Enlightening Questions

One thing about encountering Jesus is that light will be involved somehow.  In John’s Gospel, light and daytime come up frequently, as themes aligned with seeing and understanding, whereas darkness and nighttime align with not-seeing and lack of understanding.

Last week’s Gospel lesson was the story of Nicodemus, a rabbi who approached Jesus at night-time, asking questions but not understanding Jesus’ answers. Today’s Gospel lesson has Jesus approaching a woman at mid-day, in the full sun, and this time, she asks questions and does begin to understand what Jesus is talking about.  It changes her life, and significantly, her testimony about Jesus attracts the attention of her whole village, and as a result many more people investigate Jesus for themselves. 

One of the properties of light is that it doesn’t stay confined—you can’t put it in a box, you can hardly measure where it stops, and if nothing gets in the way, rays of light will keep on going.  It’s just so easy for stuff to get in the way, to dim the light, to cast shadows—like creating confusion or misunderstanding. 

The thing about encountering Jesus is that if you’re really seeking to understand, you kinda have to be ready to let go of the categories or frameworks that block God’s light, the stuff that seems to serve you in the world, the go-along-to-get-along stuff like gender binaries and subtle racism and social hierarchies and economic privilege and even popular religion.  To keep asking questions, like this woman at the well in her conversation with Jesus, is to hold all these things up to the light.  To keep seeking understanding is to embrace humility enough to be willing to let go of those things that block the light. 

In other words, if something isn’t making sense, keep asking questions.  In the way the woman at the well did, keep asking Jesus, “Where do you get that living water?”  Keep asking the people around you, “He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” 

It seems to be one of the spiritual properties of God to shine light, which is to increase understanding alongside faith.  To darken or shade God’s light with lies is to cover over and confuse God’s goodness.  To uncover and make clear God’s goodness and God’s will is what apocalypse means.  Apocalypse is another word for revelation, to reveal truth, to bring into the light of understanding. God’s goodness is revealed, and human nature is revealed, and perhaps it’s no surprise: humans can be absolutely terrible to each other. 

Because we are people whose foundation is God’s Word, we study Scripture and seek God’s will, approaching humbly and asking questions to seek understanding and bring light.  And Lutherans don’t spend a lot of time studying the Book of Revelation, that last book in the Bible, but last week I learned that there are people with power in our national government and even some officers in our military who are pointing to Revelation—that last book of the Bible, the Revelation of John—as justification for war in the Middle East, as if dropping bombs and killing people is righteous activity to hasten the return of Jesus.  This is simply wrong.  War and destruction are not God’s will. 

Barbara Rossing, a New Testament scholar and professor at the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago, in her book, The Rapture Exposed: The Message of Hope in the Book of Revelation, writes:  

“Christian fundamentalists and Left Behind readers argue that the war story is the way Revelation’s story must unfold.  I argue that the Lamb’s story gives us a very different model for God’s storyline in our world today.  Christian fundamentalists are willing to let the Middle East become the battleground.  Simply put, we cannot afford to accept their version of the story.  The violent ending they desire is not the Bible’s vision for our world.”[1]

In the book of Revelation, the author John—who is a different John than the Gospel-writer John, and because the John who wrote Revelation was imprisoned on the island of Patmos, he’s sometimes called “John of Patmos”—uses images and symbols to turn the logic of empire upside down.  John is writing this vision in the book of Revelation to help the early Christian communities understand how they are live in and alongside the Roman Empire.  Following Jesus Christ has consequences in a believer’s life, and John doesn’t hide this truth.  He wants believers to understand that ultimately, God is the one in charge, not Rome. 

John has to reframe our understanding of how the world works.  It starts with not pledging allegiance to Rome, not bowing down to Caesar, but instead declaring our citizenship in the reign of God.  John couldn’t just get rid of the Roman Empire—an overthrow of the government could never be the goal.  The tools of the believers are resistance of empire and persistence in faith. 

John uses symbols, like numbers significant within Judaism as well as numbers significant to followers of Jesus—there’s no either/or.  John also writes about visions that are strange, but this kind of writing would be familiar to people within the Jewish tradition—think of the prophet Ezekiel, who has some strange visions, too. 

The symbol for power which John uses in his writing is the lamb, who of course is not merely a lamb but a way to understand the nonviolent resistance embodied in Jesus Christ.  The way to overcome violence is to not play the game, to undermine the religion of empire by persisting.  The lamb, Jesus Christ, was killed but is still living.  This is the mystery of faith: Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again. 

Though it’s important to note: war will not bring Christ back to earth any faster.  The  tools of believers are resisting empire and persisting in faith.  The language of the book of Revelation calls believers “conquerors,” which is a military kind of word, purposefully turning military language on its head because followers of Jesus Christ do not conquer anything in the same way militaries demonstrate their power, by destruction and by death.  Instead we conquer by overcoming, by persisting in faith in God, by embracing what the world sees as weakness because we are encouraged by the expansiveness of God’s creation and the scope of eternity. 

To adapt the kind of military language we might be used to hearing in our own day, the message of Revelation says to us: speak clearly, and carry a small lamb.[2] 

Read Revelation for yourself, and don’t be afraid of what Barbara Rossing calls the “scary middle chapters.”  There are strange visions that John describes in the war between good and evil, but notice also all the worship of God.  You probably know more of the book of Revelation than you give yourself credit for.  It’s in the songs we sing in the early part of our regular Sunday worship liturgy—“This is the feast of victory for our God” and especially the part about “worthy is Christ, the Lamb who was slain”—all those lyrics come from Revelation.  If you’ve sung “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty” then you’re singing words directly out of Revelation.[3] 

And the end of the story of Revelation—for heaven’s sake, please read all the way to the end—is the vision of the healing of God’s creation. Imagine reading Revelation and thinking it’s full of coded language about how to manipulate God; imagine reading parts of Revelation and missing the point of the entire story.  When John, the author of Revelation, talks about a new earth, it’s not a replacement for this earth but the healing of the earth we’re in. 

The new earth is a place where people matter more than profit, where no one has to lose their freedom to slavery, where no one has to lose their life just to feed themselves and their families while enriching someone else far away, where no one has to decide between paying for medication or food or rent.  The new earth is a place where precious metals like gold has no purpose except to be melted down and used as material for paving the roads, and precious gemstones have no value except to be beautiful.  The new earth is a place where death is no more, where war is no more, where anguish about life is no more.  God will wipe away every tear from our eyes.[4] 

All I’m saying is: read the whole story and put it in context and please don’t let just any unserious joker on a power trip tell you what’s in your holy scriptures and if you’re ever unsure about what you’re reading or what you’re hearing, for heaven’s sake, keep asking questions.  I love to talk about Scripture and faith in God because, especially in times like these, the way we understand Scripture can be the difference between life and death. 

Choose life.  Choose light.  Jesus is the source of living water, and he will show you the way. 

Amen. 

Pastor Cheryl

[1] Barbara Rossing, The Rapture Exposed: The Message of Hope in the Book of Revelation, page 140.

[2] This section is adapted from a sermon I preached at Gethsemane Lutheran Church on May 1, 2022. 

[3] Adapted from a sermon I preached at Gethsemane Lutheran Church on May 8, 2022.

[4] From a sermon from May 15, 2022.