The Question Posed by Praise ~ Psalm 8

Thought before worship: “Let your mind roam through the whole creation, everywhere the created world will cry out to you: ‘God made me.’ . . . Go round the heavens again and back to the earth, leave out nothing; on all sides everything cries out to you of its Author; nay the very forms of created things are as it were the voices with which they praise their Creator.” ~ Augustine of Hippo

Psalm 8  (NRSV)     1 O Lord, our Sovereign,     how majestic is your name in all the earth!    You have set your glory above the heavens.     2 Out of the mouths of babes and infants     you have founded a bulwark because of your foes,     to silence the enemy and the avenger.      3 When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,     the moon and the stars that you have established;     4 what are human beings that you are mindful of  them,       mortals that you care for them?      5 Yet you have made them a little lower than God,       and crowned them with glory and honor.     6 You have given them dominion over the works of your hands;     you have put all things under their feet,     7 all sheep and oxen,     and also the beasts of the field,     8 the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea,     whatever passes along the paths of the seas.     9 O Lord, our Sovereign,     how majestic is your name in all the earth!

In our confirmation family night a few weeks ago, a thoughtful parent asked an arresting question, “Why should we read the Old Testament? And how should we do it? Isn’t it something that no longer applies?” I stumbled my way through an answer that I hope had meaning – I’m not sure. And while today’s sermon won’t directly answer that question per se I hope that by engaging this passage from the OT we might gain some insight as to why we need it. Psalm 8, of course, has much to teach us about praise.

     1.      Praise is a wide-eyed orientation toward all that exists. It is to inhabit a universe in which every inch bears God’s name.

We praise God, in other words, not simply when we address him directly in worship but when we thankfully acknowledge the earth is a good thing – a God thing, God’s creative power at work all around us. It’s when we realize that to put our hand to the gravelly ground, tousle the hair of a giggling child, or rub the back of an elderly friend, is to touch a spiritual thing. Praising God isn’t only singing artful words but also can happen while eating a fresh watermelon, skipping a smooth stone across placid water, gazing at an enormous redwood, studying for a test, investigating the frenetic march of ant, or sitting at the bedside of a sick and dying and friend, and saying “majestic.” Praising God is to see all that exists as God’s and all that God has intimately made as wonderful – he used his fingers, the Psalmist tells us.

That phrase “the work of your fingers” reveals God’s “hands-on nature” in the act of creation. God did not merely utter orders and leave someone else to do the work, but became personally involved in the most delicate and intricate way. His own attention to detail is what truly gives it its majestic character and we can see him in his handiwork. Jesus often used creation to speak about God’s identity and activity – “Consider the lilies of the field, he said . . . Look at the birds of the air.” The creator is witnessed in the creation. We know this to be true - why else do we cover our refrigerators with the art of children? Both Jesus and the Psalmist use the present tense to speak of God’s relationship to creation. It’s a reminder that God is always creating, God is the One who sustains creation, God is being itself. Even now, Paul writes, God “gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist” (Rom. 4:17).

Praising God is about recognizing “the earth is the Lord’s and everything in it.” That “everything” refers to nature but also our whole lives – spirituality, vocation, ideas, culture, etc. The spirituality of the Bible over and over repeats an idea that I want you to pay close attention to this morning. At the heart of biblical faith is the belief that our life with God, our life with others, and our life in this world are one life. Me – I tend to have 50 fragmented, frantic lives – my home life, prayer life, work life, married life, parent life and the Psalmists breaks in and says, “No.” There is only one life and it’s a life that is spiritually-earthy in praise to the One who has made you. This means that living into your vocation - your job - is spiritual task, a holy thing. Praise is who we are and what we do – a vocation that manifests itself in a spirit of caring for all that God has made, e.g. shamar – “to keep” (Gen 2:15) is the mandate from God to us in the garden and God for us in Numbers 6:24.

