WPLN’s Blake Farmer did an exit interview with outgoing Health Commissioner Dr. Lisa Piercey. Talking about what she learned as a public health official during the pandemic, she mentioned dropping by a grocery store in rural Gibso County. The sign on the door read something to the effect of, “no masks allowed.”
“It was an interesting case study because I knew these people,” she said. “That’s where I grew up and that’s where my family still lives.” While she served as health commissioner, Piercey split her time between her West Tennessee home and an apartment in Nashville. So she experienced the rural-urban divide every week. And on that day, prior to any COVID vaccine being available, she took off her own mask — despite her public statements about their importance — did her shopping and was on her way. She realized that her Nashville messages didn’t quite land in Gibson County. “One of the biggest lessons I learned was that facts don’t change people’s minds. And as a scientist that baffled me initially. I thought, ‘Oh, well maybe I need to say it louder? Maybe I need to say it in a more simple term?’ But it wasn’t that … What we learned very quickly is facts don’t change people’s minds if it causes them to go against their tribe.”[1]
We are very reluctant to go against our tribe. “Tribe” has become a way to speak about, or to somehow get a handle on, the deep divisions that baffle us. Mike Murphy, a veteran Republican strategist who studies polarization, said about the electoral landscape, “It’s two different worlds — hostile, suspicious of each other and assuming bad intent. It’s become totally tribal. There are no opponents anymore. Everyone is an enemy.”[2] And it looks like not even the hightest court in the land can resist the pull of the tribal vortex.
“Five of the last six presidents talked about healing America’s divide,” writes Peter Baker.
George H.W. Bush called for a “kinder and gentler nation,” Bill Clinton promised to be the “repairer of the breach,” George W. Bush termed himself “a uniter not a divider” and Barack Obama declared there was not a Blue America and Red America but “the United States of America.”[3]
I assume they all meant what they said, but the tribal divide only grew deeper, year after year.
The passage from Revelation we just heard, speaks of a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, gathered around the throne of God, along with angels and elders and four mysterious creatures, all of them shouting and singing together. We are given a vision of a community that transcends all human divisions and even the division between earthly and heavenly creatures — it is the vision of a community of praise, a joyful, crosscultural, polyphonic and multilingual shouting fest of gratitude. We have trouble identifying the powers and forces that are driving us apart, but John tells us that in heaven, the angels and saints are singing of the one who is drawing us together: they are singing about lamb power.
According to the book of Revelation, the risen Lord appeared to John on the island of Patmos in the eastern Mediterranean, and gave him messages to be sent to the seven churches in the Roman province of Asia, the part of the world we know today as Turkey. John is caught up into what he describes as the heavenly throneroom, where he sees a book with seven seals, and the vision unfolds with each broken seal, the seventh seal opening into seven trumpet scenes, and the last trumpet announcing a set of seven bowls of wrath which are being poured out upon the earth. John sees plagues and devastations, climaxing in the destruction of Babylon, the “great city,” representing imperial Rome. Then he sees visions of the final triumph of God as Christ returns: the dead are raised, the final judgment is held, and the new Jerusalem is established as the capital of the redeemed creation.
Revelation was probably meant to be read in its entirety in worship, perhaps with the congregation singing along with its many doxologies, hymns and anthems, uniting heavenly and earthly creatures in worship. The whole thing feels like the script for a cosmic-scale performance, and it’s no coincidence that the rich, symbolic world of Revelation has inspired poets, musicians, painters, and even architects. However, the same symbols, writes L. T. Johnson, have also “nurtured delusionary systems, both private and public, to the destruction of their fashioners and to the discredit of the writing … Few writings in all of literature have been so obsessively read with such generally disastrous results as the Book of Revelation.”[4]
Revelation was written to fledgling churches during a period of oppression and persecution. It was meant to strengthen their faith in the God who raised Jesus from the dead, during a time when the Roman empire was making claims on believers’ allegiance that made it challenging and costly for them to hold on to their confession of Jesus Christ as Lord. Revelation was written as a letter of encouragement, urging believers to keep the faith in the clash of Rome’s empire and God’s kingdom. Most of the letter’s first audiences probably knew how to read it; they were familiar with John’s world of symbols and the letter’s countless allusions to the Hebrew prophets and other parts of Scripture. But it didn’t take long before the book began to be read as “something akin to a train schedule” for the final years of the world. Rather than a source of hope, the text soon became an instrument of fear and abuse in the hands of those who claimed to know the true, but hidden, meaning of its bold declarations.
