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)