I Am Avoiding Taking My Written Theology Exam...

...and so I thought I'd post this pie chart from theologygrams. It's an oldie but a goody. Never get tired of it.

Sermon [with audio]: "Worthy is the Lamb"

Delivered at Rainbow Mennonite Church, Kansas City, KS
April 14, 2013.

Scripture: Revelation 5:11–14

In May of 1757, a promising and precocious 35-year-old poet and writer by the name of Christopher Smart was committed by his father-in-law to St. Luke’s Hospital for Lunatics in Bethnal Green, London. Though it was initially intended that Smart would only stay for a short while, the conditions of the sanitarium ultimately took their toll on his mental health, and he would spend the remainder of his life in and out of what were in those days called “madhouses.” Smart’s condition was marked by frequent periods of prolonged religious ecstasy, and he was often seen wandering the streets alone or cradling his cat Jeoffry. Over the course of many years of deplorable living conditions, his health steadily declined. This was back before the days of counseling, psychiatry, and mood-altering medication. In one of his poems, Smart wrote of his “caretakers”: “For they work on me with their harping-irons, which is a barbarous instrument, because I am more unguarded than others.”

He was eventually released from the asylum in 1763, spending seven short years in freedom before some previous financial debts caught up with him and he was arrested in 1770. He was imprisoned early in January 1771, but succumbed to pneumonia alone in his cell just a few months later in May of that same year. He died miserable and utterly alone, abandoned by his family.

Over the course of four years between 1759 and 1763, during his confinement, Smart penned seven hefty fragments of poetry that later came to be collectively known as Jubilate Agno, or Rejoice in the Lamb, which went unpublished until 1939, almost 200 years after its composition. At first glance, Jubilate Agno appears to be little more than the frenetic ramblings of a seminary student gone mad. However, a close reading reveals Smart’s mastery of liturgical style—being himself a high church Anglican—in addition to some fine wordplay. Still, with all of its liturgical grandeur, the poem reeks of mental, emotional, and spiritual anguish.

The lengthy poem is written in a sprawling call-and-response form, and begins on a cosmically tremendous note:

Rejoice in God, O ye tongues!

Give the glory to the Lord and the Lamb,

nations and languages and every creature

in which is the breath of life!
Let man and beast appear before him

and magnify his name together!

The most striking thing about this poem to me is the sheer joy welling up in Smart’s writing through the depths of his despair. Though his family had left him, though he was under great financial stress, though his health was failing and though everyone around him thought he was a fool, Smart found hope in his cat Jeoffrey. He found hope in the characters of the Old Testament, found hope in the apocalyptic image of the lamb, and found himself in a state of mind that allowed him not only to rejoice in the lamb himself, but to envision all of creation joining in with him, even as his own caregivers beat him with iron tools.

Like Jubilate Agno, the Book of Revelation emerged at a time when the Johannine community—the group of early Christians for whom it was written—was under an extreme amount of duress, persecution, and hopelessness. Revelation is not a book that was ever intended to “predict” the future, to be milked into a profitable series of 16 novels, or to be made into a really bad Kirk Cameron movie. Instead, this “apocalypse,” or “revelation” was written as a polemic against the Roman Empire, but also as a message of hope to those Christians suffering at the hands of Caesar. These Christians not only suffered the violence of physical persecution, but also the indignity of what appeared to be their philosophical error—this was almost a century after Christ; surely God was not coming back to establish God’s reign on earth if it hadn’t already happened by now.

And then John has this vision. This revelation.

To get you up to speed with where we are today: John is whisked away to heaven in a vision, and at one point he sees this scroll, and all of heaven is mourning because no one can break the seal on this scroll that holds the great mystery of the universe. But then, just as the Revelator himself begins to weep, he hears a lion roar with a ferocious bellow. But when he turns, he sees not a lion, but in fact a little slaughtered lamb. Now, the lamb is slain, but for some reason is yet alive—still bears the marks of his wounds from death—and stands in the presence of the throne of God. And it is seemingly because of these wounds that the Lamb is “worthy.”

