I, John, your brother and partner in hardships, in the kingdom and in perseverance in Jesus, was on the island of Patmos on account of the Word of God and of witness to Jesus; it was the Lord's Day and I was in ecstasy, and I heard a loud voice behind me, like the sound of a trumpet, saying, 'Write down in a book all that you see, and send it to the seven churches of Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia and Laodicea.'
I turned round to see who was speaking to me, and when I turned I saw seven golden lamp-stands and, in the middle of them, one like a Son of man, dressed in a long robe tied at the waist with a belt of gold. His head and his hair were white with the whiteness of wool, like snow, his eyes like a burning flame, his feet like burnished bronze when it has been refined in a furnace, and his voice like the sound of the ocean. In his right hand he was holding seven stars, out of his mouth came a sharp sword, double-edged, and his face was like the sun shining with all its force. When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead, but he laid his right hand on me and said, 'Do not be afraid; it is I, the First and the Last; I am the Living One, I was dead and look -- I am alive for ever and ever, and I hold the keys of death and of Hades. Now write down all that you see of present happenings and what is still to come. The secret of the seven stars you have seen in my right hand, and of the seven golden lamp-stands, is this: the seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lamp-stands are the seven churches themselves.'
6 comments:
> out of his mouth came a sharp >sword, double-edged, and his face >was like the sun shining with all >its force.
Not something to be readily visualized, symbolic then.
I remember knowing, when I first browsed this book at the babysitter's, long ago, why that sword was "double-edged." There was no comfortable back to that sword; you couldn't use it to cut anyone and get away unwounded.
> When I saw him, I fell at his feet >as though dead, but he laid his >right hand on me and said, 'Do not >be afraid; it is I, the First and >the Last;
and this is essentially the same meaning as verse 8, spoken by God: "I am the Alpha and the Omega." But now it is being said by Christ:
>I am the Living One, I was dead and >look -- I am alive for ever and >ever, and I hold the keys of death >and of Hades.
That old God/Christ identification is showing up here, after all.
But is this "Jesus" speaking? Or does "Christ," as a Christian term, mean that aspect of God which enables Jesus to speak for God, as God, while still remaining a pious Jewish human being, who also says: "I can do nothing of myself" and "Only my Father is good."
We are all children of God. But Rabbi Rami Shapiro describes Jesus as a man who had realized the full truth of God's statement to Moses: "Tell them that 'I am' sent you." The understanding of how and why God is "I am." The truth that the essence of God is not God's infinite attributes, nor is it the spectacular creation God clothes Godself with, but that small "thing" which knows that "I am" within every sentient being.
> the seven stars are the angels of >the seven churches, and the seven >lamp-stands are the seven churches >themselves.'
A new theme, within this book: those powers and principalities which "Paul" speaks of struggling with. Those perhaps-mythical creatures that William Stringfellow and Walter Wink have more recently used to explain what it is that rides humankind, what it is that we desperately need Christ to free ourselves from. (If we must live in the shadow of these powers, we can at least know that they have no valid claims on our allegiance.)
For the Quakers among us: What might Christ have to say to the well-meaning, overworked and hopelessly confused angel of the Society of Friends? Can he be as well-pleased with us as we are with ourselves? And does he forgive and even love the traits we find less laudable in our ways?
My assumption is the 2-edged sword is the gladius of the Roman soldier. I mention this only because it was a fearsome weapon in its day -- cutting edges on both sides of the blade unlike Asian style swords with a blunt and weighted edge for greater driving power. The gladius was then chose versatility of attack over brute force. While the pacifist image would be nice I doubt that is intended here.
References to the sword of the spirit (the Word of God) are in Ephesians 6:17 and Hebrews 4:12.
If your babysitter was reading you Revelations, you must have had an interesting childhood.
The babysitter was leaving me in her livingroom, which included a large bookshelf. My habit, when I could, was to pick out the best stories from a shelf, the ones where the heros were animals. Her books were more grown up, though not impossibly so. I'd already been through a lot of Mark Twain, finding much of that odd and bewildering.
Those critters that were all-over eyes, and God doing all these awful things to the Earth, and that bit at the end about Don't you dare change a word of this!--those were definitely disturbing.
Oh I get it. You're a fellow SF fan!
That's true too, if I'd felt up to listing favorite books there's be a lot of Ursula LeGuin & Philip Dick & Kurt Vonnegut, not to mention some unQuakerly things like _A Game of Thrones_ etc.
I just changed the settings in hopes of editing my last post, but you answered first. I'm now going to change them back, this "all comments must be approved" is ridiculous and I STILL can't fix my own post, which I wanted to do!
I just checked your references to "sword of the spirit," which both apparently refer (at least in my Revised Standard) to "the Word of God." Probably that concept has been kicked around a lot here.
Anyway, as I'd wanted to add to my other commment way back there, I was not a pacifist at the time. My father was both an atheist and a warmonger, and I was much under his influence (although he was also sending me to the Methodist church because he fondly rememebered singing there as a child! That's where I heard my first good interpretation of "the image of God," that it must refer to our spirits because our bodies all looked different.)
Maybe this was a side effect of the Twain influence: I was aware of how easy it was for people to think they had the handle of Jesus' words, and could use them against other people, so I saw that two-edged quality as a matter of fairness. I saw it as always cutting both ways.
Back to that Word of God. Stringfellow, when he tried to say what he meant by it, described it as God's present, ongoing action in the world. Close to the traditional Quaker take on that, maybe even going further.
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