Our stained glass with oak trees reminds us that what we do here is to lead us out there. “in all the earth” means that proper praise should always lead us outside these walls and that all that happens outside these walls is in God’s sights.

          2. Praising God is the recognition that we are created “glorious”

To praise God is to reverse the funnel of your life. Praising God shouldn’t lead you into more narrow, private, secret spaces of intimacy but into wider, broader, more spacious ones. It will make us ask, like the Psalmist, in the midst of such greatness, such expanse, who are we to God? Amidst all this jubilance the question posed by praise sounds almost despairing. How can we matter to God that’s that big, that majestic? Who are we to that God?

This was more than an idle question for the Psalmist and the world he lived in. More importantly, most of the world in which he lived had a different story – not the story of Genesis but the Enuma Elish.

It was the dominant story of the fertile crescent for at least a thousand years that spoke of creation as a battle between gods (parents vs. children) in which the universe was created by the winner Marduk out of the remains of his mother Tiamat. Afterwards Marduk decided to create human beings, “He shall be charged with the service of the gods that they might be at ease!”

To that story the Psalmist gives a resounding “no.” That’s not the way it is, that’s not who we are, that’s not how the world works, that’s not this God. The Christian farmer theologian Wendell Berry writes, “Stories create our world. The significance – and ultimately the quality – of the work we do is determined by our understanding of the story in which we are taking part.”

In response the Psalmist gives a startling confession: verses 3-8: 1. Humankind is marked by God for glory and honor; 2. Humankind is authorized by God to have dominion over all other creatures. Both of these things, of course, are assigned to God. Humankind is not unlike God, the Psalmist declares. Who are you to God? Why you are “glory and honor!” You are more like him than you realize.

I’ve spent all week arguing with God about this one. This can’t be true. Does God know me? I’m too sinful. Does God truly know you? And God’s Word has hounded me – I made you.

In vs. 2 the Psalmist tells us that crying “babies and infants” silence the enemy and avenger. Now, I don’t know who that enemy and avenger are, the Psalmists doesn’t tell us, but it means that God’s bulwark is simply doing what babies were created to do – that by being themselves they engage in an act of defensive praise. It’s a reminder that to be a praiser of God one need not slough off one’s humanity but more fully embrace it. It means that praising God and being a follower of God are not somehow leaving yourself behind or finding some perfection but being your created self. Being godly is you being you unfettered – that’s hard, it’s hard to be your true self. And the first step is maybe not to look at your sinfulness as if it created you but to remember that God did. We often start our story at Genesis 3, God starts our story at Genesis 1.

Rabbi Zusya was a Chasidic master who lived in the 1700s. One day he said, “When I get to the heavenly court, God will not ask me Why weren’t you Moses? Rather he will ask me, Why were you not Zusya?”  Friends, why do we need to read the Old Testament? Why should Christians bother investigating the Psalms? Why does a theology of creation matter? We read it in this instance to understand a startling truth - that Jesus didn’t die on the cross to make you glorious. He died to restore you to your true created self, which the Psalmist tells us already was glorious!

This truth can be quite revolutionary. God has made us a little lower than himself. He has crowned us, the Psalmist declares, with glory. Yet, the Apostle Paul writes in Romans, “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” Before I had always understood that text to mean that I had failed some external standard, fallen short of some divine exam, I believed that I wasn’t simply broken but fundamentally evil. But, while sin is devastating to us and terrible – maybe its worst work is that it keeps us from seeing and believing the glory of who we were created to be. Maybe it is that reality which keeps us from being ourselves. In Romans 7 Paul suggests just that reality by speaking of the war of sin as a war with himself “I do not understand my own actions,” he laments (7:15). “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want to do is what I do” (7:19). It means that to follow Jesus does not make me someone else – it certainly doesn’t make me Jesus – but makes me myself.  God’s gospel is not fundamentally about sin management but wholeness and restoration.

