Read the Signs of the Times —Revelation 11:19; 12:1-6, 10-12
REVELATION 11:19, 12:1-6, 10-12
11:19 Then God’s temple in heaven was opened, and the ark of the covenant was seen within the temple; and there were flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder, an earthquake, and heavy hail.
12:1 A great portent appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. 2 She was pregnant and was crying out in birthpangs, in the agony of giving birth. 3 Then another portent appeared in heaven: a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and seven diadems on his heads. 4 His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth. Then the dragon stood before the woman who was about to bear a child, so that he might devour her child as soon as it was born. 5 And she gave birth to a son, a male child, who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron. But her child was snatched away and taken to God and to God’s throne; 6 and the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, so that there she can be nourished for one thousand two hundred and sixty days.
12:10 Then I heard a loud voice in heaven, proclaiming:
“Now have come the salvation and the power
and the kingdom of our God
and the authority of God’s Messiah,
for the accuser of our comrades has been thrown down,
who accuses them day and night before our God.
11 But they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb
and by the word of their testimony,
for they did not cling to life even in the face of death.
12 Rejoice then, you heavens
and those who dwell in them!
But woe/alas to the earth and the sea,
for the devil has come down to you
with great wrath,
because he knows that his time is short!”
The extract from the New Testament Book of Revelation is the first reading for the feast of the Assumption celebrated on 15 August. The whole Book of Revelation is in an apocalyptic genre, which doesn’t always sit comfortably with our understanding of Scripture. But much of our popular fiction and film today has an eschatological aesthetic — The Hunger Games, 28 Days Later, Snowpiercer, to name just a few. The end of the world is very much of the zeitgeist, but when it comes to reading Scripture, we tend to shy away from it, particularly as Catholics, thinking of it as futuristic, Earth-denying. With its splashes of fantastic imagery it seems removed from our lives and our world. We might wonder, then, how it could possibly be read from an ecological perspective.
Catherine Keller suggests another way of understanding Revelation. She says that apocalyptic or eschatological literature “does not boldly stride toward new worlds but rather laments the destructiveness of this world.” It is ethical literature concerned with the here-and-now, both in terms of time and of space. So, in ecological terms, it is not speaking of an imagined time in the future but of the present; not in some imagined space but on this Earth — the place where all other-than-human and human interrelationships are enacted. And while the feast of the Assumption might seem to turn our attention from Earth toward the heavens — away from the present to the future — reading the verses of Revelation on this feast day with an ecological lens will return our gaze to Earth.
Earth’s Language
In Rev 11:19 Earth demands the ecological reader’s attention with lightning, thunder, earthquakes and hail. Today, Earth’s demands capture our attention just as they did the seer of the first century. Earth’s “language” calls us to be attentive so we do not miss what Earth is directing us to, the call into a new future such as that which unfolds in Rev 12.
The Vision
In Rev 12 the seer sees and describes for listeners/readers a cosmic sign: a woman clothed with the sun with the moon under her feet and a crown of 12 stars on her head. As she is described, this woman is woven into and one with the cosmos. She is in right relationship with it and so is poised to give birth — to enter into the birthpangs necessary for ongoing and new life in the cosmos. This seems to contradict Keller’s description that apocalyptic literature “does not boldly stride toward new worlds”. However, it is only momentary.
The Challenge
Another force enters the vision — the dragon creating chaos in the universe and seeking to destroy the cosmic child.
This description of warfare in the cosmos spoke to first century readers/listeners of their struggle with the powers of the Roman empire which raped and plundered the people, their lands and resources.
When we read this section today we are invited to consider the powers we struggle with in our own world — the rampant mining that ravages our landscapes, for instance, and other processes that denude and devastate our lands. It questions the human presence and activity in space/in the cosmos that scatters debris across the heavens and litters ocean beds, like the dragon ravaging the heavens and the earth.
And the dragon waits (Rev 12:4) — as do the forces that destroy Earth now. They watch and wait for the birth of the new — of the child of the cosmos, of Earth-enhancing processes and engagements. The dragon and its forces of destruction cannot allow any challenge to their death-dealing. All challengers must be destroyed.
Just as the seer imagined the chaos that the empire wrought on peoples and land in the first century, we experience cosmic, planetary and earthly forces pitted against one another causing chaos in our age. We see climate change melting Arctic and Antarctic ice, arable land breaking down into desert, toxic runoffs polluting the oceans and destroying the habitats of millions of marine creatures and wild weather events that devastate human communities.
Hope and Commitment to Act
However, the seer of Revelation does not speak of evil winning the day even in the face of the multi-headed dragon and all its powers. The heavens have been reclaimed (Rev 12:10-12). The seer turns attention to the earth and the sea and laments: “Alas to the earth and the sea, for the devil has come down to you with great wrath” (Rev 12: 12b). Earth and sea form our habitat as human community. We need to work for right relationships with the earth and sea in our time “for the time is short”, as the seer knows.
We know well that our ecological challenges at this point in human history are of apocalyptic proportions. The Book of Revelation with its eschatological visions and imagery calls for an urgency to act. As Catherine Keller says, it is “discourse about the collective encounter at the edge of space and time, where and when the life of creation has a chance at renewal — that is, it is about the present.”
Humans desire to predict and imagine our future — whether that be the prospect of heaven or the demise of our entire planet. We are great consumers of eschatological texts — books, films and television programmes which foresee our collective end abound. And yet today, when we know ourselves to be closer to the abyss than ever before — through climate change and myriad other human-made planet-destroying processes — we seem unwilling to engage with eschatology in Scripture. Perhaps this is because we look to Scripture for comfort — God will save us — in what sometimes seems like a world headed for disaster. In fact, Revelation has much to offer us, too. The seer knows, as we are coming to know, that “the time is short”.
Tui Motu Magazine. Issue 229 August 2018: 24-25