The Fourth Church Pulpit

VISION OR NIGHTMARE?

May 2, 1993

John M. Buchanan

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A LIGHT IN THE CITY

126 East Chestnut St. Chicago, IL 60611-2094
Phone: 312.787.4570
John M. Buchanan, Pastor

Scripture: Revelation 1:9-19

“...on turning I saw seven golden lampstands, and in the midst. .. one like the Son of Man...”
And he said, “’Do not be afraid; I am the first and the last,’”. . .
-Revelation 1:12, 17 (NRSV).

This was going to be a sermon on vocation. Planned for the Sunday this congregation ordains and installs
its officers for the coming year the sermon was going to emphasize the significance and, in the long history of
the Christian Church, the uniqueness of choosing and ordaining lay people to positions of authority in the
governance of an institution which has mostly been governed by its professional clergy. And it was going to.
move from that to the radical Protestant principle that each of us has a vocation, a calling; that God equips us
for work and service, not simply in the church, but in the world. The sermon was going to say that all work in
the world becomes Holy Work to the extent that we use our gifts and abilities and work in ways consistent with
the love and justice of God’s Kingdom.

But as I put my mind to preparing that sermon a sequence of events was occurring in the news and in my

persona! experience which kept changing the agenda, and so after the printing deadline, I changed both text
and topic.

The title of this sermon is “Vision or Nightmare?” and the text is from the last book in the Bible, the Book of
Revelation, which has been very much in the news in connection with events in Waco, Texas. It seemed to me

remiss on this day not to try at least to address that. And so, the lesson from the 1st chapter of the Book of
Revelation, verses 9-19:

“I, John, your brother who share with you in Jesus the persecution and the kingdom
and the patient endurance, was on the island called Patmos because of the word of
God and the testimony of Jesus. I was in the spirit on the Lord’s day, and I heard
behind me a loud voice like a trumpet saying, ‘Write in a book what you see and
send it to the seven churches, to Ephesus, to Smyrna, to Pergamum, to Thyatira, to
Sardis, to Philadelphia and to Laodicea.’

“Then I turned to see whose voice it was that spoke to me, and on turning I saw

.. seven golden lampstands, and in the midst of the lampstands, I saw one like the Son
of Man, clothed with a long robe and with a golden sash across his chest. His head
and his hair were white as white wool, white as snow: his eyes were like a flame of
fire, his feet were like burnished bronze, refined as in a furnace, and his voice was
like the sound of many waters. In his right hand he held seven stars, and from his

mouth came a sharp two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining with
full force.

“When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. But he placed his tight hand on
me, saying, ‘Do not be afraid; I am the first and the last, and the living one. I was
dead, and see, I am alive forever and ever; and I have the keys of Death and of
Hades. Now write what you have seen, what is, and what is to take place after this.’”

This is the sequence of events that changed the agenda.

On Monday, April 19, armoured vehicles pumped tear gas into the heavily fortified compound of a cult in
Waco, Texas called the Branch Davidians, led by a Rock and Roll musician, Vernon Howell, or David Koresh as
he called himself. The compound was consumed by flames and many people died — 72 is the most recent _
count — including at least 17 children. Much of what Koresh said before the tragedy, in the weeks after a
disastrous first assault on the compound on February 28, by a team of agents from the Federal Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, had to do with the Book of Revelation. The final holocaust seemed to be a
modern expression of some scenario out of the last book of the Bible. That connection was the heart of the
Time Magazine article which quoted Revelation on the cover and used quotations throughout the article.

