Sunday, November 25, 2018

The Faithful Witness



John 18:33-37
33Then Pilate entered the headquarters again, summoned Jesus, and asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” 34Jesus answered “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?” 35Pilate replied, “I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done?” 36Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not from this world, If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.” 37Pilate asked him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice."

This is the Word of the LORD
Thanks be to God

Revelation 1:4b-8
4Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne, 5and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.

To him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, 6and made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.

7Look! He is coming with the clouds; every eye will see him, even those who pierced him; and on his account all the tribes of the earth will wail. So it is to be. Amen.

8”I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.

This is the Word of the LORD
Thanks be to God.


I have, on the computer in my study, a document containing all the sermons I have preached over the past 16 years. Homilies from Youth Sundays growing up, occasional supply preaching in college, preaching classes in Seminary, more regular supply preaching while I was searching for this call, and then the past four and a half years as the Pastor of our beloved family of faith.

I’ve got all those sermon combined into one document so that I can search, and see when I used that one illustration, or which sermon has that great line from a commentary I want to quote again. It is currently 949 pages long, and contains 433,731 words. That’s a lot of preaching.

In that time, sixteen years, a thousand pages, almost half a million words, I have never once preached a sermon focusing on a passage from the book of Revelation. I’ve only referenced the book three times, the first was on April 24th, 2016 where it was the supporting passage in a sermon called “Simple and Easy,” reflecting on Jesus’s commandment to love one another. The second was last December, where I referenced the Hallelujah chorus’s quotation of Revelation as an example of taking things slowly to give opportunity to experience Sabbath Joy. The third was March 18th of this year, where I paired it with a passage from Ezekiel 36 as part of our Lenten series on the Babylonian Exile.

Now, as the church year comes to a close with Christ the King Sunday, so too does my avoidance of the Revelation of Jesus Christ to John.

There's a morbid kind of fascination with the end times, and it rears its beastly head every time Revelation, or other apocalyptic literature, comes up. People expect predictions for the future, hellfire and damnation, and a spiritual fervor that casts people out into the aisles, slain in the Spirit.

That’s not how we do. Revelation has been used to intimidate and abuse churches for at least the past two centuries, probably longer. Revelation is intended, however, to be a reassurance of the promises of God. A reassurance that no matter how bad things get right now, in this life, God has already won in the end. “Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come.” Grace and peace, not judgment and wrath.

The community who first read Revelation was “experiencing faith-quenching distress of some kind, including violence and persecution. The exact source of persecution is unknown, but it is most likely a local conflict rather than a more generalized and widespread Roman campaign.” The Gospel assured them of grace, but they did not know reliable peace. Every act of faith was a struggle against the currents of culture that  were trying to wash them out. 

We’re reading this late into 2018. We’re not under faith-quenching distress, violence and persecution permeate our sinful culture, but it rarely focuses on Christians the way the first readers of Revelation experienced it. Instead, our culture is eroding the church’s influence by treating us as mostly harmless. That brings its own set of challenges, and reading Revelation as prediction and judgment against unbelievers doesn’t help with those challenges any more than reading it that way would have ended the persecution of those to whom it was written.

What Revelation did to help that early struggling church it still does for struggling churches in 2018. It shows us who God is: “Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.” Jesus Christ, who has firsthand knowledge of who God is, who died and rose again, who has been given all authority on heaven on earth, is Lord. Jesus Christ, “who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.” Revelation reassures that God’s promises are trustworthy even though the world may be ignoring us into oblivion. “In [Revelation’s] apocalyptic vision, parallel lines eventually meet, and the triumph of heaven becomes and earthly victory.” What is Truth in heaven will overwrite what is questioned on earth, because Christ has already died, has already risen, and we know that he will come again.

“Look! He is coming with the clouds; every eye will see him, even those who pierced him; and on his account all the tribes of the earth will wail.”

Jesus is coming, and he’s coming for us, we church people whom he has made into a kingdom. We disciples whom he has made into priests serving his God and Father, and when he comes every eye will see him.

We talked at length about verse seven at lunch bunch this week. That’s the that stuck out to folks as I read it. At first glance, we jumped on the wailing of the nonbelievers as their worldview collapses. But all the tribes of the earth will wail, which means us too. This tribe of believers will see Jesus and will join the wailing for a different reason. Believers wail because we could and should have done better. Maybe the world is ignoring us, and treating us as mostly harmless, because we have not been faithful witnesses. We have changed our testimony to suit our needs, and have served our own comfort, rather than serving God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Maybe when Jesus comes, believers wail because we, of all people, should know better than to persist in the sin that corrupts the world, and yet we cannot help it.

Revelation tells us of when Jesus returns to put all things right, even the wrongs for which we believers are responsible. But the coming judgment is not to be feared, because it is cleaning the toxins out of our souls. “[John] knows that Christian existence is not innocent existence, but forgiven existence.” We know we are forgiven, and so we can live lives that show that Christ is the king, not we ourselves.

We know that when Christ comes and all eyes see him, we don’t flee from wrath, we come to the table. It is here we encounter our risen Lord, it is here that we recognize that Christ who was still is, and is to come again. We come to this table because every time we eat of this bread or drink of this cup, we proclaim his saving death until he comes. We comes to this table because we are guests invited. We are beloved members of God’s own household, and even though we may not be the most faithful witnesses all the time, we are brought in by the one who is the faithful witness.


Therefore, in response to all that God has done to us, let us crown that faithful witness with many crowns until our songs of praise drown out our wailing sinfulness. God is the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end and is coming to make all things good again, as it was in the beginning until the days when it ever shall be. Alleluia, Amen.

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