What is the shape of hope in the Apocalypse (part i)?
Hope is central to Christian understanding, and non merely because of St Paul's summary in 1 Cor 13 of 'faith, promise and love'. Most would recognise the primacy of faith: we are invited to put out trust in God in light of his faithfulness to usa. And of course love of God and of others fulfils the greatest commandment. Simply hope sits in the center, since it represents the near important reality of Christian understanding: that we long for a better future based on our feel of a amend present as 'God'southward love is poured into our hearts by his Holy Spirit' (Romans 5.5). Christian faith is non, every bit Bertrand Russell parodied it, believing in things for which at that place is no bear witness. We promise for the future based on something real in the nowadays. Only nosotros do not, contrary to those who preach a gospel of unlimited blessing and prosperity, yet come across that futurity fulfilled. What we meet now points united states of america to what we do not nevertheless see, simply believe confidently we will.
Just where does the Apocalypse, the Volume of Revelation, fit in with this? There are 2 immediate problems. The first is that the word 'promise' occurs nowhere in its text. But 'hope' as a concept does not appear in the gospels either, only in the letters in the NT. That is because the letters talk of it, expound it, and exhort u.s. to live by information technology. By contrast, the gospels and Revelation embody it in their narratives—though in rather different ways. That highlights the 2d problem: most Western don't remember Revelation, with all its violence and catastrophic judgements, looks very hopeful at all, even though it has been a text which has sustained generations of Christian readers in contexts very different from our own.
But Revelation sits within the covers of our Bible, not outside it, and has therefore been judged to be role of the apostolic message of hope articulated in the other parts of the New Attestation—and careful reading of the text confirms that this is the case, even though (like other sections of the Bible) information technology has its ain distinctive perspective. Here are 14 aspects of home equally we find it in Revelation.
ane. Personal hope: 'I was on the isle of Patmos' (Rev one.nine)
Ane of the most striking things almost the Book of Revelation is that information technology is expressed as a very particular form of personal testimony. Other contemporary apocalypses talk of a personal journey or experience of revelatory vision—but universally on the part of some corking prophet from the by. Past contrast, Revelation is presented every bit the experience of someone who seems to be known to his readers—and makes his personal state of affairs very clear. He locates himself spacialy ('on Patmos'), temporally ('on the Lord'due south day') and spiritually ('in the Spirit'; the Greek text uses 'in' for all 3 of these factors). John is telling both his first readers and us that the sights and sounds of the hope of God's victory that he is about to share are ones that he knows of personally. We cannot talk theologically about things that are not meaningful personally. Nosotros cannot share what we do not know every bit a reality for ourselves.
2. Communal hope: 'I know your deeds' (ergoi, Rev 2.ii)
One of the perennial questions asked of Revelation is whether information technology is a message of comfort for those who are being challenged in their faith, or a message of challenge for those who are complacent and compromised in their faith. Fifty-fifty a brief glance through the messages to the seven assemblies in the cities to whom John writes will observe plenty of challenge to complacency! The messages are not dogmatically communitarian, in that the mistake lines of faithfulness verses faithlessness appear to run as much through the communities every bit between them and the wider population who practice not share their faith. Individuals inside the 'churches' need to brand decisions almost where their loyalties lie. And withal, in the end, the messages are offered to the communities equally a whole. Our hope is personal, but we are non merely to exist collections of individuals of promise. Rather, we are called to be communities of hope, living out the possibility of a new future in our corporate lives together as much every bit in our individual witness.
3. Transcendent hope: 'Before me was a throne…' (Rev 4.2)
The narrative of Revelation makes a detail employ of space, appearing to motility in turn from an earthly perspective to a heavenly one and dorsum once more, repeatedly throughout the book. Just the separation of these spaces is not as clear every bit information technology appears; for instance, John sees the 'earthly' plagues unleashed in chapter vi whilst remaining in his heavenly vantage indicate. And (as with the Lord'southward Prayer) the direction of travel is for heaven (in the grade of the New Jerusalem) to come downwardly to earth, not the other way around. The image of the throne, introduced in chapters 4 and representing God'south kingly rule, is a key motif—not just for the 'heavenly' aspects, but for the 'earthly' ones also. It represents a hope that is expressed drawing extensively on themes from the canonical Old Testament—God equally male monarch, the rainbow of hope from the flood, the sights and sounds of the encounter at Sinai—but also draws extensively on ideas from the Roman Imperial cult. God is the ultimate emperor, and it is his kingdom—and non whatever human empire—which offers the real hope for peace and prosperity. Nosotros cannot save ourselves, but can only look to the transcendent offer of the God of hope.
