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The Second Sunday Of Advent
Merciful God, who sent thy messengers the prophets to preach repentance and prepare the way for our salvation: Give us grace to heed their warnings and forsake our sins, that we may greet with joy the coming of Jesus Christ our Redeemer; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the HolySpirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
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The Second Sunday Of Advent
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Scripture citation(s): Revelation 1:1-8
A Sermon by
Fr. Daniels
on
Revelation 1:1-8
✛
One Day the World Will End
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One day, the world will end.
I do not know what it’s going to be like. I have some exposure to unfamiliar contexts. In the course of travel I have spent some time in places that took me far out of my comfort zone, places with foreign customs and people who aren’t like me, and whose experiences are unrecognizable: exotic places like Cambodia, or Los Angeles. Strange places.
But even these strange lands are familiar compared to what was seen by Saint John the Divine. He was given a vision of a very different place altogether. There on the small Greek island of Patmos, in the first century, he was carried up into heaven and otherworldly things were revealed to him. He wrote down what he saw and the result is what we call the book of Revelation, the last book of the New Testament, and the source of our second reading this evening. We read from Revelation during the Advent season because one of the most important aspects of Advent is our looking forward to the time when the kingdom of God is established on the earth, the time when what John saw is revealed to all of us: the vision of the heavenly kingdom. Written on the frontal of the High Altar are the words of Jesus from the Lord’s Prayer (in Latin): “thy kingdom come.” Like Jesus, we pray for God’s kingdom to come.
I don’t know what it’s going to be like, exactly, when his kingdom comes. The language of John’s revelation is sometimes surreal, sometimes fantastic; other times it is sonorous, serious, and profound. Running throughout it is a clear theme, however: what those early followers of Jesus held to be true on earth is also true in heaven; that Jesus is the Son of God; that he is exalted in heaven; that he is the one who mediates between the created order and God the Father. Because of this, one of the most important questions that a Christian can ask is, “Who is Jesus?” A close reading of Revelation shows that Saint John the Divine provides some answers to that question. He uses six of them in his descriptions of Jesus, six in the eight short verses that made up the second reading. It is these descriptions—these answers to our most important question—that are worth unpacking.
John greets his readers in the name of “him which is, and which was, and which is to come,” a reference to God the Father. And then, he says, he greets them from Jesus Christ. Who is Jesus Christ? John says that Jesus is the one who “is the faithful witness,” “the first begotten of the dead,” and “the prince of the kings of the earth.” Then he offers a kind of benediction to Jesus: to him be glory and dominion. And that praise is offered to the one “who loved us, and washed us from our sins in his blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father…”
So then, six descriptions of Jesus: he is
- First, the faithful witness
- Second, the first begotten of the dead
- Third, the prince [that is, ruler] of the kings of the earth.
And then John praises:
- The one who loved us
- The one who washed us from our sins in his blood
- The one who has made us kings and priests unto God.
The double structure of these descriptions themselves mirror the double role of Jesus Christ in the story of salvation, a person both truly God and truly human. The first three are about Jesus primarily in his relationship to God the Father. The second three are about Jesus primarily in his relationship to human beings.
For example, “the faithful witness.” A witness is someone who tells people something he knows about. In this case, Jesus is the witness to the Father, the one who tells us what God is like. And, he is the “faithful” witness: he can be trusted to tell the truth about what he knows. What we know about God is what we know about Jesus, and from Jesus, because he is the faithful witness.
In being “the first begotten of the dead” John references Jesus’ resurrection, and the fact that it is Jesus’ resurrection that presages the general resurrection of all people. By right, death should be the end, the consequence of sin and its rightful punishment. The event of Jesus’ resurrection means that there is something on the other side of death, a meeting with God, to which Jesus has gone before in order to intercede for us.
Third, John calls Jesus the “the prince,” that is “the ruler,” of the kings of the earth. I take that to mean that there is no earthly ruler whose authority is greater than the authority of Christ. To call Jesus “Lord” is to say that whoever the other lords of the earth are, and whatever they do, for the Christian they are never greater than Jesus Christ. It is a rather bold statement: Jesus is Lord, given his authority by the Father, and there is no one greater than him. One can understand why some of the kings of the earth, across the ages, have found that a threat.
Then John moves into the register of praise, and his descriptions become personal. In addition to Jesus being the witness, the resurrected, the Lord of all lords, he is also the one “who loved us.” After the splendid and grand language of the first set of descriptions, I find it touching that John moves into the affectionate, perhaps even intimate, language of love. Glory be to the one who loved us.
It is because of that love that Jesus “washed us from our sins.” Again, death is the inevitable consequence of sin, and the pollution of sin has no place in the kingdom of heaven. Heaven resists sin the way oil resists water: it has no business with it. As sinful human beings, however, we carry that pollution around with us. But because of the sacrifice of Christ, those sins have been washed away, and thus eternal life with God is possible. This is who Jesus is.
Finally, the transformed lives of Christians who have been saved allow them, too, to be “kings and priests unto God.” We have established that kings are not the highest authorities; only God is. And one of the things it means to be a priest is to be one who prays to God on behalf of others. So that is one of the roles of all Christians: to pray not only for ourselves, but for our world, which is a world created by God but marred by sin and in need of redemption. That priesthood is the role of all believers. Jesus gives us this instruction when he taught the disciples to pray to the Father, that his will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And, then, to pray for his kingdom to come.
In Revelation, this last book of the Bible, John of Patmos tells us about Jesus, who he is and what he means. It is that person Jesus—the exalted Son of God and the self-humbling savior of mankind—it is that Jesus whom we spend Advent preparing to meet on the last day.
That day may come in our lifetime; it also may not. But, one day, the world will end; one day, the dead will be raised; and one day we will meet this Jesus face to face.