How do I know that humanity is more than an alternate word for sin? Heb. 2:6-8 referring to Jesus quotes Psalm 8 to express God’s solidarity with us. God is not content to be over and above but also remains with and among. What can be more honoring than that?

Thomas Merton’s epiphany at Fourth and Walnut: In which he realized deeply what it meant that God created human beings and became one himself: He writes, “Thank God, thank God that I am like other men, that I am only a man among others. . . It is a glorious destiny to be a member of the human race, though it is a race dedicated to many absurdities and one which makes many terrible mistakes: yet, with all that, God Himself gloried in becoming a member of the human race. A member of the human race! To think that such a commonplace realization should suddenly seem like news that one holds the winning ticket in a cosmic sweepstake.

I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.” That’s what the Psalmist is trying to say.”

I’d like to send us out in praise with benediction and then have us go out into God’s world as the church singing his praise. Go as a member of the human race, crowned with glory and honor, to care for the earth and all that is in it. Go – shining like the sun!

Benediction:

The way is long

            let us go together.

The way is difficult

            let us help each other.

The way is joyful

            let us share it.

The way is Christ’s, for Christ is the way.

            let us follow.

The way is open before us

            let us go.

The love of God, the grace of Christ,

and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.

Amen.   Sing the Doxology

Blessed: God's Last Word to Us ~ Revelation 21:22 - 22:7

22 I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple.

23 The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp.

24 The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it.

25 On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there.

26 People will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations.

27 Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb's book of life.

1 Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb

2 down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.

3 No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him.

4 They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads.

5 There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign for ever and ever.

6 The angel said to me, "These words are trustworthy and true. The Lord, the God of the spirits of the prophets, sent his angel to show his servants the things that must soon take place."

7 "See, I am coming soon! Blessed is the one who keeps the words of the prophecy of this book."

Bob’s New Song

We’ve come to the end of our preaching series on Revelation. We heard from the outset that the book of Revelation is meant to inspire us with a sense of awe and mystery about our faith. This past week we had our Confirmation Family night and each parent shared with the students one piece of advice about the Christian life. Telford’s advice is worth repeating: He talked about the difference between a puzzle and a mystery. Christianity is not a puzzle like sodoku that you can solve and be done with. It’s a mystery and the best mysteries are never solved, fully explained, utterly understood. That’s a good way to understand the Christian life as well as Revelation. And Revelation mysteriously reveals something important – God is mysterious. We’ve seen how this daring little book is also not the Mad Hatter’s day planner but a vivid and poetic book of worship. We’ve discovered how it’s a retelling of the Biblical story and a revamping of images from the Exodus and the Nativity to remind us that understanding God’s victory and its final consummation is not located in better charts but better Biblical literacy. And we learned that we don’t need to fear this book, or the future but live in the present with a blessed confidence. That’s why it has so many songs in it – 14 total. This is not a book to flee from, John tells us, but a book to be blessed by and sing. And I’ve listened to you on the patio – many of you have been blessed. As we finish this series I want you to know that “blessed” is God’s last word to you.

           1.      God’s last word to us is a blessed “no more.”

It’s a play on words – not “no longer blessed” but a “blessed because, ‘No more!’” There simply can’t be a heaven on earth, a new creation without the blessing of “no more.” There are 9 “noes” in our passage – and many more that appear just prior to our text. A heavenly earth is a place where some things simply can’t exist. Women kidnapped, held hostage for 10 years in a residential neighborhood, will not be part of the city of God.

There’s no more unclean, no more curse or falsehood, no more night, no more lamps, no more waiting, no more crying or pain, no more absence, no more abuse, no more devil, dragon or beast. To these things God’s heavenly earth gives a resounding “no more.” 

