep up with and write down that many sevens and could count at least as high as 144,000, it seems unlikely that here, early on in the vision, John is merely getting lazy with his arithmetic. This crowd is literally innumerable. Standing in their white robes… a symbol of victory… is a crowd he cannot count… Some scholars think this may be a reference to fulfilling the promise to Abraham that his descendants, his people would number like the stars.
It’s a common and well-loved idea that only a select few make it to the end or get into heaven and stand before the throne. If nothing else, humans love their exclusivity. A church of 144 people or a denomination of 144,000 righteous people is certainly easier for us to manage, but it’s simply non-biblical to think of so few people getting to stand before the throne… as the world ends. John makes it clear that a much larger number of people gain this privilege.
But who is present in John’s vision. Who is standing before the throne of the lamb here at the end of time? John says: Those from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages. This phrase is present in John’s Revelation five other times. This is not a General Assembly gathering of PC(USA) folk or an AME Zion conference or a lone mega church from Seattle or Korea. This is a gathering of every possible people, nation state and language group. This is a multitude that has no other commonality amongst them all but a belief in Jesus Christ as Lord.
I worked for a non-profit organization last summer in Richmond, Virginia that endeavored every day to bring about racial reconciliation in their community. My mentor pointed out to me that there’s one big reason many non-church-goers are unimpressed with Christianity. We, for the most part, gather on Sunday morning in groups of people like ourselves… the same racial backgrounds, cultural backgrounds, socio-economic backgrounds… and languages, worship God separately and apart and go about our lives unchanged. The most segregated hour in America is 11am on Sunday each week.
Who would be impressed by this as an outsider? Anyone can do that. You can do that at a country club or a community center. In the early Church, as recorded in Acts 6, they had the same problems with ethnicity and cultural groups. The Greeks, who were a Gentile minority group among the first Christians, came to the disciples, concerned that their people were being shorted when it came to distributing food. The disciples talked and prayed about it, knowing that these concerns were legitimate and that they would never be able to lead the Church if they had to constantly settle logistical concerns. They decided they would choose leaders to distribute the food. What I’d never realized until recently is how important were the names of those leaders listed. Reading it in English and out of their historical setting, it’s easy to miss the importance of those names. From Philip to Nicolaus, every name on the list is Greek. Every single person was a minority.
Now, while it is not uncommon in the book of Acts to end a successful event with a phrase about how God added to their numbers daily, and in this case, God did add to their numbers, what IS unusual is that this is the only time that priests were also converted. This evidence of unity, of true racial and cultural reconciliation was the greatest evangelistic effort imaginable. It was evident to them that true worship… that authenticity of the message of God for all people… was best conveyed when all of God’s people worshipped together. And here in Revelation, it truly is a gathering of all people, true and awe-inspiring worship.
Here, all of God’s people can worship together before the throne of the Lamb. Those many differences have become unimportant to all who believe and worship Christ. When the end comes, all becomes as God intended and all is reconciled. They are there before God, serving only God day and night and so they are promised that God will: shelter them with his presence. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst anymore; and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.
It’s easy for us in this day and age in a big city like Denver to be isolated from those who are truly hungry. At the most, if we don’t go seek them out, we may see them on a street corner with a cardboard sign. But there are hundreds of hungry and malnourished children in Denver alone. And it’s even less likely any of us will come across someone who has no access to water or even clean water, but if you’ve ever gone on a mission trip or with Greg on a Healing Waters trip, you know just what a real concern that is to so many millions of people today… the suffering that causes. It’s incredibly humbling to know just how great that suffering is, but perhaps even more incredible will be the day of hope when absolutely no one will hunger or thirst as they stand before the throne. The day when all physical suffering is gone… and we are protected… and not one child suffers from hunger or thirst… this will be the end of time of which John speaks.
But it is also the emotional pain that will cease on that day. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes. In no way are any of us isolated from the emotional pain that illicit tears. Each of us experience loss, tragedy and pain. So this verse is perhaps among the most powerful parts of that promise for each of us. My Hebrew professor in seminary once told us of a student in his class at a university. Her name was Jessie. In talking with her mother on the phone about her progress at the midterm, he suggested some study skills and that attending class regularly would benefit her the most. As their conversation ended, Jessie’s mother asked if he was the same Carson who signed the VA Benefits forms for students who had lost a parent in the line of duty. In fact, he was.
Jessie’s father had been a pilot, she explained and while she knew almost nothing of how he died, she took comfort in knowing it had apparently been quick. Her last memory of all of them together was in the park, Jessie being carried high on her father’s shoulders under a cloudless sky. Well, Jessie’s attendance improved after the break but soon returned to its original pattern. When she did come, she would take notes for a few minutes and then rest her head, seemingly very tired. It was clear that she was not well-liked by her classmates.
Just before exam time, they had their final class. The topic of the lecture was this passage in Revelation. Jessie, never having asked a question all semester raised her hand, and did not wait for my professor to call on her. “The verse,” she asked, looking around nervously at her peers. “That verse about God drying every tear… Does that mean every tear from that time on… or that God will go back into all of time and find every tear and dry all of them, too?”
A very bright and popular student on the front row rolled her eyes, checked her watch and hunkered down into her seat frowning. The rest of the class lapsed into murmurs and chortles. My professor racked his brain, considering historical context and the resistance to apocalyptic literature to linear interpretation and so on. Then he thought about that conversation with Jessie’s mother. My professor fumbled for an answer that he was sure was nothing more than the most polite way to address her and conclude class quickly. However, the next week, he put Jessie’s question on the final exam as extra credit, augmented by technical terms and literary and historical mumbo jumbo. Only two students attempted to answer it.
Jessie wrote the following: I called my mom and told her my religion professor didn’t really answer the only question I had all semester. I told her it was more like you talked about what you hoped the answer would be. My mom said that for some kinds of questions in life it might count more what you hope the answer is than if you have it all figured out. Do you think she is right?
She went on to talk about her father and her last memory with him in the park, flying high on his shoulders, much as her mother had told it. Then she said: I don’t know the answer to this question, professor. I really don’t. But I know what I hope the answer is. I know what I hope. Is that worth any points? …I think I really need this extra credit to pass this course. I’m transferring home next semester. I need as many classes as possible to transfer.
The only other person to answer this question was the bright popular girl on the front row. She of course wrote a brilliant exposition… literary and historical context… syntax and grammar and genre. She said that these texts “seem to be dipped in a special coating that makes them resistant to simple answers…” referring to Jessie, and that, “These writings deal not in the currency of verifiable fact, but in the currency of hope.” A currency of hope.
As she concluded her essay, she wrote: I know my answer is a good one… You know I don’t need any extra credit… please consider giving my credit to the student in the back row, the one who slept most of the time and who kept us late that day she asked this question that seemed to shake you so badly. I bet she needs it. I want her to have it. I think maybe so do you. I think I saw what you thought when a lot of us laughed.”
My professor told us that he didn’t know what became of either student or what caused this bright popular girl to descend from obscenity to compassion… but he did know… what he hoped. I myself don’t know whether you should be pre-trib or post-trib, how or if the rapture will occur. I don’t know if all the creatures and beasts and horns and plagues are literal or figurative. I don’t know what Armageddon means for sure. I don’t know how the end of the world will unfold, and I don’t believe anyone else does either. I do know who will be there at the end though, and that all peoples of all nations will be there and that we are promised God’s protection, and that there will be no more hunger, no more thirst and God will wipe every tear. And I know what I hope.
Let us pray…
Read this for the 100th time today: Listen... no one ever learned anything by talking.
