Easter season in Year C gives preachers an opportunity to explore the most troublemaking book of the New Testament. Left uninterpreted, Revelation (no -s, please!) will be exploited and distorted, again and again. But read aright, as a supremely beautiful confession of faith in Christ and a visionary experience of hope for the persecuted, it will inspire courage, fidelity, and holy patience.
An overview of the whole book will help preachers and readers track the spiraling narrative. It is, first of all, an apocalypse (as “Revelation” directly translates from the Greek): a disclosure of Jesus Christ, presented in deliberately startling images and time-bending episodes, to shake off the narrow vision of ordinary life and time.
Revelation advances in distinct stages. It begins with letters to “the seven churches that are in Asia,” some faithful, some apostate, and some so inert that they’re worse than apostate (chapters 1–3). Then we behold Jesus revealed as true priest, who leads and receives worship in heaven (chapters 4–11); true king, who does battle against the enemies of God (chapters 12–20); and true bridegroom, who gathers his beloved into the New Jerusalem for an everlasting honeymoon (chapters 21–22).
Easter 2C – Revelation 1:4-8
Apr. 27, 2025
John’s vision begins with a trinitarian blessing, though if you’re accustomed only to the Matthew 28 version, you might not notice at first.
Grace and peace come “from him who is and who was and who is to come,” or, as you might paraphrase, from “I am who I am.” This captures the everlastingness of God the Father as well as his presence to all of history.
Next, the blessing comes “from the seven spirits who are before his throne.” Not only is this out of the usual trinitarian order; the number has jumped from one Holy Spirit to seven!
Time to start tackling the numbers of Revelation. They are neither math nor a secret code. As church father Irenaeus figured out 1800+ years ago, you can manipulate numbers to mean anything you want, so they prove nothing.
But in the symbolic usage of Revelation, seven is the number of completion and perfection, as in the days of creation according to Genesis 1. The “seven spirits” signify the perfection of God’s (one) Spirit. This accounts for the recurring sevens in the opening chapter of Revelation: seven churches, golden lampstands, stars, and angels.
Last in our trinitarian blessing we hear “from Jesus Christ the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of kings on earth.” Revelation promptly adds further that Jesus loves us, freed us from our sins by his blood, made us a kingdom of priests to his God and Father, and will come again, a threat to those who despise him but the chief hope of those who are persecuted for his sake.
The reading ends with the Lord God—that is, God the Father—announcing, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.” The Father won’t speak again until the very end of the book (22:12–13). He is, indeed, the Alpha and Omega of Revelation itself! Jesus and the Spirit get all the letters of the alphabet in between.
Easter 3C – Revelation 5:11-14
May 4, 2025
The four living creatures mentioned at the beginning and end of this passage hearken back to Ezekiel’s vision, and both sources give us our symbols of the four Evangelists: Matthew the man, Mark the lion, Luke the ox, and John the eagle. If your church is graced with such imagery, now’s the time to explain it!
Angels numbering “thousands of thousands” draws on 10 being the number of completion: 1,000 is 10 x 10 x 10, which you’ll notice is three 10s, and three, of course, is the number of the Trinity.
The worship from “every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea” calls to mind both the triumphant conclusion of the hymn in Philippians 2:10–11 and the Deuteronomistic warning against graven images (Deuteronomy 5:8). What Revelation portrays here is all of God’s many different creatures united in worship of their Creator, with no more idolatry or misplaced deference, only exulting joy in the one source of life and redemption.
If “This Is the Feast” makes a regular appearance in your liturgy, this Sunday would be a good time to walk the congregation through it line by line, drawing all the connections to the worship songs of Revelation.
Easter 4C – Revelation 7:9-17
May 11, 2025
The violence of Revelation tends to be its best-known feature. This is misleading at best. Revelation is, above all, a book of worship in song. The Revised Common Lectionary avoids any of the battle scenes, probably hoping to correct this misperception, but it may leave people wondering. This week would be a good time to contrast, deliberately, the constantly resounding worship of Revelation with the very modest number of battles, especially in chapters 12 and 20.
A great way to do this is with hymns inspired by Revelation: for example, “Holy, Holy, Holy,” “All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name,” “Ye Servants of God,” “Shall We Gather at the River,” “I Want to Walk as a Child of the Light,” “Who Is This Host Arrayed in White.” If your choir sang “The Hallelujah Chorus” at Easter, you could break it out one more time!
You also have an opportunity to correct misunderstandings about the number of the saved. Directly preceding this reading in chapter 7, we get the notorious number 144,000. This, again, is not a statistic but a symbol: 12 (tribes of Israel) x 12 (apostles) x 10 (everything) x 10 (everything) x 10 (everything). Far from limiting, this is symbolically as big a number as you could get.
Then, right at the outset of today’s reading, John beholds “a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages.” Here God’s election is not stingy but sweeping, already anticipating the successful outcome of the gospel mission.