The book contains plenty of material that is difficult to absorb if your faith has been shaped by the Jesus who embodied love, forgiveness, and reconciliation. In scene after scene, God, the heavenly armies, or Christ are presented as violent perpetrators. There’s no turning the other cheek, no prayer for those who persecute, no love of enemies. Eugene Boring writes, “The reservations of some [against Revelation] have been based on the real dangers that have emerged when [the book] has been interpreted in foolish, sub-Christian or anti-Christian ways. Although every biblical book is subject to misinterpretation, no other part of the Bible has provided such a happy hunting ground for all sorts of bizarre and dangerous interpretations.”[5]
The way to read Revelation faithfully is to keep our eyes on the throne that stands at the center of the heavenly worship. Amid scenes of unimaginable destruction and cosmic upheaval John shares with us his vision of the heavenly throne where God is seated together with the Lamb, the crucified Jesus, risen from the dead. The way to read Revelation faithfully, the way to read our own challenging circumstances faithfully, is to keep our eyes on Jesus.
Rome’s oppressive power was real and reached into all aspects of daily life, but it wouldn’t last, John declared. The Nazi empire of industrialized death was real and horrific, but it couldn’t last. Apartheid in South Africa was real and horrific, but it couldn’t last. The devastating legacies of colonialism and slavery are pervasive and persistent, but they will not last. Putin’s imperial aspirations are terrifying and cruel, but they will not last. They cannot last, John declares, because they have already been conquered by the Lamb, conquered by the wondrous love of God who embraces all of us on the cross. All that separates us from God, all that separates us and from each other and from the fullness of life God desires for all of creation, all the forces and powers of division and domination have already been conquered. The Lamb is on the throne. John saw a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands, and singing, “Victory belongs to God.” John saw humanity gathered together not by imperial order, nor by coercion or dreams of greatness, but by the gentle gravity of Jesus’ life.
John heard one of the elders say, “The Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.” There is much in the book of Revelation that worries me. Too much room is given to vengeful fantasies that don’t reflect the compassion and mercy of Jesus. But the affirmation that the Lamb at the center of the throne will be our shepherd is one I want to embrace with my whole being. It’s a curious, species-hopping play with metaphors: Jesus is likened to a lamb, and the lamb in turn is likened to a shepherd, a human figure of care and protection. The one who guides us to springs of the water of life, is both utterly vulnerable and the most powerful reality in all of creation. Jesus completely resists the temptation to dominate, and he is the one who conquers and reigns.
John saw them, a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, singing with the angels, praising the wondrous love that heals creation. “God’s praises are sung both there and here,” wrote St. Augustine.
Here they are sung in anxiety, there, in security; here they are sung by those destined to die, there, by those destined to live for ever; here they are sung in hope, there, in hope’s fulfillment; here they are sung by wayfarers, there, by those living in their own country. So let us sing now, not in order to enjoy a life of leisure, but in order to lighten our labors. You should sing as wayfarers do—sing, but continue your journey. … Sing, but keep going.[6]
Amid all that divides us, even amid terror and war and all our fears and worries, John invites us to keep our eyes on Jesus, the Lamb upon the throne, and to sing as wayfarers do. To sing, and to keep going. To sing, and to press on to the better city.
[1] https://wpln.org/post/in-exit-interview-tennessee-health-chief-lisa-piercey-defends-how-the-state-dealt-with-covid/
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/06/us/politics/abortion-rights-supreme-court-roe-v-wade.html
[3] Ibid.
[4]Johnson, L. T., The Writings of the New Testament: An Interpretation (Minneapolis: Fortress Press,1999), 573.
[5] Eugene Boring, Revelation (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1989), 4.
[6] Augustine of Hippo, quoted in Gabe Huck, A Sourcebook about Liturgy (Chicago: LTP, 1994), 35.