Who can we finally trust? When the world seems against us, when those we have considered friends and protectors betray us, when life flows toward the drain and there seems no way out, when we are just hanging by our fingernails and we have no place to turn, who can we trust? Where rests our hope?

We ask that question this morning because it lies behind that vivid and explosive passage we read a few moments ago. This letter-and it is a letter-portrays a Divine revelation bestowed upon a Christian exiled because of his convictions to a prison-island off of what we now call Western Turkey. This letter to seven city churches bears a thrilling testimony of trust and hope, and in its radiant assurance it is incomparable amid the long history of faith’s testimony.

What do we encounter here? What does this brilliant letter convey? First of all, a powerful, truculent, demanding, tyrannical, militaristic, nation-state-empire ruled from Rome, with embassies stretching east all the way to Arabia. This empire builds its cities as fortresses against enemies pressing against its borders; it ensconces armies, civil servants, houses of worship in its conquered satellites. It spreads an intellectual and religious culture over the vast reaches of its domain. This pervasive culture includes civic holidays and religious rituals proclaiming its preeminence and total control over the lives of its citizens. The sign and symbol of its cultural hegemony can be seen in the Emperor himself. In the case of our letter, around 96 AD, the Emperor Domitian, claims not only civic sovereignty, he claims religious sovereignty in the name of the empire: Caesar is Lord; Caesar is omnipotent; Caesar is God; Caesar rules the cosmos; Caesar and all he represents claims your first loyalty, your deepest admiration, your highest obedience. Caesar demands your worship.

So we encounter, first of all, a pervasive religious, social and political culture, where for all of its contributions to what we now call Western Civilization, it was a culture ruled from on high by a dictator claiming to be divine. But secondly, we meet the men and women of seven churches who find themselves inclined to say “nuts!” to these claims of imperial supremacy. Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, Laodicea- vigorous Asian commercial and cultural centers, tentacles, if you will of the empire, yet housing Christian churches loathe to grant ultimate value to what they consider the blasphemous claims of the emperor, his minions and the culture embracing the whims, the survival and the goals of empire. In this fabulous letter we encounter churches resistant, disobedient, perceived by the conventional wisdom and the powers that be as godless, themselves blasphemous and ultimately subversive of the public order.

As a consequence of this perceived Christian church subversion, the empire strikes back. It seeks to crush the churches. It seduces members into compromise. “Come on,” entices the emperor, “celebrate ‘victory over Cleopatra day’, pay your taxes, put the national anthem in your hymnbooks, obey the laws, live as a solid citizen, go to church and Sunday school. So long as your first loyalty is to your nation, your family, your job, then your religion, your church, in that order, so long as your loyalties to your faith and church don’t conflict with your loyalties to the state and its culture you’re on safe ground. But, continue to express loyalty to Christ and what Christ stands for in contrast to what the Emperor represents, it’s jail, the rack, the arena, the lions. You will find yourselves assaulted, imprisoned, executed, eliminated.”

So: an authoritarian empire, a resistant church. Next we meet the author of this letter, John. We call him St. John the Divine. John attributes this missal to an ecstatic revelation. It occurs in church, he writes. But because of his own thorough resistance to the prevailing winds of imperial design and his salient defense of Jesus Christ and the world Christ offers us, John finds himself banished, incarcerated on a prison island named Patmos, in the Aegean Sea., writing as if from Rome’s Alcatraz, fortunately not executed, but deported by the powers-that-be in order to silence his passionate and persuasive voice, amid the churches, a voice in behalf of a world ruled not by the armor and ordinances of Caesar, but by the logistics and mandates, the grace and peace of Jesus Christ.

So an all-embracing empire, a resistant and subversive church, a banished, defiant poet and lastly a vision, a revelation transmitted in vivid, colorful, aesthetic-symbolic, symbolic-language, a language bursting with images and references drawn from the religious experience and metaphors of those seven churches, all them soaked in the experience and testimony of the Old Testament. The members of those seven churches, probably Jesus-movement Jews, Jews who know what it is like to be under the heel of tyrants who wish to see them wiped off the face of the earth. They know exile, they know genocide, and their prophets Isaiah, Ezekiel and Daniel-three prophets who reside in our sanctuary windows-Isaiah, Ezekiel and Daniel articulated visions of hope, restoration and a new future, six centuries previously, when the violent Babylonian dictator Nebuchadnezzar was hell-bent on smashing and eradicating anything Jewish that stood in his way. References to those prophets of hope against hope saturate this letter.