What’s so interesting, however, is that it’s not simply the bad that can’t exists in the heavenly city but also the good that’s not good enough, that’s not big enough, bright enough, joyful enough. No more temple, sun, light. There can’t be a temple because in that place the universe has unfettered access to God. You don’t need a flashlight when the daylight is upon you. It’s not bad or harmful just silly. It also means that maybe throwing your flashlight away now would be a mistake but hold it lightly. Don’t get attached. John’s vision matches well with the understanding of another spiritual poet, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “Earth’s crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God. But only he who sees takes off his shoes; the rest sit around it and pluck blackberries.” Moses was told take his shoes off because the place he was standing was holy ground – the heavenly city is barefoot world. There is no secular space, no divide, everywhere one walks is holy ground. The absence of sin and the Devil is not a fluffy, harp driven, halo wearing church service. It’s a wide open city with God at the center filled with people where anything that we do is worship. In this new world, there is no secular and sacred because everything is centered around God. It’s God visible in the world. 

“No more BUT . . . the throne of God and the Lamb will be in their midst, his servants will worship, and they will see His face. See His face? 1 Cor. 13:12. We will know and be known – It means that our prayers will be as normal speech and no longer dead in the water, lifeless, or lonely! Illus. Butterflies and Chickens (go to mcchurc.org if you want to hear this story). Has that been your reality of prayer? Well in the heavenly city we will not be prey for the tragic. God’s Word is “no more.”

Notice, however, it is NOT “no more earth.” It’s heaven and earth together that create the context for “no more.” It’s not even “no more need” for that would truly be a sterile place where a river and fruit are superfluous. To be human, a creature, will always mean that we have needs. Heaven means there will be no more lack. It’s not more hunger but no more famine. It’s not more work but no more toil, sweat and boredom. In the heavenly earth we don’t cease to be human, we finally become fully human.

           2.      God’s last word to us is a blessed openness and plurality.

There is this odd use of the third person plural in our passage. It’s “nations,” “kings,” “servants,” and “people” in this heavenly city. It’s about the “they” and the “their.” Why not a more personal grouping like an “us,” or “our”? Why aren’t their more “I-s,” “me-s,” or “mine-s”? It’s a bit jarring to be reminded that God’s plan, God’s vision, God’s geography, is bigger than my life, my view of the world, my nation, even my face.

Our “no more” fits well here. No more small salvation, no more small vision. John’s beleaguered band must have often felt that the enormous tide of Rome was against them. But to be honest, I think the same way today – in ways that are fearful, closed, and guarded.  But John’s poetic rendering of the heavenly city is this high walled, safe place that is open from all sides with people streaming in. What does a world without sin look like? Open space. When I read John vision of God’s apocalyptic salvation it convicted me of how small my vision truly is. I so often think salvation like a black cat firework. It’s loud but hardly impressive or fierce. When I was a kid one went off in my hand – it hurt but I have all my fingers. John’s Revelation of final salvation is no firecracker it’s an atom bomb, no small gathering of scared saints but nations joyously entering open gates. I so often think of salvation as an ego trip or anxiety about myself– John writes about salvation and sees a seemingly endless stream of plurality and diversity.

There is also, I believe, a deeper, more subtle, truth implied here. What do we make of vs. 27 and the “nothing unclean” or the “anyone” who will not enter. That wording seems very intentional – it doesn’t say “can’t” but implies “won’t.” It doesn’t stress the plurality of those who won’t enter but the singular is used for sin which is kept out and the “anyones” who practice them. I resonate with John’s revelation of sin and its consequences.  It’s an odd juxtaposition of images. Here are the lonely who refuse to enter the place where the gates are never shut, who refuse to join the throng. Why? Sin wants radical autonomy, self-mastery, and fear of the other. When I am the center of my world, my world is so small, so dangerous, I feel surrounded, threatened, claustrophobic. It’s not the experience of singleness or being alone but revealed in the deep ache of loneliness when we feel cut off from God and one another. John’s vision reminds us at sin is its own prison, its own distorting reality which can only see a closed gate, manifests a closed mind, express itself with closed fists, and demonstrates itself in a closed heart. I wonder, in other words, if it’s not that sin simply can’t enter, it won’t enter to be healed, to be refreshed, to be with others. They aren’t so much kept out of the Lamb’s book but refuse to sign their names. My daughter told me something that further clarifies this experience. She said she learned that of the people who struggle with chronic depression only 1/3 ever get help. This means that the other 2/3 are caught in a cycle of pain because we can’t heal ourselves, can’t climb out of the pit on our own, we need intervention. 

