Sermons

Second Sunday before Lent
Sunday 11 February at 8am

Simon Cowling
Readings: Revelation 4; Luke 8. 22-25

The word 'apocalypse' has particular connotations in English, being usually associated with drama and finality of some sort. In fact the core meaning of the Greek word 'apocalypse' is rather more prosaic. As its Latin equivalent, revelation, suggests, apocalypse simply means an unveiling or an uncovering. It is used of a type of writing in which the author wishes to communicate to his or her readers the truth about matters that lie hidden from view; an apocalypse, then, is about making known that which is not yet known.

There are two apocalypses in the Bible. In the Old Testament, the book of the prophet Daniel (more especially the second part of that book); and in the New Testament the Revelation of St. John. Both these books - as was the case with most apocalypses - were written at times of crisis. The second part of Daniel was written at a time when the Jewish nation's very existence, in the second century BC, was being threatened by the values assumptions and sheer naked power of the prevalent Greek culture of the eastern Mediterranean; the Revelation of St. John was written at a time when Christians were fearful for their lives, needing assurance that their present tribulations and persecutions of the Roman authorities were temporary, and that the Kingdom of God, in a literal and material form, would soon appear. The fact that the Kingdom of God never did appear in this way meant that Christians eventually lost interest in the Revelation of St. John, though at times of crisis in later history the book staged periodic comebacks. The time of the Black Death in the fourteenth century, for example, was one such period of resurgence. But for many Christians in the west the Revelation of St. John became both a puzzlement and an embarrassment, its value reduced to the poetic, its claims to be prophecy about the end times mocked by two thousand years of subsequent history.

However, in the final decades of the twentieth century the Revelation of St. John made a rather spectacular comeback in a rather unexpected way. A movement of the Holy Spirit called liberation theology emerged in South America under the guidance and inspiration of brave and charismatic Roman Catholic theologians, most of them priests and many of them members of religious communities. Liberation theology enabled small and seemingly powerless communities to take control of their situations for themselves through a radical dependency on God (rather than on religion) and an understanding of the Bible that saw liberation, real physical liberation from oppressive and unjust structures, as central to the message of the Gospel. Seen in this light, the message of the Revelation of St. John took on a new and dynamic meaning. The trials and tribulations of the early Christians who sought comfort in the knowledge that their sufferings were temporary became, in an almost literal sense, the trials and tribulations of the South American poor whose land was appropriated, whose jobs disappeared and whose children were denied education. Helped by this movement of liberation theology, the Revelation of St. John has become for many Christians a text that is valid not just in the context of the first century Christians, but a text that is valid for all times. It is a text that liberates us from whatever it is that imprisons us and holds out, as in today's vision of worship in heaven, an alternative world that is in abrupt contrast with what we see around us.

Every time we pray the Our Father we pray that God's kingdom may come and that God's will may be done on earth as in heaven. The vision of the Revelation of St. John is a vision of how this prayer might eventually be brought about: God's home will be with human beings, he will live with us and we shall be his people. Amen to that, and to the Gospel message of God's liberating power and love that the Revelation of St. John so firmly proclaims for now and for eternity.

© St Edmund's Church, Roundhay