All Saints Sunday is one of those too rare Sundays where we read at church from the Book of Revelation, so I wanted to take the opportunity to talk about it before we have a look at our Gospel.
The book of Revelation is actually quite a wonderful book when we do not use it to push an agenda, to terrorize people or just to try to determine when the end of the world will occur…
The book of Revelation was not written to terrorize Christians – it was actually quite the opposite. It is believed that this book is the latest (=most recent) book of the New Testament and was written at a time where Christians were terrorized (= persecuted). This book is the telling of a vision meant to bring courage and consolation as Christians await the final victory of Christ against the forces of evil and death.
What makes the Book of Revelation a bit terrifying is that it does not mean to bring courage and strength by denying how bad reality is – rather it dives deeply in the violence that tears our world apart and the sorrow that breaks our hearts. In this it is certainly not a self help book that motivates us to “feel better” by “looking on the bright side”. We certainly need self help at times and to not focus on the negative – yet we know it’s not enough in the end.
The Book of Revelation talks about the way in which – no matter how bad reality is – God will have the final word. God will bring consolation (wipe away all the tears) not just by bringing us temporary comfort, but by having the final victory against evil and putting an end to it.
The promise of the Book of Revelation does not describe a blissful reality, but it does not make a faint promise either: “Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more”. That’s the promise of promises, the promise above anything else that can be promised and hoped for.
And this is really what the Book of Revelation is about: It’s about Hope. The Book of Revelation brings us a vision (indeed a “revelation”) that brings a new light on this, at times, terrifying reality and the book invites us to live this life believing that the best is yet to come, instead of thinking of reality as just a series of loss and tragedies. This world is passing away, yes, but not just to disappear. The world is passing away because God is bringing something new, something that will endure for ever.
It’s interesting if you think about it, because what makes life so hard is mostly because this world is passing away. We get older, we lose our friends, we lose our abilities, we cling to people or things that in the end let us down and deceive us, maybe we try to make a name for ourselves, or to surround us with material comfort – only to find out that nothing last.
The Book of Revelation puts this understanding upside down. This world is passing away but the author shows us that, in a sense, it’s good that it is passing away, it’s passing away because God can bring something good, something that will last forever, and also something we will be a part of (because otherwise, what’s the point for us?)
With this vision – we find hope. And we know how much hope is important in everyday life. We all need to have some kind of hope to get up in the morning. To make it through difficult times, we need to have a vision that brings hope: that we will find a job, that we will recover from this disease, or maybe just that we will learn something trough our trials. If we don’t have a vision that brings hope, we die inside.
And what the Book of Revelation does it that it does not bring us hope only for what’s next in this life, the book of Revelation brings us hope to what’s beyond life. The “hope for what’s next in this life” is important because it also points to the hope we should have for what’s “beyond life”.
Now you may know that it is believed (or was believed for a long time) that the author of The Book of Revelation is the author of John’s Gospel – John the Apostle, maybe. There is no certainty about that, but we can find in both book a common thread. In John’s Gospel too, we are given a vision – the author of the Gospel calls them “signs”, signs that point to a reality that hidden, not directly accessible to our eyes.
If you remember, I told you that Mark’s Gospel is much more concise than John’s. True – but in away, John goes more directly to what’s essential. Mark is interested in showing Jesus as a teacher, a healer, a miracle worker, and the divinity of Christ is kept a secret for a long time. But, on the other way around, what John is interested in doing is to show us the divinity of Christ at every turn.
The Resurrection of Lazarus is the last “sign” Jesus gives to the people before he is arrested and put to death. If Jesus weeps and dies with and like all the people, he is also the one who brings ultimate consolation and new life. It’s interesting to notice that people wonder aloud if Jesus, who had “opened the eyes of the blind” (and we talked about that recently) “couldn’t have kept the man from dying” – because actually the miracle will be even greater than opening the eyes of preventing someone from dying. Jesus does not makes life better just by healing people. Jesus brings hope when no hope is to be found, when all hope is lost. John tells us that the man had been dead for 4 days, when 3 days was believed by the Jews to be this lapse of time when the deceased was still hanging around, but after that, gone for good. Jesus can bring back Lazarus when he is already gone for good. We know that Lazarus will die again, but then, it’s a sign so we believe that Jesus has complete mastery on life and death. It’s a sign to believe in Jesus’s divinity.
If we believe the signs we will “see the glory of God”, says John. Not just as spectator, but by participating in this glory. I told you before that Jesus’s glory was to have his friends with him – and we can certainly see that in our story today.
Now what can we do with that, concretely?
1. Do not lose your vision. We are Christians for hope. A lot of people notice these days that you don’t need to be Christian to be a good person and that’s true, but it’s also true that if we really believe the promises of the Bible, then we will probably become better persons too, because we will know what really matters, we won’t feel like we have to cling to things we believe will make us happy, we won’t feel we need to be in competition with one another to be acknowledged – all of that gives us a false sense of immortality, whereas Jesus promises us real life.
2. Again, do not lose your vision. We are Christians for hope. Again, a lot of people notice these days that you don’t need to be Christian to be a good person and that’s true. What is unique to believing in God – and more specifically to believing in Christ – is that we have this hope beyond all hope, a hope that does not shed us from sorrow and pain but helps us not to be stuck in it, knowing that sorrow and pain are not the ultimate reality and do not have the last word. This hope we are invited to cultivate it for our own sake of course, but also to cultivate it for the sake of others in a world so often plunged in despair. This is really what us Christians have to offer, our gift to the world: Ultimate hope, because ultimate hope is nowhere to be found – nowhere to be found – except in Christ.