Grace to you and peace from our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ.

So in the early 2nd century, a fellow named Pliny the Younger was a Governor of Bithynia and Pontus. We don’t have much for which to thank Pliny, as you’ll hear, but he did write a now-famous and very valuable letter to the Roman Emperor Trajan—as a little sermonic card-tip here, he addressed it “Lord,” which in Latin was Domine, in Greek kurios: you might recognize kurios as the word Christians used for Jesus. ANYway, his little epistle gives us some huge clues to life as a Christian in the nascent early Church, so thank you Pliny.

See, Pliny had been doing what good political lackeys do: he’d been faithfully persecuting Christians, according to Trajan’s bidding.

Trouble was, once he had them, Pliny wasn’t so sure what he was supposed to do with them—clearly they posed a threat…though they were arrested with no exact named crime.

The trouble with most Christians seems to be that they’d refused to offer the mandated obedience to Roman gods. They refused to pledge allegiance to the ruler, opting instead for some guy named Jesus. Obviously, that could not be tolerated, for it meant that this band of very bad people were collectively subversive, and, because they gathered, it didn’t take a rocket scientist (even though they didn’t have those back then, but work with me) to figure that they were organizing for more subversiveness.

No autocrat can have that.Pliny the Younger considered himself also Pliny the Generous, noting that he gave Christians three whole opportunities to deny their faith before he killed them. “Those who denied being Christians now or in the past,” he said, “I thought necessary to release, since they invoked our gods according to the formula I gave them, and since they offered sacrifices of wine and incense before your image—which I had brought in for this purpose—along with the statues of our gods. I also had them curse Christ. It is said that real Christians cannot be forced to do any of these things.”

See, just being Christian, just following the ways of Jesus, was enough for imprisonment and death, because aligning yourself with any principle or power short of the ruler was considered seditious behavior, and therefore intolerable to the Empire: any hostility to their edicts was considered hostility to the government, to the Emperor’s power, and to the supreme ruler’s intention to govern with his power unchecked.

So the Christians needed to be checked.

Pliny was so dedicated to rooting out these traitors that, in order to gather his indicting intel, Pliny tortured two “deaconesses,” and I’m totally going to take the quick opportunity to point out that this is a clear indication that there were women leaders in the early church. Anyway, exasperated, Pliny said he didn’t learn very much from them other than their “depraved, excessive superstition” in Jesus.

What had became clear, he said, was that Christianity was spreading, both in cities and rural areas.

There were these gatherings, see.

At these common meetings, Pliny said, he’d learned that Christians had a custom “to gather before dawn on a fixed day and to sing a hymn to Christ as if to a god, and to bind themselves by an oath [the word here is sacramento] not for any criminal purpose, but to abstain from theft, robbery, adultery, fraud, and to repay debts. With this complete, it had been their custom to separate, and to meet again to take food—but quite ordinary, harmless food.”

Pliny ruled right around the year 110.

About 20 years before that, a certain John of Patmos—not to be confused with John the beloved disciple, who is not to be confused with the gospel writer John, who also was not John of Patmos—wrote seven letters, bound together.

They became known as the book of Revelation—little aside pet peeve, here, it is not the book of RevelationS, just Revelation.

He had time to write (though that he could write at all indicates that he was learned), because the Romans had imprisoned him on the island of Patmos for refusing to participate in their cult: it was the cult of those who followed their political leader, the Caesar, who at that time was Domitian. Domitian, yeah, he really grooved on public accolades and follower worship: remains of a temple and a huge statue, both built to glorify Domitian, have been found in Ephesus—as in Ephesians Ephesus. When I say that it was a cult, I’m not making it up, you see.

No one knows exactly what John did to annoy the ruler—as an aside, in Revelation, John seems to be referencing not only Domitian, but also Nero, a corrupt, dangerous, and violent ruler: in fact, most scholars believe that the infamous number 666, so scary that some long books even skip from page 665 to 667, is simply code for Nero’s name, according to the Jewish numerology practice of gematria.

