One of the great shifts in late modern life is that we are always waiting on a revolution.
Sometimes these revolutions come. Be it 1776 when the American colonies threw off the yoke of our British oppressors (depending of course on where you were sitting at the time) all the way to - when I am writing this, the most recent - the July Revolution in Bangladesh that led to the resignation and exile of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina after 15 years of rule.
Ever since Bob Dylan sang, “The Time, They Are-A Changin,” we’ve seemed to think, or maybe just hope, that the next revolution is the one that will really matter. Obama’s “Change” has been followed by Trump’s “Make America Great Again.” And in the upheavals and whiplash, we discover the truth revolutionaries have always known - that no revolution comes without a cost.
Revelation picks up the thread of revolution - unbeknown to it all the upheavals that were to come - with the promise that the ultimate revolution will be one that concludes around a table at the marriage supper of the lamb.
In my early days of beginning to study the Bible, this scene really shocked me. Like I kind of knew it was there. But I had never before put together all the pieces of how truly climatic this scene is. All the hopes of the prophets of a coming messianic age. The strangeness in Hebrew thought that God loved Israel as a bride and wanted to marry her again, even after her unfaithfulness. The promises Jesus makes not only to return, but to share again in a table with us, as a bride-groom with a bride.
Then suddenly, after all the upheavals, as the earth is just settling after its quakes - suddenly a table is assembled. And each of us are invited to come find our seat.
Yet there is one more twist. Because, rather than hold off on the glory and spectacle of Revelation’s audacity to include such a scene, a slow dawning realization begins to sink in: we’ve already been rehearsing our part.
Every Sunday, when the body gathers and the bread is broken and the wine is blessed, the people of God get this radically unifying glimpse of what this ultimate table of communion might look like. It is of course but a glimpse. Many of our tables remain fragmented and broken. But the point is that even now we can see where the revolution is heading.
Is it possible for all our frustration and angst with the present state of things, we are already rehearsing our part for the revolution to come and the table to which each of us will be called?
With hope,
John
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