"Accessorizing"

These confounding passages from the book of Revelation overwhelm us with symbols. These offer a glimpse of the end, and of promise, that can only be communicated with symbols.

            Most of us are familiar, at various levels, with at least the basics of the book of Revelation, right? That it’s an “apocalypse” — by virtually all definitions a “revelation” or an “unveiling,” concerning what church folk have called “the end times,” showing, dramatically, vividly, how the world — at least the known world of Revelation’s time — would end. We will see in today’s passages that this book contains not only graphic depictions of societal collapse, but also a promise. What is the nature of the promise? What does it promise? Who is it for?

            That promise is defined here, in these visions from this book of visions — not an apocalypse, but The Apocalypse: the Revelation to John. What shall we make of this promise? How does it impact us, today, some 2,000 years after it was offered to those tiny “new church starts” in Western Asia?

            The most cursory reading shows that this is, above all, a book literally loaded with symbols. This is perhaps especially apparent in the verses before us today. Thus a good way to begin to understand this book, and the promise it offers, is to unpack these symbols.

After this? After what?

            “After this”..., verse 9 begins; the obvious question that arises is, after what? A search for an answer to that question takes us back to earlier in this same chapter, where the author of Revelation has seen a vision of “...one hundred forty-four thousand, sealed out of every tribe of the people of Israel....”1; 12,000 from each of 12 tribes. These people are marked for protection by a heavenly messenger, while four angels, standing at the four corners of the earth, hold back winds of destruction and death. The seal marks these thousands for some protection from the damage that is to occur to the earth and the sea because of the judgment of God.

            This sealing of the 144,000 is itself preceded by an “After this ....”2 The sealing of the 144,000 happens after the breaking of seven seals — more symbolism — outside the scope of this sermon. Suffice it to say that, as a result of the breaking of these seven seals, all hell is about to break loose (yes, pun intended): war, slaughter, runaway inflation fit to destroy a nation’s economy, sword, famine, pestilence, wild animals and natural disasters that upend the natural order as it has been known up till then.

            But before all this calamity is set loose, these 144,000 are sealed. But not only the 144,000 ...

            Which brings us to where we are in today’s passage, and the first of the symbols we’ll consider.

A multitude — with accessories

            The obvious, unsettling question about the 144,000 — is it only this relatively tiny remnant that is going to be ultimately spared from the calamity about to unfold? Will only this 144,000, culled from only one nation, Israel, be spared — be “saved”? The answer we’re given in today’s passage is, in a word, “No.”

            This brings us to the “After this ...” in verse 9. “After this ...” — in other words, after the sealing of these 144,000, the seer sees yet another multitude, a great multitude, so great in number that it cannot be counted, and not just from one nation, but “...from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages ....”3 And this multitude, this uncountable billions of souls, is depicted as “standing before the throne...before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands.”4

            Whoa.

            Let’s pause for a bit, here.

            Talk about symbols!

            What’s going on?

            Both of these multitudes are themselves symbols. What we are talking about, in a word, is salvation. In context, this is not necessarily what we mean today when we talk about salvation. This is not “salvation” as in “going to heaven after you die.” This is not individuals being whisked off to an other-worldly heaven after death. This is a whole people being spared an envisioned fiery ordeal that will happen at the end of time.

            Why are they — this multitude, accessorized (not to be too flip about it) with dazzling robes and palm branches — spared?

The symbols tell the story

            The members of the multitude are “robed in white, with palm branches in their hands.” A white robe “is a symbol of heavenly existence or worthiness of heaven.”5 Palm branches “are symbols of victory.”6 The multitude is part of a “victory,” initiated in “heaven,” in the realm of God.

            In verses 14b-17 we find more symbols and some explanation. A heavenly being directly addresses the author, the one to whom this revelation has been given, explaining, as well as can be explained, who is represented in this multitude. They have “come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. For this reason, they are before the throne of God, and worship him day and night.”7

            Well. This tells us everything we need to know (no, really...!). This gives us as much as we can understand, at this stage of our existence on earth, as faithful followers of Jesus Christ. The symbols tell the story. Really, the symbols tell the story as well as it can be told, because we are dealing here with mystery, with things beyond our comprehension.

            The throne before which the multitude stands is the throne of God, the One God, the only God there is, was or ever will be.

            The Lamb is the Risen Christ, Jesus, after he has passed through his ordeal on the Cross and has been raised from death and made himself known to the faithful followers of his earthly ministry. The multitude have passed through a “great ordeal” — the ordeal being the persecution unto torture and death endured by so many of the faithful followers of Christ during the establishment of the early church. This multitude of faithful followers have “washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”

            It should go without saying, but needs to be said, anyway: if you wash something in blood, it will not come out white. But we are dealing with symbols and symbolism, here! To say that one has washed one’s robe in the blood of the Lamb is to say that one has, in one way or another, participated, with Christ, in the suffering of Christ. This multitude, pictured in Revelation, has passed through an ordeal of suffering, sometimes unto death, as a result of their faith in the salvation offered by Jesus Christ through his life, his witness, his suffering and death on the Cross and his resurrection. And this multitude is not only that number that participated, way back when, in the foundation of the church.

A multitude that no one could count

            What we are given here is a great truth, communicated by a vision of a multitude welcomed to the very throne of God. Throughout the book of Revelation we are shown, in vivid detail, that fiery ordeals, some figurative, some literal, await our future on this planet Earth. Many of these ordeals lie behind us. More happen around us: war, famine, racism, a changing climate, hurricanes, tornadoes, political upheaval. We will all suffer through these, in one way or another. We are not promised a way around any of this. What we are promised is that these disasters, however wrenching and destructive, need not define our life and our end. There is not a way out ... but there is a way through. And that way through is faith. These many and varied and vivid symbols, if they depict nothing else, show a deliberate, chosen commitment to faith — faith in the true humanity, the humanity-at-one-with-God, that we see in the life, death and new life of Jesus Christ.

            The promise is that such faith is accessible to us, today. We can choose, by faith, to situate ourselves before the “throne” of God, and before the Lamb who is Christ. We can take actions — actions like providing care in instances of relievable human suffering and misery, actions that provide compassionate care to all who suffer from calamities such as those described in Revelation. Such compassionate action in effect situates us before this throne, perhaps whether we realize it or not.

But when?

            In the Gospel of Mark, when Jesus’ most faithful followers ask him about this final calamity, envisioned and symbolized for us in these verses from Revelation about a multitude standing before the throne of God and the Lamb, Jesus answered, “But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven nor the Son, but only the Father.”8 We can’t mark our calendars or set our alarms for that time. But what we can know now is that that multitude is vast, uncounted and uncountable. It can’t be counted, because it is not yet completed. We, here today, are part of that multitude — or we can be. All we need to do is choose to respond in faith to the Good News of Jesus Christ — his life on earth and his teachings and actions, his sacrificial death and his new life, his resurrected life that continues now and into eternity.

            Would you be a part of that life? Choose! Take your place within the multitude, united in faith. Don your white robe, take up your palm of victory and wave it fearlessly.

1 Revelation 7:4.

2 Revelation 7:1.

3 Revelation 7:9, emphasis added.

4 ibid.

5 The SBL Study Bible. (HarperCollins Publishers, 2023) p. 2176.

6 ibid., p. 2178.

7 Revelation 7:14b-15; emphasis added.

8 Mark 13:32.