Rv 22:12-21
23 May 2004
7th Sunday of Easter / Ascension Sunday
“Come, Make Our False into Your True”
Today is the last in my mini-series on the book of Revelation. One good clue of that would be the fact that we’ve reached the final ten verses of the book, and of the New Testament, for that matter. Today’s reading is considered to be the epilogue of Revelation. There’s a grab bag of stuff that gets put in here at the end, including the recurring theme of God (or Jesus) as “Alpha and Omega” (v. 13; 1:8, 21:6).
A couple of weeks ago, I noted that the lectionary compilers omitted chapter 13, in which John has his vision of the beast from the sea and the beast from the earth. “Troublesome” texts tend to get left out. Maybe it’s that very fact that almost compels me to include them in the readings!
Well, they’ve done it again with today’s scripture text. And I’ll repeat my comment from a couple of weeks ago about our lectionary-creating friends: wimps! Verses 18 and 19, in which John cautions about messing around with the words in his book, are deleted. (Apparently, John’s warning was not taken very seriously!)
But before that, there’s verse 15, which is the flip side to the blessing which has just been pronounced on “those who wash their robes” (v. 14). These are the ones granted access to the tree of life and entry to the city. Remember from last week: that is God’s new city, the new Jerusalem.
Here’s the sentence that gets the ax: “Outside [that is, outside the city gates] are the dogs and sorcerers and fornicators and murderers and idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood.” I’ll deal with the rest of the verse later, but it’s that last part—everyone who loves and practices falsehood—that jumps out at me. The New Jerusalem Bible reads, “everyone of false speech and false life.” False speech and false life.
In November 1987, I was a student at Southeastern College in Lakeland, Florida. Anyway, on most Friday nights, a group of us would go to Kennedy Boulevard in Tampa—at the time, it wasn’t exactly the most upscale part of town. We worked with a ministry called Safehouse International. I think their main focus was helping women and children who needed somewhere to stay. But the “Friday night thing” that we students did was street evangelism. Our flock consisted of two diverse groups: the homeless and the clientele of a gay nightclub. We considered them equally worthy of our efforts.
The night after Thanksgiving was my very first time going with the group to Tampa. I doubt that I’d been on the street for more than five minutes when I encountered a man, maybe in his fifties, dressed in shabby clothes. I walked right up to him—I don’t remember if I had a tract or not—and I said, “Jesus loves you.”
I’m not sure what I was expecting. We were Assemblies of God students; I suppose we expected to see some dramatic changes every time we went there. But with my very first person on my very first night, I did see something.
Upon hearing the name “Jesus,” the man started crying. And as he sobbed, he poured out his heart. He said that he’d once been a rich man; he’d had a job as a manager in some corporation. Due to various things, in particular a drinking problem, he just frittered it all away. But worse than losing his career, worse than losing all his money, was the fact that he had lost his family. He told me that he wasn’t even sure where they were. And he wondered if he could ever be forgiven—if he could ever be pardoned for living a false life, so to speak.
With an almost knee-jerk reaction, I said, “Jesus does forgive you.” There, that ought to do it! That ought to take care of him! But for some reason, it didn’t. My magic words failed to produce the intended effect!
“Do you forgive me?” He was directing the question to me! Somewhat taken aback, I was determined to provide what I considered to be a…theologically correct response. “Jesus forgives you.”
“No, no, no,” he groaned through his tears. “Do you forgive me?” For my anonymous friend, standing in an abandoned parking lot on the evening after so many Americans had gobbled turkey in the comfort of their homes, Jesus was an abstraction. He needed a flesh-and-blood word spoken to him. So I said, “I forgive you.” And with that, he turned and shuffled away into the night.
The poor fellow I met on the street in Tampa is what we might tend to think of when we hear the words, “false life.” Or maybe those who haven’t yet fallen into his condition come to mind: corrupt CEOs whose dishonesty is paid for by the workers. Perhaps “false speech and false life” conjures up images of slick-talking used car salesmen, email spammers and junk faxers, or that romantic interest of your youth who gave you hope—and then said, “Let’s just be friends.”
Our friend John gives us some examples of what he’s talking about. Actually, this is very similar to the list from last week’s reading in chapter 21, which was summed up: “and all liars.” Here, he starts off with “dogs,” which was a term sometimes used by Jews for the Gentiles. That may not fit John’s context; by this time, the Christian and Jewish faiths are increasingly separate. Some say “dogs” describes those of certain pagan religions in which canines played a role.
