No More Nightmares [Easter 4C]

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson

Revelation 7:9-17

No More Nightmares

It turns out that that first Easter morning was not the end of the story. It wasn't the pretty bow on the top of the tidy box of salvation history. Now, that would have made sense; it would have been a great ending, a strong climax, end it all with the resurrection of Jesus – just like the end of Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ: you end it on the high note, then roll the credits.

But alas, it was not the end. It is not even the end of Easter; it is actually the beginning of a new season in the life of the Church – and I mean that in every sense. But new does not mean tidy. Nothing in the post-Easter world was tidy. This has been evident in our Easter season Gospels. In a post-Easter world Jesus is still sporting open wounds, Mary Magadelene was still crying and confused, the disciples locked all their doors because they were so afraid, and Peter and his friends went back to their fishing boats – to try to pick up the lives they left behind to follow Jesus, to try to find the reset button. The resurrection happened, the Easter world broke out of the tomb and into the old reality, and yet, all of the old things just kept on rolling along. Jesus was not the last person to hang on a cross. Death had been conquered but people kept dying.

The earliest followers of Jesus found themselves in a strange new reality: they were experiencing the power and presence of the Risen Christ – in the breaking of the bread, in the Community of Believers, in their hearts and in their lives; the same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead was living in them and was changing the world through them. But, it wasn't easy and it wasn't tidy and it wasn't simple. Easter changed everything but it didn't change everything. The post-resurrection world was amazing and exciting but also Saul was persecuting, Stephen was stoned, and Jesus' big twelve were being nailed to their own crosses.

Despite the challenges, the earliest Christians were inspired by the Spirit and were motivated by a belief that their Jesus would return imminently, any day now. The first days following the resurrection were not tidy but they were bearable because the early Church was sure that God was about to wrap things up. They were confident that the happy ending was dangling just in front of their faces, like a juicy carrot.

But the days kept passing and by the time the book of Revelation was written, at the beginning of the 2^nd century, the Church was resetting the countdown clock and settling in for the long haul. And a haul it was. Of course it was: these Christians were pledging their allegiance to a man who was crucified by the Empire for treason. His death was supposed to kill his movement. And it was growing. They were still following Jesus, they were still calling him Lord, and they still refused to bow before the Emperor. And so, the powers of the Empire, the same powers who tried to snuff out Jesus years earlier, were still trying to rid themselves of the Body of Christ a couple of generations later.

The struggle of the early Church was complex. The most obvious difficulty was that followers of Jesus were being tortured and killed in some areas of the Empire. That raised difficult theological questions for the Church such as, Why would God allow followers of Jesus to suffer persecution?

The more subtle trial was that the fastest growing religion at the time was Emperor worship. And Emperor worship was more than just a religion. It was a national identity; it was a patriotic decision; it was a ticket to economic advantage. To choose a god other than Caesar had far reaching implications.

This meant citizens of the Empire followed Jesus as Lord, rather than Caesar as Lord, at great personal cost – even if the cost was not paid in blood. New Testament scholar Warren Carter writes, “The book of Revelation sees participation in imperial economic practices as incompatible with being a Jesus-believer (Rev 13:16-17, Rev 18:4-5). The author pictures people with a mark indicating that they either participate in the imperial economy or belong to God (Rev 7:3). One cannot have allegiance to both. These allegiances collided in civic festivals and in … artisan guilds, where members made offerings or prayed to imperial images at regular meetings. Participation in these arenas seems to have been problematic ... for the writer of Revelation, who saw the empire as a tool of the devil to promote idolatrous worship of the emperor (Rev 13), for which it was under God’s judgment (Rev 18).”¹

The reality was that following Jesus, worshiping Jesus, pledging one's allegiance to Jesus, meant that day-to-day life in the Empire was something of a nightmare. In some areas it meant life lived in the shadow of death. In the best case scenario it probably meant economic hardship, social stigma, and growing suspicion of treachery. It was a hardship for not only the individual but the entire family. One dare not enter the baptismal font lightly or unadvisedly. Following Jesus meant carrying a cross; it meant accepting a life of suffering. It wasn't an easy road.

This is the Church to whom John writes the book of Revelation. He is writing to a Church a few generations removed from the excitement of Pentecost. He is writing to a Church that has watched their brothers and sisters die for their Christian witness. He is writing to a Church that was struggling to hang on, that was desperate for hope, that yearned to believe that there was a reality more powerful than their present nightmare.

In our country, in our context, as we worship freely and openly in a beautiful, prominent building, it is, I think, impossible to fully comprehend just how powerful John's vision from the seventh chapter of Revelation was for those persecuted Christians in the Roman Empire; just how powerful this vision would have been for the church in Uganda during the dictatorship of Idi Amin when over 400,000 Christians were killed or disappeared; just how powerful this vision is for Christians risking their lives to follow Jesus today in places like Iraq and Syria. They understand the nightmare; they understand what it means to serve Jesus through the great ordeal.

And thanks to John, they understand, that there is a reality so much greater than the nightmare in which they find themselves. NT Wright says, “What [John] is offering...here is...a vision...of the heavenly reality which is the absolute, utter truth against which the nightmare must be measured. This...is the ultimate reality of the situation, and you must hold on to it for dear life as you plunge back into the nightmare. The reality is that the creator God and [Christ] the Lamb have already won the victory.”² It is the Good News of Easter in a world that so often seems to prefer the nightmare.

And while this message is and was for a persecuted Church, it is for us as well. Because while we might not know what it feels like to risk our lives for the Gospel, many of us know what it feels like to live in some kind of nightmare: like watching helplessly as a loved one suffers or dies, like when an illness robs us of our freedom or happiness, like when addiction or depression or violence threatens to tear our family apart. When bad things happen and nothing seems to be able to make things right: this vision is for that too. There is a reality greater than the nightmare.

The promise of Easter is not that everything will now be easy or tidy or simple. The promise of Easter is that life conquers death. That love wins. That even though in this life there will be pain, there will be suffering, there will be tears, those tears will be wiped away. There will be tears, they just don't sting as much this side of Easter. There will be tears, it's just that one day we get to feel our God gently wipe those tears away.

The promise of Easter is that the nightmare is just that – a dream from which we will one day wake. The promise of Easter is that one day there will be no more nightmares.

1http://www.bibleodyssey.org/en/passages/related-articles/economic-justice-and-the-roman-empire.aspx#contrib_carter-warren

2Revelation for Everyone, 73.