The Fifth Seal: initial thoughts on divine judgment.

Hi everyone,

I’ve missed you! If you live in the United States, I hope your holiday yesterday was what you wanted it to be. I’ve used the months away to, well, rest, and to do some deep-dive research and personal writing on atonement. I’m sure it will show up here at some point as we traverse the book of Revelation. Also, I got a dog! I drove to Amish country in Pennsylvania to find the perfect breed to which I am not allergic. Meet Snickers.

Vaccination progress aside, the apocalyptic times are still upon us. Read the week’s headlines and take your pick of disastrous, truth-revealing scenarios. Recently, the Global North demonstrated, yet again, the inability to internalize the massive crisis we have created for the climate. World leaders pledged progress and countries like South Sudan flooded.  Greta Thunberg’s anger singes because it is true and beyond timely: “It is not a secret that COP26 is a failure. It should be obvious that we cannot solve a crisis with the same methods that got us into it in the first place.”  I recently read an unforgettable book entitled Ministry for the Future, a science fiction novel about how humanity faces the growing climate crisis. The UN designates a new ministry to be for the future to act on behalf of generations and species not yet born. Catastrophically, it is only a massive heatwave with a death toll in the millions that begins to galvanize transformative action. Lord, may it not be so for us. Apocalyptic, to be sure.

We’re back to Revelation, picking up right where we left off. The martyred Lamb is opening God’s mail, secured by seven seals. Each seal’s opening portends a new and terrifying vision. I covered the first four seals here. By the way, if you’re new, check out this ‘About’ explanation first. The fifth seal shows the souls of violent victims of persecution huddled together under God’s heavenly altar: “I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slaughtered for the word of God. . .” (Revelation 6:5) Their unjustly-shed blood drips at the base of God’s altar like the bull sacrificed by the priest in Leviticus (Lev. 4:7). Their suffering is a sacrifice that God hears and heeds; at the same time, the altar is a place of refuge protected by God. One commentator, Craig Koester, quotes second-century Rabbi Aqiba: “He who is buried in the land of Israel is as though he were buried under the altar.”

These martyred souls cry—in the wake or expectation of Roman imperial persecution—“How long, O Lord?” How long must this injustice and agony of living continue? These souls are not enjoying heavenly bliss; they are in a liminal state between earthly and divine life, still suffering, asking the perennial question of when will justice arrive and oppression end?

“Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long will it be before you judge and avenge our blood on the inhabitants of the earth?” (Revelation 6:10)

They’re pleading for God’s judgment.

Image: An astonishing illuminated manuscript of Revelation, Trinity College Apocalypse, circa 1250 A.D., public domain. Explore more here.

Divine judgment is a central, unavoidable theme through this thorny, sci-fi/horror genre called apocalyptic literature in the Bible, and I confess I don’t know what to make of it. Much of these newsletter entries, I suspect, will be my way of grappling with that very challenge. Can we ethically affirm divine judgment in a compassionate and loving way, or is that a contradiction? Does the idea of God’s judgment need itself to be judged and thrown out, particularly due to its terrible renderings and abuses? In the fundamentalist imagination—which has largely dominated cultural understanding of apocalypse, in my opinion—divine judgment turns Jesus into the Terminator of the Second Coming, an Arnold Schwarzenegger Messiah chasing down and killing unbelievers with relentless force. But there must be consistency between Jesus on earth and Christ in (John’s visionary) heaven, and I’m convinced that the scary version of divine judgment is a massive misreading of the Bible that has left generations of people fearing, but not really loving, God. So much in the book of Revelation itself contradicts such a Second-Coming Jesus—the nonviolent, slain Lamb of God, for one. So what are we to make of the martyrs’ plea for God to judge and avenge? Whatever Christ is coming, we have only ourselves to be afraid of—not God.

Here are some thoughts on this question and passage:

1.    The people aren’t doing the judging; they’re praying for God to intervene. This is an important initial point because it means that the nonviolent, enemy-love ethic of Jesus is not thrown out by followers of Christ. Christians are notorious for avoiding Jesus’ uncompromising nonviolence, but we are not shown here that the souls or people themselves are espousing violence. They are not “taking matters into their own hands”; they are asking for God to bring justice. If Christians followed even this point, living a way of peace and love while leaving judgment to God, then surely there would be far less Christian support for guns, wars and scapegoating of the different and other.

