Crescent Hill Baptist Church
Crescent Hill Baptist Church
Louisville, Kentucky
Pentecost 6
July 8, 2007
W. Gregory Pope
HALLELUJAH AND LAMENT:
THE END OF EVIL
Revelation 18:21-19:4
We are in the midst of looking inside the Book of Revelation, what Fred Craddock calls “the house of terrible splendor.” I am indebted to Craddock for his help in my understanding of Revelation through a series of lectures I heard him give several years ago on this last book in the Bible.
I would remind you again the context of this book: The people to whom John was writing this vision of Revelation were Christians seeking to live faithful lives as they anticipated the return of Christ. They were suffering greatly at the hands of Caesar Domitian. They were being persecuted, imprisoned, even killed. And John, isolated in exile, is consumed with terrifying questions: Why is Domitian so powerful? Why does God allow the forces of evil to be so strong? Why does God let evil people prosper and good people be persecuted? Who’s in control after all? And how’s it all gonna end?
So God gives John a vision, an apocalyptic story written in codes. Hidden within the code is a message to persecuted Christians, a message of God’s ultimate triumph over evil and suffering.
The Book of Revelation acknowledges the reality of evil and suffering in a world like ours, with wars and famine and disease and death. The Revelation acknowledges a battle going on between good and evil and how it appears that evil is going to win. And this book, written to persecuted Christians, addresses the question of what it means to believe in God in a world like this.
The Biblical God in whom we are called to believe is described in chapters 4 and 5 of the Book of Revelation. There we find the most remarkable picture of God, perhaps unequaled in all of scripture.
After concluding his letters to the seven churches, John, in a vision, is invited to enter the sanctuary of eternity, to go into the very center of reality. He enters and sees four living creatures, representing all creation. And he sees 24 elders, representing the 12 tribes of Israel and the 12 apostles, all of whom are singing “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty.”
And there in the center of it all is a throne, a symbol of God’s power, more beautiful than words can describe, covered in jasper and emeralds. And the elders and the four living creatures gather around the throne singing:
You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory, honor, and power,
for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.
Here at the end of the biblical story we are taken back to the beginning of creation and words of praise are lifted up to the One on the throne - the Lord God of Heaven and Earth, Creator of all that is.
And then John says, To one side of the throne I saw a lamb, a lamb bleeding, bleeding from the foundation of the world. It was not the victim of an accident. There’s something about this bleeding lamb that is of the very nature of reality; it’s of the very nature of God.
So here’s the throne - the power of God. And here is the lamb - bleeding. What is a bleeding lamb doing there next to the throne? Well, that too is God. God’s power is not a controlling power of coercion and force, but the suffering power of love in the face a free creation. God is not raw unadulerated power. There is a vulnerability to the God of creation seen most clearly in the bleeding Lamb of God on the cross of Christ. There is a mystery, a paradox to the very nature of God. And we must not forget this about God’s nature as we consider the interplay of divine power and human suffering in the world.
Following this vision of God in chapters 4 and 5 of Revelation, John pictures for us over the next several chapters, in highly symbolic language, the evils of the world.
When we arrive in chapters 18 and 19 we see envisioned the fall of Rome (John calls it Babylon, a clear reminder to the Jewish people of the nation that took them into captivity over half a millenia ago). And in that vision we see a celebration as the evil empire of Rome comes tumbling down.
If we’re honest, we must admit there is pleasure in watching the punishment of the wicked. Just to have a good seat up there in the balcony and look down there and see.
You remember Old Nebuchadnezzar II. He was a great king, forty something years. He took his troops in and sacked Jerusalem, and they said, “King, what about the temple?” “Burn it to the ground!” Oh, he was powerful. And yet in Daniel, in Daniel chapter 4, we get the last picture of Nebuchadnezzar. He’s lost his mind. And he’s out in a pasture eating grass and grazing like a donkey. And you say, “Yeah! What goes around comes around!” (Fred Craddock’s description)
There is a kind of quiet pleasure in seeing the wicked punished. That pleasure’s expressed in the words of jilted country music artist Jo Dee Messina as she sings with anticipation:
"Somebody’s gonna give you a lesson in leavin’,
somebody’s gonna do to you what you’ve been doin’
and I hope that I’m around to watch ‘em knock ya down.” *
Who hasn’t had their love spurned before that cannot identify with those feelings! It feels good to see those who’ve hurt us get hurt themselves. And you wanna say, “Yeah! You’re gonna get yours!”
And so it happens in the 19th chapter of Revelation, we get to sit in the balcony and watch the burning, as the writer says, smoke coming up from Babylon forever. This is how it reads:
And the sound of the harp and the minstrel,
the flute and the trumpet will be heard in you no more.
The artisans of every trade will be found in you no more.
The light of a lamp will shine in you no more.
The voice of a bridegroom and a bride will be heard in you no more.
Art, music, homemaking, evening with the family, weddings, no more. Do you hear that? Do you know what that is? That’s a lament for the wicked! What’s a lament doing here? You have a Hallelujah - the wicked burn - and then a lament - it kinda takes the punch out of the Hallelujah! Here we are looking over the railing saying, “Get ‘em. They deserve it!” Then art is gone, weddings are gone, music is gone, work is gone, family life is gone, it’s all gone. And we lament.
