Sealed, Saved and Suffering
The first words of our scripture from Revelation 7, are ‘After this…” so we can tell that we’re kind of in the middle of something. In the middle of something big, in fact, so let’s start with some context. This moment in the throne room doesn’t come out of nowhere. In fact we were here 2 Sundays ago in Revelation 5 when we met the Lamb of God, worthy to break the seal and open the scroll of life. And indeed the seals are even now being broken.
We sit in a bit of a reprieve between what is emerging as the seals are being broken. In chapter six, it was seals 1-6 and 7 is yet to come. And yet again, those images of what arises as the seals are opened are a pretty culturally critical part of Revelation, I want to at least mention it: the horsemen!
The horsemen of John’s vision are both specific references to events and people in the Roman context – wars and violence and specific emperors and plagues – and they are events and situations that are ongoing. War and oppression and ruthless leaders and rampant disease.
And what follows from this chapter is the final seal and a kind of undoing of the world before the emergence of the new Jerusalem (I’ll talk more about that next week). But suffice it to say: yet more suffering and woe.
But for just a moment now there is space for God’s people to gather. As the angels hold back the winds of destruction God’s people are sheltered and protected.
Specifically they receive the protection of a seal on their foreheads. A seal marks a claim, indicates belonging, like a signature. In Asian cultures people still use individually carved seals to mark official documents.
To John’s audience, the seal on the forehead may have called to mind the prophet Ezekiel, who also had a vision while in exile, of an angel in marking the foreheads of the faithful – then before the destruction of the temple. Or perhaps they would have remembered the story of the Passover – in which the marked doorposts of the enslaved Israelites protected them from the death that was dealt to the oppressive empire of Egypt.
Now, the tribes of Israel are listed again. Singled out for protection the CEB chooses to elide lists rather than repeating “From the tribe of Judah twelve thousand sealed, from the tribe of Reuben twelve thousand, from the tribe of Gad twelve thousand sealed…” etc. Twelve twelves for the patriarchs and the disciples and magnifying it by a thousand because it’s really big and vast.
But it’s another bait and switch. Maybe you remember earlier in John’s vision, he heard that a Lion was to come to claim victory but what he saw was a sacrificial Lamb. A paradox of suffering and triumph. And now he hears that the seal is going to be limited to the 144, 000 – those from the original covenant and the new Christians who inherited the covenant. But now he sees an innumerable array of people from every nation and tribe and language leading the song of praise. God’s mercy is always bigger than we imagine it will be.
That said, there is judgment to come. Or at least destruction. And even those with God’s name on their foreheads may not escape suffering. It’s just that on the other side of the suffering there will be God’s infinitely large kingdom and the beauty and rest of God’s dwelling place.
Since last week I have been continuing to think about judgment over and against that expansive mercy. Some of our questions last week wrestled with that tension. This story contains a memory of the passover and liberation of the Hebrews in Exodus, in which God clearly exercises judgment against those who are the oppressors – and not just those who oppress but their children, their cattle, and then later the soldiers crushed under the waters of the Red Sea.
I’m not comfortable with a God who administers judgment by violence and destruction. But when I have spent time with folks who read the story of the Exodus from a place of oppression, from living under Pharaoh, I begin to understand that they need to know that God will wipe out the unjust master, will bring the tyrant to his knees.
This week I watched the movie Sinners, starring not one but two Michael B. Jordans. It’s a horror movie. A vampire movie. It’s also an allegory for the sin of racism set in the Jim Crow south. The evil and ugliness and insidiousness of white supremacy is embodied in the violence and also the sweet deception of the vampires. In the movie, the vampires are defeated and crushed the way all vampires are defeated – chopped off heads and wooden stakes and so much blood!
I don’t generally like horror movies or blood and gore. Give me instead a story of reconciliation, where the bad guy realizes their sins and is loved into relationship and repair. But that’s an easy vision for me to cast as a person of privilege. So I have appreciated (if somewhat queasily) horror films from Black directors and writers that have used the genre to examine and judge and defeat the evil of white supremacy and racism.
John’s vision presents the certainty of judgment to the violence of empirical oppressors – the sureness of destruction. This promise of clarity is indeed comforting – to know that the lamb on the throne will ultimately claim victory even if the present is plagued with violence and chaos.
And yet, there’s no way around the pain of the present age. We are servants and disciples of the lamb who was slain and it is only through him and through engaging with this word – not avoiding it, that we can make it to the end of the vision.
In 1984 Ron Sider gave a speech/sermon to Mennonite World Conference (The speech: “God’s People Reconciling“) in which he challenged his fellow Mennonites and Brethren to embrace our call to live the way of the cross as peacemakers. He said:
Never has the world needed our message more. Never has it been more open. Now is the time to risk everything for our belief that Jesus is the way to peace. If we still believe it, now is the time to live what we have spoken.
To rise to this challenge of history, we need to do three things: 1)we need to reject the ways we have misunderstood or weakened Jesus’ call to be peacemakers; 2) we need to embrace the full biblical understanding of shalom; 3) and we need to prepare to die by the thousands.
The boldness of that statement, and the speech that followed still kind of takes my breath away. He calls us beyond a passive pacifism into the fullness of shalom and asks us to put our very lives on the line, in the way that Jesus did.
In addition to the number thousand meaning just, like SO many, it also resonates with military connotations. Cohorts of centurions were arranged in that way. But this host of every tribe and nation and language will achieve victory not by military might but through their willingness to suffer.
The most famous advocate of our time, Mahatma Gandhi, once said that if the only two choices are to kill or to stand quietly by doing nothing while the weak are oppressed and killed, then, of course, we must kill. I agree.
But there is always a third option. We can always prayerfully and nonviolently place ourselves between the weak and the oppressor. Do we have the courage to move from the back lines of isolationist pacifism to the front lines of nonviolent peacemaking?
What would happen if we in the Christian church developed a new nonviolent peacekeeping force of 100,000 persons ready to move into violent conflicts and stand peacefully between warring parties in Central America, Northern Ireland, Poland, Southern Africa, the Middle East, and Afghanistan? Frequently we would get killed by the thousands. But everyone assumes that for the sake of peace it is moral and just for soldiers to get killed by the hundreds of thousands, even millions. Do we not have as much courage and faith as soldiers?
Ron’s vision cast in 1984 grew into Christian Peacemaker Teams in 1986 and has now become Community Peacemaker Teams. It has used training and strategy and non-violent willingness to witness and get in the way of oppression to build peace. And it has grown to include and touch people from many tribes and nations and languages. But it is still tiny! I continue to wonder what if Ron’s vision actually came to pass.
We are among the thousands, the millions uncounted, which God is waiting to welcome, who will praise in every language. And we are also among those who may suffer. Perhaps we are even called to actively put ourselves in the way of oppression and violence for the sake of God’s kingdom. I watch for ways to be alive to that call.
What I know is this: the Lamb is on the throne. There are thousands and thousands and millions with us who are marked for the goodness of God and we are all alongside each other in raising up the song of praise, knowing that
16 Never again will they hunger or thirst; neither sun nor any scorching heat will burn them, 17 because the Lamb, who is in the center of the throne, will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of life-giving water. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”
Let us respond with our own praise.
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