“Seeking God’s will for our times”
By Rev. Michael Stonhouse
Meditation – Friday, November 17, 2023
Revelation 19:11-16 (Forward, p. 19) CEV p. 1311
What incredible imagery: a rider on a white horse, whose eyes were like flames of fire, who was wearing a robe covered or sprinkled with blood, from whose mouth came a sharp sword used to attack his enemies and whose head was adorned with a multitude of crowns. All that is astounding enough, vivid enough, but what has often caught the attention of people is what follows next. The next verse (verse 15b) in the Contemporary English Version reads as follows: “He will rule them [the nations] will an iron rod and will show the fierce anger of God All-Powerful by trampling the grapes in the pit where wine is made.”
It is this last image that has been picked up on elsewhere. Julia Ward Howe in her exalted American Civil War hymn, ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’, has these words, ‘he is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored’, which precisely echo what Revelation is saying here. In fact, the full text of this verse reflects even more fully what today’s passage says:
“Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord; He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored; He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword. His truth is marching on.”
And it clearly identifies the rider on the white horse as being none other than the Lord, than Jesus Christ.
Now Julia Ward Howe was a devoted abolitionist, one dedicated to the abolition of slavery in the United States, and so she penned this hymn in the devout belief that this was the Lord’s crusade as well. So, then, this begs a question, namely what is the Lord’s crusade for this day, time and place? And, stemming from this, what should be our response or our involvement? These questions, in and of themselves, should certainly move us to prayer as we seek the Lord’s will and direction in this. And, while we are at this, we should be careful not to let our own agendas or backgrounds or current situations unduly influence this. It is far too easy to think that our present concerns and convictions are also God’s.
However, in all this, there is one underlying truth that we must not overlook or forget. It is, firstly, that Jesus is the Lord of the nations, not ourselves or any earthly ruler, in spite of what anyone might think. And secondly, that the Lord is coming to rule the nations and to execute judgment and justice. Certainly, that should give us pause, as we each often try to rule our own little ‘sovereign nations’ of our own little lives. We should remember that we are all, ultimately, accountable to God.
Forward notes: “From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron; he will tread the wine press of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty” (verse 15).
“A whip-smart seminarian friend grew up in a highly male-dominated fundamentalist church environment and came to hate all those ‘Jesus with the sword’ images like the one in this Revelation passage. But over time, she realized that her perception of ‘Jesus who runs on flower power’ was due to her privilege. The oppressed need justice, she said, ‘a Jesus who is as fierce as he is tender,’ a Jesus who will redress the injustices done by the powerful, attend to the grievances of the marginalized, and make right what has gone wrong.
“The bland, laissez-faire Jesus of the modern imagination is for those of us with no injustices to be redressed—those who are as comfortable as I’ve been for so much of life and not living under the kind of oppression that would lead me to cry out to God for justice.”
Moving Forward: “How do you react to the images of Jesus with a sword?”