Sabbath Devotional: New Heavens, New Wars, New Possibilities in Revelations

Scripture is inexhaustibly full of possibility. It's less like a cryptic code to be cracked and more like a story. And the best stories stay with us precisely because they resist single interpretations. So, I want to be very clear that I do not mean to suggest that what I offer below is a Correct or Definitive or Perfected reading of Revelations. What I do mean to suggest is a possibility.

And the possibility is this: I think there's a way to read the book that isn't a story of God deploying all the superior military commanders/strategies to trounce his enemies in a super violent, gory, but ultimately successful final battle.

It goes like this: John is placed before a battle. There are dragons, beasts, forces of hell. In the face of this opposition, John is told to look for the conquering lion of Judah. But when he looks, it isn't Aslan standing in front of him. It's a slain lamb, still marked with its own blood. When the red dragon threatens, it's a woman in labor who stands opposed. During the final apocalyptic battle, Christ does appear riding a war horse, but he is covered in his own blood and entirely weaponless besides the double-edged sword coming from his mouth: in short, a voice of truth and justice for the world. (At least, that's how the folks at The Bible Project read that, and I like the possibility, so I'm including it in this interpretation).

These are strange champions indeed if the intent is to utterly overwhelm the forces of hell and all its miseries. It's more unlikely than the child Peter Pevensie taking on the white witch. These warriors are not warriors at all. They are helpless. Pathetic. Impossibly needy. Yet the wearily hopeful of every nation rally behind them.

I think my favorite articulation of this interpretation is a poem by Robert Southwell. It's titled "New Heaven, New War," echoing Revelations "new heaven, new earth." Southwell was a Jesuit priest in England at a moment when it was extraordinarily inconvenient to be a Catholic. He was eventually caught, imprisoned, and executed for his convictions. And yet, in spite of the violence and weaponry that hunted and ultimately overwhelmed his life, he penned these words:

This little babe, so few days old,

Is come to rifle Satan’s fold;

All hell doth at his presence quake.

Though he himself for cold do shake,

For in this weak unarmèd wise

The gates of hell he will surprise.

With tears he fights and wins the field;

His naked breast stands for a shield;

His battering shot are babish cries,

His arrows looks of weeping eyes,

His martial ensigns cold and need,

And feeble flesh his warrior’s steed.

His camp is pitchèd in a stall,

His bulwark but a broken wall,

The crib his trench, hay stalks his stakes,

Of shepherds he his muster makes;

And thus, as sure his foe to wound,

The angels’ trumps alarum sound.

My soul, with Christ join thou in fight;

Stick to the tents that he hath pight;

Within his crib is surest ward,

This little babe will be thy guard.

If thou wilt foil thy foes with joy,

Then flit not from this heavenly boy.

I think this is the battle Christ is fighting. This is the Jesus we worship. The one who battles the wickedness of the world with invitations for mercy. The one who uses battered shepherds and broken sinners as his soldiers. The one who foils his foes with joy.

The Lamb conquers not because he carries the biggest sword, but because he refuses to become the dragon. God does not save the world by outmatching evil at its own game, but by playing an entirely different one.

I presented this reading as a possibility within the text. But I admit it's one I share with conviction. I, too, close my door at times. I occasionally draft withering comebacks while vigorously sweeping the floor. I sometimes feel overwhelmed with hurt and resentment. They burn like dragons within me. But the battle isn't over yet.

And inevitably, when I open the door again, when I go back to church, when I turn back towards my community, I see invitations for mercy at every turn. A grieving daughter. An overworked teacher. A farmer praying to make ends meet. And there is the lamb that was slain, already walking towards them. He beckons. And I follow him into a new heaven, a new earth. Worthy is the lamb.

. . . . . . . .

Image: Agnus Dei (The Lamb of God) by Francisco de Zurbaran, c. 1635-1640.

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Sarah Perkins is the peaceful root director at Mormon Women for Ethical Government.