John stresses that God’s work of intervention is for the “healing of the nations.” A reminder of God’s election – it’s always been about nations, the whole, the group, the gathered, while sin is always about the singular, the solitary, the life turned inward, the “anyone’s” who cannot enter, refuse to enter, fearful of being in relationship with others, of being dependent. Sin wants you singular. God always wants you plural it’s what you were made for. God loves you personally but never solitarily. John believes a very large number of people will be saved, from all walks of life, from all nations, and from all social classes. It reveals the depth of God’s amazing work and one of its true mysteries. It means that the heavenly earth will be a community of surprises and they will sound something like this – “Wow, I never knew he would be in here.” Hallelujah, I’m surprised to see her here.” “Amen,” someone will say, “I never expected I’d find you in here. I never knew you were blessed!”

We end where we begin or is it the end that’s our beginning? Vs. 7 is Jesus’ final beatitude, Blessed is the one who “keeps” the words of the prophecy in this book.

The word for “keep” is very colorful in Revelation. It means to guard (Rev. 16:15 – be alert), to protect (Rev. 3:10), to preserve but also to practice (Rev. 3:8, 12:17) and even to celebrate. 

Okay quiz time you students of Revelation: What does it mean to guard, to celebrate, to practice this book?

It means to worship. If you missed it, don’t worry. So did John. After all these visions, and all these new songs, in vs. 8 John has the honesty and courage to tell us that he failed his first theological exam – he dropped down and worshipped the angel who brought this message. The angels response is both funny and stark – You idiot, don’t worship me – I am a fellow servant with you and the prophets and “with those who keep the words of this book.” And then he offers a two word tutorial, “Worship God!”

Friends, that’s our end, that’s the command, that’s the intent – that means worship simply can’t be the banal thing we’ve often turned it into. It means that worship is how we are to live. Worship is how we are blessed.

Apocalyptic Christmas: A Reminder of God's Last Word on Politics (Rev. 12:10-12)

Thought before Worship: When one has been harmed or had evil done to oneself, retaliation is the natural response, but John points out it was not the response of the slaughtered Lamb, and it should not be the response of the sheep.” ~ Revelation, Ben Witherington III

¹⁰ Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say:

“Now have come the salvation and the power
    and the kingdom of our God,
    and the authority of his Messiah.
For the accuser of our brothers and sisters,
    who accuses them before our God day and night,
    has been hurled down.
¹¹ They triumphed over him
    by the blood of the Lamb
    and by the word of their testimony;
they did not love their lives so much
    as to shrink from death.
¹² Therefore rejoice, you heavens
    and you who dwell in them!
But woe to the earth and the sea,
    because the devil has gone down to you!
He is filled with fury,
    because he knows that his time is short.” ~ Revelation 12:10-12

New Song - "Rejoice" by Bob Gross

The Triple King challenge. This is has been on my mind as I prepared this sermon. What’s the triple king challenge, you ask? Well, it hearkens back to a restaurant that no longer exists in Santa Barbara called Fat Burger – charming, isn’t it? The challenge was that you had to eat an entire burger made with three half-pound beef patties with all of the fixings in 5 minutes. If you accomplished this gastronomic feat you got a free t-shirt and your picture on the wall. A number of years ago my two sons went to take the challenge with a friend from France. You would’ve thought they were going off to war. An hour later, my oldest son called me and said, “Dad, Dad, we won the triple king challenge.” What is a father supposed to say to that? “I’m so proud,” I beamed.  And then, after a pause, he asked, “Well, would you mind if we go celebrate at Cold Stone’s with an ice cream?”

