wfn.org | [ENS]Revelation in the dark awaits Pennsylvania parish during Advent

[dmack@episcopalchurch.org]

12/4/2003  

[ENS]Revelation in the dark awaits Pennsylvania parish during Advent

by Jan Nunley 

031204-1 

[Episcopal News Service] Sometime during Advent, someone in your
congregation will complain about the readings from the last book in the New
Testament, the Apocalypse (or Revelation) of St. John the Divine. "It's too
weird," they'll say-too scary, too gory, too...apocalyptic. 

Exactly. And the Rev. Scott Allen, rector of St. Elizabeth's in
Schnecksville, Pennsylvania, in the Diocese of Bethlehem, thinks that's a
good enough reason to read it right now.

So at a special nighttime service on Sunday, December 21-the winter
solstice, the shortest day and the longest night of the year-the people of
St. Elizabeth's will hear all 22 chapters of Revelation read "in its
'natural' setting...an underground Church, huddled against the darkness of
its age." 

"We were at the bishop's bible study discussing the RCL [Revised Common
Lectionary] texts for the Last Sunday of Pentecost [the feast of Christ the
King] and the epistle for that Sunday was from Revelation," Allen related in
an email. "We talked about how hard it is to read Revelation in a sanitized
environment and how it would do much better read in a different context in
its entirety." 

Then Allen's colleague, the Rev. Lexa Shallcross of St. Margaret's in
Emmaus, Pennsylvania, recalled that she had once read the entire book during
a special service--in the dark, with a single lighted candle.
 
That gave Allen his idea. In 20 years of ordained ministry, he said, he had
never read Revelation start to finish. Maybe it was time to do that.

Why solstice?

But why hold the service on the winter solstice? "In the winter solstice we
yearn for warmth and light," Allen explained. "It's a fitting time to speak
words of hope in the darkness of Advent." He promised he would be "doing
something creative" with candles "for those who are really afraid of the
dark."

"If you look at when the book was written [A.D. 81-96], the church was
facing many trials. It was in that era when the emperor Domitian began to
demand that his subjects address him as 'Lord and God' and worship his
image," Allen pointed out. "Given the apocalyptic nature of the world and
church in the last few years, I thought it might be good to read something
that asserts the sovereignty of God through all of our upheavals, confusions
and fears. It's as much a pastoral idea as a aesthetic one."

After he did some research, he said, he came to "rediscover its poem-like
quality and how much more comprehensible it seems when read as a whole"
instead of in isolated passages.

The Oxford Annotated Bible (NRSV) says that Revelation "may be described as
an inspired picture-book that, by an accumulation of magnificent poetic
imagery, makes a powerful appeal to the reader's imagination.  Many of the
details of its pictures are intended to contribute to the total impression,
and are not to be isolated and interrupted with wooden literalism."

"I think the Revelation of St. John the Divine asserts in no uncertain terms
that life gets messy and ugly, but that God in Christ still lives and reigns
and keeps watch over his church," Allen said. "It is a book of judgment,
yes, but it also a book of hope. The closing words, 'Come everyone who is
thirsty' [Rev. 22: 17], are an invitation to all of us weary of recent
wranglings who want to get on with being the Body of Christ in a broken
world."

-- The Rev. Jan Nunley is deputy director of Episcopal News Service.