By coincidence, on Thursday of that same week, April 22, ] found myself in, of all places, a cave on the
island of Patmos in the Aegean, where tradition says St. John wrote the Book of Revelation. I had resolved, by
the way, not to mention our trip to Greece, as in “the last time I was in Corinth,” for at least two weeks. In any
event, apart from David Koresh, Patmos was an incredible experience. The day was perfect — the brightest sur-~
and the bluest sky I've ever seen. For 32 of us from Fourth Church it was the last stop on a busy and wonderfui
Greek adventure which had included trips to Corinth and Delphi, Good Friday and Easter in Athens, and by
boat, Mykonos, Crete, Santorini, Rhodes, and earlier that day, Ephesus. Our guide was a wonderful Greek
woman, a knowledgeable student of the Bible and straightforward Greek Orthodox Christian. As we
approached Patmos by boat, she began to be more urgent than usual. She insisted that our group be first off the
boat and on to a waiting bus, hurrying us past all the other tourists, up the steep mountain to the tiny church on
the spot of the cave. As a result we had ten quiet minutes in what soon became another busy, crowded tourist
attraction. Something came over her. We sat on benches — she stood and pointed to the spot where John, the
beloved disciple, then an old man, was chained to the rock wall. We looked at the opening in the rock through
which all he could see was that brilliant blue sky and with only a bit of imagination, we could see him there,
old, hungry, losing his sight and hearing, chained to the inside of a cave, no contact with the outside world,
alone with his thoughts and dreams and visions. Myrto said, her voice deeply emotional: “Whatever you think
about the Book of Revelation, something remarkable happened in this place.”

Back in Chicago 48 hours later, the May 3 issue of Time arrived with Koresh’s face, engulfed in flames and a
quotation from the sixth chapter of the Book of Revelation:

“His name was Death, and Hell followed after Him.” [Revelation 6:8]

So, I did something I have not done since J had to do it for a course in New Testament: Iread straight
through the Book of Revelation, this book which obsessed David Koresh.

It is a strange book. It begins with stern but gracious words of encouragement and admonition to seven
churches in Asia Minor, all clustered around the Turkish Coast, not far from Patmos. It contains an incredible
description of violence, with images of beasts and dragons and seven-headed monsters and cosmic battles and
lakes of fire. And it contains a description of God’s ultimate sovereignty and victory in human history. And
throughout it alternates loveliness with terror.

“Worthy is the lamb.”
“And he shail reign for ever and ever.”

Words which George Frederick Handel set to glorious music in the Messiah, are from Revelation, as are
these precious words:

“Behold I stand at the door and knock.” “Do not be afraid: I am the first
and the last.”

“God will be with them. He will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more.”

But there are also vivid characterizations of suffering and death, of beasts and conquering armies and

locusts the size of horses with lions teeth and scales of iron, and the four horsemen of the Apocalypse
popularized by the members of the backfield of the 1924 Notre Dame Football Team!

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Author John Hersey, who died a few weeks ago, contributed an essay on the Book of Revelation to a
collection of Contemporary Writers on the New Testament (Incarnation, Alfred Corn), Hersey, son of
missionaries, didn’t have time for the Book of Revelation, thought it seems to be the product of someone
suffering a bad trip on a hallucinogen, or a scriptwriter for a teenage horror movie; spoke for many of us, I
suspect, saying that he had pretty much ignored it. He’s not alone in that. When John Calvin wrote a
commentary on every book in the New Testament, he simply ignored the last book, The Revelation of St. John.

Martin Luther thought it should be dropped and identified the real problem: “everyone thinks of the book
whatever his spirit suggests.”

What to make of it? Vision or nightmare?

As is frequently the case, the history of the book isa key to its content. Tradition has it that John, the.
beloved disciple, living in Ephesus in his old age, wrote the book around 92 A.D.

What we do know is that it was a time of persecution for the Christians scattered throughout the Roman
Empire. The Emperor was Domitian.

He was, the historians tell us, devious, cruel, and probably mad. He thought he was-a god. Several of his
predecessors encouraged veneration of the emperor, bowing in his presence or in front of his statue, for

instance. Domitian, on the other hand, insisted on it and required public sacrifices to himself. He ordered his
household staff to address him “Our Lord and God,”

Domitian was particularly irritated by members of what he presumed was a Jewish cult organized around a
carpenter from Galilee called Jesus. So he issued an imperial order. All known Christians were to be identified
and given a choice: they could worship him as their god or they could choose whatever punishment suited the

.magistrate’s fancy: prison, torture or death.