It’s what any human being would have done in 1945 after the atomic bombs hit Hiroshima and Nagasaki: “There, take that for Pearl Harbor. You got yours! Hallelujah! The war’s over.”
But then you dare to look at the sad devastation: Art is gone, weddings are gone, work is gone, family life is gone. Death, destruction and disease larger than our imaginations can fathom. And we lament.
How can we have a Hallelujah and a lament? Because that’s the way it is - for God, and how it should be for the people of God.
There’s a rabbinic story of the Exodus that tells how God assigned a committee of angels to take care of the passing of Israel through the Red Sea. So here’s these angels and here come the children of Israel and they get to the Red Sea and the angels use God’s power and the water parts and Israel goes through on dry land.
And then here come the Egyptians chasing them on chariots and horses ready to kill the Israelites, and when they get out in the middle of the Red Sea, the angels use the power of God and the water comes in and drowns them and the horses and men are tumbling and drowning in the sea, and the angels say, “We got em, we got em, we got em, we got em!” And then God comes by and says, “What are you celebrating?” They said, “Look, we got em, we got em!” And God looked at them and said, “You are no longer in my service.” “But we got em! We killed the evil enemy!” And God said, “Don’t you understand? The Egyptians are also my children.”
A high level U.S. government official was asked at one point during this present Iraq War the number of Iraqis who had been killed. And he said, “I have no interest whatsoever in that number.” And God says, “Don’t you understand? The Iraqis are also my children.”
Something is terribly wrong with us when the body count of “the enemy” does not matter, and all we can do is shout “Hallelujah!” and refuse to lament to death of any of God’s children.
But how often we embrace the kind of story line where we celebrate the destruction of our enemies because it is emotionally satisfying to hear that others are the source of evil, not us, and that the difference between good and evil is very easy to discern. But it’s not so easy is it? We are all of us capable of evil. We only need to revisit Abu Graib and Guantanamo Bay where we the liberators abused and humiliated other human beings. And we became the evil we were trying to defeat. Evil resides within us all. A neat division between good guys and bad guys does not exist in God’s world of truth. We wish it did. There is an axis of evil, all right. It runs straight through every human heart. The realization of evil within us all should make it more difficult for us to celebrate the destruction of our “evil” enemies.
Besides, as followers of Jesus, can we really hope for and celebrate the destruction of our enemies, or should we be loving them and praying for their transformation, as well as our own?
Babylon is fallen! - Hallelujah! Babylon is fallen! - lament. That’s the way it is even when we see the triumph over evil and suffering - it is to say Hallelujah and to cry at the same time.
The only person I know who’s had a view from the balcony, a view over the railing, was Jesus of Nazareth. He looked down from the cross, and he saw his running friends abandoning him. He saw the soldiers cursing him and gambling for his clothes. He saw the others yelling ugly things to him. And Jesus looked down from the cross and said, “You’re gonna get yours! What goes around comes around! You’re gonna be hearing from me! Your gonna burn in hell for what you’re doing to me!” No, that’s not what he said. He said, “Father, forgive them for they don’t know what their doing.”
On the cross Christ defeated the powers of evil and violence, suffering and death by refusing the way of violence, unmasking evil for what it really is, and rising from the dead.. Evil, violence, suffering, death - they’re still around with great power. But their doom is sealed by the healing power of God’s transforming love..
The Bible is the story of how sin has been, is being, and will be overcome through Jesus Christ. Because of the death and resurrection of Jesus, when all things come to a close with his return, evil, suffering, and death will be ultimately annihilated. One New Testament theologian, Oscar Cullmann, using a World War II image, likens it to living between D-Day and V-E Day. The climactic battle has been won but the final victory is not yet achieved.
The book of Revelation depicts this final battle between good and evil as the Battle of Armageddon. It is not a literal war, not WWIII as some have imagined, and others are even hoping for. Armageddon is a spiritual war, being fought even now, where evil will ultimately be defeated by God when Christ returns. “Be of good cheer,” Jesus said, “for I have overcome the world.” The completion of this great redemption awaits his return.
Until the day of his return as Prince of Peace, our calling is to be peacemakers in our homes, schools, places of work, our communities, and the world. On the day of his return all war shall cease; there shall be no more crying, no more sorrow, no more death. In those beautiful words of Julian of Norwich: “All shall be well, and all shall we well, and all manner of things shall be well.” “Even so, Lord Jesus, come.”
SERMON TALK-BACK QUESTIONS
1. In light of Revelation’s vision of God’s throne, what kind of power does God have in the face of the world’s suffering?
2. How should the Christian fight evil?
3. How should the Christian respond to the defeat of Saddam Hussein? Should the Christian hope for the death of Osama bin Laden?
* Jo Dee Messina, "Lesson In Leavin'", in I'm Alright album, 1998
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CRESCENT HILL BAPTIST CHURCH
2800 Frankfort Avenue
Louisville, Kentucky 40206
(502) 896-4425
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