News

I wonder what you made of our Second Reading this morning, with its talk of portents, the woman clothed with the Sun, the great red dragon, war in heaven between the Angel Michael – he’s not called the Archangel here; in fact, only in once in the Bible is he so designated, in Jude 9 – war in heaven between the Angel Michael and the dragon, and the dragon/ancient serpent/Devil/Satan and his angels being thrown down to the earth.

It was taken from the Book of the Apocalypse, or the Revelation, of St John, the last book of the Bible, and a book which found very early and widespread acceptance by the Church, although there were some later doubts before it was fully accepted as a part of the New Testament [See: https://michaeljkruger.com/the-book-of-revelation-how-difficult-was-its-journey-into-the-canon/].  It was clearly a Book which spoke to the early Christian community and the persecutions it was suffering at the end of the first century and beyond.

One writer describes the Book of Revelation, or Apocalypse, as ‘a bewildering kaleidoscope of scenes, punctuated by voices and bursts of heavenly hymnody’ [John Sweet, in Ox. Bible Comp., p.651].

The Book begins with Seven Letters to the Seven Churches of Asia, and then goes on to describe the Seven Seals on the heavenly scroll, the Seven Trumpets of Warning, and the Seven Bowls of God’s final wrath, around magnificent visions of the Heavenly Worship and the New Creation.

We began our Reading just after the seventh Trumpet had been sounded, and our passage seems to be describing the ‘Third Woe’, which is the end of the world and its time of judgement.

The background to the first part of this passage, which involves the Woman, the Dragon and the Child, is rich, diverse, and would have been familiar to its first hearers.  There is a conflation of the Old Testament serpent of Genesis 3 and the Great Leviathan of Isaiah 27, but it also draws on pagan mythology, especially the story of ‘Apollo and the Python, a dragon who threatened Apollo’s mother at the time of his birth and was later slain by him’ [See Ox. B. Comm., p.1296].

The second part, the story of Michael and the Dragon, and the war in heaven, looks back to the Book of Daniel and we see the impotent rage of the Devil at his defeat, and the baselessness of his accusations against those Christians who have conquered him by the Blood of the Lamb, that is through their perseverance and martyrdom.

We often miss these background images and references, and so we may not as easily be able to relate to what the passage might be trying to say to us.

John of Patmos, the writer of the book, according to Revelation 1:9, is using highly imaginative and imagistic writing to reach forward towards the end of all things, and the ultimate triumph of God’s Reign.  He sees the movement of history as being towards a final struggle where God’s love will overcome all of the forces of darkness in the world, and his reign will be established for ever.

After the Seven Letters, Seals, Trumpets and Bowls, his writing resolves, in the last chapters of the Book, into a wonderful vision of the final state of all things, where the River of the Water of Life flows from the throne of God through the streets of the heavenly Jerusalem, where there will be no more darkness, where all will be well, and, as the Choir sang last evening, in Edgar Bainton’s wonderful anthem, ‘And I saw a new heaven’, ‘And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes, and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain, for the former things are passed away’ [Rev. 21:4].

The passage we heard from Revelation 12 may be a difficult and complex one, but it is worth re-reading and grappling with, looking at its context and background, because it points imaginatively to a time when the Devil and all his works will be banished from the earth, and God’s Kingdom of righteousness and justice and love will prevail, a time when, in Mother Julian of Norwich’s wonderful words,  ‘All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well’.  AMEN.