Revelation 12 (actually chs. 12-14)  is a beautiful, multi-layered, juicy passage and I had to fight all week with this desire to force you to eat all of it in a short amount of time plus the ice cream. It’s tasty, but I’m not going to do it. I’ll try not to stuff your face.  I’ve removed a couple of patties and tried to make it manageable so that we won’t choke. So let’s take a few bites and discover what Rev. 12 says about God’s politics.

          1.      Our political story is about a woman, a boy and a dragon, O my! vss. 1-9.

It’s an allegorical, biblical, and political story. And the most important thing to know, to see what John is doing, to understand the book of Revelation, is not to try and read the future rightly but to know your Bible, particularly the Old Testament. John’s vision of God’s politics is not some futuristic prediction but an art house, heavenly remake of two Biblical classics – the Exodus and the Christmas story! That’s why it’s important to remember that of the 404 verses found in Revelation, 275 include one or more allusions to the OT. And we’ve already seen how it speaks in this evocative, poetic language meant to jar us awake. That it doesn’t so much aim to inform us about some conspiratorial end but reinvigorate our worship and passion for the mission of God by saying ancient and repeated truths in a new way. This is Revelation at its best – a dramatic and poetic retelling that makes us realize how little we understand what we already believe.

So this isn’t a hallmark version of the two stories and John’s vision challenges both our biblical literacy and our tendency to sentimentalize the Bible. John is more of an art film, film-noir-kind-of-guy, so you have to have to watch this story unfold with your thinking cap on with a group of friends, this is not Dumb and Dumber or an Arnold Scwarzenegger movie! 

First, it’s important to set the scene of John’s world - Roman coins show the goddess Roma as the queen of heaven and the mother of gods depicted with the divine emperor. She was the spirit of Rome and was believed to be incarnated in the person of the emperor.  He embodied Rome; he was Rome and in him the spirit of Rome resided.  The first temple actually built to the godhead of the emperor was built in 29 BC at Pergamum in Asia Minor, one of the cities in the book of Revelation.

John’s world was a world of worship and a world of competing stories. A world in which Rome claimed to be able to unite peoples, provide peace, offer identity, and “save the world” through patriotic emperor worship. They identified a historical person as a god upon the earth who brought the good news, literally the “gospel”. They redid the calendar to begin on the emperor’s birthday, they even had a choral society in Pergamum whose sole function was to sing hymns to the emperor in the temple precincts. Is it any wonder that John includes so many hymns to Jesus in this book? In response, to this world John reminds Believers of 2 different stories, a different response. According to John, our present and future victory is found in the past.

Nativity / Mother Mary / Jesus, the Lamb & Messiah - Ps. 2:9 – messianic psalm

Exodus / Mother Zion / promised Messiah

 

Exodus = “wilderness”, and worship of God (Ex. 9:1); Exodus 19:4 – “You have seen what I did to the Egyptians and how I born you on wings of eagles . . ./ referenced in Rev. 12:14; Isaiah 66 - in which Zion is the mother out of which God’s purposes are birthed, out of which Israel will find redemption. But also important is the added point that even God himself is like a mother that comforts her child, in vs. 13

Humility and word of caution are in order for this is very much a passage anchored in the past and, in some ways, all-together foreign from us. Yet, our world is also a world of political worship and story. We feel it when turn on the t.v., listen to the radio, and work in the community. We hear it national anthems and political speeches that use religious language and symbols which aim to identify us first and foremost by our national citizenship or political heritage. Friends, John reminds us, however, that to know our identity, to find our hope, our salvation, our political vision we need not look to the future but peer into the far away past found in the Bible. Our liberation didn’t happen on July 4, 1776 or when our candidate got elected to some political seat. And our victory won’t be acquired through some new futuristic weapon or political leader. Our story, our salvation, our hope, “the power and the kingdom of God” came about because of a peasant girl and little baby. And our freedom is not simply to hide behind our faith by claiming that it is only about the forgiveness of sins, spiritual solace, hallmark like manger scenes. It is about Satan thrown down and God’s kingdom and will come down “on earth as it is in heaven.” This is not simply a tale of Jesus skipping around healing people or saving souls but eradicating evil that had so long bewitched, bothered, and bewildered human kind. This is visual picture of Mary’s Magnificat. This historical, concrete event, allegorized by John, reveals its cosmic force. This story is God’s last word on politics.

