Resistance Songs of Revelation
When the human heart deeply yearns for something, it often turns to song. It seems every generation’s artists – from Creedence Clearwater Revival to Kendrick Lamar – using every musical flavor imaginable – from folk to traditional African American Spirituals – have created songs to express resistance and offer a word of hope. I was recently turned on to some “resistance songs” from a most unexpected source: the Book of Revelation.
Woven into Revelation’s complex tapestry of dragons, beasts and the New Heaven and Earth are maybe two dozen “songs.” Many of these songs are easy to spot. They are beautiful, poetic musings heard by John of Patmos like the heavenly host in Revelation 5:12 “singing with full voice, ‘Worthy is the Lamb that was slaughtered to receive power and honor and glory!’”
Other songs, though, are more subtle, even subversive. Before much of John’s visions really take off, he is instructed to deliver messages to seven churches in Asia Minor. The angel’s message to the church at Philadelphia begins with this gorgeous lyrical flourish aimed squarely at their oppressors: “These are the words of the holy one, the true one, who has the key of David, who opens and no one will shut, who shuts and no one opens” (Revelation 3:7).
This would have been a song of great comfort and profound resistance to our first century AD spiritual ancestors, who were living under the threat of persecution from increasingly hostile Roman authorities. As members of the same Body of Christ as those who heard these words two millennia ago, we are called to sing songs like these to help us also “hold fast to the faith” (Revelation 14:12).
Particularly in this Advent season, we remember that the One who holds the keys of ultimate authority doesn’t reside in an earthly palace or wield violence to demonstrate power. Instead, He who holds the keys is Emmanuel, the Lamb who demonstrates power through a profound act of powerlessness on the Cross. It is this Lamb who opens the doors to His Kingdom that no one can close and closes the doors to Sin and Death that nothing can reopen.
At its fullest, Advent invites us to be awake to the realities of our faith – “the crucial balance of the now[1]” – what Christ has done and is doing – “and the not-yet” – what Christ will do finally to restore all things unto Himself. So, while we wait, it helps us to sing. We sing a song of thanksgiving for the gift of Jesus, who came to visit us in great humility. We sing a song of hope-filled resistance to remember that, by God’s grace, we can cast away the works of darkness, put on the armor of light and trust in the One who holds the keys.
[1] Rutledge, Fleming. Advent: The Once & Future Coming of Jesus Christ. 2018. p. 7
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