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Writer's pictureRev Leigh Greenwood

Sunday Worship 13 October | Revelation: Heaven's Perspective on Empire

Revelation 13:11-18
Then I saw a second beast, coming out of the earth. It had two horns like a lamb, but it spoke like a dragon. It exercised all the authority of the first beast on its behalf, and made the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast, whose fatal wound had been healed. And it performed great signs, even causing fire to come down from heaven to the earth in full view of the people. Because of the signs it was given power to perform on behalf of the first beast, it deceived the inhabitants of the earth. It ordered them to set up an image in honour of the beast who was wounded by the sword and yet lived. 
The second beast was given power to give breath to the image of the first beast, so that the image could speak and cause all who refused to worship the image to be killed. It also forced all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads, so that they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of its name.
This calls for wisdom. Let the person who has insight calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man. That number is 666.


Revelation began with Christ standing among seven lampstands, then John was instructed to write seven letters to the seven churches, then the Lamb opened seven seals which unleashed a series of catastrophes, and then seven angels blew seven trumpets which also heralded a series of disasters. In the midst of the seals we saw the one hundred and forty four thousand sealed by God become a countless multitude praising God, and the trumpets were interrupted by the death and resurrection of two witnesses whose testimony saved many. There are still seven bowls with seven plagues to come, but first we have an extended interlude. In chapter twelve, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon beneath her feet and a crown of twelve stars, gives birth as a large red dragon with seven heads and ten horns waits to devour her baby. The child is snatched up to heaven, and the woman seeks refuge in the wilderness for three and a half years. There is a war in heaven and the dragon and his angels are cast down to earth, where they pursue the woman, who is given wings to escape. The dragon then declares war against the woman and all her children, and takes his stand on the shore of the sea.


That brings us to chapter thirteen, the reign of the beasts from the sea and the earth, which is followed by the praise of the one hundred and forty four thousand, after which three angels call the people to worship God and announce the fall of Babylon and declare that those who worshipped the beast must face judgement. This is then followed by the harvest of the earth, as one like a Son of Man swings his sickle to harvest the crops, and then an angel swings his sickle to harvest the grapes and throws them into the great winepress of God’s wrath, so that blood flows out of the press, rising as high as a horse’s bridle for one hundred and eighty miles. This book isn't getting any easier, is it?


Let's start with the woman and the dragon. We have learnt by know the value of reading Revelation symbolically, and the birth of what appears to be a much anticipated child immediately puts us in mind of Jesus. That seems to be confirmed by the reference to ruling with a rod of iron, which draws on what was understood to be a messianic prophecy from Psalm 2. It might seem strange that the child features so briefly in this account, but remember that this vision was written to be sent to seven churches, communities who already knew the story of Christ, and so the focus is on their part in this cosmic drama. As for that, the woman appears at first to be Mary, but then later seems to take the role of the church, which suggests that we are not reading a straightforward allegory, but rather being offered a collage of overlapping and multifaceted images. The woman is persecuted, but she is also protected, and the real battle is fought in the spiritual realm. A loud voice declares that “the devil has come down to you in great anger, knowing he has little time”, another assurance that oppression is finite and evil is doomed. As we have seen before, that seems to be the pastoral heart of this letter.


Now we come to the beasts, and here is where we most clearly find the theme I have pulled out for this morning, heaven's perspective on empire. The first beast comes from the sea and is given great authority by the dragon, who he resembles in appearance, with his seven heads and ten horns. He utters blasphemies and he conquers every tribe and people and language and nation, so that it is said all people will worship him. The second beast comes from the earth and exercises authority on behalf of the first beast. He deceives people and leads them to worship the first beast as a living idol, forcing them to receive its mark in order to participate in society. This sounds very much like the totalising and brutalising force of empire, which dominates everyone into complete submission. Some scholars have suggested that the first beast represents political power which comes from outside and conquers, while the second beast represents religious power which comes from within and collaborates. 


Whatever we read into the details, the picture of empire we are given here is not unifying or liberating or any of the other adjectives people use to excuse it, but oppressive. Every tribe and people and language and nation is brought together, as we saw earlier in the vision of the multitude praising God, but here it happens through fear and violence and the threat of exclusion, not through spontaneous praise. It was said of the multitude that “they shall neither hunger anymore nor thirst anymore; the sun shall not strike them, nor any heat...and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes”, but there is no such promise of peace or joy or satisfaction for those who worship the beast. Empire tries to make itself look like God, but it is not where we find our salvation.


