A Daily Walk

A Daily Walk <-- Audio file of sermon based upon Revelation 1: 9-19

Good morning. I am glad to see so many of you here safe and sound from the weather this week. And let us continue to hold in prayer and help those who are still limited by ice, snow, and cold.

When I was last here, we had 3 straight weeks of sermons from biblical texts that are “apocalyptic” in nature. I use that word as a literary form, not it’s translation which simply means “revelation.” We looked at a text from Matthew, one from Revelation, and one from Daniel. We left Daniel by asking the question “what is faith?” and I invited us to mull that one over for a couple of weeks.

What is our faith individually and collectively? What does it mean? What difference does it make? Now, we’ve circled back around to the book of Revelation for one final apocalyptic text in this sermon series. And I hope we’re going to flesh out some of that question of faith. Well, let’s jump in and find out.

You see, until now we’ve looked in very intellectual terms at these texts. We’ve deconstructing where we’ve gotten overly emotional or interlaced them with other stories of our culture. But as we’ve said before, these apocalyptic texts are to “jar” us out of our everyday thinking. So, applying an intellectual lens to them is not the only tool we have. We are still faithful when we look in more emotional terms too. Many of these writings are truly for the purpose of creating an emotional response that impresses upon us a feeling or ideal that can’t be taken lightly. Nevertheless, that does not mean the stories have to be taken literally either. Herein lies the conflict that’s often hard to balance. And herein is our connection to faith.

As the book of Revelation opens, we are immediately told this book is to signify truths about God. As Oxford University professor of biblical studies Christopher C Rowland put it, this book “calls us to move through the letter to the spirit, not to become so bogged down in the minutiae of symbolic detail that we fail to experience these words as an organ for further imaginative insight into the ways of God and the world.” You see, we’re called to look at these texts not as a code to be cracked but as a story that reveals something, something that might be difficult for us to see or believe otherwise.

Jesus taught using parables or stories that could be applied to the way people lived. The book of Revelation tells a story using jarring images to weave together the truth of God’s ongoing relationship to the world, a relationship where justice and love triumph over institutional and individual sin. So applying one of Jesus’ parables to our lives might be as simple as saying “the good Samaritan helped someone he didn’t know because it was the right thing to do and so should I.” But applying the story told in Revelation is not as simple as applying it to a literal situation because it’s breaking across time, the Alpha and the Omega. It’s a “big picture” point of view where we can apply the truth to our faith but not exactly to the circumstances. Nonetheless, what parables and apocalyptic stories have in common is that they are both rich in meaning and keep telling us more and more if we keep looking into them.

But let’s get back to what the text says. The narrator is having a vision of Christ who is preparing him to write down what is to be revealed. From what John has already seen, we get the foreshadowing that he’s in for a wild and bumpy ride. But from the very beginning, John was asked for something he could do… to be a witness.

To be a witness and write down exactly what he sees, nothing more, nothing less may seem simple. But how often do we really live our lives that way? We anticipate, try to make sense, categorize information, and so on. It’s in our nature. Even now, I bet many of you are trying to figure out where I’m going with this. And ultimately, it’s John’s nature too because he did more than witness throughout this book. He interacted, asked questions, and did want to make sense of it. But all he was asked to do was witness.

So, I want to set forth witness as an essential part of faith. What we believe, how we define our theology, and all the different ways we’ve made intellectual sense of our faith are not really what’s fundamental. What’s fundamental is simply witnessing God.

Just as we saw last time we looked at Revelation, this book will go on to tell of a God of real power, creativity, and love that is beyond time. It weaves together the work of overthrowing the injustice in the world and beyond and offers assurance that God’s work will come to completion. It also shows how the restoring of creation as an ongoing work right now that’s hard to see from the inside out. But here we are, even today, on the inside looking at God’s work all around us. Can we see it? Do we stop to see it? Or are we too busy trying to make sense of it rather than witnessing it?


When we look at this text the next thing Jesus asked John to do was share what he witnessed. Now we may be tempted to look past just how deep this is. What we see is a book written by a man almost 2000 years ago that we don’t know, have no connection to, and quite frankly have a hard time understanding. But at that time, Jesus was asking him to write this letter to 7 churches. The Christian churches at this point were small and people knew people. They were in relationship with each other. This was not Jesus asking John to publish a book for folks unknown to him. This would be more like me asking you to write a letter to an elder in this church who has made a difference in your life. You know them, if not personally, you still know a good deal about them.

So the second thing I want to hold out about faith is that it’s relational. Faithfulness is in how we connect with others and share what we’ve witnessed. Sharing our experience of God is not only foundational to faith but foundational to the cultivation of a deeper faith. It is by seeing how God has been present to other people that we see God more fully in our own lives and vice versa.

A few weeks ago when putting the question of “what is faith?” out there, I quoted Hebrews 11 saying, “faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” I said that faith is that quiet utterance within us that tells us something more is going on here than what we can understand. Faith is that most foundational piece that calls to us and beyond us. It is not definable and it’s more emotional than intellectual. It is purely spiritual.

I raise this because I believe this is God’s message to us today, for our daily walk in life. The church as an institution has gotten very good at intellectual arguments about belief. We spend enormous amounts of time, energy, and money trying to out argue one another’s beliefs while missing that God is present with each of us. And our society spends a great deal of time trying to see who can out talk the next person. Politicians, news commentators, and corporate leaders want to secure their power by making sure we believe they are sharing an absolute truth. And meanwhile, congregations, communities, and individuals hurt and long for something of real substance that speaks to their very core… a faith full of “assurance of things hoped for.”

I’m not saying that we should not use our gifts of intellect. On the contrary, it is a gift and we should apply it with gratitude. But as a gift, we should honor God, the giver, by rooting it first in faith.

So, what do I mean by this? I mean that our primary concern should be with making sure God is glorified in what we believe, say, and do. As we do make statements of belief, we should ask if it makes our experience of faith richer. When we are in a public forum, we should seek to make our engagements spring from our faith. As Sara Little, professor emeritus at Union Theological Seminary said, “when belief is equated with religion or supersedes faith, when it becomes a control mechanism or a test for salvation, it is a prison rather than a home.” So we need to make sure our beliefs are not only supportive of our faith but of other’s faith too, lest we be creating a prison of limitations rather than a home of flourishing.

You see, just like Jesus did not want John bogged down in the symbolic details of his vision so he would not miss God, we too must not get bogged down in the minutiae of trying to outthink our faith or we might reduce our own faith and the faith of others. In similar fashion, last week the president of Louisville Seminary said last week that, “A good theologian walks past the establishment and into the fresh air of faith.” I would argue that it isn’t just a good theologian that doesn’t get caught up in establishment and doctrine. I think it is a good Christian whose daily walk is in the fresh air of faith.


Sisters and brothers, faith is our most core gift from God. It ties us to God and to one another. It gives us the vision to see and understand. Just as John had this vision and sought to know more of what it meant, so do we seek to make greater sense of the world and God. But we need to keep faith as our foremost concern, a faith full of witness and sharing of God’s presence and love. When we are concerned more with seeing and sharing in our experience of God than we are with convincing others we are right, the words of belief will flow naturally and with truth. Our words of comfort to one another will ring true. And our experience as children of God will be forever enriched and transformed. Let us take a daily walk in the fresh air of faith.

Thanks be to God. Amen.