Gregory Stevenson - A Slaughtered Lamb: Revelation and the Apocalyptic Response to Evil and Suffering

E xperiences with evil and suffering present a challenge to faith because they call into question certain common Christian beliefs: that faithfulness will lead to blessing and prosperity, that God will place a hedge of protection around his people and keep evil at bay, and above all that a fatherly God of love and compassion would not allow his children to suffer. Most Christians live their lives with the tension between these ideas and their experiences simmering below the surface. As long as they feel mostly comfortable and secure in their own lives, they do not allow themselves to question the validity of such closely held beliefs. But when suffering becomes personal, when evil dares to intrude upon their lives, then that mildly simmering tension erupts to the surface. Revelation speaks to such situations because it offers a transformative interpretation of both the world and of faith.

The figure of Jesus Christ establishes the pattern of faithfulness in Revelation and it is this pattern that John calls upon his readers to embody. In Revelation 1:1 John identifies his work as the revelation of Jesus Christ, an assertion that points to Jesus as a source of the messages and visions that follow, but which also hints at a deeper truththat this book in some way reveals Christ. Structurally the book begins and ends with Jesus, from the opening identification of the work as the revelation of Jesus Christ to the closing admonition, the grace of the Lord Jesus be with all the saints. Amen (22:21). Johns claim that the very essence of prophecy is the testimony of Jesus (19:10) indicates that the figure of Jesus Christ provides thematic cohesion to Revelation. Revelations presentation of Christ, however, must not be understood apart from its presentation of God, for the function of Christ in this book is an outgrowth of the Creators activity within his creation.

Chapter 1 of Revelation lays the theological and Christological foundation that undergirds the entirety of the book. Although John introduces his work as the revelation of Jesus Christ, he quickly adds that it is a revelation which God gave him (1:1), thus identifying God as the ultimate source of the visions that follow. Though Revelation is written in his distinctive idiom and shaped by his hand, Johns perspective is clear: this is a message from God and bearing the stamp of divine authority. In addition, John, who displays a fondness for the number three throughout Revelation, presents God by means of a threefold designation: 1) the Alpha and the Omegathe first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, 2) the one who is and who was and who is to come, and 3) the Almighty (1:8). These titles identify a God who is powerful (Almighty), a God for whom temporal designations are inconsequential because he is past, present, and future, and a God who is the Creator and caretaker of all creation from its beginning to its consummation, from the alpha to the omega. Taken together these titles assert the sovereignty of God as one who not only encompasses creation from beginning to end, but who possesses the power to engage creation redemptively.

That John introduces himself in the next verse as a fellow participant in the affliction that his churches experience reveals an important aspect of Revelations theological perspective. The sovereignty of God over his creation does not result in an absence of suffering on the part of the faithful or the removal of those forms of evil that may oppose them. Rather Revelation asserts two seemingly contradictory truths without fully resolving the tension they create: 1) suffering and encounterswith evil are an intrinsic component of Christian existence and 2) God is sovereign. Some find these claims impossible to reconcile. For John, however, what is most important for Christian faith is not their reconciliation, but learning how to live faithfully within the tension created by these two immutable truths. One step towards doing that is recognizing how God, in his sovereignty, has engaged evil in the past.

As stated previously, John defines evil in Revelation as that which stands in opposition to the kingdom of God. In Revelation 1:5-6, John evokes two formative events in the history of Gods people that involve both opposition to the kingdom of God and a display of Gods redemptive power: the exodus event and the cross event. John writes, To him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father. The latter part of this statement is an allusion to Exodus 19:6 in which God declares that the Israelites shall be for me a priestly kingdom. In Exodus it is God who creates Israel as a priestly kingdom, yet in Revelation 1:5-6 that task is ascribed to Jesus. He both freed us from our sins by his blood and made us to be a kingdom, priests. By conflating Christs action on the cross with the exodus event, John encourages us to interpret one in light of the other, to see the cross as a continuation of Gods redemptive activity within creation.

Both of these events are not only formative for the history of Gods people, but are also formative for the narrative of Revelation. Throughout Revelation John uses the exodus and the cross to shape his audiences identity as the people of God and to provide a historical and conceptual framework for interpreting divine activity. Thematically these two events share much in common. Both involve empires (Egypt, Rome) that act oppressively towards the people of God. Both connect Gods deliverance with human suffering and with violence. With the exodus account, God delivers the Israelites by means of violent plagues inflicted upon their captors. With the cross, God delivers through an act of violence perpetrated by Rome against Jesus.

Despite these connections, the exodus event and the cross event reveal different aspects of Gods redemptive activity. The exodus event reveals a God who acts in power to redeem his people. He is the Almighty who delivers by the power of his right hand, inflicting plagues upon the Egyptians, bringing about the death of the firstborn of Egypt, and parting the waters of the sea. The cross event, however, reveals a God who delivers not through power as defined by the kingdom of the world but through weakness as it is perceived by the kingdom of the world. Throughout Revelation this interplay of power and perceived weakness recurs, most notably with the figure of Christ whose symbolization shifts back and forth between symbols of perceived power (lion, warrior) and of perceived weakness (a slaughtered lamb). By invoking the cross and exodus in 1:5-6 and uniting them in the figure of Christ, John lays a foundation for his transformation of the world through symbols.

With the cross he presents Christ as one who joins humanity in suffering and who thus shares in humanitys weakness; yet, by joining the cross event to the exodus he indicates that Gods power to redeem comes to us through that weakness. The combination of exodus and cross is a combination of power and weakness in such a way that it unmasks the pretensions of the kingdom of the world where military might and worldly power pave the way to victory. The world becomes a very different place, however, when viewed from the perspective of the kingdom of God. Just as John can assert that Smyrnas poverty is in fact wealth (2:9), that the reputation of life enjoyed by the church at Sardis is really death (3:1), and that Laodiceas prosperity is really poverty (3:17), he tells us that weakness is in fact power. Gods power to save and to work redemptively through the cross appears as little more than weakness in the eyes of the world. The image of a man crucified evokes defeat, weakness, and death. And yet it is that image of weakness and defeat that in Revelation provides the pattern for power and victory. In the image of the slaughtered Lamb we encounter the pattern of the Christ.