Starting Points: Revelation 5: 11-14

This year, from the second Sunday of Easter until the Sunday after the Ascension, one of the readings is from the Revelation to John, also called the Apocrypha of John (from Gk apokalypsis = revelation), which is the last book of the Bible. 

 Christian tradition says that it was written by “John” – who may, or more likely, may not, be the John of the fourth Gospel, who was exiled to Patmos probably towards the end of the first century CE.  To find out more about the Patmos community, Raymond Brown’s The Community of the Beloved Disciple is a scholarly, but accessible, commentary on all of the Johanine literature.

Revelation is a difficult book to read.  Some of the “scenes” are eschatological; they talk of the end time.  The Christology (“words about Christ”) of Revelation is high; that is, it starts from Christ’s divine nature; in Revelation Jesus, the Christ, the Lamb of God, is equal to God; he is the Lamb who sits on the throne.

The symbolism of seven as a perfect number is a theme of Revelation – the seven churches of Asia and the seven seals (and look in today’s Gospel where Christ appears to seven disciples).

Revelation is in two parts.  After the introduction in Chapter 1, Chapters 2 and 3 are admonitions to the churches of Asia Minor, while Chapter 4 – 22 are full of visions, allegories and symbols giving rise to as many interpretations as there are commentators.

No-one is certain when Revelation was written, though opinion veers towards a time of persecution by Rome, the exhortation being instructions to hold fast to faith in the hope of the Victory of God (God’s Church), over Satan and his antichrist (the Roman Empire and whoever was emperor at the time of writing).

The Sunday readings take us from the confirmation of the divinity of the Lamb (Christ), through a pean of praise of God for the wideness of his creation, and his merciful welcome at all, towards the (hopefully) far future and the welcome to the New Jerusalem and the Eucharistic feast at the end of time.  

Last week, “John” opened his “letter” to the seven churches with a salutation which confirmed that God is the one “who is, and who was and who is to come”, the three “tenses” of the “divine eternity”, an interpretation of YHWH, itself a pun on the Hebrew “to be”. Another interpretation is that “was, and is, and is to be” refers to the Christ in his Incarnation, his Resurrection and his Second Coming. 

John then addresses Christ Jesus as the one who saved us through his sacrifice – a theme picked up throughout Revelation including in today’s passage “the Lamb who was slaughtered”.  And finally refers to the Eternal One, God who is Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end.

Revelation 5: 11-14, acknowledges the Lamb, the major Christological image in Revelation, (remember the Passover lamb, whose blood protected Israel) and, for the first time, The Lamb is deemed, in the doxology (words of praise) which follows to have equality with the “one who sits on the throne”.

 We are also introduced to the wholeness of creation “every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea” – all creation is of God, the praise due to him being also due to the Lamb who has received “power wealth, wisdom and might” and who has equality with God.

As the next few weeks pass, we shall see these themes developed, until we reach the end of the Revelation to John and the vision of the New Jerusalem.