April 22, 2007 - Easter 3, Year C
Saint James Episcopal Church, Saint James, NY

The book of Revelation
is one of those parts of the bible
that most of us try to avoid. Apart from the first couple of chapters
with their short letters
to the newborn churches scattered around the Mediterranean
and the end, with it's wonderful vision of a new heaven and a new earth, where God will wipe away our tears,
the rest is pretty much impenetrable,
a complicated mix of vision and apocalyptic and prophecy and metaphor,
of angels and dragons and blood and war.
There are probably as many interpretations of these words
as there have been years since they were written,
many of them relying on counting of years
and making connections between the somewhat fantastic creatures of the book
and people in our own day, between the strange battles
and events that we have experienced.
The Left Behind series
is just the most recent and popularly successful of these interpretations,
so much so that it's been parodied on The Simpsons;
I have a suspicion that many of us avoid even reading Revelation
lest we get tainted
by the crazy people.
I know I do.

Which means that when we get a reading like today's second reading from the New Testament,
our first response
is to pretend it doesn't exist. To just ignore it,
and hope it will go away.
Because while there's kind of glory to it.

We're not always very good
at working out how to understand metaphors in scripture.
We tend to either take them literally
and get caught up in knots when they don't correspond to the reality we know,
or acknowledge that they use figurative language, and then write them off
as somehow "not real."

But those aren't the only two alternatives. The other
is to recognize
that figurative language
is the language that we use
to describe
what is indescribable.
It's the language we use
when language itself
isn't good enough, isn't powerful enough
to express the reality
in front of our eyes.
It's the sort of language we often use
when the thing we're describing
is something — or someone — that we love.

And we see that in scripture as well.
Think back to the description of the beloved in the Song of Songs:
Your eyes are doves...
Your hair is like a flock of goats...
Your teeth are like a flock of shorn ewes...
Your lips are like a crimson thread...
Your cheeks are like halves of a pomegranate....
If you try to draw a picture of this person,
she looks very strange indeed, birds instead of eyes, goats as hair, sheep as teeth.
And if you were to insist
that because she is described in this way, that's what she actually looks like,
you would have to conclude
that she is a very strange figment
of someone's twisted imagination.
But the point is not to create a realistic image
a photograph,
but for the writer to say
what this person reminds them of, in the richest, most valued way.
In an agricultural society, talk of birds and flocks and fruit
tells us that this person is beautiful, so beautiful
that she is of greater value
than all the possessions
in the world.

The language of Revelation
works the same way.
It's trying to describe something
that is essentially
indescribable.
It's trying to catch hold of something
that by its very nature
can't be tied down.
It's talking about reality,
but a reality
that language
is inadequate
to express.

And so when we get to today's reading,
and come across a Lamb
standing
as if it had been slaughtered
with seven horns
and seven eyes
who has hold of a scroll,
what we know
is not an animal with blood dripping, all sorts of strange protuberances,
and enough manual dexterity
to grab hold of a roll of paper,
what we know
is a reality
that is beyond all language.
You can't put all the images together
into a picture;
instead
we build a sense of what is being described
out of all the associations
that the writer makes.
And what the writer sees
is a figure with more power and glory than can ever be imagined.
This figure is a lamb,
the Lamb of God
is how Jesus is described just after his baptism,
precious and beloved, a sign of hope
in an agricultural community,
a promise of prosperity.
And a lamb that is slain,
a sacrifice, given for the sins of the world,
the one we know
hanging on the cross
and then risen
still bearing the marks of nails and spear,
the marks of death.
And this figure has eyes, seven in all, the perfect number; this figure
sees everything, and not just sees everything, but sees clearly;
and it has seven horns,
a symbol of power in biblical tradition
but also something
that adorned the altar in the temple,
so it is God's power, God's perfect power,
and in case we missed it,
this figure goes and gets a scroll from the very throne of God.
And there is incense and music and glory,
and all the words in the world
are not enough to describe
the one
that we know as
Christ.

"Use your words"
is something we say to two and three year olds
when they get frustrated and cry and yell. But of course
that's part of the problem.
They don't quite know yet
how to use their words
to express not just what they want, but how they feel.
We're like that with Christ.
We want to use our words, but we know
our words aren't enough.
All we can do
is try.

In a sense,
that's what the whole of this Easter season is like.
We're talking about something
that really can't be described.
Jesus is risen. Jesus has defeated death. Jesus is alive.
There are no words in the human language
that are sufficient
to describe this reality, because it had never happened before
and has never happened since.
Our language
is simply
insufficient.
And so we do the best we can.
And the writers do the best they can.
To describe this thing that is real, is more real
than anything else they have ever encountered,
but that can't be tied down, can't quite be captured
in language.

That's what our reading from Acts and the gospel
are both about.
In Acts,
Saul, later to become Paul, Saul sees
the risen Christ.
And language is so inadequate, human perception so inadequate
that he can't describe it other than a bright light that blinds him
and a voice.
And in the bright light he sees something,
but it's beyond the words he has.
And it's real, more real than anything else, and in case we missed it., or thought it was just a hallucination,
the writer tells us that the other people traveling with Saul
heard the voice, and saw Saul blind,
and can testify
that this is real.

And in the gospel of John
the risen Jesus appears to the disciples on the lake,
just as he appeared to them
when he first called them,
and they can't quite bring themselves to describe him
because there just aren't
enough words,
but they want to make sure
that we know it's real,
and so they record the number of fish,
one hundered fifty three in all,
a huge haul
that any fisherman would remember,
and they tell us about the meal
he made them,
bread and fish
eaten by the lake.

And both these stories, like Revelation,
are stories of people who encounter the risen Christ
and want to tell the world,
but words
are not enough.
And so they do the best they can,
and above all else
they try to tell us
this is real.

That's what this Easter season is about. Trying to express
that Jesus risen
is real.
And it's something that matters, we know, sadly
how much it matters.
Because in a world
where 32 people
are killed on a college campus
by a young man
with no hope,
that Christ's resurrection is real
matters so much.
It matters
that death does not claim the final victory.
It matters for those who died,
that their deaths
are not the end.
It matters for us,
who have been reminded
of the fragility of life,
the close possibility of death.
And it matters for people like that young man,
who had not heard, deep down,
did not know
that he was loved, that he was not alone,
that there is hope.

Use your words.
Use your words
to talk about what is really real.
The one who we know, Jesus Christ, risen from the dead,
who sees us
and loves us
and offers us new life.

©Raewynne J.Whiteley, 2007