But I want to draw your attention to what exactly the Lamb is worthy of:

[Read Revelation 5:11–12]

Power, wealth, wisdom, might, honor, glory, blessing—what’s wrong with this picture? The slaughtered lamb has none of these things. Even as all creation is singing its praise, the bloody, mangled, victimized lamb is the very definition of weakness, of poverty, of foolishness, of dishonor. The real, proper response for such a sight should be laughter, not praise. And yet, the lamb is the only one with the power to open the scroll, and ultimately the only one with the authority to establish God’s reign on earth as it is in heaven. A place of justice and mercy, where the trees grow leaves for the healing of the nations.

See, the Lamb defies our worldly expectations of glory and redefines these terms. No longer is power defined by politics and intimidation, but now by humility and self-sacrifice. No longer is wealth associated with monetary gain—what would the lamb need with money?—but now by poverty, empathy, and by love. No longer are might and honor defined by getting the upper hand against someone and forcing others to submit to your will, but instead by binding up the broken hearted and by setting the captives free. No longer is wisdom defined by gray hairs, by theologizin’ and philosophizin’, but now by the very foolishness of the cross. Just as Jesus in the Gospels heralds the reign of God as the anti-Rome—where we turn the other cheek after being struck, where we walk the extra mile when forced to carry the gear of our oppressors, where the poor are exalted and the rich are sent away empty-handed—so do these anti-values become values under the Reign of God. We look for Jesus expecting a lion, instead we get a lamb.

And it is in the lamb’s weakness that we see true strength.

One of my favorite movies when I was a kid was the 1984 film, The Neverending Story. In the movie, there’s a character called the Rock Biter, whom the hero Atreyu encounters early on. The Rock Biter is called the Rock Biter because he is basically this giant mountain with arms and legs and a face, who eats rocks (which is kind of weird, if you think about it) and rides around on a big stone bike, and he has these tiny friends that travel with him—a guy with a “racing snail” and a guy who rides around on the back of a giant bat. But at the end of the movie, when an approaching darkness of nonexistence known as the Nothing is eating up everything in its path and threatens to rip the world apart, Atreyu runs into Rock Biter once again, and this time, he sits alone, staring at his hands that are as big as houses, waiting for the world to end. “They look like good, strong hands, don’t they?” the Rock Biter says. “My little friends. I couldn’t hold onto them. The Nothing pulled them right out of my hands. I failed.” The Rock Biter’s admission is one of the most empathetic, heartbreaking moments of the whole film, because we look at this giant mountain of a creature, we see his monumental strength, and yet in his inability to save his friends we see something of ourselves—we see our own weakness and vulnerability. How many friendships have we let slip through our fingers because of things we have done or haven’t done? How many loved ones have died of illness, despite our best efforts to take care of them? How many times have we failed, picked ourselves up, and failed again?

Canadian theologian Jean Vanier says that “the greatness of humanity is that we are programmed to become weaker, that we all ultimately become conscious of our own fragility.” When we fully reveal ourselves to one another in all our brokenness, we catch a glimpse of Christ. We catch a glimpse of the lamb who redefines weakness as power, poverty as wealth, foolishness as wisdom, frailty as might.

In our weakness, we find strength in one another. In our despair, we find joy. In our brokenness, we encounter God.

So we see in this passage that the Book of Revelation doesn’t predict the future. It eternally informs the present.

Like the Rock Biter who finally has to admit his own weakness, like those who praise the upside-down values of the Lamb in John’s vision, and like Christopher Smart, who discovered joy even in his suffering, we must find each other in our vulnerability. It’s just like in our celebration of the Eucharist—we not only recognize Christ’s brokenness in participating in the Lord’s Supper; we recognize that breaking the bread together in some way recalls our own brokenness before one another. And in that mutuality is power. We see that in Christ’s brokenness, we are to follow suit.

