"Washed in the Blood."

Revelation 7:1-17

May 12, 2019

I.

The Lamb has opened six of the seven seals of the scroll of destiny.  Before he opens the final seal, an angel arises in the east and hits the pause button.  The continued and intensifying consequences of human injustice, symbolized by destructive winds from each of the four directions, are held back so that God’s servants may receive an identifying mark to protect them from the worst of what is to come.  The followers of Jesus basically receive this seal identifying them as belonging to God.

This seal reminds us both of the blood of the lamb which protects the people at the first Passover, when the Israelite slaves are preserved from the angel of death killing the first born of the Egyptians, and a scene in the book of the prophet Ezekiel where some are marked with what would have been an X on their foreheads to set them apart and exempt them from the consequences of injustice.

The angel proceeds to apply this special mark to 144,000 disciples, listed by Israelite tribe, 12,000 in each tribe.  144,000 is one of those symbolic numbers that show up in the Bible which are not meant to be taken literally, but indicate a large, inclusive, complete set.   

This is the fulfillment of the 12 original tribes of Israel that come out of Egypt into Canaan under Moses and then Joshua, about 1500 years before this.  At that time, God establishes in the Promised Land a tribal confederation.  Each tribe is given territory to be governed by the Torah, the Laws of God.  This political arrangement is decentralized, with power spread out among clans and villages, exercised by the local elders.  If they follow God’s Torah, it is impossible for them to fall into the toxic and oppressive political regime they escape from in Egypt.

Egypt was a hierarchical autocracy with Pharaoh at the top, with a command and control structure in which power flowed down through the nobility and the owner class, with the Hebrew slaves languishing at the bottom owning nothing and doing most of the work.  It is a system of gross inequality and injustice, and God wants this new nation to have nothing to do with such evil.

The fact that this is what John sees in his vision is important because this tribal system is explicitly anti-Pharaoh, and is just as obviously anti-Rome.  God’s kingdom is a place where God, not Caesar, rules, and everyone else is equal under God.  There is no ruling class.  There is no owner class.  There is no aristocracy or oligarchy.  There isn’t even a central government, really. 

God sets this up as a kind of ideal political system; the best way for people to live and thrive together in peace: a commonwealth gathering around God’s Word, submitting to the will of the Creator.  

In some ways it is what the church is supposed to be, which is why Jesus makes the point of choosing an inner circle of 12 disciples: to remind us of the original tribal theocracy.  Only, instead of being clustered in one geographical territory, the church gets spread throughout the whole world.   

II.

This is what God’s anti-Empire looks like.  This is literally the kingdom of God.  It is a kingdom without a human king… God is the king.  Everyone else is equal as God’s servants, or literally, slaves.  And to be God’s slave is to be truly free because it is to be bound to our deepest, truest, blessed, essential created nature.

God’s mark on the 144,000 means they belong to God and it serves as protection.  It means that, in the beautiful and powerful words of the prophet Isaiah, “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.  When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.”  

The mark is a sign that God is with us and will carry us through to the other side of whatever is coming.  The sign does not exempt us from passing through the water and the fire; but it promises that we will emerge beyond the power of death that the water and fire represent.

These 144,000, ordered according to the 12 tribes, serve as the vanguard of God’s movement.  Because of their witness and their leadership as exemplary slaves of God, the movement will expand and grow both in faithfulness and numbers.

But the point of Israel, beginning even with Abraham, is to be the exemplary people of God through whom God will bless everyone.  God chooses one nation — not so that nation would have God’s blessing and keep it to themselves — but through that nation God intends to bless all.  The Israelite tribal confederation was not supposed to be a hermetically sealed special place where God’s will is done; but the values and practices of Israel are from the beginning supposed to spread.  It is supposed eventually to influence and embrace the whole world!

This is what the coming of the promised Messiah is intended to jumpstart. It is to reset this fundamental idea of Israel as the prototype of the global kingdom of God.  Through Israel God’s shalom is meant to be shared with all.  Just as God chooses one nation to bless all nations, in Jesus Christ, God sends one person to bless all people.

So the 144,000 represent the new Israel, the church, us! sent into the world with a mission to make disciples of all nations, drawing everyone into the commonwealth of peace, equality, non-violence, and sharing, which is the Kingdom of God which Jesus makes it the centerpiece of his mission to proclaim.

III.

Then John’s vision expands to include all those nations to which the church is sent, a vast inclusive multicultural, multi-racial, international multitude of people who have come through “the great ordeal” and “washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb.”  If the 144,000 represent the church as the new Israel, the holy nation sent into the world, the “great multitude that no one could count” represents the fulfillment of this mission, when all the nations are reached by the good news.

I wonder if the “great ordeal” doesn’t describe the Christian life in every age, especially in times of persecution.  I mean, we already know that John’s assumption is that being a Christian will necessarily provoke the rage and fear of the world’s empires.  We saw this in his letters to the churches earlier that a persecution-free authentic church is inconceivable to him.  So maybe what he is seeing is the completed, fulfilled church, all the witnesses in every age to the good news of God’s love in Jesus.  He is seeing the future consummation of the Christian mission.

To be a Christian is by definition to be someone who has “washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb.”  Paul says that those who have been baptized into Christ have “clothed themselves with Christ.”  This kind of imagery means that we are covered, we are protected and preserved by Jesus’ life, as represented by his blood.  We are clothed with Christ when his compassion, his simplicity, his generosity, his justice and love, his non-violence, his forgiveness characterizes our approach to the world as well.  Such a robe is our spiritual armor.

And the fact that these are our own robes means that we have participated in a death like his, in his suffering, and in his witness.  It means we have "died before dying,” in the sense of having denied ourselves, taken up our cross, and followed the Lord Jesus.  

There are different ways of “washing our robes in the blood of the Lamb,” different kinds of “martyrdom” or witnessing.  Sometimes Christians are actually called to shed their own blood and suffer bodily violence and even physical death for their trust in Jesus.  This endurance of brutal persecution witnesses to the Truth in a world awash in lies and delusion.  It has always been a part of Christian witness, and is happening today in several places in the world.  

It also counts as a kind of martyrdom when we exhibit selfless compassion and serve others in need in obedience to the Lord.  This can even be personally costly.  People are being arrested in this country for giving food and water to migrants and homeless people.  It is quite possible to go to jail in America for doing things Jesus commands us to do.  

A final kind of martyrdom or witness is the intentional undertaking of spiritual disciplines which help us to let go of our own ego.  We can’t be Christ in the world until and unless Christ sits on the throne in our own hearts.  And that doesn’t happen until our old ego-centric false self is dislodged, and our true Self in God, the living Christ, emerges within us, shaping our thoughts, words, and actions.  

IV.

The vast multitude sings a magnificent hymn to God.  Indeed their purpose is worship, “to glorify God and enjoy God forever.”  They live under the shelter of God’s blessing, comforted, fed, with the Lamb as their shepherd.  This is our purpose!  This is our destiny!

John’s vision never forgets that the ultimate meaning of life is joy!  God intends joy for us!  We are made for joy!  We are preserved and carried through every great ordeal, for joy, peace, love, hope, and blessing!

And what happens in this book is the collapse and disintegration, the implosion and the crumbling, of anything that gets in the way of, or prevents, or denies our joy.  I am sure that John has Psalm 23 in mind when he talks here about being guided through the valley of the shadow to springs of the water of life by the Lamb, who is our Good Shepherd.

This is a life to which we witness and which we may begin to know even now.  For he is, the Lamb, who gives his life for the life of the world, who realizes our true humanity and reveals God’s nature, is the true life of all.

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