To be honest, no one is even entirely sure who John himself was, but for a variety of reasons, the consensus hunch is that he was a leader, a prophet, within the young Christian community. Revelation, also known as the Apocalypse—which comes from the Greek word which means ‘revelation,’ or ‘unveiling,’ hence the name of the book—is even considered by some to be a letter of pastoral care. New Testament M. Eugene Boring believes John felt he had a “pastoral responsibility” to its recipients, people Boring says who faced the same threat—persecution, repression, and forced loyalty to the false god, namely the Roman Emperor and Empire—as he had. John wanted to acknowledge their fear and impart strength.

Upshot: the entire book, that is, is a banger: an encrypted message written in Jewish metaphoric and numerological code—yes, it’s a bit psychedelic, but that’s because it dips out of the tradition of apocalyptic literature, and because John was clever: the Roman goons didn’t know Jewish imagery and numerology, but his people did. He needed them to know, but the authorities to miss the subversive word that God’s promises were true; that only God was worthy of adoration—not some paranoid and needy ruler armed with malice and hate; and that the Christian community was called to gather together regularly so that they could remain strong, buoyed, courageous, connected, and joyful, despite the threats of the beast.

Lutheran theologian Rev. Dr. Barbara Rossing, whose expertise is precisely in the book of Revelation, writes that these early Christians “gathered together and worshiped God, convinced that, as Chilean scholar Pablo Richard describes early Christian ethics, 'Jesus has set up here on earth a community that is an alternative to empire.’ Early Christians ministered to the poor. They visited prisoners. They broke bread together, and they sang hymns to God and the Lamb.”

This is what Christians did.

