St Margaret's Church Prestwich

Rev Helen gave this sermon on Sunday 14 January 2024. Here it is for you to ponder again.

So I’ve said it before Daniel is my second favourite book in the bible, well Revelation is number one and we have had a very poignant reading from it today. I just love the whole book it is so amazing and I think the thing that attracts me to it really is the imagery and everything that comes behind that and Revelation gives us some very iconic images, that I’m sure we’re all familiar with. The plagues and disasters visited on the earth through scrolls, trumpets and bowls. The four horsemen come riding out, conquest, war, famine and death to devastate the world. The war in heaven, Michael and All His Angel fighting the dragon before casting it down to the earth. The beasts emerging with the whore of Babylon on it’s back and marking their followers with its number six six six. The imagery it conjures for me are amazing and one way I enjoy engaging with it is to listen to someone reading it to me (David Suchet does it well) and stare at a white wall and just see what images come into my head while listening.

It’s a hard book to read and it’s hard to even put it into a category like the other books in the bible, as it’s a prophesy, apocalypse, a letter sent to different churches… none of the above. It is also attributed to John, generally believed to be the same author of Johns gospel or it could be another biblical John as there were a few. It’s a book that scares people, no one quite knows what to make of it but it’s full title is the Revelation of Jesus Christ so all this is telling us about Jesus, who he is and what was the reason for the incarnation we remember and Christmas. In todays gospel Jesus says of himself ‘You will see great things…see the heavens opened and the angels of God ascend and descend upon the Son of Man’

Our second reading today is that beautiful reading from Revelation, they have scroll and they need someone who is worthy to open it, the anointed one, the self sacrificial one, the one who gave their life to save others. The person who is from the roots of David, the royal priest, the one sent by God. No one there around the throne can do it, the saints and angels who were residing there, except one person, the lamb which is there with its throat slit, it’s dripping with blood, the blood of sacrifice, the final sacrifice needed to save and purify humanity and that’s what the lamb represented.

Back to todays gospel Philip and Nathanial make a couple of comments about Jesus, he talked about in very different terms he’s described as the Son of Joseph and Philip says Can anyone good come from Nazareth?, how unfair is that? Jesus is almost being dismissed by them as someone unimportant. Jesus however was going to go on and do some amazing things, unimportant would not be a way to describe him, just think about some of the things he is going to go on and do and the things he would teach.

He told us to be kind to each other and generous to everyone, he told us to help those who are in need, to be with and help the sick and dying, he lived on charity and handouts himself, he told us to care for those who are less fortunate than we are, to be with those who society has rejected he himself ate with tax collectors and beggars, he saw everyone as equal, he gave to those who were less fortunate than him but the one thing he said which covers all of this was he told us to love each other. He uses the word love, liking is an optional extra here it’s easy to love those we like but the other way round is a lot harder. He told us to forgive our enemies or those who hurt us just think when he was being nailed to the cross, ready to be hung there and left to die what did he ask of God, to forgive those who were doing this to him. The humanity, us, who he came to save killed him and he asked for the to be forgiven. He allowed himself to be tortured and executed for those he loved, many who would still remember him years later, who he would never meet. It’s hard to think of him sometimes when we have the baby still in the crib or Jesus at the start of his ministry and where he will end up. The revelation of Jesus Christ summed up here in a slaughtered Lamb, the only one who is worthy to start the events to bring forth the new and better world, the second Eden or New Jerusalem in Revelation 21.

You see him again in Revelation 19 as a rider on a white horse, in contrast to the other 4 horsemen, he is described as faithful and true. How do we know it’s Jesus here? He is wearing the many crowns of an eternal king, he is naming and speaking the word of God, he’s dazzling white but he’s covered in blood his own blood as he sacrificed himself and his weapon isn’t a sword it’s his words and actions The king of Kings and lord of Lords.

This is what the book of Revelation is doing it’s telling us all these things that Jesus is and all that he will do, the most important thing about him is he is that person who was sent by God to save the world as it says in ch 5 ‘You were slaughtered and by your blood ransomed for God…You made them to be a kingdom…serving your God as they will reign on earth’. Jesus will be enthroned as king of the world we remember that at the feast of Christ the King, the last Sunday of the church year. His teachings and actions will form this new world and remember those rooms he promised in God’s house for those who followed him and lived how he lived the way he said. It’s a nice thought isn’t it.

So what is the book of Revelation? Prophesy, letters, visions or the apocalypse? Is it a code to crack? Many have tried and still do! Is it the future or has it already happened? Honestly? I don’t think we’ll ever be able to answer that with certainty but what does it show? It shows Jesus for who he is, what he did and how he gave his life for those he loved and if we follow his way he will be with us in this world and the next for so loved he the world he gave his own life to save it and he doesn’t ask for much in return really does he? Amen