          2.      Our weapon is a story of redemptive suffering for the truth. 

Gosh, I don’t like that part. I want my political story to have words like crushing the opposition,  no casualties, and easy win. John, however, offers different words: “But they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they did not cling to life even in the face of death.” John offers us here a political philosophy that goes against the grain of our national, political story – conquering takes place though dying not killing. He unmasks the deceitful question of politics which asks, “What are you willing to die for?” and suggests that what it’s really asking is “What are you willing to kill for?” And John answers by looking to the cross and resurrection for the answer. This is not Pollyannaish politics, however. John acknowledges that there is “woe” on the earth. That the devil has come down with great wrath.” But friends, there is also good news. He knows “his time is short!” Evil rages on earth not because it is so powerful, but because it is so vulnerable. Revelation likens Satan to a rogue animal that the forces of God have corralled. The beast rampages within a limited geography seeking to do as much damage as possible during his short time. But he rages on earth because he has already lost. We should resist him, we should not retreat or shrink, we must say “no” to idolatry and immorality but without resorting to the weapons of our opponents. Our political weapon is story – we tell the story of Jesus and the stories of those who follow Him – “who did not cling to life even in the face of death.” Revelation should be our answer to any who would insist that a belief in God is for those who wish to escape this world or find life too difficult to bear.

Boris Kornfeld was a surgeon and political prisoner forced to work in a hospital in a Russian gulag deep in Siberia in the former Soviet Union. 

While in the gulag, Dr. Kornfeld met a Christian whose quiet faith and frequent reciting of the Lord’s Prayer attracted the doctor’s attention and interest. One day, while repairing a guard’s artery which had been cut in a knifing incident, Dr. Kornfeld seriously considered suturing the artery in such a way that the guard would slowly bleed to death. Appalled by the hatred and violence he saw in his own heart, he found himself repeating the words of the Christian prisoner, “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.” 

Shortly after he prayed that prayer asking God for His forgiveness, Dr. Kornfeld began to refuse to go along with some of the standard practices of the prison camp, and one day he even turned in an orderly who had stolen food from a dying patient. From that day on, he knew that his life was in danger.

One day, as the doctor was examining a patient who had been operated on for cancer of the intestines, Kornfeld began to describe to the patient what had happened to him. Once the tale began to spill out, Kornfeld could not stop. Well into the night, he told his whole story of coming to faith in Jesus Christ and the difference God made in his life. That very night Kornfeld was assassinated while he slept.

The patient pondered the doctor’s last, impassioned words, and as a result, he, too, became a Christian. He survived that concentration camp, and he went on to tell the world what he learned there. The patient’s name was Alexander Solzhenitsyn. 

Solzhenitsyn went on to write many books that were smuggled out of the gulag and many scholars believe his writings were some of the first stirrings that marked the beginning of the end for the Soviet Union. Horror upon horror was revealed to a world that was shocked by the inhumanity of the Soviet system, which had murdered sixty-five million of its own people in the gulags. The great Russian author was quick to acknowledge that the problem lay not simply in Communism. The problem lay in every human heart. Solzhenitsyn once wrote, “It was only there on rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between parties either – but right through every human heart – through all human hearts.” We need to tell more stories like that.

What does our political witness look like?

It looks like this . . . On the night, he was betrayed. . . (communion)