I have said before that I do not think Revelation maps perfectly onto historical or future events, and I think what we see here could speak to any manifestation of empire, but the vision does seem to have a particular empire in view at this point. We saw last week that seven was the number of perfection or wholeness, so it may seem strange to have this number associated with the demonic rather than the divine, but the seven heads of the beast from the sea could be intended to bring to mind the seven hills of Rome. The references to blasphemies and idols could recall the way in which Roman emperors were treated as gods, with temples built in their honour. Bruce Metzger suggests that the mark of the beast which is necessary in order to trade is inspired by Roman coins, which bore images of the emperor. And if we assume that the number of the beast is reached by using the numerical value of the letters in its name, then the most likely candidate is Roman emporer Nero, who may have been dead by the time John was writing, but whose mythology and propaganda long outlasted him. This theory is strengthened by the fact that some textual variants have the number as 616, which is the number you get if you use the Latin rather than the Greek form of Nero’s name. 


There is something quite shocking about naming an actual person as the beast, and that is not something that should ever be done lightly, but if we see this representation of the Roman Empire as an archetype which reveals something about the way the world is, perhaps there is something here about the need to name the evil of our own age, to recognise the form that empire takes for us, and to challenge it. What might some of the other details mean if we look beyond Rome? There has been much theorising about the mark of the beast, including some more modern suggestions that it will be some sort of microchip that we will all be forced to have implanted. I think it might help to compare this mark to the things it seems intended to mock. The mark is worn on the right hand and the forehead, which seems to be a parody of the instruction from Deuteronomy to “tie [my commandments] as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads”. It is also ma distorted echo of the seal of God that was placed upon the one hundred and forty four thousand earlier in Revelation. This mark then could be anything that symbolises allegiance to the empire rather than to God, and while that could be something physical, it could also be something in the way we speak and act that shows who it is we truly worship. The challenge here may be to reflect on what mark we wear, on whether our lives bear the stamp of the empire or of God.


Let's finish with that frankly horrifying image of the winepress pouring blood. There are quite a few startling images of God's wrath in Revelation, but remember that in previous weeks we have considered the possibility that what we see in John's vision is not God punishing us, but rather God letting our sin play itself out. What appears as divine judgement is really human consequence, and the torment we face is of our own design. I am stubbornly hopeful about the world, but even I have moments of despair. As I look on the news with horror, I think that God could not possibly devise any torture worse than the things we do to one another, and perhaps we only project hell onto God’s plan because we do not want to admit that it is of our own making. The glimmer of hope is that we might hear Revelation as the Ninevites heard Jonah's prophecy, as a warning not a certainty, and we might likewise repent and save ourselves from destruction. And just to be clear, when I saw ‘we’ and ‘our’, I am speaking of humanity as a collective. We are not all equally guilty, and the particular hell we face may not be one we have created, but we are all in this mess together, and together is the only way we are going to get out of it.


Well, I suppose there could be another way out. God could smite the wicked and protect the righteous. Maybe that's what we think is happening in the image of the winepress, with the crops being the righteous who are harvested into heaven, and the grapes being the wicked who are thrown in the winepress to be trampled, but the truth is that God hasn't worked like that since the flood, and perhaps not even then. Humans are a bit too complicated for that to work anyway. Where do we draw the line between good and bad when we are all a subtle and shifting blend of the two? We've already seen that there is a lot of symbolism in Revelation, and it can mean wildly different things depending on how we interpret it. We've also seen that Revelation is not a particularly squeamish book, so there seems no reason why it couldn't have avoided all doubt and just thrown people into the winepress, if that was what was intended. 


Perhaps then there is another way of interpreting these verses. Perhaps the crops are all that is good about human nature, and the grapes are all that is bad, and the reckoning is not between us but within us. Perhaps the river of blood does not symbolise the suffering caused by God's wrath in the winepress, but the suffering that has been caused by all the sins of humanity that the grapes represent. Perhaps it is a challenge for us to reflect on what in our nature will be harvested for heaven, and what would be better tossed into the winepress. Other interpretations are of course available. Darrell Johnson thinks the blood is that of Jesus, pointing to the fact that the winepress is “outside the city”, as was the cross. I simply offer my reading for your discernment. But if I am right that we are all in this mess together, and together is the only way we are going to get out of it, then what we must surely learn from this morning is that the totalising and brutalising dominance of empire is not how we go about it. Instead we need a different way of working together, of being together. We need a way that is quiet and gentle, joyful and inclusive. We need the kingdom of God.


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