"The Great Supper of God."

Revelation 19:11-21

November 3, 2019

I.

We see this other aspect of Jesus Christ, the Word of God.  Earlier he is presented as the sacrificial Lamb who was slaughtered but who now lives.  The other side is this vision of a victorious warrior on a white horse, the “King of kings and Lord of lords,” bearing the sword.  

It is important that we realize that this is still the Lamb, and that the Lamb imagery has priority.  It is only as the Lamb that he is the warrior and King, which is to say that his final victory is based on his primal sacrificial love.  Otherwise he would just be the kind of military messiah that the people wanted, one who would allow their nation to triumph.  But because he is “the Lamb who was slaughtered” we know his victory is not about the winning of a particular “side.”  Rather, his is a victory won by what the world sees as abject defeat.

The blood on his robe is his own blood, and the blood of the witnesses to him who were killed in his Name.  Blood in the Bible mainly means life, and it is this life, his life, given for the life of the world, that decorates his clothing like the medals displayed on the chest of soldiers today.  These indicate authenticity; they show that the person has paid their dues, been through the worst, suffered and made the ultimate sacrifice for the cause.

This is not just about defeating Rome, a particular military/political system that burned and devoured its way across the Mediterranean Basin for a few centuries, long ago.  John’s vision is much, much broader, wider, deeper, and higher than a mere historical event.  He sees the defeat of the Beast and the false prophet as representing the fate of Empire itself and its propaganda machine.  He sees the downfall of the cancer of violent egocentricity that infects the human heart and gets extended into institutions and therefore into history.  He sees the collapse of war and injustice themselves as principles and practices that dominate human life and kill the planet.  Indeed, he sees the end of history.  

We need to remember the key verse at the end of chapter 11, when everything changed and the tide turned, the verse that perhaps sums up the whole book: “It is time to destroy those who destroy the Earth.”  This is the ultimate defeat of nothing less than the reign of terror and sinfulness that threatens God’s whole creation!  

That is what the Lamb accomplishes.  That is why John sees the Lamb now in this new guise, as the conquering warrior riding the white horse.  By now we have heard enough to know that he is really the anti-warrior.  His appearance does not give validation to the arrogant men who rode literal white horses into villages of people and thrust literal steel swords into human bodies.  For it is precisely that murderous impulse to conquer and enslave by force that this Warrior, the Word of God, the Lamb, defeats.

And he is accompanied by the armies of heaven, the heavenly host, all in pure white linen, also riding white horses.  The color white represents here the purity of a light that contains the full spectrum.  White shines as inclusive light, embracing the fullness of the light God makes on Day One, with the words, “Let there be light.” 

II.

In this battle, the only One who engages the enemy is the Lord, and he does it by wielding his sword, which we know from other passages in the New Testament represents the Word.  The sword is, then, an extension, and application, of who Christ is.  This Word has the ability and potency to overcome all those who oppose it. 

In other words the Word of God is the weapon used by the Word of God in overcoming and defeating the powers of evil.  This is not a literal, physical fight to the death, so much as a theological/biblical debate.

Perhaps it was similar to the debate Jesus gets into with Satan in the wilderness, right after his baptism.  Jesus rebuffs Satan’s first two temptations by quoting Bible verses, but then Satan comes back with a Bible verse of his own as part of the third temptation.  “Scripture says that the angels will bear you up so you don’t even dash your foot against a stone,” he says.

But of course it doesn’t work.  Jesus is the Word, he is the author of the Scriptures and the Creator of the universe.  The Adversary cannot successfully use the words of Scripture against him.  They’re his words!  It’s like that scene in Annie Hall where Woody Allen settles an argument about the teachings of Marshall McLuhan by actually hauling the real person of Marshall McLuhan into the conversation.  The author is always the ultimate authority, and Jesus is the author of everything.

What John describes is not an even a fight so much as a collision between God’s eternal Word and the mindless, lying chatter of the rebellious powers of falsehood, ignorance, hatred, fear, and shame.  It is a contest between ultimate Reality on the one side and illusion, delusion, fantasy, paranoia, and craving on the other.  There is no doubt about the outcome.  The Word does not win by fighting; the Word wins by simply showing up.

