[Fr. Robert Barron]
[comments on] [The Biblical
Revelation] I had the privilege just last week to speak
at “Magnificat day” in Philadelphia. It was a day sponsored by the
Magnificat Foundation, and it was attended by
– I think about - 4.000 people, so it was a great Catholic jamboree and
wonderful to see all the people there and something very rare
really in my speaking career, the organizers assigned me a topic. They said we want you to speak
on the word the risen Jesus speaks to the Church of Philadelphia
in the Book of Revelation. Just very clever,
so I’m addressing the church in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 2013, but Jesus addressed the Angel of the Church
of Philadelphia in the first century. So it was a good challenge for me
to go back to this great text and then to apply it
for a present time. One thing. The Lord addresses
7 churches and the words are pretty harsh for the most part.
They are pretty critical. The one to Philadelphia though
is very positive. It’s the most positive of the words
and here’s the beginning of what he says to Philadelphia: “To the Angel of the Church in Philadelphia
write this: the Holy One, the True,
who holds the key of David, who opens and no one shall close,
who closes and no one shall open.” So, the risen Lord speaking to Philadelphia
identifies himself as David and holding the key of David. David is one of those
pivotal figures in the Bible because he looks back to Adam,
he looks forward to Christ, and he sheds considerable light
in both directions. Adam. Adam is the first King.
He’s given the task of tilling the soil of Eden (don’t read that
simply as instructions for farming). It’s caring for this
flourishing garden of life that God wants for his people. God wants to rule as king
but precisely through his viceroys, namely human beings made
in his image and likeness. On this reading, what’s original sin
but a failure in Kingship. Adam listens not to directives of the Lord
but to the serpent. He allows the serpent
to have sway in the garden. He thereby becomes a bad king
not defending this flourishing garden of life. And the garden devolves
into a desert. So Adam is a failed king but God
does not give up on Israel. What he does is he forms a people
after his own mind and heart and then he sets up a series of Kings. So think of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob,
Joseph, Moses, Joshua, Samuel, up and down the biblical revelation
you have governors of Israel or tenders of the sacred garden. All of them are failed figures. All them, to varying degrees,
commit the sin of Adam: they go after false gods,
they give in to corruption, etc. A climatic figure in the Old Testament
is David. David more than any of the other ones
is a kind of new Adam. As David establishes his kingdom,
the tribes gather around him at Hebron, first in the south then in the north. David sets up his capital in Jerusalem,
and then he establishes the Ark in his capital and he unites Israel. He then even begins
to conquer neighboring peoples. The idea is: he is doing
what Adam was supposed to do: establish the garden and then carry
that divine order to the whole world. However, we know David is not
a perfectly pristine King. David falls as well. Think of Bathsheba
and lots of other failures. So Israel begins to hope
and to dream that a new and definitive David
would come. What did they mean? They mean the King who would rule
the world for Yahweh, who would be the definitive
tender of the garden. So David looking back to Adam
and now looking forward to his fulfillment: Jesus. Is announced from the beginning
as a new David. He’s born in David city of Bethlehem.
He is a warrior King from the beginning. He enters Jerusalem the way
Zachariah the prophet said he would, as a new David. He does battle but in the
most unexpected way. Not fighting with the weapons
of the world but fighting precisely on the cross
where he swallows up all the darkness of the world. All the darkness that’s
bedeviled the human race from Eden on, this new and definitive David takes it on,
conquers it. The Resurrection is the showing forth
of his victorious Kingship. What’s evangelization
as Paul understands it? Announcing to all the world that
the new and definitive king has emerged. Jesus Kurios. Jesus the Lord. All of that, all of that is in
this opening move in the word to Philadelphia. “The Holy One the True,
who holds the key of David, who opens and no one shall close,
who closes and no one shall open.” Is Jesus Christ the King of your life?
That’s the question. He wants to dominate you. Dominus is just the Latin rendering
of Kurios. Lord. He wants to dominate your mind,
your will, your body, your passions, your public life, your private life. Not to be sequestered in
one little room of your life, but he is moving in as King. That’s Jesus now as the definitive David
reigning in your life. Here’s what the Lord says
next to Philadelphia: “Behold I have left an open door
before you which no one can close.” It’s a wonderful image, isn’t it?
The open door. Door is to play a prominent role
in the book of Revelation. Remember the image of Jesus
knocking at the door. I knocked at the door.
