Scripture: Revelation 12:1-10 Series: 2022
Part of a series on Revelation, this sermon preaches Revelation 12:1-10 (the woman, the dragon, and war in heaven) as a recapitulation of the incarnation transposed onto a cosmic scale, arguing the chapter is illustration rather than future chronology. Pruitt contrasts worldly notions of power-as-muscle (South Park’s Jesus vs. Satan, ancient war heroes, the honor-cycle that fueled WWI) with the gospel’s power revealed in weakness, the Lamb who was slain. Drawing on Hauerwas and Milton’s Paradise Lost, he insists the heavenly battle is no fair fight and rejects dualism: evil devolves into nothingness. The practical call is to admit we do have enemies (often the people who merely irritate or wound us) and to love and pray for them, enacted in a guided meditation, because Christ is victorious.
Illustrations: south-park-jesus-vs-satan, dwayne-the-rock-johnson, judas-maccabaeus-david-war-heroes, rome-honor-in-battle, world-war-one-honor-cycle, hauerwas-no-enemies-quote, milton-paradise-lost, screen-every-time-phone-call, enemy-prayer-meditation, holy-spirit-not-the-force
February 20
Heavenly Battles
Then a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. She was pregnant, and she cried out because she was in labor, in pain from giving birth. Then another sign appeared in heaven: it was a great fiery red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and seven royal crowns on his heads. His tail swept down a third of heaven’s stars and threw them to the earth. The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth so that when she gave birth, he might devour her child. She gave birth to a son, a male child who is non to rule all the nations with an iron rod. Her child was snatched up to God and his throne. Then the woman fled into the desert, where God has prepared a place for her. There she will be taken care of for one thousand two hundred sixty days.
Then there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought the dragon. The dragon and his angels fought back, but they did not prevail, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. So the great dragon was thrown down. The old snake, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world, was thrown down to the earth; and his angels were thrown down with him. Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say,
“Now the salvation and power and kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Christ have come.\ The accuser of our brothers and sisters, who accuses them day and night before our God, has been thrown down.” Revelation 12:1-10
When I was in high school, there was a cartoon that came out that was basically targeted specifically for boys in high school. It is still on today. Ostensibly, the show is about 4 elementary school kids in Colorado who get into a lot of profane mischief. Not many scenes can be shown on Sunday morning. The show that I am talking about is South Park.
This a show that does not shy away from religious themes and actually engages faith rather than dismissing it out of hand, as most shows on television do.
In one episode, there is a wrestling match that is going to happen with the following intro: Jesus vs. Satan, live on Pay Per View!
They have a throw down wrestling match between Jesus and Satan. Jesus is this pale, pasty guy with a beard and long hair and acts kind of like a hippy and Satan is this gigantic red beast that makes Dwayne the Rock Johnson seem small and it looks like this red Devil is going to pummel and destroy Jesus.
In the actual show, Satan throws the fight because he is betting against himself. But it is interesting because it portrays power and violence in this very worldly way. It is hard for us to escape the idea that the powerful are the ones with the most muscles and the most money and the most weapons. This is very different from how the Bible works.
The power that is revealed in the Gospels is found in weakness. What is fascinating is that the images throughout scripture of, for instance, Michael, the archangel, the image of Jesus, the image of anyone in the New Testament is not an image of overflowing muscles and firepower. There is not a Samson in the New Testament. Nobody ever complements Jesus or Peter for not skipping leg day.
And it is not like victory in battle was not seen as highly desirable in a leader. Judas Maccabaeus, the leader of the Jewish revolt against the Seleucids Greeks, would have been a hero bandied about in Jesus’ day. David, another War hero. Some theories have it that the reason why Rome kept on conquering was not a thirst for blood but a hunger for the honor of victory in battle. In the ancient world, absent a war, men couldn’t prove their strength. Conflicts in the ancient world often took place every 20 to 40 years because men needed a place to prove their worth and would use any excuse for it. There are many in the church who are veterans with close friends and family in active service, but ancient warmongering was nothing like the service our veterans have offered.
