Saint Eusebius (Revelation 6:9-11) Last night I met Saint Eusebius Still clothed in bloody sheet A harvest scythe hung round his neck With dead birds at his feet His mouth it seemed to tremble As the words so faint escaped Running down upon his quaking chest Where they were quickly scraped And secretly recorded By a perfect angel hand To cover up the mystery Of all that he had planned To execute a vengeance In silence so secluded Where air and equilibrium Could no longer be excluded But reaching for the ceiling His fingers turned to stone While the chains around his ankles Made no effort to atone As he crawled back toward the altar To take his place below How long he cried to be denied But no one seemed to know “Belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man.” Thomas Paine Every so often the Bible says something that doesn’t seem to fit so well with everything else. When the Lamb freshly slain for the sins of the whole world opens the fifth seal on Revelation’s scroll, we are introduced to a group of martyrs crying out for vengeance. Whether it is a personal or more public issue is difficult to ascertain. It is their request alone however, that has baffled Christian readers for centuries. But perhaps we’re just missing some nuance or something has gotten lost in translation. Or maybe this is just some wandering Old Testament fragment that has yet to find its way under the greater rubric of “Pray for your enemies and bless those who persecute you.” No matter, there they are in heaven in what appears to be a preferred location. So we can write it all off to God’s grace and maybe that’s the best way. And still I am forced to face the fact that while God is willing to love and accept us with all our faults and deficiencies, it remains difficult for us humans to “turn the other cheek” and sort out the loving of other sinners while rejecting their sin because to ask them, it rarely feels that way. At this point I think there are at least a couple of thoughts worthy of examination. 1) Maybe one of the most telling verses in the Apocalypse is found a little bit before this unhappy party of martyrs is brought to our attention. John is having a wonderful vision of heaven and how it works. “Before the throne I saw people of every tribe and tongue and nation.” The word nation, ethnos in the Greek, usually means all nations other that Israel; that is Gentiles, goyim if you please. My immediate question was how John was able to recognize the differences of nationality and ethnicity. The answer is simple: These redeemed people had retained their earthly shapes, sizes and colors. How wonderful God and His heaven will be! And by this vision alone we should be encouraged to enjoy all those differences here and now so that when we’re finally ushered into God’s throne room we will not have to experience total culture shock. God doesn’t play favorites, Jesus said, He casts a wide net, and Genesis picks no bones in letting us in on the fact that all people are created in God’s image, which could mean that the magnificent idea of incarnation may just be bigger than what we’ve been taught. 2) When Saint Paul wrote his second letter to the fellowship in Corinth, he knew he was addressing a city with as much color as the boroughs of New York. “From this point on,” he instructed them, “we are to regard no one from a human point of view because the old is passing away and the new is knocking at the front door.” I think he was saying that something like a new age was dawning and with its arrival a holy revolution was the order of the day. A wonderful revolution of reconciliation, Paul says. No more killing. No more hating. No more bigotry. No more revenge. No more a lot of stuff. No more us and them. And as crazy as it sounds, God has enlisted people like you and me to be ambassadors of this new spiritual politic. And this has always been the true work of the church: Extending to others what God has so graciously extended to us. Those folks out there, says the Spirit of God, bear my invisible image. They are worth more than you can conjure in your wildest dreams. In 1969 I met a Sunset Strip evangelist. Someplace along the line this man felt impressed to walk around the world carrying a large wooden cross with a little wheel on the bottom. Then he went on to carry that cross thousands and thousands of miles. During a hot desert crossing from Israel into Jordan he looked back down the narrow shimmering highway to see a Jordanian woman balancing a heavy load on her head. As he stood watching, a bus slowed down and many of the passengers leaned out of the air-conditioning to snap pictures of the woman. “I knew it was a Christian tour bus,” he recalled later. With their scrapbook offerings in place the bus resumed speed until it pulled up next to the now famous street preacher and his well-known wooden cross. Many got out of the bus with cameras ready to capture another memory. “Can we take our picture with you and the cross,” they asked. Looking at them with sad and disappointed eyes, he said, “No.” And when they wondered why, he told them. “I saw you,” he said. “I saw you slow down to take pictures of that woman. Not one of you got out to help her with her burden or even offer her a lift. So no, you cannot take your picture with me.” Then recognizing their rising indignation, he added. “I’m not sure what you believe, but this I can tell you; whatever it is, I believe the opposite.” Sadly, millennia after the author of two-thirds of the New Testament wrote those inspired words to his friends at Corinth, George Bernard Shaw rightfully concluded, “Yes. God made man in His image, and then we returned the favor.” Loosely translated: We fear long before we hate, and it is probably a god of our own making that hates the same people we hate.
Posted on: Mon, 15 Dec 2014 05:01:06 +0000
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