Yet it equally anticipates the suffering that will accompany the mission. Fidelity to the Lamb is costly because it makes you the target of the hostile powers that despise God. John learns that the people clothed “in white robes” are “the ones coming out of the great tribulation.” Comfort is offered to them, and hope, both of which are necessary to the persecuted.
But Revelation also blocks revenge fantasies, which can fester in the persecuted. That is why the focus continually returns to the worship of God, and that should be the focus of your sermon as well.
Easter 5C – Revelation 21:1-6
May 18, 2025
The Revised Common Lectionary skips pretty fast to the happy ending of Revelation, and then camps there for three weeks running. It feels a bit unearned. You may have to back up to show what is at stake in the triumphant conclusion.
Revelation earns its happy ending by dwelling at length on the evil that is inflicted upon the earth. It doesn’t duck or deny evil, though it also isn’t interested in giving evil more attention than it already claims. This book is more sophisticated than people assume; it knows that you end up worshipping what you stare at, so to stare at too much evil lures you into evil’s way of thinking and acting. Yet pretending like it’s not there makes you easy prey.
Jesus is the one who must and will defeat evil in the end, and that’s what happens directly before today’s reading. The beast, the dragon, and the false prophet (Revelation’s anti-trinity) are dumped into the lake of fire and sulfur, never again to emerge; Death and Hades give up their victims and join the anti-trinity in the lake of fire. All enemies have been defeated. But a good story does not end there.
What happens now is what all of creation has been waiting for (see also Romans 8:21): to become the fit and blessed dwelling place of God. The new heaven and new earth come to be, and the new Jerusalem descends from heaven as the setting for the wedding celebration. The name Immanuel, God-with-us (Isaiah 7:14; Matthew 1:23), becomes a living reality: “He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.”
Hope that is seen is not hope (Romans 8:24). Revelation knows this hasn’t happened yet. But this hope is “trustworthy and true” (Revelation 21:5). In a sense, “It is done!” (21:6). Revelation offers spectacles for stereoscopic vision: one lens perceiving and resisting the evil that continues, the other lens perceiving the victory that is already Christ’s.
Easter 6C – Revelation 21:10, 22-27; 22:1-5
May 26, 2025
Who’s in and who’s out of heaven preoccupies people’s minds. Almost all answers are bad, even the good ones. Acknowledging the question presumes human competence to answer. Scripture is remarkably uninterested in giving us either knowledge or authority to address this issue, and with good reason—even asking draws us away from focusing on God.
Today’s reading can offer an alternative framework for faithfulness around these inevitable questions.
First, as we heard last week, the new Jerusalem descends to the earth, and God lives at its heart, his very being the temple and the light that enlightens everyone.
Second, while the city has boundaries, they are life-giving, not death-dealing boundaries. The foursquare city has its walls, but each wall is perforated by three gates. These gates “will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there,” which is to say, the gates of heaven are never locked once and for all. Quite unlike the lake of fire, which, happily, will be shut and locked eternally!
God’s generosity does not mean, however, that evil can get a toehold in the new Jerusalem. Nothing “unclean,” “accursed,” “detestable or false” will ever enter. Mercy does not make a pushover out of God. This may mean that people who refuse to relinquish the falsehoods or accursedness they have acquired will voluntarily disqualify themselves from entrance into the city. Revelation doesn’t offer any pat promises of universal salvation.
But it also doesn’t assume multitudes of the damned or divine glee in eternal rejection. There is no evil the Lamb cannot defeat. The issue seems to be whether everyone will allow the Lamb to defeat the evil within. This is why all the answers are bad: They force us into speculating about the inmost recesses of sinners’ souls, instead of returning our attentive trust to God’s intention to rescue those suffering from evil and to detach evildoers from their evil.
So the answer is, don’t give answers about people’s eternal destiny; refuse the question altogether. Proclaim instead the trustworthiness of the merciful, righteous, and victorious Lamb who was slain.
Easter 7C – Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21
June 1, 2025
The perpetually nervous Revised Common Lectionary edits out all the awkward verses from this final reading from Revelation. The result is almost as dishonest to Revelation as a whole as sensationalist depictions of Armageddon and calculations of the end of the world. It’s particularly ironic since one of the deleted verses (22:19) reads, “If anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book”!
Surely by now your preaching chops can cope with the full witness of Revelation. It is not bad news to anyone that evil, deception, plague, abuse, murder, idolatry, and the rest of the catalog of sins are barred from eternity!
In keeping with the whole witness of Scripture, Revelation offers to sinners guilty of such deeds every opportunity to repent, believe, and be reconciled to God. Time continues, according to 2 Peter 3:9, to give sinners time to repent.
But sin does not get infinite time. It would not be good news if it did. There is, in principle, a time limit for repentance. A human life only lasts so long. You don’t have to be a fire-and-brimstone threatener to urge people to get right with their God.
Even with these stern warnings, though, Revelation ends as it begins: with a beautiful vision of God, merciful and triumphant.
“The Spirit and the Bride say, ‘Come.’ And let the one who hears say, ‘Come.’ And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price. He who testifies to these things says, ‘Surely I am coming soon.’ Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!”