Will you open to me? But also we hear about an
open door to heaven. But the first interpretation of this door
is: the door of mission. So you’ve discovered that Jesus Christ
is the Lord, he dominates you, the next move is to go through
the open door of mission to announce the Lordship to the world. I’ve used the image before
of Noah’s Ark. The same idea. If you preserve a microcosm
of God’s good order in the Ark but then the minute Noah was able
he opened the windows and doors and let the life out. So we are meant now
–as Christian communities- to go through the open door of mission
so as to announce his Lordship to the rest of the world. Because remember:
David looks back to Adam. That was Adam’s task as king of Eden
now to “Edenize” the world. We are under the lordship of the true king
who wants to “Edenize” the world. That’s called evangelization. I want to look too at that
second sense of the door. I mentioned the door
into the heavenly realm. That’s in chapter IV, when the visionary
looks through this open door and sees the Liturgy. Read Scott Hahn and people like that
for the details here, but he looks into Heaven and
sees elders, presbyteroi –our word “priest” comes from that-
dressed in white robes. He sees a great elder on the throne,
he sees the Lamb of God, he sees a scroll being read,
sees incense, candles, etc. What’s he seeing but the temple, the heavenly temple,
the heavenly Liturgy. We become properly aligned
under the Lordship of Christ the King when we look through the open door
of the Mass into Heaven. Mass is not a like a little celebration
of our community. Mass is a participation even now
in the heavenly worship. So I would say the open door,
2 things: mission and Mass. If you want to flourish under the
Lordship of Jesus go on mission,
go out the open door, and go through
the open door to Heaven. Attend the Mass. I think is what’s being
communicated here. I love this, the next word:
“You have limited strength” he says to the Church of Philadelphia,
“and yet you’ve kept my word and you have not denied my name.” Limited strength is not really
a bad thing in the Bible. It tends to me that you are
now open to God, so Paul says
“I boast of my weakness.” We are not into a kind of Greek or Roman
culture of self-assertion here. This is a Biblical worldview,
so you are weak –well yes, of course- therefore you rely on God. But then “you have kept my word
and you have not denied my name.” Kept the word, kept the word. What’s the word
but this word of revelation. The story of God becoming King.
This is whole story of the Bible. You have kept it, meaning you realized
your mission is to tell the world that story. The reason from the beginning we’re
called upon to know the Bible, the reason Vatican II called for
a biblical revival is that the Church’s task primarily is
to tell the world this great story. Keep the word. The tragedy is so many of us in the Church
have lost the sense of the Bible. When we make Biblical references
just today on the culture, often people are lost. Our job is to keep
the Holy Word of God. To know it so we can announce it
to the wider world. And secondly “you have not
denied my name”, I love that. The name of Jesus.
It’s a saving name, it’s a saving word. Yeshua. Yahweh saves.
Are we ashamed of the name Jesus? Do we privatize it? Do we whisper it among ourselves
in our liturgical prayer? Or do we allow that name
to come forth very publicly? Is it on our lips readily?
Is it in our ordinary conversation? Do we bring Jesus to bear
in all walks of life? You haven’t denied my name,
the Holy name of Jesus. There’s something I really believe
that Evangelicals can teach Catholics -is to be more comfortable
with the name Jesus and with the story of Jesus
readily on their lips. Just maybe one more
observation here. I will keep you safe in the time of trial
that’s going to come to the whole world, to test the inhabitants of the earth.
Trial. So here is now or in the first century and
the Lord talks about trials to His church. Anyone that knows even a little bit
of Church history knows that every single age
is marked by trial. Why? Well, that’s
the biblical message. God is always testing his people. Go back to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob,
Moses, David, Saul, the rest of them. Every major figure in the Bible
is tested and tried because during times of testing
we realize strengths we don’t know that we had. During timed of testing we are
deepened and strengthened by the Lord. We’ve been going through, of course
I told the Church of Philadelphia this as if they needed me to come
from Chicago to tell them, that we’ve all going to a time
of great trial with the scandals of the last twenty years.
How do you read them? We read them sociologically and
psychologically and all that is fine; but read them theologically:
it’s a time of testing and purification. What the Lord says
to the Church of Philadelphia, he says to us now –it seems to me-
you have been passing through a time of trial and that’s,
in a sense, to the good, because it’s cleansing and
purifying your Church. So be mindful of that. Just a last observation now. “The victor I will make into a pillar
in the temple of my God, and he will never leave it again. On him I will inscribe
the name of my God and the name of the city of my God,
the new Jerusalem which comes down out of heaven
from God. Here’s chapter III, isn’t it? He’s anticipating the end
of the book of Revelation, isn’t he? Heavenly Jerusalem,
the city that is representative of God’s Lordship over the
whole world. We hear that when the
heavenly Jerusalem comes down there’s no temple in it.
Why? Because the whole city
has become a place of right praise. That means the economic life,
and political life, and sporting life and entertainment life
and transportation. All that goes on in the city,
all of it has become radiant with the presence of God
because it is now ordered to God. That’s the culmination
of the entire biblical revelation. What went bad in Eden is now
restored and elevated in the New Jerusalem which means the city is totally
under the Lordship of Jesus. The word he gives to Philadelphia is:
you need to submit to that Lordship so that you now can go through
the open door of mission and make the whole world
into the heavenly Jerusalem. So that deeply encouraging messaging
to Philadelphia is still a deeply encouraging message to all
the Christian Churches today.