The period of persecution in the last decade of the first century was particularly terrible. It’s difficult to talk
meaningfully about things like this. The Holocaust Museum which opened in Washington last week is an effort
to keep alive the memory of an evil so gross our minds and spirits simply don’t want to deal with it. And SO,
we slip the word “persecution” into innocuous sentences without dealing with the unspeakable reality the
word represents: men and women and children torn from their homes and killed in the street or thrown to wild
beasts or burned alive for their belief. Many, of course, denied their faith, and who could criticize them? Many
worshipped the emperor with their fingers crossed.

Persecution, of course, never worked. Rome never succeeded in eliminating the Christians. Part of the
reason may be that Roman soldiers had other things to do besides looking for and killing Christians. But part of

the reason is also surely that there is something about persecution that brings out the best in some people:
bravery, strength, self-sacrifice.

And we do know that one of the reasons so many Christians in the last decade of the first century were
brave and strong was a curious letter, or small book, that they secretly circulated from city to city, church to
church. ... It was written by an old Christian who himself, it was said, had been one of the twelve disciples as
a young man. It was said that he, old John, was the beloved disciple. A few years earlier, as the persecution
was just heating up, he was sent into exile, to the lonely island of Patmos. And there in his exile he wrote to
the Christians in Asia Minor who he knew were in for a very bad time. Using a kind of code which the
Christians all understood but thoroughly baffled the Romans, he said some very unflattering things about the
empire and poked fun at the emperor, a little like Gary Trudeau in Doonsbury. In the 17th chapter there is a
~ wonderful cartoon character: the great - pardon the expression — “Whore of Babylon” who, because clearly she
represents Rome, must have set the Christians to snickering, maybe even guffawing.

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Old John predicted that some terrible things would happen, which they did, but, at the end, he assurred
those vulnerable, frightened believers, that God would be with them: that no matter how terrible things were at -
the moment, the conclusion to the story of their lives, and the life of the world for that Matter, is in God’s loving
hands. Nothing, not even the death of all their friends and loved ones, not even their own death, would
separate them from God’s love nor change the way the story concludes,

John also told them to keep an eye on the future. Something was ending and something was beginning. He
was right about that. The world didn’t end, but before very long that age did. Domitian was assassinated by
one of his servants and the next five emperors were friendly to the Christians, and by the time Rome got around
to persecuting again, there were far too many of them, and before long the empire became the Christian
Church’s protector.

It’s a tragedy that this remarkable book is so misunderstood, not simply by the David Koreshes but by
everyone who tries to superimpose it on current history. It has happened in every age, as Martin Luther *
observed. My grandmother was absolutely certain that the beast was Adolf Hitler — although later she thought
it might have been Franklin D. Roosevelt: she was sure that the Whore of Babylon was the Catholic Church and
the lake of fire was the nuclear holocaust in 1952 that she was certain was about to destroy us all. Anybody
with a little imagination and an ax to grind can do it. Hal Lindsay’s Late Great Planet Earth is the most popular
and profitable of a whole genre of simplistic interpretation of the Book of Revelation.

Pat Robertson, whose Christian Coalition is making a very impressive effort to take over the Republican
Party, published a book last year, The New World Order, which argued that the Gulf War and President Bush’s
cooperation with the U.N, was the first step in establishing the order of the Anti-Christ. Gary Wills at
Northwestern University, read Robertson’s book and observed Robertson’s speech at the Republican convention
last summer and wrote, “The crazies are in charge. The fringe has taken over.” [New York Times, 8/16/92]

In a Chicago Tribune editorial yesterday, A. S. Ross lamented the silence of mainstream religious leaders in
the whole “rising tide of religious extremists, including the bombing of the World Trade Center by Muslem
fundamentalists, and the murder of a physician in Pensacola, Florida by a Christian fundamentalist. Let it be
said from this pulpit and the pulpits of the land that what David Koresh did with the Book of Revelation, and
what all the others do who superimpose its imaginative images on a particular time and set of circumstances . ,.
let it be said that this is not right, not Christian, not responsible, not honest.