iv. Christological hope: 'I saw a lamb continuing…' (Rev v.6)
We are so used to the narrative of heavenly worship in chapter iv and 5, and then used to the linguistic communication of the 'lamb standing as though slain' through Christian hymnody, art and devotion that we miss how shocking and surprising this epitome is. It is non but inherently contradictory—'continuing' denoting life, whilst having the appearance of beingness slaughtered—it is besides quite unexpected. We have also been given a description of Jesus in his risen glory in affiliate 1, and this new image is introduced without explanation or any connectedness. And there is already Ane on the throne, with no indication in that location is infinite for another to bring together him! But this surprising paradigm communicates a key conviction: that the hope plant in Revelation is centred on the atoning work of Jesus' decease and resurrection, by which humanity from 'every tribe, language, people and nation' might take the take a chance to encounter this redeeming hope for themselves. And the placing of the lamb on the throne with God sets off a convergence of the identity of Jesus with the Father that forms the foundation for afterwards Trinitarian expression of the nature of God.
5. Hope in the face up of cosmic catastrophe: 'Its passenger was named Death' (Rev 6.8)
With iii 'sequences of seven' in chapters 6 (the opening of the 7 seals), affiliate 8 to 9 (the bravado of the seven trumpets) and chapter 16 (the pouring of the seven bowls) we have some of the most powerful and evocative of the images of the book. The image of the 'four horsemen of the apocalypse' as harbingers of doom is well known amongst people who accept never opened their Bibles. These series continue the structural moves in Revelation, from the heavenly to the earthly—but the key question for interpretation is whether these are envisaged as past, present or future? The grammar doesn't assist us, as almost of Revelation, being vision (and audition) report, is written in the past tense (with ane major exception: can you work out where?). Simply the things described here, especially the things associated with the 4 horsemen, would have been very familiar to anyone living in the first century—as they take been to most people in well-nigh ages through history. If nosotros are aware of the apocalyptic country of the world, plagued by violence, conflict, environmental ending and economic inequality, and so at present is the time to reach for apocalyptic hope.
6. Hope embodied: 'And I saw a groovy multitude' (Rev 7.9)
The saints under the altar cry out 'How long O Lord?', pleading with God to provide an reply to the country the globe is in. And the outset office of God'southward answer, offered in the 'interlude' between the sixth and seventh seals, is not an abstract theological answer, nor a discrete action of judgement, but the personal intervention of raising upward a faithful people who will testify to the world. John redeploys the image from Ezekiel ix of a true-blue remnant preserved from the judgement of Jerusalem and reconfigures it to described a faithful people preserved from the sentence of the earth. The careful counting John hears indicates a census being taken to establish the fighting strength (compare Numbers 1) of this disciplined spiritual army. The striking apparel that John sees shows that this uncountable people from every nation has come up through (not been extracted from) suffering and have been shaped by it. And he sees and hears that they are caught up in praise not merely for the by or the present of God's acts, merely for the future of God's deliverance. God's immediate answer to a world of catholic catastrophe is found in you and me, every bit we are formed in spiritual discipline, cover the suffering of the globe with empathy, only overflow with eschatological anticipation that the all-time is yet to exist. If we have seen in chapters 2 and 3 that 'judgement begins with the house of God' (i Peter 4.17), that is because nosotros are to exist the bearers of divine hope which our world so badly needs.
vii. The paradox of hope: 'sweet in my mouth, bitter in my stomach' (Rev 10.x)
After returning to images of earthly catastrophe with the 2d sequence of vii (trumpets), we have a second interlude, focussing again on God's forming of his people. Ezekiel was given a gyre to eat, which tasted sweetness, and he was to prophesy a message of hope to God'due south people (Ezek 2). But John'southward commission in Rev 10 is different. His curlicue is sweet in his mouth, simply bitter in his breadbasket; he is to prophesy not just to those who will take his message of promise, only to the nations who will pass up it. The message will bring both joy and pain, to those who hear it and to the one who proclaims it. The second half of this interlude shifts (in chapter xi) from John's prophetic ministry to the prophetic ministry of the whole people of God—all the followers of Jesus—who practice the ministry of Moses and Elijah before a hostile earth. Their testimony does bring repentance, but it as well brings opposition, so that they experience death at the hands of others, though resurrection life by the power of God.
Question for reflection: Which of these aspects of promise can you chronicle to most easily? Which are harder to grasp or live by—both personally and corporately?
(This is a summary of the beginning half of a presentation given in Manchester Cathedral in February 2018. The second half will follow in a 2d mail service later this week.)
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