2.    The martyrs’ prayer joins a long biblical tradition of praying to God for justice against oppression. See Zechariah 1:12; Psalm 6:3, and many more.

3.    The word avenge in Greek can mean different things. A little Greek nerding out reveals an ambiguous meaning: the first definition of the word is vindication, which means that primary longing here is for justice and protection, not bloody retribution of enemies. For those who are into this sort of thing, the verb is ekdikeo. Brother John of Taize comments that these souls “want to have it made clear that their cause has been heard and that their suffering was not in vain.” To pray for vindication is different than praying for one’s enemies to be demolished; although, admittedly, the Psalms capture even that wide and raw range of human emotion, too.

4.    Early church commentators read this verse alongside Jesus’ teaching to love enemies. It seems early church commentators sat with the tension between love, justice and vengeance. A sixth-century bishop from North Africa named Primasius wrote of this verse: “This ought not be understood in a carnal manner, as though they (the souls under the altar asking “How long?”) were inflamed by animosity and wished revenge. We know that we are to love our enemies through an abundance of love. . .” (Commentary on the Apocalypse). Another ancient scholar, Cassiodorus, leans into paradox when he suggests that these souls, still taking Jesus’ teaching to love enemies in mind, are praying for the eventual conversion of their persecutors—by asking God to provide just retribution. In this way, “they escape the destruction of eternal damnation.” (Exposition of the Psalms 78.10). Here, in the ancient theological imagination, there is a restorative element at play, namely that the martyr’s imperial murderers will eventually change and be saved. There’s both punishment and hope for the oppressor.

5.    This prayer—and the entire book of Revelation (and much of the Bible, for that matter)—comes from the social location of the oppressed. Reading this passage from my contemplative corner in rural Massachusetts, such a prayer for apocalyptic judgment seems far removed. But it is not far removed for those suffering systemic violence or those most in solidarity with those suffering. John of Patmos expects that repressive, imperial violence is the norm for Christians who affirm the alternative, subversive lordship of Jesus over Caesar. The anti-apartheid South African pastor Allan Boesak studied the book of Revelation and wrote of this verse from his own context: “God takes up the cause of the poor and oppressed precisely because in this world their voices are not heard. . . Christians who enjoy the fruits of injustice without murmur, who remain silent as the defenseless are slaughtered, dare not become indignant when the suffering people of God echo the prayers of the Psalms, and pray for deliverance and judgment.”

6.   The martyrs’ question of “How long, Lord?” is an angry prayer born of suffering. That’s ok and even necessary. The anger of the oppressed needs to be heard, and—speaking as a cis-gendered, white man in America, ignored at the peril of my own soul. Black feminist Audre Lorde spoke about the creative power of righteous anger: “Every woman has a well-stocked arsenal of anger potentially useful against those oppressions, personal and institutional, which brought that anger into being. Focused with precision it can become a powerful source of energy serving progress and change.”

7.    Maybe divine judgment is a necessary accounting for injustice? Again, I don’t have Jesus-Terminator in mind here, taking down those who, like Jon Snow, resist “bending the knee.” Rather, the martyr’s prayer reminds me of reparations: for justice to be done, harm needs to be acknowledged and wrong needs to be made right. This does not entail wrath-filled punishment or “God as Divine Avenger” and is a necessary step in any restorative justice work. Here’s scholar Fania Davis: “In African indigenous justice, vindication of the person harmed is prioritized. The person responsible, and often their family, is obligated to offer apology, recompense, and reparation to the harmed person and community.”

Without vindication for the oppressed, how does the universe truly bend towards wholeness and justice? How long, O Lord, must this suffering continue and these wounds remain unhealed? And what, God, are you going to do about it (which is to ask, at the very same time, what are we going to do about it)?

For those still reading, I’m aiming to continue Revelation reflections once a month. So stay tuned on the 4th Friday! As always, I love hearing from you. Feel free to leave a comment or reply to this email.