Text: Revelation 13:1-10 and 17:11-18

There have been a few times recently when I’ve had a kind of experience of dissonant realization. It’s almost like I’m seeing myself or my surroundings from a distance, going about normal day to day activities. Just the normal everyday stuff: coming and going from the store, driving cars, going to the gym. And I’ve realized at the same time that there is this beast just beyond my view. People being violently kidnapped from the street or bombed by weapons that have left from American harbors, essential agencies and services being destroyed.

It’s a disconcerting kind of experience that while not the grandiose and encoded and unveiled visions of John, who does see deadly many headed beasts. But it does help me understand the kind of dissonant experience he might have been experiencing and responding to.

And I’ve also been in a couple of situations recently that both validate that dissonant feeling and remind me that, like John of Patmos writes, we will need endurance and faithfulness to face. And that it may be costly to stay in the struggle.

One is a non-cooperation training that I was invited to participate in a couple weeks ago, which I wrote about in the e-memo last week. It was a secular training that helped to identify the hallmarks of authoritarianism and offer tools for destabilizing what is ultimately fragile power. 

But the other one was the MCUSA Convention, where the theme was explicitly ‘Follow Jesus.’ So many speakers and workshops and activities pointed back to the opening sermon of Jesus where he proclaimed liberation and healing and good news to the poor and who explicitly told his disciples that if they wanted to follow they would need to take up the cross – accept that they may have to face the punishment of the powerful for their proclamation and action.

Both of these situations were both hard and hopeful. Hard because I realized how little practice we as a community have at resisting the lure of empire. And hopeful because God is making everything new. And with practice and cooperation and the faithful endurance of the saints (that’s us) empire cannot stand.

In the time when John has his vision, the church was not necessarily specifically being targeted. Christians were not being persecuted for being Christians explicitly. But like everyone in the Roman empire they were steeped in Roman cultic propaganda. Roman ideology and symbology and language and imagery were just everywhere. That was the water and they were all the fish swimming around in it.

You only notice when it’s pointed out to you and so John was u doing exactly that. His vision used images that they would understand from culture and religion and social norms and mixed it all up to reveal something new. 

People are still doing this kind of thing – encoding messages and swapping out symbols in politicized messages. It’s all over social media. There was a recent codeswitch episode about it on NPR. If I wanted to talk about our current administration I might talk about ‘47’ or ‘the Cheeto in charge’ instead of naming names. If I want to talk about Palestine I might use a watermelon emoji or the colors of their flag. 

But let’s get into John’s imagery and do a little decoding before I go any further. I almost feel like I should have a chart.

Images:

• Dragon = Satan, the embodiment of evil, temptation. He is no longer in heavenly body but still very powerful in influencing the earth
• Beast from the sea = The sea always means chaos in the Bible and this beast is explicitly the Roman empire. The heads are an allusion to the vision in Daniel’s and refer to previous empires. Rome has taken them all and become like them.
• Beast from the land = also the evil of empire, but this time dressed up like a something much more beautiful and innocent
• The mark/stamp of the beast = correlates to the stamp or certificate needed to buy/sell/trade in the Roman economy. All citizens, in order to survive need to participate in this market economy. Coins also would also bear the stamp of rome (and of Roma)
• Beautiful Babylonian woman, aka Roma = another personification of Rome. Again a false image who looks like a classy lady but kings and leaders are seduced/forced into relations because of her power or to appease her. Her face was stamped onto coins, decrees, was used as a stand-in for Rome.

Numbers:

• 7 = the Divine/whole/perfect number – any combos of 7s are extra perfect
• 6 = the human number – short of perfection – any combos of 6 extra less than perfect
• 42 = six sevens – indeterminate but finite time
• 666 = both less than perfect; a counterfeit to the perfection of 777
• and specifically Nero Caesar, using the ancient practice of Gematria, in which letters of Greek or Roman or Hebrew alphabets corresponded to letters

All of that (and more that I didn’t necessarily go into) is a part of the John’s vision. And maybe this is a good time to offer the reminder that this is a dream/vision. Even John doesn’t know what it all means the angel needs to tell him. This isn’t a prediction or a prophecy but an encoded description.

John is describing an empire in which the culture of excess and power and domination are everywhere. In both the beasts and in the beauty. In the worship the Caesar as a god. In the trade and the marketplace. In the pax Romana with seems like peace and protection but is violently enforced. In the worship of wealth and hierarchy and patronage. The churches and members of churches a part of culture as we are. They were not in colonies off by themselves or monasteries.

It sounds so familiar. One commenter said, “You think you’re just going to walmart but what you’re actually doing is worshiping the dragon.” I would sub in Target or Amazon in my particular situation but In other words, any participation in culture, especially without examination, is participation in the culture of power and domination and violence.

Probably the most impactful words to me in this very scary and sobering vision, are these: “This calls for endurance and faithfulness on the part of the saints.” 

We are the saints. Now. We are the saints now. When John spoke he was speaking to the churches of Asia Minor but it is still true. We cannot let ourselves get swept along. It will take endurance and faithfulness to face both the beauty and the beast of empire.

I am reading the Hunger Games series with Orie right now. Goodreads describes it this way: 

“In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. The Capitol is harsh and cruel and keeps the districts in line by forcing them all to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a [televised] fight to the death.” 

You may or may not be surprised to learn that I’m feeling a lot of resonance with the characters from the districts, which are the locus and means of production and yet experience none of the wealth that is earned from what they grow or produce, who are rising up against a violently authoritarian government. 

This genre is usually called ‘dystopian’ or sometimes ‘post-apocalyptic,’ but it is a kind of apocalypse. It reveals/reflects realities of our own culture in a very heighten and exaggerated way. An authoritarian government violently represses a population; there are strict rules and roles for each person and each community; the powerful capital propped up by industry participation; a slight rebellion begins to show cracks.

When the protagonist, Katniss accepts that non-cooperation and rebellion, a refusal to play the game the way she’s expected to, may bring her own death, she accepts that as part of what it will take to resist the beast that is the Capitol. Katniss is right on the same page as John of Patmos. He says, “Whoever has ears must listen:  If any are to be taken captive, then into captivity they will go. If any are to be killed by the sword, then by the sword they will be killed. This calls for endurance and faithfulness on the part of the saints.”

Those who follow Jesus will need to take up the cross. Faithfulness and endurance takes training. It takes practice. And North American Mennonites are a little out of practice! But the good news is that when we do work together and practice we do get better at it. 

That kind of training – practicing taking up our cross by understanding the work of freeing captives and proclaiming good news for the poor and liberating the oppressed – is no different that the way we train our physical bodies. When John calls for faithfulness, he means showing up again and again over time. When you put in the reps of lifting or running or rowing (all things I did this week at the gym), you teach your body that it is resilient.

That faithfulness of practice and strengthened my ability to breathe, to lift heavier items for longer, to run farther. When I was at the Nashville airport literally running for my next flight, or when I’m carrying heavy bags of groceries, or heaving shovelfuls of wood chips, I always think about how I’m so glad I’ve been training! I am better prepared for the work of life .

And there’s no time like the present. Every time is the right time to step build up that muscle of resistance. This is a team effort and the bigger the team the better. I know that Mennonite Action is even now coordinating non-cooperation and non-violent resistance trainings all over the Mennonite world in fall.

Our histories have shown us that where people are trained and engaged and working across communities and sectors, with courage and cooperation, to face the beast, the beast backs down – whether that’s incremental gaining of rights or the fall of dictatorships. Revelation could not be more relevant: may we have the faithfulness and build the endurance together to stand before the beast and may the beast devour itself. Amen.

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