Unfortunately, this thinking wasn’t only in the ancient world. We honestly see it with World War I. It had been 44 years since Germany had defeated France in humiliating fashion but the old Franco-Prussian war heroes were gone and the next generation felt like they had something to prove. That conflict, in 1870, was fueled by the humiliation Prussia had received 60 years before when Napoleon defeated the proud nation. On the French side, in 1914, there was a whole generation that was ready to prove themselves against Germany. Russia, who had been humiliated by the Japanese 10 years earlier, was also ready to prove something. Austria, whose leader had been ruling since 1850, was falling apart and was scared of future Russian and Slavic build up and so pushed forward with an impossible ultimatum on Serbia that could never have been met.
They all had something to prove and war was the place to prove it.
Series Intro
My friends, we are continuing today in our series on the book of revelation. Revelation is about our identity. What is the source of our identity? What kind of story do we think we are in? What do we think we need in our lives? What do we value in our lives.
Conflict is very different in the New Testament and the Old Testament, like I said earlier. Jesus is not a war hero. Peter and the other disciples are not soldiers but fisherman and tax-collectors, not the most masculine of professions.
If you read Numbers or Judges or Joshua, it is filled with war. 1 & 2 Samuel and Kings and Chronicles are filled with war. For a long time, some people have read the Bible and thought that the God of the Old Testament was different from the God of the New Testament. This is a very old heresy called Marcionism. It is a deep misreading of the Bible. There is conflict in the New Testament, it is just conflict of a different kind. There is an enemy. There is a challenge. Human existence does not lack for enemies. Cosmic reality does not lack for enemies. As Stanley Hauerwas says, though, “Cosmic struggle sounds like a video game that middle class children play. Most of us do not go to church because we seek a safe haven from our enemies. We go to church to be assured that we have no enemies.”
Who would hate us? Who is our enemy? It is easier, when we are being told by Jesus to pray for our enemies, to imagine that we don’t have any enemies. We may think, “I don’t want to be contentious. Who do I need to pray for? Everybody likes me. Uggh. It is so hard being me because I don’t have any enemies.”
Or, there is the temptation, because of the divisiveness of our politics, to take personal offense at other peoples idea. How dare they think that. They are enemies of common sense and society. If they post this or say that, I’m never talking to them again. When Jesus talks about love your enemies, he isn’t speaking about groups or races but individuals with whom we have no reconciliation. Jesus is speaking to the reality of conflict.
What we see in the Book of Revelation, with this powerful imagery, is that there is a conflict going on that is not minor. There are consequences for this conflict.
Any story you read or watch has conflict for in conflict identity is either changed or revealed. Conflict does not need to be physically violent but it is most often thought of as violence.
What is the source of our identity. How can it be made known and understood? And the source of our identity is found in the central words of communion.
Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.
We have in Revelation 12 a recapitulation of the incarnation. We have the announcement to Mary, we have the birth, we have the life of Jesus. It all takes place here.
I think Revelation 12 is one of the more powerful arguments against reading the book of revelation as this consistent future chronology because it is really hard not see this chapter as something that already happened. It takes the incarnation, the birth of Jesus, and transposes it onto a cosmic scale.
We still have this narrative on top of narrative on top of narrative. We have the woman crying out and 7 diadems, there is a great red dragon sweeping the stars from the sky. And they flee into the wilderness just like Mary, Joseph, and Jesus flee through the wilderness to Egypt. And a war breaks out in the heavenly’s and Michael appears with his angels. Not with his soldiers, with his angels, with his messengers.
