Revelation 7:1-17
August 31, 2025
First Congregational United Church of Christ of Manhattan, KS
Sermon by the Rev. Caela Simmons Wood
When I am riding my bicycle home from work, I often ride up Manhattan Avenue and a memory comes back to me: it was a hot August day and I had just moved into my dorm room on campus. I was about to begin my first year of college and I was on top of the world. I was out and about, navigating the world on my own - no parents, no worries. I felt pretty great about myself. In fact, I had just done something that felt very grown up. I rode my bike from Moore Hall down to Aggieville to pick up some school supplies at the bookstore.
And as I rode my bike back to my new home, something a little strange happened as I got close to Petticoat Lane. I was riding along, riding along and suddenly……EEEERCH. Bam! I fell over on my side. Scraped my knee. Wounded my pride.
Did you know that your shoelace can get caught around your gears when you’re on a bike?
Yeah, neither did I when I was 17. Some lessons you have to learn the hard way, I guess. Since that day, I have always checked my shoelaces before getting on my bike.
Falling off your bike hurts. But there might be one good thing about it: it keeps you humble. Right when you’re feeling all grown up, like you’ve got things figured out, you can be humbled by a simple shoelace.
Now I promised you a sermon on Revelation - not shoelaces and skinned knees. So let’s dig into this book that so many of us love to hate. I promise I’ll circle back to bicycles and humility before we’re done.
If I were to go around the room and ask every single person their favorite book in the Bible, I’d venture to guess that Revelation wouldn’t likely come up. Am I right?
Revelation isn’t winning any popularity contests. But it turns out there’s actually a lot of important stuff in here, if we’re willing to do the hard work of uncovering it. But before we can do that, I think we have to at least name some of the things that keep us away from it.
First, it’s scary. I can remember gathering up courage and peeking at a few paragraphs here or there as a child….and then slamming my Bible shut. Back then, I thought this was some kind of magical book, akin to a Magic 8 Ball, maybe, and that if I read it too often, the horrors in it would come to pass. I was really terrified by this book as a child. For anyone who thinks of this book as a prediction about the future, it’s horrifying. I mean, even though God wins in the end, a lot of scary stuff happens before we get to that point.
Fortunately, Revelation was never meant to be a prediction or even prophecy. Instead, it’s a odd and unique type of literature called apocalyptic.
That’s why you’ll sometimes hear it referred to as the Apocalypse of John or John’s Apocalypse. Apocalypse means revelation. Or it’s sometimes translated as “unveiling.” Which is interesting, because apocalyptic literature often obscures more than it reveals. At least at first.
Revelation isn’t the only piece of apocalyptic literature in the Bible. There are other examples in various places like Daniel and Matthew. Apocalyptic is a coded way of speaking to an oppressed group of people about their oppressors and God’s ultimate power over them.
Believe it or not, Revelation is meant to be a love song of hope. Through very carefully crafted symbols and coded speech, the authors of apocalyptic literature unveil a parallel universe – unseen by the average person – where God is in control and working diligently to dismantle forces of evil. It’s meant to be uplifting, not scary.
Of course, the fear factor isn’t the only problem with this book. Many of us stay away from it because we just can’t identify our God with some of these images. There’s a lot of blood, violence, and some horrible misogyny to boot.
Anyone know the hymn “Are you washed in the blood of the lamb?” We don’t sing that one around here. I don’t think that being dunked in lamb’s blood is very appealing to most people these days. But those kinds of bloody images are all over the place in Revelation. John’s God is angry, violent, filled with wrath. If you think God in the story of the 10 Plagues in Egypt is bad, just wait until you see how God acts in Revelation.
Even without all this blood, though – even if John’s Apocalypse wasn’t terrifying and pointing to a violent God – there’s yet another issue that can feel troubling. And that’s this: in this book John reveals a God who is 100% all powerful. We hear the language from today’s reading echoed centuries later in the text that Handel set to music – “King of Kings! And Lord of Lords!”
A ruler is one thing - the ground of our being, our ultimate source, our leader and guide. Okay. Sure. But once we get into a particular vision of a Ruler who is all-powerful, all-mighty, totally omnipotent, some of us start to feel a little squirmy. It can be hard to look around a world filled with genocide and school shootings and ICE raids and believe God is all-powerful. Many of us find ourselves needing to choose between a loving God who is unable to control everything and an all-powerful God who allows terrible things to happen.
Personally, I long ago chose a God of love whose power is limited. And that’s a difficult version of God to reconcile the one John unveils in this book. It really is.
Here’s the thing about Revelation, though. And this was the discovery that made me feel like I could dip my toe in, or maybe even wade back into these pages looking for something worthwhile. Ready?
Revelation wasn’t written to us. We’re not the audience. The author says so right up front: this book is to the seven churches in Asia in the first century. It’s not written to us.
But even more than that, this was the real game-changer for me: Revelation was specifically written for a group of people who were persecuted, oppressed, given very little authority over their own lives, forced to live within the confines set by the Roman Empire. They were persecuted for their identities. They were kept in poverty. They lived with the constant threat of violence. John’s Apocalypse was written as a word of hope and possibility for people who were living in a world on fire all around them.
Wait. Maybe the 21st century has more in common with the 1st century than we initially thought.
Regardless, you have to have a secret decoder ring to catch all the references. Biblical scholars have certainly tried to unpack it all over the years. And when they have, the overwhelming message to these struggling people is: hold on. Help is on the way. God has not forgotten you or forsaken you. Your God is working behind the scenes right now, fighting for your freedom. God has not abandoned you and God will bring you safely to freedom’s shore.
Those are intended to be words of hope and consolation for people who are embittered and embattled. And they must have provided comfort to our ancestors or they wouldn’t have made it into the Bible. Perhaps there is a way they can provide consolation to us, too, if we keep our hearts and minds open. Or perhaps not. My guess is: some of us may find Revelation comforting and some of us never will. It’s not a one-size-fits-all, that’s for sure.
Revelation is a messy book. And it seems every time I come back to it, I find something new and confusing. And perhaps the confusion, the messiness, the inscrutability of this book is important, too. We don’t understand it. Not all the way.
It’s kind of like what happened to 17 year old me when she was riding her bike down Manhattan Avenue. I went from feeling totally grown up to very silly in an instant. Humbled by a shoelace.
Reading Revelation can feel like that. It can keep us humble.
No matter how hard I try, I am not likely to ever really “get” Revelation or name it as one of my favorite books of the Bible. And no matter how grown up I feel or how carefully I ride, I am bound to get tangled up and fall off my bike from time to time.
Revelation reminds us that no matter how much we seek God’s face, God is ultimately unknowable. Just when we think we’re starting to get a handle on it, something shifts and we discover we were wrong. Or confused. Or that there’s so much more to God that we’ve never even seen before.
I love what D.H. Lawrence said about the book. Lawrence said, “When we read Revelation, we feel at once there are meanings behind meanings.” Isn’t that lovely?
Maybe part of what compels us to Revelation is precisely that we can’t understand it. There is a beauty in letting go of conquering the text and simply letting the wildness of the images wash over you.
Revelation may obscure more than it reveals. It may shroud more than it unveils. We can feel adrift upon its pages – as if there’s no real way to find solid footing. Its true meaning seems impossible to grasp. Like water slipping right between our fingers.
In all our musings about God: this particular book keeps us humble. And that’s not a bad thing.
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