You may remember that when I started this series of sermons a couple of weeks ago, I said that I would be preaching only good news until the end of May. I remarked that I was tired of hearing bad news, because this year’s Lenten season seemed to be so very full of bad news. Things haven’t gotten any better, have they? Just when we thought that we might have a break from bad news, two young men bombed the finish line of the Boston Marathon. Those bombs killed three innocent people: 29-year-old Krystle Campbell, the manager of a local restaurant; 23-year-old Lu Lingzi, a 23-year-old student at Boston University; and Martin Richard, who was only 8 years old. Over 170 other adults and children were injured, runners and spectators alike. Some lost limbs, others suffered severe wounds from the shrapnel that was packed inside the bombs, and all of them were deeply troubled by the distress that they witnesses. None of them will ever be the same again.
Now, it’s one thing to lose a loved one to an illness. Although
that kind of loss is difficult, we all know that our mortal bodies are going to
wear out sooner or later. We can even deal with injuries that are the result of
the workings of nature. We may not like it, but the fact is that floods,
hurricanes, earthquakes, and tornados are simply hazards of living on this
earth. But unnecessary harm caused to innocent people in the middle of a public
event – that is, quite simply, the result of evil; and it is impossible for us
to accept. The book of Revelation has quite a bit to say about evil. In fact,
the book of Revelation faces evil squarely in the face like no other text in
the Bible faces it. Revelation recognizes evil for what it is; assures us of
its ultimate fate; and gives us instructions on how to behave as Christians
while evil is still around. And if the church ever needed to hear that kind of
message, we need to hear it now!
Like most of its messages, Revelation shows us the world’s
evil in symbolic visions. In particular, we see three creatures that represent
the evil that lurks in our world. The first is a dragon, a great red dragon who
pursues the Messiah and makes war on all God’s people. The second rises out of
the sea, appearing as a combination of a leopard, a bear, and a lion. We’re
told that it has authority all over the world. You met the third in this
morning’s reading from chapter 13 as it rises out of the earth. It looks like a
lamb but it speaks like a dragon. This third beast is a deceiver; and it leads
people into paths of destruction. These three beasts represent all the evil in
the world of one kind or another. Don’t be misled into thinking that they only refer
to one specific kind of evil. In the time that Revelation was written, the
beasts probably referred to Rome and its emperor; but they have referred to
many kinds of evil down through the ages. 70 years ago, Adolf Hitler and the
Third Reich could have been the beasts; while today, they could be the network
of global terrorism that threatens our security and our peace of mind. But
don’t waste your time trying to decide which particular evil in history the beasts represent. They represent any
of them and all of them.
After we see the visions of the evil creatures, we hear a
puzzling statement: “This calls for patient
endurance on the part of the saints.” (Revelation 14:12) “Patient
endurance…” The Greek word that is usually translated as “patient endurance” is
hypomone (hoo-poe-moe-nay). Sometimes
it’s translated as “patience,” or as “endurance,” or even as “perseverance.”
Regardless of how we translate it, we’re supposed to be doing it in the
presence of evil. We’re supposed to be patiently enduring. But that endurance
doesn’t mean just gritting our teeth and hanging on for dear life. On the contrary,
hypomone is a positive endurance.
It’s doing something while we’re
hanging on.
The best example of hypomone
is the little Dutch boy who stuck his finger in the hole in the dike. You
probably know that story. The area of Europe that we call Holland is actually
below sea level. The ocean is kept back by huge earthen dikes that surround the
country. If one of those dikes springs a leak, the results can be catastrophic.
As the story goes, one day when a little boy was walking along the dike, he saw
just such a leak. There was nobody around but him; so he stuck his finger into
the hole in the dike. And he kept it there. For hours. His finger got cold. It
swelled under the pressure. It hurt terribly! But he kept his finger there
until somebody came along who could offer some help! Because of that little
boy’s hypomone – his patient
endurance – a catastrophic flood was averted.
That’s what we Christians are supposed to do in the face of
evil. We can call it “patient endurance” or “non-violent resistance” or just
“hanging in there.” It’s all the same thing. Quite simply, it is resisting evil
while not resorting to using the methods of evil. Gandhi practiced it to win
independence for the nation of India – and to raise the status of members of
the lowest caste, the Untouchables. The Danish people practiced it during World
War II when Hitler ordered every Jew to wear a yellow star. Every single Danish
citizen wore a star so that their Jewish neighbors could not be identified. And
Martin Luther King used it to raise our nation’s awareness of civil rights
issues. Hypomone isn’t just an
obscure Greek word. It’s a living activity, one that all Christians are called
to practice!
But I still haven’t answered the question that’s on the
table this morning. What does this patient endurance have to do with fighting
evil? The surprising answer, according to the book of Revelation, is that it’s
not our job to fight evil. Jesus does the fighting for us! Our only job is to
hang in there and patiently endure. In last Sunday’s scripture reading
(Revelation 5:1-10), Jesus was called the Lion of Judah and the Lamb of God.
Jesus appears again in this morning’s text from chapter 19. In today’s text, he’s
a warrior on a white horse, and his name is “Faithful and True,” and “the Word
of God.” In case you don’t recognize him, the name “King of Kings and Lord of
Lords” is written across his robe, just like that big “S” that Superman has
written on his chest. Yes, that’s Jesus, all right. And at the end of the day, he is the one who captures the beast and
throws him into a lake of fire.
One of the messages of Revelation is that we humans can’t
ever clean up cosmic evil. But Jesus can – and God promises that, one day, he
will. Jesus will eventually destroy evil once and for all. But that day isn’t
here yet. And until it is, we need to let Jesus do his work while we do ours –
patiently enduring, holding tightly to our Christian faith, and believing in
God’s promise that one day, Jesus will clean things up once and for all.
You might wonder what that kind of patient endurance looks
like. I can show you in the person of retired South African Anglican archbishop
Desmond Tutu. Archbishop Tutu was ordained back in the days when South African
was officially divided by apartheid. He resisted not only this policy that
separated black from white; he resisted the violence that was a frequent result.
When the all-white South African government banned anti-apartheid
demonstrations, Tutu and other members of the clergy intervened in
confrontations between demonstrators and the police who were called in against
them. He urged that economic pressure be used against the South African
government instead of mob violence. When apartheid was finally rejected as a
national policy, Archbishop Tutu led the Commission of Truth and Reconciliation
that was charged with examining the sins of apartheid and looking for ways to
foster reconciliation between black and white citizens.
For this nonviolent resistance against the evil of apartheid,
Tutu won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984; and just this year, he was awarded the
Templeton Prize. This award honors those who have “made an exceptional
contribution to affirming life’s spiritual dimension, whether through insight,
discovery, or practical works.” The judges commented that “Tutu’s steadfastness
to core Christian principles such as love and forgiveness has broken chains of
hurt, pain, and all too common instincts for revenge; and instead, has advanced
the spiritual liberation of people around the world.” That sure sounds like
patient endurance to me. And what does Archbishop Tutu say? “We inhabit a
universe… where kindness matters, compassion matters, caring matters,” he said
in his official remarks. “This is a moral universe, and right and wrong matter.
And mercifully, gloriously, right will prevail.”
I can only say “amen” to that. Despite all the evil that we
see around us; despite the appearance that it is too powerful to defeat;
despite its claim that it will have the last word; it doesn’t get the last
word. Jesus gets the last word! Jesus is fighting for us; and Jesus will win in
the end. So… hang in there!
No comments:
Post a Comment