Not the way of the beast

This coming Sunday I will be leading worship in our very multicultural church here in Chicago. And it happens that we are making our way through the book of Revelation, and chapter 13 is our surreal text this coming week.

I confess that it has been quite a while since I’ve read through the whole book of Revelation. But chapter 13’s account of the dragon and the beasts made sense to me immediately as I reread it today.

When you are thinking and praying every day about a genocide involving bombing, sniping, and starvation of children, women, and men with your country’s tax dollars,

and the many people around the world who care have not been able to stop it,

putrid beasts with ten horns, seven heads, and seemingly boundless power seem appropriate as representations of such massive evil.

One of the beast’s heads has been killed but the wound has healed over? I picture it flopping on its neck as the beast lumbers along, one of its dead eyes open and staring.

I wonder whether some of the heads have one horn and others two. Horns in scripture are symbolic of power and strength. The power here is utterly malevolent, and it has multiple manifestations.

We already know from earlier chapters that evil is conquered only by the Lamb who was slain—that is, by Jesus, through whom God entered our suffering and went all the way into death and hell for the world’s salvation. In chapter 13 the writer warns us that the evil of our day (the time of the original audience, but also our own) will sometimes be so vile and entrenched as to seem invincible. But Jesus’ victory-through-suffering still stands, and we must stay centered in that Love.

Because our congregation includes a whole range of literacy and education levels as well as multiple languages, after Revelation 13:1-8, 10b is read, a couple of the pastors and I are going to read out the following explanation in English, Nepali, and Kinyarwanda:

In every culture there are stories of dragons and other beasts: powerful forces that are hard to understand and to oppose.

Revelation 13 uses the language of beasts to picture the powers of this world.

This beast has seven heads and ten horns. It is scary!

The writer of Revelation is showing us the powerful evil in the world system.

In our time, the beast is money, racism, and domination.

The way of the beast is not the way of Jesus.

We are surrounded by the beast and its power, but we choose the way of Jesus.

We choose peace and justice, endurance and faithfulness.

When we pray for Gaza, Congo, Sudan, and other places where people are suffering, we are praying against the beast.

It is a long, hard battle, but Jesus triumphs through his life, death, and resurrection.

Let’s pray.

Author: ruthgoringbooks

Poet, writer-illustrator of books for children and adults, artist, editor, lover of Colombia. Poeta, escritora e ilustradora de libros para niñxs y adultxs, artista, editora, amante de Colombia. View all posts by ruthgoringbooks