Last week at the Vatican the Roman Catholic Church selected a new pope to succeed Francis. This one took the name Leo. The name chosen by a new pope says something about how he might want to frame his ministry. The last Leo was Pope Leo XIII, who sat on the papal throne from 1878 to 1903.
Leo XIII is known as the father of Catholic Social Teaching, a doctrine of the church that concerns itself with the common good in society and basic human dignity.
It’s worth taking a minute to look at these teachings. It begins with prioritizing the common good. It affirms that every human being is made in the image of God and therefore has worth and dignity. It teaches that we all have the right and responsibility to work together in society for the common good – caring for others and for all of God’s creation. And it lifts up the poor and the marginalized, affirming that how a society cares for the least of these is a reflection on the society’s moral state.
You could say these teachings are really a reflection of just exactly who Jesus was – and is. And that is a focus in our readings today.
Our scriptures today move us away from the Easter readings – those days after the resurrection when Jesus appeared to his disciples here and there. These passages both take us backward and forward – to an earlier time in his ministry in John, and a future time in the book of Revelation.
I will say at the start the Book of Revelation is a difficult book. It is written by a man named John, but most likely not the disciple John. Scholars believe that Revelation was written near the end of the first century, during a period when the church was suffering persecution from the Empire. The memory of the Jewish-Roman War and the siege of Jerusalem was strong, where the temple was destroyed, and a great many were enslaved or killed.
When John wrote his Revelation, he was in exile on the island of Patmos. He experienced a powerful vision, which he then attempted to describe in this book – a message of hope for a besieged church.
Because it is a vision, a sort of a dream, everything about it is symbolic. Everything in it presents the challenge of interpretation to make any sense of it. This means trying to understand the cultural references as well as the historical meaning of the symbols he was invoking.
One thing jumps out at you when reading Revelation: violence. It can be a distressing experience just reading it. Because there were severe persecutions at the time, we might gather that John is referring to trials and tribulations of the faithful. And so, to a people feeling largely defeated by the powers of the world, John was speaking about a greater power. And it is a different kind of power. And that is what we must be clear about. We must not lose sight of.
It is unfortunate that in our present age there are popular interpretations of it that are way off the mark. About 30 years ago a very popular book series came out called Left Behind. Many people read the books because they were fun and exciting. But even if you didn’t read them you probably know something about the storyline.
It is all about the end times, the apocalypse. It draws from the theory of rapture, which is the notion that those who are saved will be snatched up from earth and taken into heaven. And that everyone else will be left behind. And then, according to the theory, all hell will break loose on earth.
You have probably heard of this idea – the rapture. When I was in high school youth group we watched a film called Thief in the Night, which was a kind of Christian horror film. The point was to scare us into faith.
But the problem with the rapture idea as it is popularly understood is that it is so flimsy. It has no real credibility. The whole thing was fabricated in the 19th century by a man named John Darby, who based the theory on a couple of verses from the epistles – 1 Thessalonians 4, where Paul uses an image of all the faithful, living and dead being caught up in the air with Jesus, and 1 Corinthians 15, where Paul says that we – the faithful – will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet sound. Paul is, of course, speaking of the resurrection of the dead. Not the so-called rapture.
The problem this theory of rapture, also called dispensationalism, is trying to resolve is a desire to make perfect literal sense of the Bible. I sometimes say that people go through some pretty impressive mental gymnastics to make the Bible fit into a logical, literal, comprehensive framework. It just isn’t meant to be.
For most of the years of my ministry I wouldn’t have bothered talking about this. Even though back in the day I knew plenty of Presbyterians who were devouring the Left Behind books, I just let it go. It hardly seemed worth talking about. And it wouldn’t matter so much to me now if I still felt it was pretty harmless. But it isn’t. Both the ideas and the sentiments of the Left Behind saga have permeated all aspects of the world in which we live. Even worse, they have permeated the Christian faith in America.
It is a mindset that sees the world as “us” and “them.” The strongest concern I have about it is the way it interprets Christian faith through a very worldly lens. In the Left Behind world, divine power looks a lot like the worst kind of worldly power. It looks like rock’em sock’em payback. Vengeance.
And that notion of divine power as brute force, of “might makes right,” is enjoying a surge in popularity now with churches that are anxious to impose their particular beliefs on others – by any means necessary. Some of whom are looking back with nostalgia to the ages of the crusades, as if it were a golden age of glory for the church.
But it does not sit well with the Jesus we know from the gospel. This Jesus who called out Peter for trying to defend him with a sword. This Jesus who called himself the shepherd who protects the sheep, who guides them to springs of the water of life, who will wipe away every tear.
There is more than one kind of power.
There is the power of the sword, the gun, the bomb – the power to cause destruction and death. That is a hard power, a zero-sum power that only sees winners and losers. That is a power that pits us against them and uses the ends to justify the means. It is a power that says to the downtrodden, “It sucks to be you,” – that is, if it even sees you.
But there is another kind of power.
There is power in the blood, as the old hymn says; the power in Christ’s suffering and death, the power to wash clean those who have been through trials and tribulations, the great ordeal as Revelation has it. There is power when the one who has the privilege makes a sacrifice for the one who has nothing. Which is what is emphasized in that wonderful body of work called Catholic Social Teaching.
There is more than one kind of power. There is hard power and there is soft power. The kind of power that provides others with what they need, power that protects others from harm – this is soft power. It doesn’t knock people down, but it lifts people up, and we know that the world is a better place – a safer place when people have what they need fundamentally. Food, shelter, safety. The right to control their own bodies.
You might say it is the more feminine side of power, which feels fitting on Mother’s Day. But, of course it is not solely a female kind of power. Jesus is a model of such soft power.
In a world, much like ours, where power was snatched by any means necessary, Jesus introduced a new kind of power. He is both the Good Shepherd and the Lamb who was slain, who shed blood that has the power to wash us clean. His sheep know his voice. They follow him. And in the glorious scene in John’s revelation, they worship him waving palm branches in their hands – just like on Palm Sunday. Only, this time they know he is not a military leader come to rescue them from the Empire. He is the Lamb who gave his life to rescue them from sin and death.
They sing praises to the one who has and will shelter them and provide for them; the one who will be their Shepherd. He will guide them to springs of the water of life and wipe away every tear.
Amen! Blessings and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever.
