Following the Lamb Wherever He Goes (5)

Revelation 1:1-8: Introduction

One Sunday in the mid-90’s a.d. the Holy Spirit visited the prophet John on the island of Patmos where he was exiled because of Jesus and the witness John bore to him. God had a message to give to him, a message he delivered through Jesus about Jesus (“revelation of Jesus Messiah,” 1:1) through an angel. Intended for seven churches in Asia Minor (1:11), John (not the author of the gospel though they share some similarities) penned this mysterious and controversial message. Not so much to its recipients, perhaps, but throughout history its fortunes have varied wildly (see introduction).

This message comes with a blessing (seven actually, see introduction) on those who read, hear, and heed it (1:3). Head, heart, and hands are all necessary for a faithful response to this message – not any one or two of them alone.

The message concerns Jesus Messiah – his true identity and significance for both his people and the world. Something on the near horizon of these churches occasioned this message (“what must soon take place,” v.1; “the time is near,” v.3). As we will discover the matter at issue is these churches’ struggle to be faithful to Jesus amid the lures and pressures of the Roman Empire.

As we have seen, the beginning and ending of Revelation (1:4-8; 22: 8ff.) are in conventional letter form of the time. Pastors wrote letters to their churches as stand-ins for their presence when they were unable to be present. Stuck on Patmos, John had to write. But the letter form clues us into his pastoral aim.

John intones a trinitarian blessing of the people. Grace, peace, love, freedom, and kingdom. This blessing comes from “him who is and who was and who is to come” (1:4). This phrase is bad Greek grammar which has lead many to conclude that Greek was not John’s first language. That may be. But might it not also be that John has deliberately “barbarized” his Greek to suggest a subversion of the pagan idea of God that prevailed in Rome? His grammar relates the name of God to his self-revelation in Ex. 3 where God declares his name “I am who I am” or “I will be who I will be.” This is the first of many allusions to the Exodus in Revelation.

The God who has been God through the past and the present is also the God of the future. But here another peculiarity arise. Instead of the expected “who will be” expressing God’s relation to the future John writes “who is to come.” God does not have a future. He is the future. And as such he comes to humanity. “Thus, the human characters (in Revelation) . . . may approach a future, but only to find God already there, coming to meet them” (David Barr, Tales of the End: 1111-1113). We could rephrase this statement as “the one who has come, is coming, and is to come.” Our God is neither static nor distant but always “coming” to meet us where are.

The “seven spirits before the throne” probably means the  fullness of God’s Spirit, drawing on the symbolic value of the number seven.

Finally and emphatically, we meet Jesus Christ, “the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.” John’s description correlates with what he next says about the effects of Jesus’ work.

-As faithful witness he loves us.

-As the resurrected One (“firstborn of the dead”) he has freed us by his blood shed for us.

-As the “ruler of the kings of the earth” he has made us his kingdom, priests for God who possesses glory and dominion forever.

The language here is redolent of God’s BHAG. In Ex.19:5-6 God’s people are called  a “priestly kingdom,” that people, Abraham’s family, God intends to use to bless the world to achieve his ultimate purposes. What is striking here is that as important as what Jesus has done for us – freed us and made us into this people, those past acts are realized new every day by the present tense “love” he as God’s faithful witness bestows on us every day. That, finally, is the thing that makes God’s people go!

It is God’s love through Jesus that calls us to worship, makes our worship genuine, and energizes our ministry as agents of God’s kingdom. Love is the coin of the realm in this kingdom.

And as “ruler of the kings of the earth” this Jesus and his kingdom of love stands against the Roman Empire’s might and seeming invulnerability. Here, right at the start of this worship service we are reminded of the political and polemical edge of Christian worship which, in the words of Walter Brueggemann, “insists not only that this is the true world, but that other worlds are false. The church sings praises not only toward God but against the gods” (Israel’s Praise: Doxology Against Idolatry and Ideology [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988], 27).

This “ruler of the kings of the earth” will return “with the clouds” (v.7) bearing the vindication of his people with him. All will recognize the import of Jesus as the arbiter of their ultimate destiny (though John does not speculate on that destiny here.

This is God’s plan. And thus it will be (v.8).

The Lord God is “the Alpha and the Omega” – the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet signifying God’s encompassing control over everything. And he is the “Almighty,” whose power is his love which marks his control over all and his never-ending coming to us to be with us.