Revelation 17
October 6, 2019
I.
Back in chapter 12 we saw the blessed and beautiful Woman Clothed with the Sun, representing the People of God, who gives birth to the Messiah and has to flee to the wilderness to escape the Dragon. Here we have the opposite character in another woman, one who rides on a beast and makes the earth into a desert by the predations of what the text calls her “fornication.”
The word here in Greek is porneio, which means sexual immorality. But the interesting thing about this word is that it is derived from the word pernemi which means “to sell.” So the thing that makes sex, or any other good thing for that matter, immoral is when it is sold, exchanged for gain, that is, when it becomes prostitution. And the “fornication” of this harlot character is seen as more than just sexual: it has to do with how we try to sell any part of ourselves, and any part of God’s creation, including other people, in our selfish greed for profit. The “many waters” upon which she sits represent the world as it is involved with commerce and trade. John sees all that as a vast network and culture of fornication, in every sense of that word.
“Fornication,” then, is when we take any aspect of God’s good creation and turn it into an article of trade, manipulation, pressure, or quid pro quo (which is a Latin term simply meaning “this for that”). It means that things or people have no value in themselves but are only worth what you can get for them. This, the sinful and careless diminishment of things and people into items for sale in the marketplace, benefiting whomever enters into the exchange with more to begin with, is the larger and deeper meaning of fornication. It is the spirit of commodification in which everything, including human beings, gets reduced to its economic value, everything is subject to exchange for money, and everything is haggled over in a spirit of competition, exploitation, swindling, theft, and eventually often war. This is what the woman in this part of John’s vision stands for.
We totally understand this. We know what it means when we hear that someone has “prostituted himself.” It means that he caved in and abandoned his principles for the money. It means he sold himself — his mind, his time, his energy, his talents, his reputation — to the highest bidder, or at least to someone who would pay him for it. It is what we say when a great actor or musician starts doing lucrative deodorant commercials. And it is frankly what most of us are doing all day long because it is the very basis of our economy.
And we have no business claiming any superiority over others, especially those who are forced into perhaps the lowest form of this kind of degradation, which is sex work. Because we are neck deep in this kind of thing all the time ourselves. For we are under the spell of the prostitute in John’s vision whenever we do anything for the money.
And we are making such calculations so constantly that we are not even conscious of it. We rationalize it and justify it so perpetually and naturally that we are not aware that there is anything at all wrong in it. For instance, why would I go to get air in my tires at one gas station where it costs me 4 quarters, when I can go to the QuickChek on Route 9 in Howell and get air for free?
II.
I use a deliberately harmless and trivial example to show that we are always doing these cost/benefit analyses in our heads. We are always assuming without even any consideration that, well of course we’re going to go for the lowest price and of course we’re going to go for the highest salary and of course we should try to get the best return on our investments and of course….
And it is that “of course” that shows how sucked into the orbit of this prostitution mentality we are. It is veritably pre-conscious for us. Why would anyone think any other way. It’s inconceivable!
Indeed, the idea and practice of buying low and selling high is so automatic and reflexive in us that we assume it is just a natural feature of the way things are. How often do we approach relationships this way, even to the point of making lists of pros and cons? Do the benefits outweigh the costs? Does what we get out of something outweigh what we will have to contribute? Does this cost more energy than it’s worth? What is the “bottom line”?
Our whole economy runs on this. I mean, for example, what is a job but an arrangement in which we sell ourselves to someone else? We give them our time and energy in exchange for money. It’s just an extremely sanitized and (hopefully) non-sexualized form of prostitution. And so on.
In our decisions we habitually analyze the spread sheets showing past data and performance, and we strive to produce a budget projecting priorities for the future. This is what the text means when it says that the beast “was, is not, and is to come.” The beast gets his energy when we focus on the past and the future, and ignore the living present. This is about memory and desire, it is about nostalgia for the past and fear of the future… but it has no idea of where it really is or what it is really doing now.
Indeed, the ones who manage to live now in lives of compassion, equality, inclusion, and justice following the Lamb, Jesus Christ? It is their blood on which the whole system is drunk. The life and labor of those who address real, present need, as Jesus does, fuels everything.
The consequences of this attitude are perpetual conflict, as we see here in how the whole system is consumed by hate as the “kings of the earth” rebel against the “great city” the woman represents. The great city which is really a wilderness is where we find her, because that is what her regime is turning the whole planet into: a wasteland.
The Lord says we may serve God or we may serve money, but it is not possible to do both. He sets this irrevocable opposition, this absolute either/or, between the two that also deeply characterizes the attitude of John in Revelation. John would say we may follow the Woman Clothed with the Sun, or we may follow this harlot in chapter 17 who represents the spirit of selling yourself to the highest bidder. There is no compromise between these two.
III.
But what other way is there for us to live? I mean, come on! Are we expected to give without expecting anything in return? Are we expected to work for free? Are we expected to not get as much as we can for what we have? That was Martin Shkreli and other pharmaceutical executives’ question when they raise prices of one of some drugs 400%, beyond the ability of many sick people to pay.
Is there some other way to live?
The Christians in John’s day know that there is indeed another way to live. They know that the regime of the beast and the harlot and the antichrist is not really a way to live at all, but ultimately a way of extermination, annihilation, and extinction. They know because of their trust in the Lamb of God who demonstrates abundant love in giving his life for the life of the world… and revealing the true life of resurrection in and though all things, which they experience in the Church.
The Lamb shows us God’s continual self-emptying in love for the world. This indeed is the meaning of the cross in which God’s life and love — in the shed blood of the Savior — is poured out for creatures who cannot possibly deserve it. This is what Jesus means when he says things like we should give to people precisely because they will never pay us back. In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus repeatedly advises against doing anything for the sake of what you will gain from it, whether it be money, or power, or popularity.
Jesus is saying that if we imitate the free grace of God in freely giving to others what they need we will be rewarded. But he doesn’t just mean rewarded in heaven after we die. He means we are rewarded in this life in this creation because we will thereby live in a better world together. Instead of the beast’s selling economy, an economy based on prostitution in which we exchange what we have been given for money, and which puts lethal strain on the creation, the Lord offers a different vision and model. He offers and exemplifies a sharing economy in which we give what we have and receive what we need.
In his economy no one is so devalued that they are not worth receiving adequate health care, or decent housing, or clean water, or nutritious food. No one is so devalued and rendered so worthless that they do not deserve friendship, empathy, or concern. Indeed, not only is everyone valued and cherished and held in his economy, but the ones most attended to are those with the least, like the people be declares blessed in the Beatitudes: the poor, the grieving, the pure of heart, the peacemakers, the gentle, the persecuted.
IV.
The Kingdom of the Lamb does require a rather comprehensive and thorough change of heart and mind. We call this repentance. We cannot inhabit the Lamb’s Kingdom if our souls are still intoxicated with the ideology of the beast and the harlot of this story. We cannot dwell in God’s garden in peace if we are all about ourselves and what we can get and how we can get more, especially more than that other guy.
This is the great urgency of our evangelism. Will we go down with the world that the beast and the dragon and the harlot are consuming and destroying? Or will we be raised up with the Lamb in the world, the true world, that is coming and is now here, and which the Church is supposed to be representing, anticipating, and embodying? Will we perish in the doomed, squalid existence of selling and being sold? Or will we emerge into the pure Light of God’s world of sharing and giving? +++++++
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