World Without End

Proposing Ears to Hear

I am often asked by friends and those in church circles if I ever want to formally put my thoughts regarding Eschatology and the book of Revelation together.  I carefully navigate these questions because I feel called to the local church. Therefore, much of my energy related to these topics is placed inside the local church. I don't like the idea of meandering through 100 pages of the use of the genative case. I know people much better at that than me, and I will gladly point others in their direction.

I am writing a Master's Thesis, because I liked the idea of a place to systematically work through some ideas.  My proposal was approved last week, and I am officially starting today, although I have spent years mulling over various rabbit trails regarding Eschatology and contemporary culture.

If you are so inclined, here is my proposal.  Only 3 pages are actual writing, the rest is bibliography and such. Thanks for staying with me on this journey.

Thesis Proposal v.3

The Apocalyptic Pastor

Eugene Peterson is about as mystical as Presbyterians get. He is a great example of a 21st century contemplative. Over the last few weeks I have been studying the use of Revelation in preaching and the pastoral vocation. Peterson devotes an entire chapter in The Contemplative Pastor: Returning to the Art of Spiritual Direction to the topic.

Peterson quickly identifies the role of apocalyptic as an adjective of the pastor. Insisting on the realities of the kingdom against the realities of the world is part of the task of the pastor. They are there to remind us of our exact station. Too often, the church acts like Israel, waiting for the promised Messiah. The Christian life lives in the expectation birthed by the resurrection.

Below are the three broad strokes that Peterson takes describing the apocalyptic pastor.

1. Apocalyptic Prayer-
Prayer is the pivotal action in the Christian community. In his task of being a pastor, John situates himself in prayer through the whole book. At the beginning and end of Revelation, John is in a posture of worship. Living on the boundary between Rome and the Kingdom, prayer connects the Christian life. Prayer is a formal, awesome activity. Pastors pray to bring people into the presence of God. Prayer is the true reality of a Christian

2. Apocalyptic Poet-
John is playful in Revelation, because he shapes a new reality for the reader. This is translation, not memorization. The creative task of the pastor is to shape the praying imagination of his people, therefore poetry must be used. Poetry is original speech, bringing things into being. Words make truth.

3. Apocalyptic Patience-
We want things quickly. The apocalyptic community is patient because it dwells in holy wedlock with Christ. It develops us into the true people of God. Apocalypse is urgent without being hurried. Patience is needed to enter into the "subtle and glorious poem vision". It takes patience to unlearn our hurried life and abide in the "deep time" of God. 

If you are familiar with Peterson, you understand that he constantly promotes a John 15 approach to Christianity, bed rocked in a constant and on-going relationship. This quick chapter is just another step in his dance.

Related Posts:
Story Telling and Re-Telling
Forming an Eschatological Community: Formation through Text

Glory be to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit:
As it was in the beginning, is now, and shall ever be, world without end.

Christian Time and the End of Times

I took this picture earlier in the year of my favorite prayer shack at the Abbey of Gethsemani in Bardstown, Ky.  Famous as the monastery of Thomas Merton, I can completely lose track of time during my retreats there.  This particular Rosary Hut is my favorite place to forget about things and concentrate on prayer. I leave behind the time that often rules me and enter into the liminal space of eternal time.

In my studies on the book of Revelation, I am coming to the growing conviction that the book is less about a linear dating of a dramatic close of life and instead that it is a narrative of Christians living inside the world.  How we further identify our own dwelling place, either in the city of God or in Babylon, Revelation speaks to the timeless breadth of the Church. 

I have been surveying what others think about this idea and I have found some very interesting thoughts.  In the book Narrative Reading, Narrative Preaching: Reuniting New Testament Interpretation and Proclamation,Stanley P. Saunders writes a chapter titled Revelation and Resistance: Narrative and Worship in John's Apocalypse. Saunders quickly sums his reading of Revelation in this quote;

Revelation was created for oral performance amid the eucharistic gatherings of the early Christians.

Saunders trots this out by dealing with the linear structure of the way that we assume narrative generally takes place, and explains it as only making sense inside a non-linear "imaginative participation".  I have also been listening to lectures by Thomas Hopko's Apocalypse: The Book of Revelation Within Orthodox Christian Tradition. This series outlines the book of Revelation within an Orthodox framework.  The Orthodox lectionary doesn't have a single reading from Revelation, it is the only NT book left out of their reading cycle.  Hopko goes on to teach that its inclusion is not necessary because Revelation is woven throughout the Orthodox liturgy as a foundational principle.

