24.07.2025
Saint Francis
The Gift of Peace in the Midst of Fear
Revelation Series Part 1
Sermon for July 6, 2025
5th Sunday after Pentecost – Pr. Bea Chun, St. Francis Lutheran Church
Grace to you and peace
from the one who is,
and who was,
and who is to come.
It is early morning—
a cool, misty winter morning on the rocky island of Patmos.
John walks slowly along the terrace
of his small stone dwelling, built high on a hillside.
The sky is pale; the sea below is veiled in shifting fog.
Swallows dart and swoop in the cold air.
Across the valley, a shepherd tends his flock on another hill.
Far off, gulls cry above unseen waters.
John listens. Prays. Waits.
His servant appears—silent and reverent—
carrying a cup of goat’s milk and a small scroll,
a letter just arrived on the morning boat.
John breaks the seal and unrolls the parchment.
It is from Pergamum,
one of the seven churches under his care
in the Roman province of Asia.
And the news is devastating.
Antipas—the faithful bishop,
shepherd of that young congregation—
has been arrested, tortured,
and finally executed in a public spectacle.
They say he was burned alive inside
a bronze bull-shaped altar,
a grotesque imitation of pagan sacrifice.
The congregation is in mourning.
And they are terrified.
The pressure to participate in emperor worship grows stronger by the day—
to burn incense before the imperial altar,
to declare “Caesar is Lord,”
to offer acts of public loyalty.
And what if they refuse?
They will be marked as dangerous, subversive, un-Roman, unpatriotic.
Several times now, their worship space has been vandalized.
Several times they’ve had to relocate.
Every gathering feels risky.
John sighs and lifts his eyes toward the sea.
Last week there had been a similar letter,
from the church in Smyrna.
There, too, believers are facing hostility.
Some have lost their livelihoods.
A baker—his shop emptied because neighbors fear buying bread from a Christian.
A merchant—his goods destroyed in the market.
A family’s home—smeared with blood, then looted.
And yet... both churches are holding fast.
God be praised!
Their faith is resilient.
New believers are joining them.
New catechumens are preparing for baptism.
But for how long?
How long can they endure?
John worries for them all.
And what about the others?
What news will come next—from Philadelphia?
And Ephesus—so devoted to doctrine, but cold in love?
And warm-hearted Thyatira—so generous, but soft on false teaching?
And what about Sardis? Is there anything left?
That once-vibrant church seems now only a shell of spiritual life.
And Laodicea—complacent, self-satisfied, rich in wealth but poor in spirit?
John aches to be with these churches—
to travel from city to city,
offering encouragement to the persecuted,
admonishment to the complacent,
truth to the confused,
hope to the faithful.
But he is in exile.
Banished to Patmos,
a small, rugged island under Roman control.
Not because he broke the law—
but, as he writes, “because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus” (Rev. 1:9).
So if he cannot go to them—
what can he do?
What can he say?
He knows better than to offer false hope.
To say, “It will all be over soon,” would be a lie.
The pressures are mounting.
The empire is growing more hostile.
Hardship is not ending—it is only beginning.
What could possibly be the right message now?
Then, suddenly—
a shift in the light.
The mist around the hillside
is pierced by a brilliance beyond the sun.
It is as if the heavens themselves have opened.
Then a voice,
loud like a trumpet:
“Write in a book what you see,” the voice says,
“and then send it to the seven churches:
to Ephesus, to Smyrna, to Pergamum, to Thyatira,
to Sardis, to Philadelphia, and to Laodicea.”
John is startled and turns around
to see whose voice is speaking to him.
But instead of a person,
he sees a vision:
a vision of seven golden lampstands,
and in the midst of the lampstands—someone “like the Son of Man,”
clothed with a long robe
and with a golden sash across his chest.
His head and his hair are white as white wool, white as snow;
his eyes are like a flame of fire;
his feet are like burnished bronze,
refined as in a furnace,
and his voice is like the sound of many waters.
In his right hand he holds seven stars,
and from his mouth comes something
like a sharp, two-edged sword,
and his face is like the sun shining with full force.
John is terrified, and he falls to the ground
in shock and awe.
But ever so gently, the shimmering figure reaches out to him,
places his right hand on him, and says:
“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 ever,
and I have the keys of Death and of Hades.
Now write what you have seen,
what is, and what is to take place after this.”
And with this begins the first in a series of visions
that John received while he was a prisoner on Patmos,
imprisoned there for his faith.
These visions form the backbone
of one of the most fascinating,
most misunderstood,
and most argued-over books of the Bible:
the Book of Revelation.
Some people claim that the Book of Revelation
predicts a literal, violent end of the world—
and that it contains, in coded language,
a chronological road-map to future events,
full of gloom and doom.
The Book of Revelation
is also known as the Apocalypse—
a Greek word that actually has a very simple meaning:
unveiling.
Pulling back the curtain.
Like what happened to the Wizard of Oz
when Dorothy’s dog, Toto,
pulled back the curtain and revealed
that the mighty Wizard
was nothing but an ordinary man
operating a machine.
That’s what the word apocalypse means—
a revealing, a pulling back of the curtain.
But unfortunately, in popular culture,
apocalypse has acquired a different meaning.
Today, most people associate the word “apocalypse” with:
catastrophic destruction or the end of the world—
massive disasters (natural or human-made):
nuclear war, climate collapse, pandemics.
And it doesn’t help that,
in 1979, Francis Ford Coppola
blessed us with an iconic movie called Apocalypse Now,
depicting the Vietnam War
as a time of madness and devastation and insanity.
But the Book of Revelation
is not about predicting the future—
or at least not the future of our world
for us who live in the year 2025.
Yes, John was concerned about the immediate
future of his churches,
and the suffering that might lie in store for them,
and how they might find strength
and hope in the midst of their challenges.
That is the main theme of the Book of Revelation:
that evil forces are at work,
but God's love and justice are stronger than evil—
and they will prevail.
And the very first words spoken
in the first vision are the words:
“Do not be afraid”.
That is the core message of Revelation.
Not a book full of riddles and coded timelines,
but a book about choices—
choices of loyalty:
between the forces of the empire
and the kingdom of God,
between the fear of the devastating power of Rome
and the hope of the power of the Lamb.
John does not promise them escape.
But he promises presence.
He promises truth.
And he promises victory—not the empire’s victory,
but the Lamb’s.
So today, dear church,
we begin a journey—not into fear,
but into strength and resilience and hope.
And isn't this what all of us need right now,
in this challenging summer of 2025
on this Sunday after the passing of the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act”?
We need strength and hope and resilience.
The Book of Revelation
is not a riddle to decode.
It is a letter of love and fire
from the risen Christ to his people.
He speaks then, and he speaks now.
To the persecuted.
To the weary.
To the comfortable.
To the confused.
To the brokenhearted.
To us.
Let anyone who has an ear
listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches.
Amen.
The text: Revelation 1:4-8
John to the seven churches that are in Asia.
Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come and from the seven spirits who are before his throne, and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of 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 dominion 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 on account of him.
So it is to be. Amen.
“I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.
