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The following sermon was preached by The Bishop of Winchester, The Rt Revd. Michael Scott-Joynt on Easter Day 2002 at Mattins in Winchester Cathedral.
“Do not be afraid; I am the first and the last, and the living one. I was dead, and see, I am alive for ever and ever; and I have the keys of death.”
Revelation 1:17-18 (9-20)
Most of us steer clear, if we can, of the Revelation to John, the last book in the Bible, because it has a reputation for being violent, gory, unintelligible and unChristian! I’m afraid that that may have stopped you listening carefully to
this morning’s second lesson!
But if the Church is to be obedient to its Lord, the Revelation is vital reading; and the twelve verses that we have just heard speak more comprehensively about the Resurrection of Jesus, that we are celebrating today, than any other twelve in the New Testament!
The focus of Revelation is always clear. It is about Jesus “who was dead and is alive” through the power of God; it is about us and all our fellow human beings, and about our world and its future; it is about the task of the church, of Christians;
and crucially, it is about who is actually the world’s Lord, its and our governor, the arbiter of everyone else’s and of our thinking and behaving – to whom day by day is each of us giving, choosing to give, or more often giving without much or even any reflection, our
allegiance and obedience?
So a reading from Revelation presses upon us what I believe is the challenge to us of Christian Faith this Easter – and I put it to you baldly:
are we going to accept as received wisdom, as the truth, from politicians and commentators of every sort the belief that September 11th last year is the “Defining Moment” for our times and for the future – with all that we can already see stemming from that judgement? To judge from television and the newspapers, and the actions of political leaders here and
elsewhere, you’d think that there was no alternative to our doing so. Or are we going to accept, and seriously to explore, the fundamental conviction of Christian Faith, about
which Revelation is especially clear: that the world’s Defining Moment was and is the Resurrection of Jesus - and his, He, is the supreme World Power?
Around the time that John received his vision, a Roman Emperor had a coin minted that showed his son as the infant Zeus, playing with a bracelet of the stars which many understood to rule their lives. John sees Jesus, “who
was dead and who is alive”
, holding seven stars in his right hand; he is dressed and equipped as earlier Biblical visions had depicted God himself – as later John will see Jesus as the slaughtered Lamb at
the very heart of God’s throne, the focus of the worship of the church on earth and in heaven. “The kingdom of the world”,
a great shout in heaven proclaims later in the book,
“has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ”.
And the One like a Son of Man who is Lord of creation, of all time and of all eternity, holds not only the stars but the keys of death – he quickens and raises individual lives. So today we commend to his love and mercy Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother. And he
is not a distant figure, but “in the midst of the lampstands”,
present among the churches; present in the two next chapters of the book like a general reviewing the combat readiness of the churches, keenly attentive to their weaknesses and
their strengths, vigorously reminding them of the resources for the battle that he is supplying; and the Lord Jesus is present to individuals, as John experiences him in his vision: “Do not be afraid, Fear not...” -
just like the women at the tomb the first Easter morning, or Peter walking on the sea of Galilee, or Christians down the centuries and in every kind pressured place today:
“Do not be afraid, Fear not...”.
And John receives his vision, and God’s commission to share it back with the churches around whom he is sure that persecution is beginning to swirl like the “many waters” around the rocks of Patmos, in exile there because he knows the situation
of those churches at first hand. Our reading began with one of the most accurate and the most challenging of all the New Testament’s pictures of what it is to be a Christian:
“I, John your brother who share with you the persecution and the kingdom and the patient endurance that are ours in Jesus”.
To believe in Jesus’ resurrection is to believe, and to take our part in revealing, that the world is his and that he is Lord and King of all, that his power suffices - by living as outposts, pickets of his new creation, points where people can access Jesus and the life that he is sharing. And to believe in Jesus resurrection is to know that this participation in his Kingdom
is going to be framed in persecution
of some sort, and in patient endurance
– precisely the way of the Lord himself which John captures as he links together those three words which run like a kind of spinal chord through the New Testament and through all Christian believing.
If you are a Christian today in Zimbabwe, or in Pakistan, or in Myanmar, or in Bethlehem, or in the Congo, all this is clear – demanding, painful, frightening and testing, yet constantly discovered to be true: “he placed his right hand on me saying, “Do not be afraid....I am the living one”...”.
Like the churches to which John’s book was first addressed, I doubt if they find his Revelation unintelligible!
Our history as a country, and the positions of power and influence in the world that this country and its Government still hold, makes it the more important, I believe, that Christians in England and of the Church of England, we in Winchester, listen
to the challenge to us, this Easter Day, of John’s Revelation: will you determine to take the Resurrection of Jesus as the Defining Moment, the constant point
of reference, for our own lives and but also for our society and for our political decisions? Will you, will I, will we as a church and as local churches, be accountable to Jesus as Lord and subject to his scrutiny – remember how John hears
his Lord reviewing the Seven Churches of Asia for their combat-readiness for the service and suffering that accurate, faithful witness to him will require?
For belief in the Resurrection of Jesus led John the Divine to know that being a Christian was sharing with his fellow-Christians “the persecution and the kingdom and the patient endurance that are ours in Jesus”;
and to hear, with Christians of every age from Mary Magdalen to the present, the voice saying:
“Do not be afraid; I am the first and the last, and the living one. I was dead, and see, I am alive for ever and ever; and I have the keys of death.” To whom be all glory and love, praise and service, now and for ever. Amen |