Christian time differs from earthly time.  It is caught up in the idea of time being something that is conceded to man so we can better understand who God is. Worship is then an active rehersal of the world according to God.  To think of time being final to God is quite silly.  Revelation as scripture is highly illogical in the most rational sense, because it must be read in relation to the entire canon. By removing the fairly recent interpretation of Revelation being a calender and instead integrating it within Christian time gives us a better reading, and a truer one to the larger tradition of Christian history.

Doing this isn't easy, and it takes stretches that might need a generation.  Revelation must be preached, and not just to ease congregational concern.  It is like remolding play-dough, and even having to add some water to it in the process.  Revelation is a book of worship acted out in participation.  It is an apostolic narrative of resisting the world.  The 7 churches in chapters two and three set the stage, and the rest of the book is a culmination of biblical idolatry and the consequences of it. 

In the end (no pun intended), we live against the idea of the end of times and actually think of the book as the entirety of time.

Glory be to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit:
As it was in the beginning, is now, and shall ever be, world without end.

 

An active Eschatology

I really enjoy thinking about how it is possible to leave a fear based cataclysmic eschatology (one filled with the fear of the end, and fascinated with escape) and enter into an active view of the culmination of creation and the marriage supper of the lamb. I wrote a series on forming an eschatological community last March.  In it I focused on worship/formation and how inside of worship the Church thrusts itself into the future.

Think about (with the exception of Kari Jobe's Revelation Song) the last time you remember the average church service interacting with either Revelation or Eschatology outside of the sermon.  When was it and how was it done?

We had opening chapel today at Asbury and we participated in a great call to worship from Revelation 7.  My friend Zack Glenn did an amazing job leading it. The bold type is where the community responded.

After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands.
They cried out in a loud voice, saying,

“Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!” 

And all the angels stood around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God,
singing,

Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom
and thanksgiving and honor
and power and might
be to our God forever and ever! Amen.” 

This was a great way to enter worship....anytime you have 500+ people saying words like that it has to be powerful.

Glory be to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit;
As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be

Worship, Eschatology and Sacramental Imagination

I teach people about blogging and social media alot (its one of the main topics I hit on at the other blog outsideisbetter.net).  In keeping up with my hits from search engines on this blog I notice that I get alot of inquiries regarding sacraments and eschatology.  I have referenced this paper before, but I wanted to put it up in the embedded format.  I wrote this for a Sacraments class a couple of years ago and I think it answers alot of questions.  I will warn that this is an academic paper-so it gets heady, but I still like it and have sent it to folks that have emailed me with questions.  Enjoy

Glory be to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit;
As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be

Worship, Eschatology and Sacramental Imagination

Taking the book back: more thoughts on reading Revelation

I have been knee deep in research for my Masters thesis which I am writing next spring.  Taking advantage of vacation allowed me to get some key reading and mapping done.  The first rough draft of my intro speaks about the book of Revelation being the "red headed stepchild" of the biblical story to the average church goer.  I have had a couple of conversations, and I am trying to schedule some more, asking why preachers don't preach from Revelation more.

The responses that I have been getting often stem from the lack of resources that are directed at congregational ministry.  People simply aren't thinking about the book being read, prayed and used by normal Christians.  Pastors don't want to touch it because they don't understand how to get around all the nut-job bible math, or provide a robust alternative. In the minds of many, it simply isn’t a book for church folk and it rarely becomes part of the devotional reading that forms the believer in the path of sanctification.  The Holy Spirit isn’t allowed to form us as an eschatological people directed at the coming kingdom while dwelling in the here and now.  Instead, we just stay away from it all together-and lose a gigantic part of what makes us Christians....at times I would go so far as to say we loose our distinctiveness because of the fracture.

The book of Revelation holds a message that actually belongs to the local church and not the academy or the minds of scholars.  As Christians, we need to be reading the book, asking questions, but also learning other positions and asking our Pastors and Bible teachers to speak from the book.  

I offered a few thoughts in a previous post "Forming an Eschatological Community-Taking the Book Back" that gave some recommendations for reading selections.  Slow and deliberate reading, done alongside with prayer, will help us to understand any piece of scripture-and we don't need to leave out Revelation.

Glory be to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit;
As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be

Baptism and Zombies

After a conversation with a friend yesterday, I remembered this sermon I wrote and preached for a class on mystagogical preaching.  Mystagogy is an ancient style of preaching that centered around the sacraments and explained them using everyday materials as well as a wealth of biblical metaphors.  While it sounds serious, it was also very playful and was used more as instructional than evangelistic.  These sermons where heard in the 3-5th century during the time of preparation of baptism.  When I thought sacramental as well as playful......why not zombies and baptism?

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There are two things in life that I fear. One of them is rational and the other is very irrational. The first fear is of fish, and I think given circumstances that we cannot get into today, it is a completely rational fear. This second fear has nowhere near the level of explanation needed to justify it. It has only entered my life in the last few months and over-takes me in my sleep at times. I am deathly afraid of Zombies. That’s right, zombie’s.
 
