Text

7:9 After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands. 10 They cried out in a loud voice, saying, "Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!" And all the angels stood around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, 12 singing, "Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen."

7:13 Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, "Who are these, robed in white, and where have they come from?" 14 I said to him, "Sir, you are the one that knows." Then he said to me, "These are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. 15 For this reason they are before the throne of God, and worship him day and night within his temple, and the one who is seated on the throne will shelter them. 16 They will hunger no more, and thirst no more; the sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat; 17 for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes." (NRSV)

Commentary

So what do you do with a text like this? Here we are in Easter, yet the lectionary drops us into the middle of an apocalypse. The text's form and symbols seem so utterly strange. What will we do?

We might begin by thinking not just about what the text "says," but what it "does" and how it "does it." The mythic language of Revelation is designed to have an impact. Rather than interpret such a text in the way we would decipher the instructions for programming a VCR, we should look at how that text is trying to impact its hearers: not just what it "says," but what it "does" to its hearers.

The best way to do this is to pay attention to the text's form. Forms help us understand texts in ways that are far more helpful than any provided by a flattening literalism. Imagine you are in a small group of people and tell this joke:

Knock Knock.
Who's there?
Annie.
Annie who?
Annie-body home?

The same holds true for apocalyptic texts. If we focus too much on what the text says, we may be missing out on what the text is doing. Knowing the form of apocalyptic texts makes a crucial difference. The problem is, while we know the form of the knock-knock joke, we may not be as familiar with the apocalyptic Jesus who "stands at the door and knocks" (Rev 3:20). Over our lives we have heard a lot of knock-knock jokes that prepare us to hear and understand them. In all likelihood, however, we will need to read other apocalyptic texts similar to Revelation 7:9-16 in order to "get" what the form of this text is trying to "do."

Fortunately, there are quite a number of apocalyptic texts which are similar to our lection for All Saints Sunday. The form here is quite similar to what is known as the throne-room vision. In apocalyptic throne-room visions, there are usually five elements:

A The throne is described
B The heavenly court is described
C The seer/visionary expresses fear
D A heavenly figure explains the event to or assures the seer/visionary (usually an angel)
E The seer/visionary receives a commission or elevation to a new status

It is only by understanding the form that we get what this text is trying to "do." Revelation 7:9-16 actually parodies the standard throne-room vision form and does so with God's grace in view. After all, it's not about what the seer does to deserve elevation, it is rather about the divine promises given to those who " have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb."

For the preacher, this shift in the form is important. A central feature of the form of this text is the focus on God's promise. We usually read texts like Revelation as if they were only designed to scare the hell out of us. To be sure, parts of Revelation are scary indeed. Yet even if that is true, Revelation is not utterly exempt from the logic of divine grace. Here the form points the way out of the cosmic morass of Revelation and does so by offering a symbolic vision of divine grace in the midst of the muck. Discerning readers will notice the placement of our text. This vision of the 144,000 (a heavenly version corresponding, like the outside panels of a triptych, to the earth-bound vision of Revelation 7:1-8) takes place between the opening of the sixth and seventh seals. For preachers this is of utmost significance. When do you need a vision of grace like our text for All Saints Sunday? Why, precisely in the moment of darkest darkness. When all hell has broken loose, and evil seems to have its way on every side-that's when you need a vision! When life seems to be one damn thing after another, when so many seals are broken and the worst is yet to come, that's when you need a vision of no more scorching heat, of a wiping away of tears.

Yet to turn it around is equally true. A glorious vision of the 144,000 that emerges without suffering and struggle seems equally unreal. Indeed, it is pie in the sky. Instead, the vision of Revelation 7 needs to understood in light of the chapters around it: Revelation 6 and 8. This precisely constitutes its hope. Allan Boesak (Comfort and Protest [Philadelphia: Westminster, 1987] 129) puts it this way, "The New Jerusalem is not an unreal mirage from beyond; it is a city that arises on the ashes of Babylon, which is now being destroyed." And this is where preachers can begin to envision preaching this lectionary text. It is precisely in the ashes of our common life where it is possible to articulate an Easter vision.

Preaching apocalyptic texts?

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