Let it be said that to use religion in this manner, to exploit this precious ancient letter for sick and demonic
ends is the worst blasphemy.

When the only religion that makes it onto the cover of Time is craziness, let it be said here: What David
Koresh was about was not Christian, had nothing to do with Jesus Christ, was connected to no accountable
Christian Church. What David Koresh was about was the pathological exploitation of lonely, needy, weak
people, willing to suspend every critical faculty — in order to belong to a group, in order to be and to mean
something.

Let it be said that not only is that not religion — but the Gospel, the Gospel of love and compassion and
respect is, perhaps, its best antidote and preventative.

A society which values individual freedom will always be vulnerable to the exploitation of its own liberties.
Which is to say that there will always be cults like the Branch Davidians who shut themselves off from the
world and who prey on the weak and needy. And there will always be people like David Koresh whose own
pathology, combined with the trappings of religion, will find protection under the Bill of Rights,

5/02/93 —4—

But I think we do have to ask law enforcement agencies to understand the violent and tragic potential of
religious fanaticism. I think we do have to ask again why it is necessary to guarantee the right of people like
that to purchase and own lethal weapons. In fact, the Branch Davidians might have been just another pathetic
cult if it were not for the fact that in the past year-and-a-half Koresh spent $200,000 on weapons which,
according to Time, included 123 military style M-16 rifles and the parts to turn semi-automatic rifles into
machine guns, AK- 47s, 50 caliber sharpshooting rifles, M-60 machine guns, and two cases of Pineapple type
hand grenades, delivered to the door by United Parcel.

One might ask about the sanity ofa society that enables that and powerful political lobbies, such as the
N.R.A., which spend millions of dollars to oppose passage of laws that would restrict and ban the ownership of
weapons like that by Koresh or anyone else for that matter.

John Hersey didn’t like the Book of Revelation because he said it predicts that bad things will happen; and
then if the faithful do nothing but be patient, God will intervene and make everything come out right.

When the emperial power of Rome is arrayed against you perhaps waiting with courageous patience is the
only advice that makes sense. What that misses, of course, is when Christians wait patiently, they begin to
dream about a new world; not merely dropped into history by God out of the blue, but built, labored over,
constructed — brick by brick, ordinance by ordinance, law by law, institution by institution, school by school,
hospital by hospital - by faithful followers of Jesus.

That is what we have been up to for 2,000 years. Not waiting patiently for the end of this world, but
praying for and working for a new world. We do it because we have hope: because we know and believe and

trust that old John in his cave on the island of Patmos was speaking truth when he wrote his vision of a God
who dwells with us.

Things may not look good at the moment. John Hersey observed that at the end of the 20th century we have
to cope with plagues not ever dreamed of in the 1st century: over-population, mass starvation, mountains of
garbage, epidemics of drugs, AIDS, crime. The world may appear to be an uncompromisingly frightful place
and the future may not look easy and bright. That may be true for you and me personally. The future may be
full of private terrors — personal disruption, loss of employment, loss of relationships, loss of meaning,
sickness, surgery, death. But we know, and when we forget we hear — like a trumpet — the promise that God is
with us, that death has been defeated, that God will wipe away every tear from our eyes, and that, therefore, we
have every reason for joy and freedom and confidence and hope.

IfI had preached the intended sermon on Christian vocation, I would have concluded by challenging each
of us to be and do everything God has equipped and called us to be and do: to live lives of service and love and
compassion, not simply on Sunday, but in the world, in our professions, our daily work, our relationships, our
use of our resources, our commitments and hopes and passions.

That seems a fitting way to conclude this sermon as well. The call of Jesus Christ is not to retreat toa
compound and wait for the end, literally or figuratively; it is to live fully and hopefully and joyfully, in the
present, knowing that whatever the future brings, God will be there:

“See,” old John wrote about his Lord and his God:

“Tam coming soon: ...1Iam the Alpha and the Omega,
the first and the last, the beginning and the end."

Thanks be to God. Amen.

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