But no less important, John draws these dazzling Old Testament images, references and symbols so they make sense only to those immersed in them day by day. The gentile enemies cannot understand this letter. The Roman secret police, Caesar’s shills, undercover agents, paid informers and intelligence operatives find John’s images totally incomprehensible. But those living under the boot of the tyrant, those about to be sent to the equivalent of the ruling power’s gas chambers, the Jesus-movement Jews, they comprehend and celebrate these images as promising ultimate hope, salvation, release, restoration, victory. These images, so alien to us, so foreign to our own 21st century understanding, John’s shining images to those about to undergo severe trial, persecution and death yet drenched in the Old Testament, these images bear promise: an indomitable, joyous and radiant hope. They do not deny the religious crisis at hand. They do not promise that horrors devastating the churches will not occur. They do not avoid the reality of the conflict between love and hate, violence and peace, coercion and persuasion, self-interest and self-sacrifice, pacifism and militarism, corporate corruption and corporate servanthood in the middle of our human life and history. They are not pie-in-the-sky images; they do not promise a life apart from the difficulties and probes of our common existence. They in no way offer an escape from the issues our forebears faced in the first century or we face in the twenty-first. They offer us an anchor to windward, a rock to stand on, a brace to hang on to, a vision grasping us. And like all religious language-all religious language-John’s images point beyond themselves to a reality words fail to capture, to truth breaking dogmatic propositions, to depths that plunge us far beyond our capacity to measure, to meanings we dare not fence off with calipers, to mysteries splintering all our puny, logical parameters.

So: a cruel, proud and self-proclaimed sacred empire. At least seven, but probably more, Christian churches were striving toward faithfulness, asserting loyalty not to Caesar, but to Jesus Christ; Churches were then threatened and assaulted by outraged religious and civic powers eager to wipe those churches out. We meet a banished member of those churches, a prophet on a prison island in the Aegean writing to his brothers and sisters at the edge of persecution, in rhetoric saturated with biblical metaphors bewildering the Imperial Gestapo, yet serving as a trumpet call bathed in Old Testament images of hope, promising the faithfulness and the ultimate sovereignty of the God of the risen Christ over history. John of Patmos envisions a bastion of security amid a world swarming with evil intentions and demonic power; he designs an expression of trust in the gracious and loving providence of a God in charge of our lives, our past, present and future while everything we see around us denies it: history’s “No” confronted by Hope’s “Yes!” Hope’s “Yes!”

And who comes to us as the heart of this revelation? Who reflects among us this sure and certain hope? Make no mistake about it, though the original setting of this trenchant letter resides in the first century Roman Empire, though the setting may be instrumental in determining the objectives of John’s correspondence to his churches, this letter is not meant in the first place to describe the condition of the churches in those first century colonial outposts. This letter is not primarily a history of Christians facing persecution and oppression under cruel and crazy emperors. No way! This letter proclaims Christ. It celebrates Jesus Christ. That marvelous metaphor, “I am the Alpha and the Omega . . . the first and the last,” reiterated twice in these opening stanzas, affirms the core of John’s faith and hope; it affirms his confidence, amid all the tribulation his churches face, that the promises of Christ for a future grounded in grace and peace still undergird their very existence. Jesus Christ is the first word, the last word; everything else comes in between. All of us live between that Alpha and Omega, our lives secured by the first and the last.

I like the way Eugene Peterson approaches Christ as the last word, the Omega. “Everything is suddenly in proportion,” he writes. “Christ the last word. This last word controls all the preceding words, much as the existence of a mountain peak determines the preparations and the pace and path of climbers headed for it, even when they do not see it. This is the goal toward which everything is aimed. The ten thousand details now find their place in the whole. Oddities and puzzles and curiosities, dull places and favorite places, all arrange themselves quite effortlessly now around the Christ.”

A perfect analogy? Those of you hiking in the wilderness, those of you tackling a mountain, especially here in the Northeast, many of their summits hidden by trees and shrubs along the way, and in the case of Mount Washington as you approach from the South along the so-called Crawford path, the summit hidden by nearer obstacles, false tops protruding, the path marked with cairns to secure your confidence on the way, everything in your being resting confident in the summit yet to come, your energy and imagination focusing there even as the fog, the boulders, the strain of the hike tend to resist your progress. The summit and its promise put all into proper perspective. Like Christ, the last word.

You know, one of the things I love about this sanctuary are the many symbols extracted from John’s fantastic letter. Among other remarkable symbols from Revelation you will find an Alpha and an Omega window. But, funny thing, when this sanctuary was renovated in 1984, the “Alpha” window was there in that corner of the balcony. . .and the “Omega” window over there in that corner of the balcony. We took the windows out for repair, tightening the lead around the glass, securing the windows in the building’s shell. But the tradesmen who replaced them-you guessed it-put the “Omega” window where the Alpha window had been, and the Alpha window where the Omega window had been. So when you face them now they read, “Omega and Alpha.”

