Revelation! What does this book evoke in you? Bloody dragons and doomsday! How often have you heard it preached on in the United Church ... or most "respectable churches" Oh, yes, it is the fair of Sunday morning preachers G.K. Chesterton once remarked that "though St. John the Evangelist saw many strange monsters in his vision, he saw no creature so wild as those would would try to make comment on the book of revelation."

Yes, this is a bizarre book. And initially a book that some thought should not be included in the Bible. The early church lacked confidence that it was the word of God. That is could be called Sacred scripture. Alas, almost no one in the church would make such a claim today. Indeed, even though this is considered the most bizarre and the most controversial. Over time it has been tested through a host of Christian communities and lives. By the most spiritually mature among us; those who have witnessed with their lives in love and the way of Jesus Christ, that this is part of God's word to us. If the Church as a whole has a deep and lasting confidence that this book is the Word of God we had better listen to what God has to say.

Well, actually God has nothing new to say in Revelation? Everything is Revelation can be found in the previous 65 books included in the Bible. Revelation adds nothing of substance to what we already know. It is said in a new way ... and perhaps therein lies its power to awaken us to what God has being saying to us all along.

The book itself announces its authority right away. "The revelation of Jesus Christ which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place, he made it known by sending his angel to his servant John who testified to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, even to all he saw. No where else is such a claim made.

You see, except for this book, no other book in the Bible claims direct inspiration. You see the Christian Bible is not like the Koran, where we claim it is word for word from God. We believe in the Bible is inspired, but as for directly sent words by angels to scribes who wrote them down. No, the Bible is not like the Koran, except perhaps here. Where else does a book make such a harsh warning about changing even one word of the book, except here in a book called "Revelation".

Yes, the book is written by a human person, Christian tradition is in almost entire agreement that the book of Revelation is writer of the Gospel writer of John. And so, if one insists on dismissing the authority for a book, we may as well dismiss, "The Word become flesh ..." "And he washed their feet ..." "I am the way the truth and the life." We may as well dismiss the Gospel of John. And while we are at it since Revelation is based upon the foundation of scripture; Revelation is almost all quotations of other parts of the Bible. If we dismiss Revelation we may as well do away with the whole Bible.

While there may be nothing new in content, there is much that is new in how the Good News is expressed. Can we see it. In an age of analysis, pragmatism, brutal efficiency, and mind numbing busyness, are we able to hear a poet inspired by the very heart of God? This one who's mind is saturated with God, and his whole being staggered by this vision of God. The world making, salvation shaping word of God is heard and pondered and expressed. He is God intoxicated, God-possessed, God-articulate. These are not the words of someone who has become mentally ill or taken drugs. He is sane ... he is mature in faith.

No, this is no ivory tower professor pontificating, or some pampered poet sitting on the beach day dreaming. Even on the margins, he is in the thick of it. Sent to prison, exiled on an island for preaching the way of Jesus; for living in a way which resisted the beastly common sense ways of the so called enlightened pagan empire.

Revelation is a powerful wake up call to churches that have lost their zeal. Let's be honest, the churches in the west are in decline. Not in Asia or in the so called Third World. But here the mainline churches, and if the evangelicals are awake they see it among them too. And its not just the numbers or the finances. Church in the west has become boring.

Well ... revelation is clear ... if we are bored it is no fault of creation or God's covenant. If we are bored somewhere along the way we have stopped listening to God. Somewhere along the way we reduce God, or even neglected God. Somewhere along the way our faith become full of weeds which choke out the excitement of being called by God to share in God's mission.

There is Good News for those who are bored. What Christ wants is for us to embrace God's reality and become abundant gardens of God's love in a weed weary world. To become actors in God's great Divine Drama. Friends if any of you are bored with life, amid the silence hear Christ call to share his Cosmic mission.. Let him lead you and he will take you on an adventure you can not even conceive of.

Do not be afraid, trust in God's future. Christ is the Alpha and the Omega; the beginning is good and the end is good. But do know that we are between those times, amid dangerous territory where the powers of the can destroy us. If we haven't sold out and become puppets; if we act and live differently there will be short term consequence that call for spiritual resistance and divinely supported endurance. But in the end your efforts will be vindicated. "Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of the prophecy, and blessed are those who hear and who keep what is written in it, for the time is near?" What time is near. The time of Christ's return and the end of this age, and the beginning of a new heaven and a new earth. This is the last act of the Divine Drama. We are not in the middle, at high noon, at the intermission but we are in the end times, when the final battles of the losing forces of destruction take their last vain attempts to thwart God.

And make no mistake, Revelation makes demands upon us in the pursuit of the blessing it offers us. It frightens and jars us out of our desire to remain asleep. If we will be jarred! Desmond Tutu said, "You can not awake someone pretending to be asleep."

Be warned, reading this book will lead to a more informed and obedient life, and therefore to live in a way that may be controversial, costly to ourselves, and to our public reputations. Because to live such a life is to refuse to conform to the expectations of the world unless the demands are compatible with Christ's teaching. We can not underestimate the extent of the resistance required of us nor should we underestimate the gravity of grace that if given to us that we should share in the divine mission of Christ in the world.