For the Healing of the Nations - a Remembrance Sunday Sermon

It’s a word that trips off the tongue very easily.

It’s a word that is much misunderstood.

It’s a word that’s been in the headlines recently

It’s a word that comes to mind all too readily on Remembrance Sunday.

It appeared in the headlines as Hurrican Stanley hit New York.

It could have appeared in the headlines as Hurricane Stanley hit Haiti had there been many headlines when that storm hit the Caribbean.

It has often been used to accompany photographs of the Somme and the other killing fields of the First World War.

It has often been used to describe the devastation of Hiroshima, the horror of Coventry, the killing factories of the holocaust.

It was used of those photos of napalm in the Vietnam war.

It comes to mind now as news breaks of yet more killing in Afghanistan.

The word is ‘apocalyptic’.

It’s a powerful word because it somehow sums up the sheer awfulness of destruction at the hands of the elements and far worse as a consequence of man’s inhumanity to man.

In the middle of the destruction it seems as if it’s the end of the world.

In the middle of that First World War, in the middle of the second world war, in the middle of the Holocaust … and for those caught up in the middle of the war in Afghanistan it must feel as if it is the end of the world.

Apocalyptic indeed.

When such images and such memories fill us with dread and we feel as if the world is falling apart the scenes we think about are ‘apocalyptic’ indeed.

I wonder whether on Remembrance Sunday it is helpful for us in a service specially for Remembrance Sunday to explore a little more what that word means.

For it is a word that’s easy to misunderstand.

Those scenes of utter destruction, that make you feel as if the world is coming to an end are thought of as ‘apocalyptic’ because they are reminiscent of a certain kind of writing that talks of the end of the world and depicts scenes of horror and of carnage.  The kind of writing that’s in our Bibles not just in the book of Revelation that is known as the Apocalypse, but also in books like Daniel and even in the Gospels.

I have a feeling it’s worth re-visiting what is going on in a book like the book of Revelation, the Apocalypse – if we can uncover something of the riches of that particular word we may have something that helps us get our mind round the sheer horror of war and the awfulness of what is going on in the world at the moment in the wars that rage in the middle east that seem to show no promise of positive outcome and seem potentially so apocalyptic.

The book of Revelation has been read in all sorts of ways, and often in such a way as to be positively unhelpful.  There is a way of reading the Book of Revelation, however, that is, I believe immensely helpful to us when faced with situations that seem to be so apocalyptic.

That way of reading hinges on the meaning of the word ‘apocalypse’ and what is going on when the Book of  Revelation describes the horrors it describes.

Literally the word ‘apocalyspe’ means ‘uncovering what is hidden’, ‘disclosing what is secret’.

The Book of Revelation as it makes clear at the beginning is all about the visions that a particular individual by the name of John had when facing terrifying circumstances.  The brute ugliness of the Roman power in the Mediterranean world had hit new lows with bouts of persecution directed at the followers of Jesus.

It is in one of these bouts of destructive persecution that John is exiled to the island of Patmos.  In the middle of his terrifying situation he writes in a coded kind of language.

What he writes is set at the end of times … but that is not to say the vision and the book is about what happens at the end of the world.  Set at the end of times his vision speaks into the current situation John finds himself in.  Written almost in a kind of coded language what he sets out to do is to give h is own analysis of what is really going on in the circumstances he finds himself in.

By describing these larger than life visions of what happens at the end of time he is actually seeking to provide his readers with a way of understanding what’s really going on around them in all the horrific events they witness.

It is as if there is a massive battle going on amongst all the powers that be in the heavenly realms that parallels the awfulness of all that happens on earth.  This is where you have to take care.  What is happening in the world around him is not a war between the forces of Christ and the forces of Rome – it is a persecution of the followers of Jesus.

The key points of victory as John in his vision glimpses the reality of the heavenly world is in the Lion that becomees a lamb and is slain – the death and the resurrection of Christ.

That pathway through suffering opens up the secret of God’s world and shows that through the awfulness, the apocalyptic events the contemporaries of John are going through there is an ultimate victory for God that will be made real.

It is a passionate plea for hope against all the odds in a God who will bring to fulfilment his purposes for the world.

The battles escalate – until the final resolution comes and John sees in his vision a new heaven and a new earth coming down from God as a bride adorned for her husband.

And the shape of that new heaven and that new earth is not just to give a sense of hope in a world beyondthe world we see: it is to show us how things are when all  is right in the new world of God’s creation.

If that is as it is in God’s way … then it has implications for what we do in the middle of the mess that is the world with all its apocalyptic goings on.

If in that new heaven and that new earth God will wipe away every tear fro mour eyes and mourning and crying and pain will be no more … then our task is wipe the eyes of those who weep now, to comfort those who mourn to alleviate the pain of those who hurt.

The vision goes on to speak of the immediacy of God’s presence let loose in that world – our task is to bring that presence into the midst of the pain of this world.

And then comes that wonderful vision of the water of life and the tree of life with its leaves for the healing of the nations.

If that is the vision John has of the new heaven and the new earth that is what we need to be shasring here and now.

Revelation shows us what is really going on in our world too.  And indeed in the world of every generation.  It is not telling us that the end of the world is approaching.

It offers us the hope that God’s victory is ultimately assured no matter the awfulness of what goes on.

That is not to be used to claim in battles we are engaged in that God is on our side.

Rather it is to be used as an indication of what we should be doing in the here and now.

In the face of conflict to bring comfort and healing.  And in any war situation to be seeking peace and the healing of the nations.

We honour the memory of those who have lost their lives in war as we recommit ourselves to the search for peace and the alleviation of suffering.

And that calls for political wisdom – a rejection of a blind assertion that God will always be on our side, and a determination to address the issues in the way we influence our political leaders and commit to the alleviation of pain and suffering wherever it may be.