Still, whether the motivation is ethnic or religious, using a word like “dog” dehumanizes people. It’s been said that using such language “runs into conflict with much else that we find in scripture. Scripture embodies the struggle. [Lazy readers] use its pages to justify their prejudices and dismissive attitudes to others in every generation.”[1]
There are both Old and New Testament examples. For Joshua and the Israelites entering Canaan, the current inhabitants are presented as vermin to be exterminated. In the gospels of Matthew and Mark, a nameless Syrophoenician woman is the catalyst for a lesson Jesus learns about his culture’s use of the word “dog” (Mt 15:21-28, Mk 7:24-30).
The next word on the list in verse 15, “sorcerers,” would seem to be of concern only to those who have a beef with Harry Potter! The word in the original Greek, farmakoi (pharmakoi), sheds a little more light. Farmakoi is the origin of our word “pharmacy.” John’s reference to “sorcerers” is also a reference to “drugs.” While mind-altering drugs have always had a role in sorcery and magic, in recent years, we’ve found all kinds of ways to use pharmaceuticals.
I think I’m safe in saying that Americans are probably the most overmedicated people in the world. Certainly, there are legitimate reasons for taking drugs. I myself take 400mg of Dilantin each day. And there are people who really need to be on medication, but for whatever reason, are not. Still, the great amount of frivolous drug taking contributes to the “falsity” that our scripture points to.
And then next on the list is “fornicators,” coming from the Greek word pornoi (pornoi), which is the source of our word “pornography.” Need I say much about this one? If our sexual ethics haven’t yet reached the gutter, they’re getting pretty close to it! I really hate to belabor the Iraq prison scandal, but there’s a current and vivid example to the entire world of how debased American culture has gotten. (Or should I say, “American lack of culture”?) We play right into the hands of narrow-minded folks like the Taliban and the Saudi government, who say that women should be all covered up and kept out of sight.
Clearly, this isn’t just a military problem. The individuals involved are sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers, who come from here. They are a reflection of what we are becoming.
And then, with “murderers and idolaters,” we can think of the folks who physically do the deeds. Or, going a bit deeper, we can examine the presence of murder and idolatry within ourselves. According to Jesus, by holding on to anger against someone, we’re killing that person (Mt 5:21-26). And in his first letter, after warning his readers about a number of things—including the spirit of antichrist—John finishes with this: “Little children, keep yourselves from idols” (5:21). He’s talking about a lot more than stone gods! Idolatry is very much a part of the human condition.
In reality, we’re in danger of holding on to some, or all, of the qualities in verse 15. There’s the intolerance and bigotry shown by the use of the word “dogs.” Like sorcerers, we try to manipulate God and others, with or without drugs. We’re controlled by lusts of the body; we’re motivated by grudges, and we’re devoted to everything in creation—to the exclusion of the one beyond all image or concept or thought.
One reason we might hold on to that stuff lies in our past. We all have various issues to deal with. It might be pain—a pain that goes back even to early childhood. Perhaps there’s been a traumatic experience. Maybe there’s been some kind of physical, emotional, or sexual abuse. There are the mistakes we’ve made…the faults…the blunders… It could be something more recent. Have we been driven to compete? Does it seem life is passing us by? Is there someone we need to forgive?
We all have the qualities that I’ve mentioned within us. We try to hide them in ways we cannot tell others. We’re even afraid to face it ourselves. So we begin to lead a false life; a life which may seem good on the outside, but slowly rotting on the inside. We all need God’s forgiveness.
In what’s sometimes called a “preview” of Pentecost, or the “first” Pentecost, Jesus gives power to his disciples. In John 20, he breathes on them, and then says to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained (vv. 22-23).” Maybe that’s what I was doing that night in Tampa!
By forgiving each other, we help unleash the power of Christ. We act on the words we say each week: “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” Would you then respond to me, “I’m not in debt to anybody here!”? If so, I would then say: oh, but yes you are! If nothing else, we owe each other love (Ro 13:8-10).
We owe each other the love that helps us deal with false speech and false life. Of course, by its very nature, love cannot be compelled. It must be both freely offered and freely received. That’s the same nature that motivates the early church in its cry, “Come, Lord Jesus.”
Come, make our false into your true.