The emblem of the Moravian Church is the image of a slaughtered lamb surrounded by the motto: Vicit agnus noster, eum sequamur. “Our Lamb has conquered, let us follow him.”

Let us follow the Lamb into weakness.

Let us follow the Lamb into vulnerability in our relationships with one another.

Let us follow the Lamb into the spiritual poverty that cultivates true humility.

Let us follow the Lamb into the Lamb into the community of the broken.

And may we all join those myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands in the unending cosmic hymn of praise for the foolishness of Christ.

Interpreting the NT with Coins

My first post at Near Emmaus has just gone up, and I encourage you to go check it out, if New Testament interpretation is your thing. It involves ancient coins, Revelation, and the mark of the beast.

Hope that whets your appetite.

Numismatics: An Underutilized Tool for NT Interpretation?

John's Revelation, Bonhoeffer's Germany, and Our America—Guest Post By Lawrence Garcia

Around the turn of the first-century, several congregations in Asia Minor received a letter from a grey-haired and banished Apostle John who, at that moment, was a resident of the island of Patmos. No doubt they had received Johannine correspondence before, but this one was different. This letter functioned more like a gateway to another world, with John himself playing the role of mediating host. It would not be long after they had taken up residence within John’s visionary escapade that they would realize they weren’t in another world per se but rather their own world, albeit from a different perspective. This was home—Ephesus, Smyrna, and Pergamum—this was Asia Minor.

The torrent of images all had their points of contact with aspects of daily Greco-Roman life and history: the wounded and healed head of the beast recalled the recent rumor of Nero redivivus, the prostitute on the beast had its correspondence with the Magna Mater, the goddess Cybele worshiped in the area, and Babylon’s opulence that depicted all too well the wealthy aristocrats situated on Rome’s posh Palatine Hill. Thus, it is in this sense that John’s letter is an “apocalypse”, that is, a removal of the veil exposing what was previously hidden.  According to the revelator, the particular reality that was being unmasked was that of the Emperor Cult and its ubiquitous propaganda which the churches seem to have accepted as truth. Dio Cassius, a contemporary of John wrote:

“At that time Caesar was attending to general matters, and he permitted the establishment of precincts to Rome and to [his] father Caesar—calling him the hero Julius—in Ephesos and in Nicea, for these were the most distinguished cities of Asia and in Bithynia respectively. He ordered the Romans who settled among them to honor these two. But he allowed the Hellenes—to concentrate precincts to him, the Asians in Pergamum and the Bithynians in Nicomedia… Yet even there (Rome), various god-like honors are given after his death to those who rule uprightly; and heroic shrines are built to them.”[1] (emphasis added)

The bestowal of divine honors upon the emperor, coupled with the erection of imperial shrines, had its very beginnings in Asia Minor, which happens to be the locus of all seven churches. This is not a connection to be merely glossed over in a mad rush to have the book tell us all we want to know about the end of the world.  Such a shallow reading is ruled out of court, precisely because the parodying of Roman-imperial propaganda that can be witnessed throughout Revelation was designed to reveal the true nature of the empire itself at that exact point in history. Small wonder then that the letter asks of its recipients to “Hear what the Spirit says to the churches,” for it would demand that they open their hearts and minds to this startling alternate reality. One commentator sums it up well:

“Revelation is a call to have faith in God rather than empire. This call takes place in a narrative through which John tells of his visionary experiences… This plot is the story of YHWH’s plan for the people who live in a world dominated by concentrations of human power. The Biblical Story of a people called to be ‘set apart’ from power arrangements that characterized Egypt, Canaan, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome.”[2]

So in the light of John’s vivid drama, Rome’s military glory, its material prosperity, and its forms of justice and peace were shown forth to be nothing more than a ravaging of the earth, blatant economic exploitation, and raw violence and bloodshed.   Thus, the churches in Asia Minor were to renounce their allegiance to Rome, see Rome for what she really was, and “follow the Lamb wherever he goes.”  In light of this realization, they would find the Lamb’s way of conquering not by way of martial victory, but rather, that of blood-stained love.

