LIVING INTO THE RESURRECTION 1

Revelation 1:4-8; John 20:19-31

2nd Sunday of Easter, April 24, 2022

Pastor Ritva H Williams

Last Sunday — Easter Sunday — I shared with you Adam Braun’s insight that the resurrection of Christ is both a fact to affirm and a call to live into. As we move through the season of Eastertide our scripture readings will lead us in exploring what it means to live into the resurrection of Christ. This year, alongside the gospel lessons we have six readings from the book of Revelation. 

Now on a first reading, the book of Revelation is decidedly strange, weird, and even bizarre. There are those who make a living scaring uninformed readers by spinning paranoid fantasies of revenge and destruction. In doing so they miss the whole point of the book of Revelation. 

To set the stage for what we can learn about living into the resurrection from the book of Revelation there are three things we need to know.

1. The book of Revelation contains the writings of a man named John (1:1, 4, 9; 22:8), possibly John the son of Zebedee, one of the twelve apostles. John was a native of the Holy Land who sought asylum in the Roman province of Asia (modern Turkey) in the wake of the first Jewish-Roman War (66-73 CE). At the time of writing he was in prison on the island of Patmos — a kind of Roman Alcatraz that housed the Roman Empire’s prisoners of state. From his prison, John sends letters to the seven churches he oversees in the Roman province of Asia (modern Turkey). Those letters make up the book of Revelation. The closest modern analogy we have is Dr Martin Luther King Jr’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”

2. The recipients of John’s letters were Christ-followers in the cities of Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea. Many of them were refugees and immigrants, speaking Greek as a second language. Others were long time residents drawn from diverse ethnic groups. They had different ideas about how to live out their commitment to Christ, e.g. some refused to eat meat from pagan sacrifices, others did not; some had women leaders, others did not. What they all had in common was that they were a minority within the dominant culture, viewed with suspicion and hostility by their neighbors who worshipped the many gods of the ancient world, and even by other Jewish and Christ-following groups. In his letters, John praises the churches for their faithfulness to Christ, he urges them to resist assimilation into the ideology of the dominant Roman Empire, and encourages them to stand fast in the face of harassment and even lethal violence. 

3. John’s letters were gathered together into at the book with a Greek title — Apokalysis — from which we get the word “apocalypse.” John’s letters and the visions he records are NOT predictions of the end of the world. The Greek word apokalysis means to unveil or unmask, to show what lies underneath the surface. Apokalypis shows us what we’re not seeing. It is like reading The Creation of Patriarchy or White Fragility. Apocalyptic is prophetic in the biblical sense of speaking against dominant cultures that oppress the most vulnerable and seek to take the place of God. Revelation’s vision of Jesus is meant to unmask what is really going on so that John’s audience can sustain itself and its integrity in over against a hostile and oppressive dominant culture.

So what is the secret of survival for John’s audience? 

Our reading begins with John speaking on behalf of the source of his apocalypse: God, the seven spirits before God’s throne, and Jesus Christ. God is described as the one who is and who was and who is to come, spanning all of time past, present and future. The Alpha and Omega, the beginning and end of all things. The seven spirits are the seven archangels: Michael, Gabriel, Uriel, Raphael, Selaphiel, Raguel, and Barachiel. Jesus Christ, like God, has three titles. Faithful witness recognizes Jesus’ past role in proclaiming the message of God even when it led to his crucifixion. First born of the dead recognizes Christ’s present status as vindicated and victorious by his resurrection.  Ruler of the kings of the earth points to Christ’s future role as universal sovereign. Christ mirrors God as the one who was, who is and who is coming. 

The amazing, incredibly good news is that this eternal being who holds the stars in his right hand, loves us. Christ loves us and frees us from the power of sin. To be freed from the power of sin means that we are not defined by our own past decisions or mistakes. We are not defined by the ways that others have hurt us. We are not defined by social systems that try to define who we can be. The fact that Christ loves and frees us from the power of sin means that we can choose alternatives. We can turn away from destructive attitudes and values and let them die, in order to take up new living-giving practices and ways of being. Christ has made us a kingdom of priests serving God, a community of faith where each of is invited to know, live and share the love of Christ with each other, and with our neighbors. 

Our gospel lesson shows us how to live into this resurrection reality of being Christ’s beloved people freed to choose love of God and neighbor as our way of life. The risen Christ tells his disciples, “As God has sent me, so I send you. Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained” (John 20:23). The last part of that verse — if you retain the sins of any, they are retained — makes no sense. As Professor Sandra Schneiders insists, “it is hardly conceivable that Jesus, [who is] sent to take away the sin of the world, commissioned his disciples to perpetuate sin by the refusal of forgiveness.” She points out that in the original Greek this phrase actually reads “whomever you hold fast (or embrace), they are held fast [they are embraced by God].” 

The second part of our Gospel lesson shows us what this looks like. We see Thomas holding fast in spite of his doubt. He remains within the community of disciples. He trusts them, he relies on them even if he doesn’t have any experience of his own to compare to theirs. We see the community of disciples continuing to embrace Thomas and hold him fast in spite of his doubt. They trust and rely on Christ’s promise that anyone they hold fast, anyone they embrace will also be held fast and embraced by Christ.  Christ appears again a week later so that Thomas can personally see, hear, and touch the living Christ. We see Christ holding Thomas fast, embracing him through his doubt into new faith. 

Please pray with me:

Eternal God-Christ-HolySpirit, help us live into the resurrection by holding fast to your love for us and for all people. Purge those of us who are privileged of our sense of superiority and lead us to embrace our neighbors who are different, who are discriminated against, who are vulnerable to abuse or violence. Help us to hold fast to each other through disagreement, sickness, and grief. Remind us daily that you love each and every one of us, and your holding us fast is the source of new life for all of us. Amen.