To Whom Do You Belong? A Reflection and Sermon on Revelation

If you have a television, you may be familiar with a type of programming called “edu-tainment.” These shows embark to be a hybrid of documentaries, reality television, and serialized sensationalism. The epitome of the “edu-tainment” empire is the History Channel- a station that markets itself not only as rooted in teaching history, but also in franchising a series entitled “Ancient Aliens,” a reception of history if major events were controlled by aliens.

And if you think I am being derisive to these programs, let me stop and confess that I LOVE them. While I’m not exactly proud of this, I’m also not so ashamed by it that I wouldn't confess to it if asked... or preaching a sermon. This is a long running love of mine.

Twenty-five years ago, when TLC stood for “The Learning Channel” and actually created somewhat educational content, there was a series of programs about the end of days and the Book of Revelation. As a child I mistakenly watched this programs and proceeded, as few children do, to read the Book of Revelation in order to make sense of its eschatological promise of signs and disaster. As a seven-year-old child I didn’t understand most of the language of Revelation, let alone the layers of symbolism and allegory that give Dante a run for his money.

Twenty some years later, with a master’s in divinity and half-way through a doctorate in theology, I’m not sure I understand this final book any better.

But it’s not a book that is meant to be readily understood.

Richard Baukham, in his study of Revelation suggests that, “Once we begin to appreciate [its] sources and their rich symbolic association, we realize that they cannot be read either as literal descriptions or as encoded descriptions, but must be read for their theological meaning and their power to evoke response… The point is not to predict a sequence of events.”

Yet we still cling to desires to pick apart the symbols in John’s apocalypse. Recently, Morgan Freeman debuted a new series on National Geographic Channel (the replacement to TLC) called “Thinking About God.” This past week’s episode focused on eschatology, or what people believe about the end times. Freeman interviewed a researcher at the University of Illinois, and learned that trying to decode the future is human instinct. Psychological experiments showed that participants reacted more calmly to a small electrical shock when they could predict it, versus those that expected a shock at undetermined intervals. Humans innately want to know how things will end in order to prepare themselves for the worst and consequently how to live now.

This is how we have approached the final book in our canon. We read the newspaper in one hand and the bible in the other, comparing notes. The financial success of apocalyptic televangelists and the Left Behind novels and movies underscores this behavior. Yet, Bauckham is right. The purpose of Revelation isn’t to predict the future, but rather to teach us how to live in the present.

Which brings me to a second “edu-tainment” show I’ve recently become enamored with. Over here it is titled, “Separated at Birth,” but in the states it goes by the name “Long Lost Family.” The show is about adopted children searching for their birth parents, or less frequently, parents searching for children given up for adoption. These children are almost never upset that they were adopted. Yet they express a desire to know a missing piece of who they are. For the people on “Long Lost Family,” these searches end in happy reunions.

One man, upon learning that his birth parents had been searching for him, remarked “It’s like I’m a piece of a puzzle. There is a whole other family that I belong to, one that I’m barely meeting for the first time.” And I want to pause here on the word “belonging” and what that means for our reading of Revelation.

The question of “belonging” extends far beyond this show. The desire to know where and to whom you belong may be acutely felt for those who are adopted, but I imagine it’s a question we experience more frequently in our lives than we imagine. Who I am almost always imply relationships and places. I am the wife of Jack. I am the daughter of Dianne and Jim. I am a student of Mike and Phil. I am an office mate of Katie, Joy, Conor, and Nicolle. I am an alter server at St. John’s, a student at the University of Aberdeen, an ordinand in the church, and a Texan. These are the associations that make up how I relate to the world.

But to whom do I belong? 

To whom do we belong?

Both our Gospel reading and the selection of Revelation answer this question. We belong to God. Jesus answers his critics- “My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. No one will snatch them out of my hand.” In the great future, these are those to whom the Lamb “will guide to springs of the water of life, and to whom God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.” We belong to the God who called Tabitha back to life. The God, if we read the Psalm appointed for today, who leads us through the valley of death and beside cool waters.

And this shapes our lives presently. In the wider Anglican communion, it is “vocations Sunday.” To many the talk of vocation stirs up the question of ministry. The fashion of using “vocation” to mean a job outside the church has fallen out of parlance in society. To have a vocation is to be called to something, and calling has a strong “church-y” connotation. A vocation is not a necessarily a career (although it might be), rather it is an aspect of our life intrinsically tied to our person. Everyone has a vocation- some to their profession, but also as citizens, husbands, wives, children, neighbors, so on and so forth.

But as Christians, our primary identity, our primary vocation is rooted in the narrative of God’s relationship with creation. The first task given to humanity was to care for creation. How much more so is it now? A life lived in Christ commands us to go forward and care for the world around us. Martin Luther famously answered that if the world was ending tomorrow he would go today and plant a tree. As we grow into the identity of Christians, our lives are to take on the character of Christ. This does not mean that we simply try to mirror Christ. Rather, we are challenged to grow in love for creation and respond to the chaos around us, not with fear and anticipation of the future, but with mercy and hope for a future when creation will be fully renewed, to be the person God calls us each to be, unique and wonderful in our individual gifts to the world.

Poet Gerald Manley Hopkins describe this transformation more eloquently than I ever could in his poem, “When Kingfishers Catch Fire”

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came. 

I say móre: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is —
Chríst — for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men's faces.

To be the person God calls us to be, to act in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is- that is our vocation. That is how we care for creation, how we act as Christ in ten thousand places.

We don’t just become this person. It is a life that is grown into and cultivated.

I suggested earlier that there is a connection between how we read Revelation and how we live our lives. If we are not settled, it is tempting to read Revelation as a roadmap for the future. A roadmap that we read in dread, worrying about the next sign post that we pass inches us closer toward hardship and pain. If we are settled instead in the promise that God does not abandon us, that once we belong to God, nothing can separate us, Revelation becomes a picture of hope. It is not a roadmap for destruction but rather a promise that God is recreating the world and we have a part in it. Living your life in fear or hope, shaping your relationship with world, carrying out your calling, all are the after birth resting as a child in God’s promise or worrying that that promise isn’t eternal. It’s about knowing to whom you belong.

So to whom do you belong?