Friday, April 6, 2007

Lent Bible Reading Challenge Day 40

God Wipes Away All Tears

Revelation 7:9-24

Revelation is my least favorite book in the Bible. Parts are quite beautiful. The way that it was written to bring hope, give courage, and invite perseverance in the face of persecution during the rough years of the Roman Empire is amazing. Yet when we read it in an egomanic self-aggrandizing literalist way today, assuming and interpreting every word to be about us, here and now, then I must say I'm not for it. The selection - our last in this 40 day Bible Reading Challenge that I took from a list in a Lent Activity Book - portrays the wide diversity of the people that will be saved in the end. It's an appropriate sequel to the events, story, and theological world-view that we encounter in the resurrection of Jesus (affirming the value and potential of human, physical life) and those of the Pentecost Story (affirming that God wants us not as docile inactive spectators, but as active spirit-filled co-participants in the work that God is already doing in the universe brining all of our difference, diversity and uniqueness to the life vocation.)





The passage (taken from the middle of the book) concludes with a vision of wholeness and peace. In God's presence, in this community gathered from all of the nations, the ennemies of life will be defeated: grief, hurts, fear, anxiety, injustice, isolation, oppression, hunger, thirst, and death. This is the image that the writer of Revelation sought to share with those he was writing to under persecution in the Roman Empire.





Unfortunately today we twist the meaning of this text from one of hopeful perseverance and an invitation to faithfulness in the midst of living in the world that ends with God's paradise being in the world to an escapist vision of our world - true believers are whisked away to a far-off heaven leaving this screwed up world to its own demise. What then becomes paramount is not Christ's challenge to love our neighbors as God loves us, but rather to focus on our own spiritual well-being, making sure we say the correctly worded prayer to ensure that our soul makes it to paradise. In the Tribune today I read an article on page 2 that talks about a church outside of Toledo that has seen explosive growth from just such a vision, that they've effectively spread in a tech-media-savy way thanks to their previous work experience in marketing. Check it out here. (Sorry can't find the online version of the article entitled "Satan rants about Easter from on high."

Now here's my disclaimer - I'm not jealous of their success, nor meaning to judge them, nor am I working for Satan. I found that I was amazed that such marketing would be effective - most likely that's because of my world-view shaped by my culture, life in the East Bay, educational background, and my hypocritical cyncism, that you may have or may not have of already experienced in my less self-conscious moments.

I'm a disciple of Jesus of Nazareth as the Christ - the visible image of God - not because of fear of damnation (I'm probably on my way there already anyway), Satan, or guilt. I'm a follower on the way of the Cross because Christian faith affirms the instrinsic value of human life, invites to working for peace, justice, and wholeness in our world through a cosmic transformation made possible by the action, vision, and meaning-making of a Savior who dies to fight injustice and evil and is raised from the dead in a victorious coup d'etat. I'm a follower not because I'm hedging my bets in a Blaise-Pascal-wager sort of way, but because I want to be transformed by the love of God made known and experienced through the revelation of Jesus of Nazareth. I want to live wholy, love generously, fight radically for solidarity and justice, and live gracefully in community in such a way that by my - and our - actions all can see that we are Christ's disciples.