These powerful images also allude to scripture. We have the dragon which alludes to the serpent found in Exodus 7 and Deuteronomy 32. There are allusions to the dragon in Job 7 and the one who devours the vulnerable in Jeremiah 51. We see Michael as a prince of the heavens in Daniel 10. As an archangel, as a leader of the angels in Jude, verse 9. I’ve already mentioned the woman. I read her as Mary but there are four historic ways of interpreting her.
There is Mary. Then, some read her as the people of God, another is as the Jewish community, another as the Church community. We have layer upon layer of images. You cannot extricate these images from the context coherently. They are not placed here in a one-to-one linear relationship with some future timeline. They are illustrations of the power of God. To see them as illustrations instead of chronological predictions does not lesson their power or the power of God. It only lessons the power of false teachers who think they have it all figured out. Teachers who do not heed the words of Jesus: you shall not know the time nor the hour.
The climax of existence, the battle of life over death. Even though we know the end, there is still drama. A spoiler of all existence has been revealed in the Book of Revelation. We know who has the victory. We know who wins. Life wins over death.
John Milton’s poem, Paradise Lost, lays this all out in beautiful, complicated poetry. It starts by describing Satan in ways that are similar to how he looks in South Park. He is powerful and strong. The devils are mighty. At first glance, it looks like the reader should sympathize with the plight of the devil. It is why some libertarians have misread Paradise Lost and seen the devil as the protagonist. The devil claims that he seeks freedom and that he is oppressed by God. But the poem slowly deconstructs evil and satanic forms of power and shows how they devolve into nothingness. The devils squabble and selfishly tear themselves apart. When Jesus finally confronts the devil in Book 6, Milton writes, half his strength he did not put forth.
The heavenly battle is not a fair fight. The devil and Jesus are not on equal footing. The powers of wickedness and the power of God is not on equal footing.
God does not seek balance in the world between Good and evil. The Holy Spirit is not the force in star wars. Dualism is an easy trap to fall in. There are a number dualistic religions. Christianity is not one of them. Balance is only found with light. Darkness, wickedness, evil, the devil, they all suck up light and life. The ambition cannot be contained or sustained. It does not stand on equal footing with the God who is the light of the world.
The book of revelation is not about the end of days but how brokenness, tragedy, disease, these will all come to an end and we can begin to experience that end here today. We experience it at this table. We experience it with the concrete practice of loving our enemies.
We love our enemies because Christ is victorious. We wish the best for our enemies because Christ is victorious. Again, we may think that we do not have enemies but that is only because we are deceiving ourself. In this world, when we have relations with people, our enemies may not be people who want to destroy us or kill us. They may just be people who wish us ill. People who irritate us. People whom we don’t want to spend time with. For each of us, there is someone in our life whom we are going to call screen every time. Which means if this person calls and you see their name, you do not answer the phone.
For each of us, there are people who have done something to our detriment. That is our enemy.
I want us to take a little time to go through a meditation exercise.
Close your eyes and take a deep breath.
I want you to think about someone you love in your life. Don’t tell anyone. I want you to think about someone you love and I want you to pray for the best for them.
Now I want you to think about someone whom you barely know….
Someone you don’t like, someone who irritates you…
Then I want you to think about someone you never want to see again in your life…
Christ is victorious. All is possible. Even hardened hearts can be softened by the power of God. We pray for our enemies. We pray for those who despise us not because we are so awesome but because Christ is victorious. And those despisers in our life will not win. We lift them up to God because God has won the victory. Christ has won the victory.
We do not come here as people without enemies. There is conflict in this world. There is brokenness in this world. There is conflict in each of our lives, we cannot deny it. But our hope is not in the brokenness. Our hope is not in charismatic leaders with bulging muscles, our hope is not in heroic victory, in willing ourselves forward, in overworking ourselves.
Our hope is found in the lamb who was slain who sits upon the throne and offers life to us.
Let us pray, Heavenly Father, your love and your life were offered for us. We did not take them or earn them but in our unworthiness you gave yourself for us. Help us not seek glory in this world but seek your way of love and peace. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.