Easter 4, Year C | Revelation 7:9-17
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
May 11, 2025
the Rev. Jonathan Hanneman
To watch the full service, please visit this page.
“Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne and to the Lamb!” – Revelation 7:10[1]
We in the Episcopal Church don’t often run into Revelation during our Sunday Lectionary cycle, but when we do, we have a nearly impossible task in trying to understand the book. With such a legacy of confusing and conflicting explanations and expectations, it’s no wonder so many people throughout history have wanted to pull it from the Bible. The fact that we generally approach it today in terms of the mountains of fan fiction people have produced over the last two centuries doesn’t help, either, and, in fact, often leads us to interpret the book in a backward fashion.
When dealing with writings like Revelation, full of symbols and veiled references, it’s important to start with the big picture. Don’t start obsessing about any details before you understand the author’s primary message.[2] Our language allows us to slice things down into the tiniest possible pieces and moments of time, but we aren’t so good at putting the bits back together. We tend to leave everything a complete mess or, at best, grab loosely (often un-) related parts and squish them into the molds of what we want[3] to see. Then we get so caught up in our Frankensteined ideas that we completely miss what the author was trying to tell us.
Revelation’s big picture, then: God overcomes. Good overcomes. Diversity, complexity; resonance and harmony—all that makes Life mysterious and wonderful—continues to overcome, again and again and again. Empire, Evil, Desolation—domination, oppression, and cruel uniformity—rise in different forms and at different times. Their reign may seem interminable, but Enacted Love will win in the end. Reality’s base rests in God, so mercy, graciousness, and generosity are the true expression of all that is. If, then, someone’s interpretation of this book doesn’t lead you toward a faithful life of kindness toward others as service to God, they’re directing you down a false path.
Moving slightly more in the direction of detail, Revelation exemplifies a genre known as “apocalyptic literature.” Unfortunately, we tend to conflate apocalyptic literature with prophecy, which puts us into a real mess, seeing that we already confuse prophecy with prognostication. So to clarify, in reverse order, prognostication involves predicting the future. The people in the ancient world who did that were known as seers or oracles, not prophets. The role of the prophet was to proclaim God’s message of justice, mercy, and love, calling the powerful to account in ways memorable enough that they’ve continued to echo throughout the centuries. Prophecy remains relevant over time not because it’s prognostication but because it draws our awareness to patterns that consistently inform human behavior throughout varied times and cultures.
The confusion with prognostication and prophecy rises because some seers did at times function as prophets; however, we need to recognize that very few prophets were also seers. Apocalyptic literature, then, is a form of expression that a prophet or other person might employ. But while the style uses dramatic, end-of-the-world imagery and themes, the author isn’t really talking about the End of the World, as we think about it. They’re using cataclysmic language to talk about current events, a form of communication which remains common among oppressed peoples even today. This allows the minority groups to address delicate issues in a manner that makes it extremely difficult for any outside reader to understand the message, at least in enough detail to prosecute anyone for what might otherwise be seen as sedition. Apocalyptic literature like this naturally contains prophetic elements—instructions for how people ought to live—but we need to guard against using these writings to declare fated timelines or predict future events.
Unfortunately, we in the modern world fall into that outsider group, as far as most of Revelation is concerned. Even through scholars have figured out particular details that reference events of the late 1st and early 2nd Centuries CE, there is no detailed reader’s guide from John’s era, so we’re forced to incorporate a significant amount of conjecture. That’s why it’s especially important for people like us to start with the big picture—there’s simply too much that we don’t or even can’t understand. For example, it’s impossible to know who the elders are supposed to be or what exactly the four living creatures represent, nor can we identify “the great ordeal”[4]—or “tribulation,” to use the more traditional and pop-culture translation—with absolute certainty. But, thankfully, we don’t really need to. The same message applies to any ordeal faithful people have already experienced or will yet endure: “Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne and to the Lamb!”
That is the point. That is the entire lesson we need to take away. God reigns no matter the present chaos, fear, or destruction we may be experiencing any given day. Despite how dark any present circumstances may seem or the direction they appear to be pointing us, the Lamb has already made a way for us. Our “salvation”—restoration to proper standing within the Creator’s family—is, has always been, and will forever be in the safest possible hands, ones out of which “no one can snatch.”[5] “The Father and [the Lamb] are one.”[6] And we, “a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages”[7] are one—one with each other, one with the Lamb, and one with Divine Love itself.
“Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne and to the Lamb”
[1] All Bible quotations are from the NRSV unless otherwise noted.
[2] That’s true for any part of the Bible, really.
[3] or have been taught
[4] Revelation 7:14
[5] John 10:29
[6] John 10:30
[7] Revelation 7:9