“Witness and Resistance”

(Revelation 7:9-17; John 10:22-30)

Easter 4, Sun, May 10, (Mothers) 2025, FBC Amherst, JG White

I spend a good deal of time each week choosing songs for our Sunday mornings together. Here are a few lines I did not choose:

Prophets swell the loud refrain,

And the white-robed martyrs follow

Are your garments spotless?

Are they white as snow?

Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?

I'm just a pilgrim in search of a city

I want a mansion, a robe, and a crown

We don’t have time to sing everything. Here we are today in Revelation chapter seven, with the white-robed martyrs. This comes amid the many pages of the judgements of God. The judgment scenes are about half of the book. The Seven Seals of a scroll are being opened. We are in the midst of these, well, between the sixth and seventh seals. Chapter 7 is an ‘interlude’ of sorts. A worship scene of the famous 144 thousand, and then a multitude from all nations. 

As I said before, the scriptures for each Sunday are “Revelation, all the good parts.” (Karoline Lewis) We did not read about the four horses and their riders: white, red, black and pale green. We did not read about the sun darkening, the moon becoming bloody, the stars falling, and so forth. We are not going to read about the seven trumpets, or the army of locusts, the woman and the dragon, or the other beasts. 

The book is filled with symbols. “Symbolism at its highest,” said 20th Century Bible scholar Bruce Metzger. A word from him will remind us: The descriptions are not descriptions of real occurrences, but symbols of the real occurrences. The message that John conveys through this symbolism is that evil will surely be overthrown. (Metzger, Breaking the Code, 530)

Evil will surely be overthrown. That is the whole message, in dramatic, visionary form. So back to today’s vision. The white-robed martyrs. All the gospel songs and other material that identifies with having a wonderful robe in the afterlife need us to be reminded who these people are. 

Who are these, robed in white? The martyrs. Martyr means witness, though we tend to think of them first off as those who actually died for something, got killed. And these two paths do go together. Those who resisted wrong and evil and ended up dead. They bore witness to the world about Christ Jesus, the true and only head of the Church – and the universe! 

One of the main things the Book of Revelation guides us to is a life of being a faithful witness and of resisting evil. Of course, we are not about to be arrested, examined, tortured, tried or executed for being Christians. We’re not; we’re totally safe. But we may be discovering how much of life in general we give up or loose for the sake of the Good News for the world. 

A chicken, a cow and a pig were walking down the road together when they pass a church advertising a breakfast fundraiser in a week’s time.  The chicken says “That’s a neat idea.  Let’s help them out.  Let’s offer them eggs and milk and bacon to help with the breakfast.”  “Not so fast,” said the pig.  “For you two that’s a contribution, but for me it’s total commitment.”

To stay with animals… we could go to the Gospel lesson, and declare that we sheep know the Good Shepherd’s voice, and can trust that Shepherd to guide us to every place in our lives. No matter what happens, we shall not be snatched out of His hands. 

So we are strengthened in spirit to testify about life with God. And I don’t mean just show there is a God and there is a Jesus, but show the ways of life our Master trains us in. 

God’s Kindom is coming. We are not just declaring that it is out there and will get here one day. It is staring now, the Kindom is in the process of arriving as we speak. As others have said, heaven is in session now. Heaven and earth shall meet, shall join, shall be one. This is what our Faith shows, and what our lives reveal, praise God!

People talk about Revelation and the apocalypse and wonder, are we in ‘the Last Days.’ Well, my short answer has always been Yes, because these final days started about two thousand years ago. What do we keep remembering that Jesus preached? The Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of the Heavens, is at hand, nearby, available! If this is true, it is good news indeed.

So we are the folks who are learning from Christ to live the Kindom life now. So many things! Like what? Like thankfulness. Not false gratitude: true gratitude! There is a long history of gratitude being demanded, being a duty, being a means of control. But better, wonderful, good gratitude is so natural and free. 

It was great this past week to go to Halifax and hear in person Diana Butler Bass, Christian author and public theologian from the Washington, DC, area. One of her dozen books is all about gratitude. We learned from her four postures of gratitude. These are simply the natural things people do with their bodies to be thankful and express thanks to one another, and to God.

Arms upstretched…  Hands over heart…  Hands in prayer…  Gift offered…

Just do those with me. They will work better when standing.

True gratitude is part of witness. Probably for much of human history there have been empires that demanded gratitude. Being grateful as a duty. You have to be thankful to your master, to your ruler, to your emperor, or else you will get in trouble. So it was in the Roman Empire, two thousand years ago. So it even seems to be in the USA, with this President. (Remember how Zelenskyy was berated for, among other things, not being grateful?!)

The vision in Revelation 7 shows those white-robed martyrs, who worship and thank God. God, who is the source of their food and drink, their protection, their guidance, and their comfort. When we express genuine gratitude, we bear witness about the goodness that is available, and we show how gratitude can truly work. It is simple joy and praise. 

What else? How do we witness about God the Good and resist evil? So many, many ways. How about good citizenship?

As Diana Butler Bass talked about faith in the public square these days, and about true gratitude, she confessed something good. She spoke about voting, about voting  for the poor and disenfranchised, not for herself and the well-blessed people. She claimed this is how she tries to vote in each American election: for the sake of the many people who don’t have it as good as she. 

Another example: our economic faithfulness. I like what Michael Gorman wrote about the work and shopping and all that we do. He warns us about our careers and day-to-day practices... If it involves buying or selling goods, Revelation subjects it to question. Is this a business that directly or indirectly promotes the rich and exploits the poor? Does it harm the earth or other human beings? If so then Revelation 18 addresses it. (Reading Revelation Responsibly, p. 149) How we shop can be within the Kindom of God… or not. We can resist the powers that be with our habits, which may require sacrifices on our part. 

Speaking of business and shopping and money, one final example of our witness and resistance: the failing of the internet. A podcast just started recently, dealing with why Google and so much on the internet does not work nearly as well as it used to, oh, twenty years ago. Why? Why is it so, well, crappy?

The creator and host of the podcast suggests this is intentional. Google has made searching stuff on the internet less efficient, so we have to search more, so that we see more advertising, so that Google makes more money, of course. As I start to think about internet justice and injustice, it seems complicated to figure out what I can do differently on my computer and my phone. But it is worth exploring. Because I use this technology every single day. I believe Christ would have me be a better Jeff White when it comes to computing. It is worth resisting gigantic companies that are actually doing evil. Ironically, Google’s early motto, in 2004, was ‘Don’t be evil.’

Resistance is not futile. This is our witness to the world. We still say ‘don’t be evil.’ There is good, and we will stand on the side of goodness and right. Our Good Shepherd will continue to guide our way, in this wild world. Christ can handle it. You can bet your life on this.

To read Revelation responsibly is to read it as a script for the Church, not as a script for some future to come. The drama of these pages can inspire us to bear witness to the truth, and resist what is wrong.