Trouble was, this Way, being people of the Way really messes with the agenda of an autocrat.

~~~~~

An enormous part of our liturgy comes from the book of Revelation: did the passage from today sound familiar, for example?

‘Liturgy’ stems from two Greek words smushed together: laos, which means people—hence, for example, ‘laity’—and ergos, namely a work, or a task, that sets out to complete a specific purpose—think ‘ergonomics’—so it literally means “work of the people.”

While modern folk are most familiar with word ‘liturgy’ meaning a ritual of worship, the word originally referred to the work, namely the business, the service, and the donations that privileged people in Athens and beyond offered to and for the well-being of the people, (the laity) of the community.

When absorbed into the Christian world, though, laos specifically referred to the people of God; their shared mission—to worship God, to serve only God, and to be representatives of God’s will and ways in the world—became known as the liturgy.

Their entire way of life, that is, rooted in worship, especially the meal and the water and the hymns, was their living liturgy: works by the people of God for the people of God, if you will.

The Romans understood worship very differently, and therefore had a very different liturgy. Again, Barbara Rossing.

”Romans celebrated Victory, but more than that—they worshiped Victory...The Roman goddess of military victory was named 'Victoria' in Latin, or 'Nike' in Greek. Portrayed as a winged goddess, she is the inspiration for the wing-like symbol on running shoes today. 🤯

Victory personified was emblazoned everywhere in the Roman Empire...The message was clear and strong: Rome's Victory--or Nike--in wars was what made peace and prosperity possible. No one ought to dare to oppose Rome's dominance over the world. Even a homemade graffiti inscription scrawled on a rock in rural Arabia at the end of the first century shows the widespread acceptance of this fact: 'Romans always win.’”

Romans always win.

Yeah, well to that threat, Christians said this: We see your Victoria and we—or rather God—raises you a Lamb.

A…Lamb?

Like, if you’re going to make a case that your God is more worthy than some mighty authoritarian god—with not a few victories to make the case—the Lamb is not maybe a person’s go-to.

I can almost see the Metaphor Committee gathered around the table, stumped with how to counter “Victor,” and finally, one sits up and says, “Guys, guys: I’ve got it, and hear me out here: Lamb.”

To make it more confounding, the word John uses isn’t even “lamb:” it’s…cuter. As Rossing says, “it’s more like ‘lambkin,’ ‘lamby,’ or, as a the late Lutheran pastor, author, and illustrator Daniel Erlander said, ‘Fluffy.’ The only other place,” she says, “that this same word is used in the New Testament is where Jesus says he is sending his disciples out into the world "as lambs among wolves" (Luke 10:3).”

But here’s the kicker: John understood that the way that the Christian God becomes victorious is not by violence, not by despotic threats, not by holding power and forcing conformity to it, no: it’s by pouring himself out for the world, what is known as kenosis. As Rossing says, “Lamb theology is the whole message of Revelation."

This message does not mean acquiescence, no: Rossing very much points to Biblical scholar Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, who said that the hymns and liturgies in Revelation are actually "for the sake of moving the audience to political resistance . . . If the author would write today, he might say: ‘Don’t salute the flag, salute God’; or ‘Don’t pledge allegiance to the state, pledge it to God’.”If that seems bold now, imagine what it was like to receive John’s letter with your name, with Emmanuel Lutheran’s name, as its addressee.

Which, to be honest, is sort of what it’s doing, insofar as John’s message was found worthy by the early church to be placed in our common texts as a reference point to a life of faith and, well, a Revelation of God.

John of Patmos wrote to people who were afraid, and who had every reason to be so. They knew they had one choice: live according to the Caesar, or live according to the Christ. Be faithful to the Victor, or be faithful to the Lamb.

John understood the stakes. He lived the consequences of his choice.

So in his pastoral letter, John centered worship. Liturgy, he believed, provides hope, reminds people of who and whose they are, and it resists Empire.

With all of this now in your minds, hear again John’s words to us, words full, of all things, of joy, and praise, and, in a word, worship:

Then I looked, and I heard the voice of many angels surrounding the heavenly throne and the living creatures and the elders; they numbered myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands, singing with full voice, "Worthy is the Lamb that was slaughtered to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!"

Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea and all that is in them, singing, "To the one seated on this throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!"

And the four living creatures said, "Amen!" And the elders fell down and worshiped.

They worshiped.

Preparing for this sermon, for the first time I was struck by the explicit contrast that this hymn—the one we sing at every Eucharist, every time we come to the table—sings vs. what Empires want us to sing.

Worthy is the LAMB John sings, and we sing. Not empire. The Lamb.

It made me think of how for some time now when I pray the Lord’s prayer, I pray this way, as a reminder to myself:

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name,

thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread;

and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us;

and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen.

Only your name, God, is to be holy, only your reign is to come, only your callings matter, and moreover, it’s not just about the heavenly then, it’s about the earthly now. We worship Jesus the Christ now, we engage in Christian liturgy now, we come to the table now, we serve Jesus now.

It’s no coincidence that we are hearing this text in the Easter season.

If Easter doesn’t matter, if it doesn’t fundamentally alter our understanding of God, of creation, of one another, of ourselves, and of the entire shebang’s relationship to God, well I for one would rather be outside right now rather than in this apparently pointless liturgy.

But Easter is the crux (which is sort of funny, because ‘crux’ means ‘cross,’) but it’s the entire crux of our faith: Easter announces that death no longer has the last word.

Death in all its forms refuses to concede that point—either that, or it does concede it, and it positively ticks death off. It rails and it fights and it clamors to maintain all the power it can, and to suppress anything and anyone with a contrary message, a subversive message, a message that devalues not just violence, bullying, threats, amassing power, material wealth, and privilege, but it devalues the empires that worship these illusory and base things.

That terrifies empires, and so empires terrify us. They do.

John totally gets it.

The people to whom John writes totally get it.

Heck: nobody gets it better than Jesus gets it.

And many of us these days get it.

Contrary to what you may have thought about Revelation, the book is a bastion of hope, of comfort, of courage, and of Easter promise:

Weeping spends the night, but joy comes in the morning.

God has turned my wailing into dancing;

  and has put off my sackcloth and clothed me with joy.

Victory, it turns out, is not Rome’s.

It’s God’s, and therefore it’s ours.

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