I am one of those people who can remember my dreams. Some might find that a curse, but I find it quite amusing to see what my strange mind is up to! You can see and hear me give this Homily on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9sur_vfNDc
The other night for example, I started with being offered a ride in an ancient car, but then found myself climbing a wall ,and then found I had to tidy a room. Some might suggest that my subconscious was telling me that work must come before fun, but nowadays scientists tend to argue that dreams are just our minds churning through various thoughts in a fairly random way. So the images I experienced had no more deeper meaning than a reminder of the TV programmes I’d been watching plus some other thoughts that I might have had on my mind that day. What is clear is that there are great dangers in taking our dreams, or our visions if we have them, as an exact guide to what we should or should not do next.
I tell you this about myself, because this Sunday, and for all the rest of the Sundays in Eastertide, the Church gives us as our 2nd Reading various excerpts from the Apocalypse – or as I prefer to call it Revelation, because Apocalypse has taken on a meaning in our modern world far removed from the original Greek. This is the most misused book in the Bible, because too often people have tried to find specific meanings, even predictions of the future, from what is actually a series of dreams and visions. The writer tells us today (Rev 1:9-19) that all this came to him because the Spirit possessed him and that then he “fell in a dead faint.” Of course, it is true that he had already said that what he saw in his visions would soon take place, (Rev 1:1) but I would argue that the actual extraordinary detail of his visions simply expresses in a very vivid way his conviction that Jesus has conquered sin and suffering and death, and so whatever Christians are suffering now, would soon be replaced by the glory of being with God for ever.
He expresses this in a beautiful vision at the end of his Book, which is often read at Funerals (21:1-4) in which he speaks of the “New Jerusalem coming down from heaven”, and his assertion that God ‘Will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death, or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” We can see this great theme of Life defeating death right through this extraordinary work, and so it is a very appropriate set of Readings for Eastertide; but the mistake is to try and interpret all the elaborate images he uses to express his theme as if they themselves refer to actual events. I’m reminded of a programme I’m watching at the moment where the British artist Grayson Perry chooses various works of art sent in by the viewers for his national exhibition. The art he chooses is never like a photograph; but as he interviews the successful artists you get to understand what that person was trying to convey in what they have created. A scientist might try to analyse these paintings scientifically; but we are taught to look at art with a different eye if we are to understand the messages art conveys to us and this is the same with many of the stories in the Bible, and most of all of the Book of Revelation.
The stories of the Risen Jesus must all be viewed like this too ; for as we heard in our Reading from Acts on Easter Sunday (Acts 10:34-43) the Resurrection is not an event open for all to see, but only for those who are given the insight by God. In today’s Gospel (John 20:19-31) we see that the response of those who did see this was beyond words. The one word we do hear used often to describe the indescribable is the word “Joy”. The women are “Filled with awe and great joy” in Matthew’s account (28:8) or “The disciples were filled with joy,” as in today’s account. Now Joy is an interesting word isn’t it, because it’s quite a different thing from plain happiness. We speak about being happy but not about being filled with happiness; but we can be “Filled with joy.” Indeed, joy can be experienced even in the midst of pain and suffering; a steady sense of God’s presence close to us even in the darkness. We heard that in our passage from Revelation where Jesus touches the writer “With his right hand,” raising him from his dead faint We can even weep with joy, which is a strange thing to say, even though we know what it means.
Some people try to use the story of Doubting Thomas to affirm that the risen Jesus could be examined, but that doesn’t fit with the other descriptions where Jesus appears amongst them even when the doors are closed, or where Jesus disappears from their sight just after the two disciples have recognised him “In the breaking of bread.” What is more important here is that when Thomas is offered the chance to touch the wounds, he just exclaims “My Lord and my God.” The point here is that the risen Jesus is a revelation of the glory and wonder of God, a sign that the human Jesus is now revealed within the glory of God the Father. But the glory and immensity of God can only be conveyed to us in part, because to see the full glory of God is impossible until after we are transformed beyond death; for then we shall be like him for we shall see him face to face. (See Romans 6:5 & 1 Cor 13:12)
This is what the writer of Revelation is trying to convey in his various extravagant descriptions, or perhaps I should say “images”, of the risen Jesus. Sadly, much of this elaborate description has been missed out in the section we read at Mass today. This, Verses 14-16, is what is missed out : “His head and his hair were white as white wool, white as snow; his eyes were like a flame of fire, his feet were like burnished bronze, refined as in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of many waters; in his right hand he held seven stars, from his mouth issued a sharp two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining in full strength.” Once we’ve heard that extraordinary description it is easier to understand why he falls “In a dead faint”. Then we hear the risen Jesus going further, using more amazing images to proclaim who he is, “It is I, the First and the Last; I am the Living One, I was dead and now I am to live for ever and ever, and I hold the keys of death and of the underworld.” We should simply be blasted to bits by all this. We shouldn’t seek to understand the glory of God.
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