Ah, but who knows: a blessing in disguise?! A witness Providence, the Alpha and Omega, took a hand in? Because now the windows face the world the right way. Looking from outside they read, “Alpha and Omega.” Oh, to be sure, no one is up on the roof checking them out, but they face outward in the right order offering promise to a city going through astounding change, facing a world where six-year-olds are shot by six-year-olds, where men and women soaked in booze and drugs, call the alley behind our church, “home,” where the income gap between this high rent district and other districts continues to broaden. It is that world to whom Jesus Christ and his world must be the first and the last word!

Or take that vivid figure, that “Son of Man” John places among the lampstands. Among the attributes of that figure are feet like burnished bronze. This image reminds readers, first of all, of the political tyrant, Nebuchadnezzar, who appeared in one of the prophet Daniel’s dreams as a statue with a golden head, his chest and arms of silver, thighs of bronze, legs of iron-and feet of iron-and of clay; a statue brought down by falling rock striking those feet of clay, shattering them, toppling the gold, the silver, the iron, spreading that imperial statue like chaff across threshing floors, blown into oblivion by the wind. Gone! Pretentious empire collapsed. History!

And thus with all political pride, all those who pretend to a vision, or skill or power competent to save us, like those fellows now running for President of the United States-Al Gore, for instance-in his victory speech last Tuesday evening cataloging the successes of his administration, proclaiming that “More Americans are safer, more Americans have hope. America is strong prosperous, at peace with the world.”

Oh Al: that Bhuddist Temple, the lies about fund-raising, the self deception about the nature of this administration. Al: a head of gold, arms of silver, thighs of iron, feet of clay. And George W. Bush will not let us forget it. Neither will John of Patmos!

And yes, George W. Bush? That Compassionate Conservative? The Reformer with results? The Education governor? He told us last Tuesday night, “I will stand on principle, and bring honor to the electoral process and to the office I seek.”

O George W.! The gross deceptions in advertisements regarding the character and record of your opponent, the tons of money proffered and the claims of those who will claim you and your anticipated administration! You are either bought, or they are shaken down. A head of gold, arms of silver, thighs of iron, feet of clay. And Albert Gore will not let us forget it. Neither will John of Patmos!

You see, what John paints for us in this sizzling revelation is a picture of the kingdoms, the empires, the nations of the earth, their leaders, parties and claims regardless of the number of F-16s, nuclear submarines, multi-trillion dollar economies, astounding technologies. John presents a picture of nations, of empires, resting on flawed, crumbling foundations, over the long term vulnerable to break-up, dropping like chaff to a threshing room floor, strewn by the wind into the wild blue void. . .

And the one who finally deserves our loyalty, the one we can count on? How shall this one be described? The One whose feet, as John describes, are not of clay, but rather like burnished bronze, refined as in a fire; the One whose kingdom, whose domain, whose realm we pledge our allegiance to, neither Republican nor Democrat, but one where we pledge to peace born of justice, to fairness, to the recognition of everyone’s full humanity, the right to health, homes, education, useful, creative work. We need remind our front runners of this mandate. John of Patmos does.

And friends, most importantly, John knows our hope lies with the One who loves and frees us by his blood, the one “pierced”, who comes to us as brother, friend, and whose sovereignty is expressed in servanthood. The magnificent image of the Son of Man John offers us comes as paradox, for John draws him also as one who hangs pierced and bleeding on a cross. That this figure should be the center of history, the saving presence, the one who becomes no less vulnerable than we; that this figure, the one who dines with a prostitute, who drops off for lunch with a social reject, who talks with children while anyone with any political savvy knows Caesar’s hated legions roam the city streets, that this one who searches out those who miss the social register by a mile and skips over those dripping with credentials and pedigrees, that this one should shoulder both the tragedy and triumph of creation rests at the core of John’s victory letter. He confesses the one whose hands hold all of history is the one who sinks most deeply into history, becomes vulnerable to it, and illustrates sovereignty through servanthood, rulership through selfless witness, and dies-dies-abandoned in a bloody mess where love, justice, fairness, goodness, appear nowhere to be found, yet-yet-trusts through the abuse and brutality of the Cross in the God who can take even that most miserable of instruments and transform them into an instrument-who would guess it-an instrument of forgiving, transforming love. Talk about sovereignty over circumstances! Talk about rulership of history! Talk about hope!

Now there, my friends, there at the Cross, in season and out, against everything threatening our lives, John offers us One, the ruler of the Cosmos, in whom we can finally, lastingly-thank God-ultimately trust!