The sword Jesus uses here against the Beast and the false prophet and their minions is himself, the Word, the very power by which the whole creation is spoken into being at the beginning.  It is the power and authority of the Real, against which the small-minded, fearful, pathetic lies of these other two clowns don’t stand a chance.  It’s like expecting a holographic projection to stop a freight train. 

Jesus says we may build our house, that is our life, on the soft, unstable, contingent, shifting sand of self-serving lies we are continually fed by our egos and our culture, represented in the Beast and the false prophet.  Or we may build our house, that is, we anchor the foundations of our identity and practice, on the bedrock that he gives us in his life and teachings.  And that bedrock is the overflowing, self-emptying, sacrificial love of God of which everything is made, embedded and encoded with the signature of God’s very Voice.  That love is in the end the only Reality, the only Truth, the only Way, the Source of Life.  

III.

The Beast and its false prophet, the Antichrist, are not killed in the great final battle.  They are not mortal humans but spiritual entities.  Thus they cannot be killed, but they will continue to howl in people’s imaginations in some form.  What they do receive is a fate even worse than death.  They are thrown alive into a lake of fire that burns with sulfur.  Which is apparently really hot.  Almost 1000 degrees, Fahrenheit.  And rather smelly, I would think.

In this way they get back upon themselves the pain they brought into the world.  The Beast and the false prophet — the Empire and its PR director — get immersed in the agony of every lynching victim, the despair and brutality endured by every slave, the hurting of every exploited worker, every animal tortured in a lab, every tree reduced to toilet paper, every woman burned as a witch, every soul beaten up for who they love, everyone burned alive in firestorms of carpet bombing, everyone shot by assault weapons, every victim of every pogrom and genocide, every life form driven to extinction, every whale skinned for its oil, and so on.  These two are plunged into the fire-pit of their own invention, a planet mangled by their greed and hate.  

The rest of their followers simply cease to exist, having hitched themselves to lies, hatred, fear, and injustice, their intentional, conscious, consistent rejection of God’s love separated them from the truth, and when they meet the Truth, they just perish.

Then happens the opposite of the great wedding banquet of the Lamb that John alluded to earlier in the chapter.  Instead of the joyful feast of the people of God, sitting at table in God’s Kingdom, we have a different sort of meal, which the angel describes as the descent of vultures and other birds, to start picking at the bodies of the Beast’s dead army.  And the angel refers to this as “the great supper of God.”  All the people who had given themselves over to the Beast — kings and captains, the mighty and their cavalry, free and slave, small and great — have their mortal remains meticulously and carefully devoured by the birds.  

Those who sought to exterminate and kill God’s creation are devoured by the birds of God’s creation.  They remain subject to the basic facts of physics and biology, laws which the Creator placed within the creation itself, which is the inexorable circle of life in which nothing is wasted and everything feeds everything else.  This is another way that life and God wins.  And we participate one way or the other.

The choice is either to serve God and others now by witnessing to and sharing in the outpouring of God’s love, in generosity, compassion, joy, healing, and love we see Jesus Christ, the Lamb who gives life for us and to us.  Or we may serve others in a different way.  We may be served up when our bodies in death literally become food for others, represented by the solemn gathering of birds in John’s vision.  But as Bob Dylan sang, “You’re gonna have to serve somebody.”

IV.

But we do not have to be a feast for the birds, or the worms, or the microbes.  Yes, our physical bodies return to the dust and our elements get reconfigured, recycled, reused, and re-membered.

At the same time, we have been called to the marriage supper of the Lamb, the celebration of union and unity between the Creator and the creation.  That’s is what we represent when we gather at this table.  That is why we call it “communion.”  For in finding, in this broken bread and filled cup, the oneness we share with Jesus Christ as we remember him according to his commandment and example, we also celebrate our oneness with each other, with all things, and with the living God.

We choose to serve him.  And we mean that two ways.  We serve him to each other in this Sacrament.  And in him we are sent out to serve others, giving ourselves for the life of the world after his example and according to his Word.

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