The Uninhabitable Earth.

Revelation 8

May 19, 2019

I.

The genius of the book of Revelation is that the very things that supposedly “prove” to some that, in the words of one atheist writer, “God Is Not Great,” actually demonstrate God’s transforming, redeeming, saving — indeed, loving — Presence.  We see this in what Paul writes about Jesus’ crucifixion.  The very event that looks like the complete failure and ignominious end of Jesus’ whole mission, the gruesome execution and burial of the so-called Messiah, actually, to the eyes of faith, and in people’s actual experience, turns out to reveal God’s power, wisdom, strength, and, paradoxically, love.

It is a matter of perspective.  If we radically alter our point of view, the meaning of God’s actions becomes clear.  We see this in the central and seminal event of the Hebrew Scriptures: God’s deliverance and liberation of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt.  In the process of freeing the people, Egypt gets smitten by 10 horrendous, mostly ecological, plagues, which basically demolish with considerable violence the elaborate system of oppression in which Pharaoh had bound the people.  

From the perspective of the Egyptians, these successive disasters must surely have felt like a conclusive demonstration that there is no good God taking care of them, preserving them from evil.  How could God be so mean and wrathful?  Where is God’s forgiveness?  But, of course, from the perspective of the people being liberated, whose descendants go on to write the Bible, these events are celebrated as aspects of God’s miraculous deliverance.  God’s incendiary love for the world means the destruction of hateful institutions.

It often seems to be privileged, comfortable, powerful, well-off people who interpret their own inconvenience and discomfort as evidence that God doesn’t exist, or at least is, in Woody Allen’s memorable phrase, “an underachiever.”  As if God were an employee who was not performing up to expectations, not doing what we want and making things easier for us.  They understandably greatly prefer a deity who lets them off the hook, who overlooks their own selfish violence, and gives them a free pass into heaven after they have invested a lifetime in inflicting hell on others.

But the reality is that God’s liberation always means the deconstruction of whatever enslaves us.  For us to be free, God has to undermine the egocentric self we have constructed within ourselves.  And God has to destroy  the different kinds of prisons we have built for others.  Freedom requires the breaking of the chains that had been binding and crippling us. 

The emancipation that God brings into our life undermines everything we have learned to depend on and give our allegiance to.  It shatters the-world-as-we-know-it.  To what is false, the Truth comes as an annihilating cataclysm.  To evil, goodness feels toxic.  Darkness is allergic to light.  Life kills death.  That is the meaning of resurrection.  The point then is to align ourselves with the truth, goodness, light, and life of God that always prevails in the end.

II.

This next scene in Revelation begins, after a long, pregnant silence, with the people of God, the saints, gathered at worship in the heavenly Temple.  Their prayers ascend to God along with billows of fragrant incense, burning on the golden altar.  

The prayers of God’s people are always for liberation and deliverance, for life, redemption, and justice.  They are the prayers of those who have nothing to lose, no stake in the status quo.  Indeed, they are looking for the end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it, so that God’s true and good world may emerge.

And the response of the angels is to take the hot coals from the altar and throw them onto the earth, applying fire, the agent of refining and purification, to the world.  In this case, the fire is accompanied by thunder, lightning, and earthquakes, indicating God’s will expressed in nature.

That is the cue for four angels to blow their trumpets in succession, and for a series of disasters to occur.  There is a lot of fire, a lot of blood, and a lot of damage to the earth, vegetation, the waters, and even the sun, moon, and stars.  That which the Empire had reduced to commodities and resources, to be extracted, taken, used, wasted, polluted, and used up in the pursuit of gain and power, now get decimated.  They are reduced in value and quantity often by a third, which would undercut the Empire’s material foundation.   

Frankly, these verses sound almost like a condensed version of a book I just read called The Uninhabitable Earth, which gives a sober, unflinching view of the dire consequences, according to science, of the rise in atmospheric temperature which is now undeniably occurring on this planet, due to our burning of fossil fuels like oil and coal.

The fact is that it has been 800,000 years since there was as much carbon in the atmosphere as there is today.  Back then, the planet was 11 degrees warmer.  That doesn’t seem like a lot, but we’re already at 1 degree warmer and seeing the effects in storms, fires, heatwaves, and floods.  For every degree rise the consequences get more severe.

Some of the things that John sees in his vision are actually literally happening among us!  We are in the middle of a period of significant extinction.  We are facing crises of fresh water, and deforestation. 

As I have said before, the visions in Revelation should be interpreted less like historical fact and more like what we see in dreams.  We get images, symbols, metaphors, stories, and associations, which may be interpreted on several levels.  Revelation is more art than science, more poetry than prose, more about imagination than measurable, quantifiable data.

That being said, it is somewhat disconcerting to see such parallels in our actual contemporary events, or even weirder to discover, for instance, that the word in Russian for “wormwood” is actually “chernobyl.”

III.

One question is: What do we do in such a situation in which the order of nature itself seems to be unraveling?

Remember that a lot of this mayhem is happening in at least apparent coordination with the prayers of the saints.  They pray, and disasters occur.  It is not that they are directly praying for such destructive events.  We would never pray for anyone to suffer.  Ezekiel tells us that God never delights in anyone’s death.  The people of God are longing for the coming of God’s Kingdom.  It is something we still pray for every day when we say in the Lord’s Prayer, “Thy Kingdom come.”  What do we think that means, I wonder? 

In order for the new, the true, and the good to emerge, the old, the false, and the evil has to fall.  We have to lose our allegiance to the principalities and powers in this world in order to see God’s new world being born among and within us.   

The coming of God’s Kingdom means the collapse and disintegration of the world’s Empires.  This is something that is always happening.  And we who live in the time before the final fulfillment of God’s Kingdom, nevertheless are always looking forward to it, anticipating it, and living now according to its values.

This is why, whatever is going on out there, what is happening in here — both in our own hearts and in our gospel communities — is repentance and discipleship.  We are living together according to Christ’s example of compassion, generosity, service, humility, non-violence, and love.  We are living in gratitude and grace.  We are welcoming and accepting others in forgiveness and peace.  We are experiencing together the deep joy that comes with the knowledge that God does triumph, and God’s Kingdom does come, in the end.  

The early church does not sit on the sidelines and root for death and destruction, even when it was the fall of an evil regime like Rome.  They never succumbed to hate or glee at others’ pain, even that of their enemies and torturers.  No.  The church is known for their ministry to victims of whatever was happening, no matter who they are.  Christians were the only people who would stay in cities to care for plague victims, for instance.  

Because the crises, including such things that John sees in his visions, are treated as opportunities to witness and serve.  We minister to the victims of disasters, regardless of any other circumstance.  This is the example of the Lord, who never asks about how a person got sick; he just heals them.  Neither do we attach any conditions to whom we will help.  We just give what we are given to give.

IV.

For in Jesus Christ we do identify with the suffering of the world.  Even as we await the fulfillment of the Kingdom of God, living in that Kingdom now, and having that Kingdom within us now, means consciously placing ourselves with Jesus, which is to say, with those in need, whoever they are.

That is our part in the working out of God’s will.  That is the content of the prayers of the saints before the altar.  It is intercessory prayer and active service for a world in turmoil as we continue to witness to God’s Kingdom in simplicity, humility, faithfulness, hope, and joy.

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