Friday, April 30, 2010

Revelation 21:1-6

Consuming the Consummation

We read these verses over graves at cemeteries. Kind of a cosmic wrap up for the late departed. It's a nice text for that, even though, strictly speaking, such usage is out of context of the narrative flow of Revelation. 

In my title, “consuming” and “consummation” do not really come from the same etymological root. They just sound alike. The former comes from a latin root meaning “to lay waste” or “to exhaust”, like that spilled oil in the Gulf of Mexico. The latter – consummation - has to do with completion. Fulfillment. Which is clearly the spirit of our text. Even so, for the apocalypse, there is no consummation without consuming.

Let's use recent events in the Gulf of Mexico to help bridge the gulf between the use and setting of Revelation 21. On the Gulf, this vast spillage is presently consuming. Laying waste. “Drill baby drill!” really means “consume baby consume!” We are witnessing the consummation of consuming on the Gulf as we write. It's as disturbing as everything that led up to Revelation 21 since we left the other “nice” text (Revelation 7:9-17) from last week. The lectionary would have us skip over the great consumings of the book of Revelation that have marked it as something of a foix pas in the more polite churches – the ones, perhaps, more prone to members holding oil stocks.

Rome's appetite for material consumption may have more to do with Domitian's claimed title “our Lord and God” than is at first obvious. This is the claim, and others like it, that apparently produced the white-robed martyrs of the apocalypse. The empire was expensive, and the economy of the eastern provinces was a plumb to be picked to maintain the lifestyles of the rich and famous. Loyalty = stability = tax-ability = more and bigger to the imperial players. So emperor worship was, among other things, a manifestation of out-of-control consuming. Think of those Roman nobility that lost their minds on drinking binges out of cups made with led. (Is that theory still current?) Or the big farmers who were never big enough, gobbling up the countryside to create thelatifundia that would congeal into the landed caste system of the Middle Ages. Nobility born of "adding field to field" (Isaiah 5:8). It's as symbolic as chic-cocaine. Like crude oil creeping over salt water, respecting no boundaries. All-devouring. Gratification at any cost. Never enough. Always on the brink of consummation. To the ancients the Pax Romana was many things, and some of them, undoubtedly good. It brought good roads. But it was also a sound byte to keep the revenues flowing. And the consumers consuming according to the pecking order.

The point of view of Revelation is that of the martyrs. The ones who said “no.” From their perspective, there can only be one final consumer: God. For him they would sacrifice everything. There are many forces that represent themselves as having the right to consume, and, seemingly, the power to back it up. The bizarre figures of the chapters leading up to chapter 21 are graphic: the Whore, the Beast, the Dragon, Babylon writ large, Satan, Hades, etc. These are the devourers, and those who bear the mark of loyalty to them will consume whatever and whomever they need in order to maintain their life in this great survivalist scenario. We do not need some pop spiritualist to write a book telling us who these figures represent. We know.

Revelation 21 is a consummation of our hope in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. That's why it preaches at funerals. But it is also the consummation of a great consuming of all that would devour the cosmos in the previous chapters. God devours the devourers for the sake of the new heaven and earth. The "lake of fire" is a perpetual containment - devouring containment - of them whose lives know nothing but the consumption of life. But these are the judgments of theCreator. Not some bloody tyrant with an insatiable appetite. The scribes of our own time would like to label each of us as a consumer in a whole chain of mass consumption. Not that we do not have material needs. But that is not our essense. In fact, such a mark is a damning matter. The hard message is that those who would draw more and more into themselves must themselves be devoured. The creation cannot afford such. Another oil spill. Another beast to climb out of the pit saying “Am I really so bad, friends?” The paradox is that the God who ultimately devours the pretenders is also the Lamb who gave himself up for slaughter out of love for the world. He became utterly empty. Only God can pull off something like that. It makes all the other consumption scenarios look like third-rate medicine shows. The inhabitants of the Gulf can bear witness to that sad fact.

© 2010 Andy Gay