Zombie’s have recently entered pop culture again in may area’s. If anyone here is part of the social networking website Facebook.com, no doubt you have grown tired of invites to play the zombie game. Look at the Zombie movies that have come out in the last few years, even the legendary George Romero (writer and director of “Night of the Living Dead”) has come back into the spotlight by directing and writing Zombie movies again. Max Brooks, son of satirist Mel Brooks, has written a book entitled “The Zombie Survival Guide”, that is listed at #466 overall, and at #1 in satire, #4 in Foreign Languages, and # 15 in Nonfiction education. Brooks goes through everything you need to know in a situation ranging from a level 1 attack, with 1-5 zombies, and level 4, what he calls a zombie apocalypse. Inside the book are instructions to fortifying your home, evading zombie hordes while on the run, setting up a large scale zombie fortress in a prison and finally restarting civilization after the zombies are destroyed. Our society is clearly fascinated with the undead!!!
 
Growing up Baptist, the only remote liturgical element in baptism was the phrase “Raised from death into the newness of Life”. In the United Methodist Book of Worship there is a phrase “We are Incorporated into God’s mighty acts of salvation and given new birth through water and the Spirit”. These two phrases are saying the same thing. My Father baptized me, and I remember hearing the words as I came out of the water. I grew up watching him baptize people and recite these words week after week. This is a powerful thing for a young boy to hear, and a powerful thing to see his earthly father participating in. This phrase is said over you and to the entire congregation because there is power in baptism.
 

When you are baptized you figuratively die and rise again-Just as Christ literally died and rose again. In baptism you are woken up and have the light of Christ shining on you. The night is now gone and our salvation is near to us now, and we cast off the works of darkness and instead have Christ. Through Christ all things have creation and existence.

We are awakened to a new reality through our baptism being placed inside of God’s continuing action, joined with the Church and ultimately being brought into our proper place of loving union with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
 

Where we encounter the problem is with our sin nature.
 

There is a military term, “being baptized by fire”, meaning that it is only in the action of combat that the skills needed to be a good soldier surface. What could not be taught becomes instinct. One of the parts of this is the “1000 yard stare”, a look in the eyes of the soldier that allows him function in combat at his best, it is a look of intense aggression and scrutiny of elements. Some have a problem with baptism in the Old Testament and say that the non-existence of the act in before Christ negates it’s need to us a Christians today. But I say to you Moses was baptized. He was baptized by fire, by fulfilling his calling to lead Israel out of Egypt. Just as Moses was baptized by fire so was Gideon and his 300, David and his sling, and Jeremiah in the pit. The Holy Spirit descended upon them at the appointed time and gave them the instincts to join with God in his redemption of the world. Think about what the 1000 stare Moses directed at Pharoah and said “Let my people Go”!
 

After baptism we outwardly do not look any different. John the Revelator tells us that once in the throne room of God we are clothed in pure, white robes. But as you and I walk around on the earth today, we are covered in the ever-flowing sacrificial blood of Christ, and every day as we go to the Triune God we are covered again with a fresh washing of the blood of the lamb. This is more powerful than any system of defense or handheld weapon. When Satan sees us, we resemble the slain lamb and on our forehead is the mark of his suffering, the mark of the cross.
 

The problem is that many Christians walk around un-dead, zombies in this world and the spiritual world. They have come out of the cleansing water into new birth, but are still captive to their sin, still bound to it. They are no longer standing firm inside of the mysteries. They have stopped coming to Christ, and their covering of sacrificial blood is caking up and flaking off. The cross on their forehead is no longer seen. They go through life stumbling through sin, not knowing why they have the desire to feed on it and why they seem drawn to it. Their 1000 yard stare has been reduced to inches.
 

But, we have a cure that George Romero could only dream off in his series of movies, and at first glance-it is more bloody than anything man imagined. The constant fountain of grace that flows from Christ, our great high priest who has passed through the heavens and who is the Son of God..... the source of our new life. Come back to your confession. Christ our Lord has been through temptation just like us, and has ultimately and finally defeated Satan. With confidence we come to this fountain and recover ourselves in the blood on a daily basis.
 

So friends, cover yourselves. Be not afraid of re-awakening to a new life. Our flesh is made alive in the Holy Spirit. Christ came not only by water, but by blood and the Spirit. The Spirit shows us the way to this fountain. Let the Spirit lead you today to the only source, the antidote of a truly awakened life to Christ.