Undoubtedly, John’s creative way of unmasking empire would have proved invaluable in the churches continued struggle to not be absorbed into the wider imperialistic culture—a struggle endured from the days of Constantine to our own.  Perhaps the struggle is due to our susceptibility as human beings to be shaped by the constant bombardment of imperial propaganda?  For those in Asia Minor, absorption occurred by way of imperial temples, altars, coins, festivals, and inscriptions, all serving to legitimate the divine status of Roma Aeterna (Rome eternal).  And closer to our own time, such as exemplified in the early twentieth-century by Hitler’s propaganda machine, as Erwin Lutzer, states:

“Hitler believed that books could never bring about a revolution; only the spoken word, delivered by a person who could convert them to a radical agenda. He said that when you want to tear down a world and build another in its place you must first separate the supporters and the members. The function was to attract supporters, and change people’s minds so that they would be in agreement with the aims and the philosophies of the movement.”[3]

Lutzer continues to site Hitler’s Mien Kampf which is worth quoting:

“The first task of propaganda is to win people for subsequent organization… The second task of propaganda is the disruption of the existing state of affairs and the permeation of this state of affairs with the new doctrine, while the second task of the organization must be the struggle for power, thus to achieve the final success.”

We can only speculate, but could the mass murder of millions of innocents have been averted if the largely German Christian nation would have “heard and obeyed” John’s call to resist uncritical allegiance to Empire?  In his book, Authentic Faith: Theological Ethics in Context, Heinz Eduard Tödt recalls Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s (one of the few German Protestants to actively resist Hitler) reflection on social “stupidity” in the face of power:

“Bonhoeffer knew that what he saw was not obvious to all. His surprising thesis in the section on stupidity [Dummheit] is that stupidity ‘is not an intellectual defect,’ and ‘not so much a psychological problem as a sociological problem… On closer examination, it appears that every strong external exhibition of power, be it political or religious, stupefies a large section of people.’ Under the ‘overwhelming impression of exhibition of power,’ people often lose their ‘inner independence’ and refrain from ‘finding an authentic way of responding to the given circumstance of life’.”[4](174)

Bonhoeffer’s analysis of society’s “Dummheit” in the face of impressive displays of power characterizes the failures in Asia Minor vis-à-vis Rome, and in Germany vis-à-vis Hitler.  Indeed, seductive displays of power need apocalyptic visions to counteract these stupefying effects of imperial propaganda. Thus at this point  it can become all too easy, as we stand from our perspective at the precipice of history, to critique those in Asia Minor who colluded with the imperial cult, while also passing judgment on those German Christians who signed oaths of allegiance to Hitler, silently stepping aside and standing by as he “Cleansed the Land.”  Engaging as it were from a superior perspective while ignoring the question of whether or not we in America today, in something of a Constantian power paradigm, are likewise  blindly following the pro-military propaganda that allows our government to advance its agendas unhindered.  I suggest that it is vital for us to begin reading John’s apocalypse in light of our current situation, especially as our government maintains a constant idle of fear and power that it might quickly rev-up new military ventures by employing the familiar rhetorical tactics put to effective use by Rome and Germany. We would do well to heed the warnings of the apostolic visionary, lest we also be condemned by history for refusing to “Hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches”.

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[1] Dio Cassius 51.20.6-9 Translation by Loeb.

[2] Wes Howard-Brook, Anthony Gwyther, “Unveiling Empire: Reading Revelation Then and Now,” (Orbis Books: Maryknoll, NY, 1999), pg 23.

[3] Erwin W. Lutzer, “When A Nation Forgets God: 7 Lessons We Must Learn From Nazi Germany,” (Moody Publishers: Chicago, IL, 2010), pgg 76-77.

[4] Hienz Eduard Tödt, “Authentic Faith: Bonhoeffer’s Theological Ethics in Context,” (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.: Grand Rapids, MI, 1993), pg 174.