A revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place. Christ made it known by sending it through his angel to his servant John, who bore witness to the word of God and to the witness of Jesus Christ, including all that he saw.

Blessed is the one who reads the words of this prophecy aloud, and blessed are those who listen and keep what is written in it, for the time is near.

John to the seven churches that are in Asia: Grace and peace to you from the One who is and was and is to come, and from the seven spirits before God’s throne, and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn from among the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.

To him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us a kingdom—priests serving his God and Father—to him be glory and power forever and ever. Amen.

Look! He is coming with the clouds; every eye will see him, even those who pierced him; and all the tribes of the earth will wail because of him. So it is to be. Amen.“I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “the One who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.”

I, John, your brother and partner in the hardship, kingdom, and endurance we have in Jesus, was on the island called Patmos because of the word of God and my witness to Jesus. I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet saying, “Write what you see in a book and send it to the seven churches: to Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea.”Then I turned to see whose voice it was that spoke to me, and on turning I saw seven golden lampstands, and in the midst of the lampstands I saw one like a Son of Man, robed to his feet with a golden sash across his chest. His head and hair were white as wool, white as snow; his eyes were like a flame of fire; his feet like fine bronze refined in a furnace; and his voice like the sound of rushing waters. In his right hand he held seven stars; and from his mouth came a sharp, two-edged sword; and his face was like the sun shining at full strength.

When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. But he placed his right hand on me and said, “Do not be afraid; I am the First and the Last, and the Living One. I was dead, and see—I am alive forever; and I have the keys of Death and Hades.Write, therefore, what you have seen, what is now, and what will take place after this. As for the mystery of the seven stars that you saw in my right hand and the seven golden lampstands: the seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands are the seven churches.”

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A quick story. I was plating food in the kitchen when our four-year-old, Naima, came up and said, “Dad, hold still.” She stuck out her tongue in concentration and pointed her hand at me. I thought, Oh—she’s pretend-shooting. I played along: “Ah! You got me.” She looked horrified. “Dad, we don’t shoot people.” “Right, right—I thought you were joking.” “Dad, we don’t joke-shoot people. I’m taking your picture. Hold still.”

She was mimicking me taking a photo—phone in one hand, thumb tapping the screen. Her imagination for “how to take a picture” is different from mine. And that imagination literally postures her body differently in the world.

It made me wonder: where else does a formed imagination change our posture?

One place is our ideas of hell. Many of us were handed images of fire and torment. Super brief (and admittedly fast): in the Hebrew Scriptures, the afterlife is mostly Sheol—the place of the dead, shadowy and non-moral. Later, Greek imagination adds wandering, rivers, and the Lethe, the river of forgetfulness. By Jesus’ time, Jewish language also includes the very literal Gehenna—Jerusalem’s burning trash valley—used metaphorically in his warnings. Early Christians largely treated these as metaphors to reflect on life now.

Then Dante Alighieri writes the Divine Comedy. His Inferno does more to shape the Christian imagination of hell than anything in the Bible—levels, punishments, named sinners. Over centuries, those images colonize our imaginations. In the 20th century, some churches even weaponized hell to scare people into decisions.

It isn’t only hell. Think about the pictures of Jesus we’ve absorbed—“white Jesus,” flag-draped Jesus, gun-toting Jesus. I recently saw a Department of Defense ad set to Isaiah’s “Here am I; send me,” inviting service as if it were allegiance to a nationalized Christ. My point isn’t necessarily a take on the military; it’s that images like these leverage a religious imagination for other ends.

Imagination is powerful. We need to be careful what takes root.

Which brings us to Revelation. The book opens as a letter from a person to people. John names himself. He writes to seven real churches. He’s been exiled to Patmos—a Roman island used to sideline troublemakers the empire doesn’t dare execute. If John wants to encourage his churches, he has to write in coded, imaginative language. He even decodes some of it for them: the stars are angels; the lampstands are churches.

And how does he begin? With an overwhelming image of Jesus—eyes like fire, feet like burnished bronze, voice like many waters. Why? Because his people’s imaginations are colonized by Rome: by the spectacle of violence, the threat of soldiers, the tax that required confessing “Caesar is lord.” Some believers were tempted to fold in and become indistinguishable from empire. Others were paralyzed by fear.

John’s pastoral move is to reclaim their imagination: Jesus is Lord. Not Caesar. Start there. Let that image take up space in your mind.

We know this feeling. News cycles monetize fear. Leaders—left and right—get treated as ultimate. When a bill passes (or fails) and our response is, “The world is ending; what’s the point?”, our imagination has been colonized. Fear reshapes our posture: we disengage, give up, stop loving neighbors, stop resisting evil.

Revelation says: don’t let fear have your imagination. Don’t let empire write your liturgy. Let the gospel do the colonizing—with hope.

This doesn’t mean we deny fear. It means someone greater than the powers is at work. If Jesus holds “the keys of Death and Hades,” then our imaginations can be formed by resurrection, not doom. Formed imaginations change posture: instead of slumping into despair, we stand to join God in resisting empire; instead of bowing to idols (nationalism, whiteness, wealth, violence), we worship the weak and the marginalized.

So here are the questions I’m carrying this week:

* What images have colonized my imagination—about God, myself, my neighbors?

* Where am I mistaking empire for God?

* What practices (prayer, Scripture, Sabbath, service) help re-posture me toward hope?

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