Glory be to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit;
As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be

Pentecost and the Slain Lamb

Over the last few days I have been thinking about Pentecost.  During the season of Easter, Revelation serves as the 2nd New Testament readings in the Revised Common Lectionary (1:4-8,5:11-14,7:9-17,21:1-6 and 21:10+22-22:5).  While these readings during Easter have some obvious placement of the churches understanding of the promise of God, I have been thinking of Pentecost and Revelation.

I think a good way to really understand the ascension of Christ and his current place is found in Revelation 5:

Rev. 5:6  Then I saw a Lamb that looked as if it had been slaughtered, but it was now standing between the throne and the four living beings and among the twenty-four elders. He had seven horns and seven eyes, which represent the sevenfold Spirit of God that is sent out into every part of the earth.
Rev. 5:7 He stepped forward and took the scroll from the right hand of the one sitting on the throne.
Rev. 5:8 And when he took the scroll, the four living beings and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb. Each one had a harp, and they held gold bowls filled with incense, which are the prayers of God’s people.
Rev. 5:9 And they sang a new song with these words:
     “You are worthy to take the scroll
         and break its seals and open it.
     For you were slaughtered, and your blood has ransomed people for God
         from every tribe and language and people and nation.
Rev. 5:10      And you have caused them to become
         a Kingdom of priests for our God.
         And they will reign on the earth.”  (NLT)

Often the ascension is something that never enters the average evangelical mind.  We skip over it in favor of a view of a "conquering" Lord who exists in a future promise of 2nd coming.

 The image in Revelation of a lamb standing as sacrificed is best translated as “of the killing by violence” (BDAG).  This isn’t a sacrificial term, but one that denotes a death that comes at the lack of mercy from another.  The marks of this death aren't bloody imprints on the hands, but the full brunt of a brutal Roman execution.  The marks describe the horrific type of death.  The sacrificial imagery comes from the “lamb”and the tie-ins to the passover feast and sacrifice.

To think that Christ, carrying the marks of his crucifixion ascended to the right hand of the Father is our image through Pentecost.  During John’s vision, he saw Christ functioning in this place.  The pascha (where we get our term passion; denoting the sacrificial passover meal) marks of our Lord are still on His body. 

Often-this means explaining away the images of Christ as the perfect male, or draped in an American flag with gleaming white teeth and instead looking at Christ the way John saw Him, bearing the marks of His suffering while exercising His singular role as the agent of life upon the Earth.  He is being worshiped as YHWH by the creatures of heaven, a very bold theological development for the 1st century church.  This passage shows a very early development of the Triune nature of God, differentiating the roles of Father and Son-but ascribing supreme divine status to Christ.  The blood of the sacrifice has purified a people being set apart for an eternal role of devotion to the Father. 

So in Pentecost, our worship of the ascended Christ is focused on these truths.  Explained using deep imagery, we now go past Easter worshiping the fullness of the relationship between the Triune God, while remembering (and rejoicing) the sacrifice on the cross.

Preaching, Mindmapping, and the Apocalypse of John

This is a repost from my other (main) blog Outside is Better.

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Revelation 7:9-17 Mindmap
Originally uploaded by chadbrooks

I have the opportunity to preach from my favorite book of the bible this week, St. John's Apocalypse...or as most people know it Revelation.

Usually when I actually have time to prepare a sermon, I like to do a mind map before I start writing the sermon. It is another way of doing an outline, but it helps me trace a non-linear pattern through the text. It works for folks that are scatter brained like I am.

I have different sorts of annotations that I use, and the scan didn't show some highlighted colors, but this style works well for me. I imagine I could preach from the mind map if I needed, but I am trying to become more of a wordsmith, and that requires doing some writing beforehand.

Revelation is a non-linear book, and I think that in this particular situation mind-mapping works well.  One of the major ways to tie the book together is the Μετὰ ταῦτα εἶδον passages (translated as After this I saw/looked in many English translations).  These phrases string together a series of visionary experiences that weren't sequential, but descriptive of an "all at once" experience (seen in 4:1,7:1,7:9.15:, 18:1 and 19:1).  Due to the cycliromatic nature of Revelation and it's ordering-mind mapping allows you to preach from the same style as the visions are portrayed.

Jeremy Begbie and eschatology

Jeremy Begbie gives what I think to be one of the best lectures on eschatology today.  I have heard it in bits and pieces several times in different places.  I have never been able to find an audio recording of it, or take good enough notes.  The lecture is just to good to not listen to.

If you are not familiar with Begbie, he lectures with presentation software and a grand piano.  It makes complete sense when it is all done as well.  Because of the complicated manner of teaching, I don't think he changes things very often and has a "set" of amazing lectures that he delivers.

  Andrew Jones provided both of my wishes (mp3 link AND great notes) in a recent post and I want to send you off to it.  Read the post and listen to the lecture, they are both great.