One of the challenging questions in approaching the Bible (or really any work of literature if you think about it) is what tone you are meant to read the work in.
Tone carries quite a bit of weight in human interaction. The phrase, “sure seems like it” could hit all kinds of ways. “Sure… seems like it” could be a concession. Whereas “Sure seems LIKE IT” would carry quite a bit of exasperation. This skill is like a human super-power - allowing us to take the tactile material of words and bend them to our meanings and moods.
I bring all of this up because the pen-ultimate scene of Revelation is one of the more challenging (I think at least) to read in a 21st century tone. We tend to “feel” a lot of judgement in this moment. And rightly so. The scene that happens at Armageddon - a scene where “God remembered Babylon the great, to make her drain the cup of the wine of the fury of his wrath.” (Revelation 16:19)
The tactile material substance of these images is not pleasant. It sounds (at least in my ears) like retributive judgement. Which of course it is. The “Babylon the Great” that is being judged has committed many evils, the horrors of which were likely in the minds of the first-century readers of these words in ways they are less clear in ours.
However I bring up these thoughts on tone because it can be easy for us to miss that there is grief that hovers over every page of judgement that Revelation portrays.
We are told all the way back in Genesis, at the very start of the story, that when God looked out at all he made, “The Lord was grieved that he had made human beings on the earth, and His heart was deeply troubled.” (Genesis 6:6)
I think God has been grieving from the start.
Not that grief is all God feels, or that grief is all we feel. There is a heat to a righteous burning justice. A sense of completion when what was wrong has been made right, even when such restoration comes at incredible cost.
But even Jeremiah, who chronicled the ongoing ailments that plagued Judah’s infatuation with idolatry, and who suffered in his own body the costs of rejection and strife, still weeps when Jerusalem is eventually destroyed.
So part of the call in this episode is to pay attention to the layered tones that infuse the book of Revelation. There is judgement. There is justice. And for those who have suffered, there is vindication and even retribution. But far too often we miss the sound of weeping. The song of prophetic lament. That weeps over what might have been that has been lost.
I do not know what restoration will require when it comes to our beautiful and broken earth. But I know God’s salvation will come. And I trust that tears will be wiped away. But first we will weep at all that has been lost.
May we, even now, learn to listen to that song, along with the many others we must sing as a people who are still not yet where we belong.
With hope,
John
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