The Pledge--April 30, 2025

The Pledge--April 30, 2025

"John, to the seven churches that are in Asia: Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before the throned, and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth." (Revelation 1:3-5)

Over twenty centuries, church folk have come up with some great titles for Jesus, and boy, do we know how to sing 'em.  We call Jesus "King of Kings and Lord of Lords," or "Good Shepherd" or "Son of God," all of which we have just pulled right out of the Bible.  We get creative, too, and sometimes a little poetically alliterative, with titles like "Royal Redeemer" or "Suffering Servant," and again, they are all on solid biblical ground, too.  But among the lesser-known, less-frequently-used titles for Jesus are these two that come to us from the opening greeting of the book we call Revelation, in a passage that many of us heard in worship this past Sunday.  And I'll guess that because we aren't as used to hearing them, we may not quite know what to make of them or what they mean.  So let's take a closer look and a deeper dive, shall we?

As the writer John of Patmos (we don't know if he's the same or a different John from the original disciple of Jesus, since it's a common name) opens with a greeting in the name of God, he refers to Jesus as both "the faithful witness" and "the firstborn of the dead."  And it's those titles that might be unusual to us.  But both of them are important in the ways that they point us ahead to God's new creation and our wider hope for the restoration of all things. And maybe, if we can hear those titles for Jesus alongside the familiar ones we know from Handel's Messiah, we'll be reminded of just how wide and big a hope we have been given in Christ.  

When John calls Jesus "the faithful witness," he's echoing Jesus' own words to Pontius Pilate, "For this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice" (John 18:37).  Jesus is a witness--and in the Greek of John's Gospel, it's clear that the word "witness" is related to the word "testify"--of how the universe really looks within the Reign of God.  He doesn't just talk about that reality, though; he enacts it, embodies it, and makes it real.  And Jesus is faithful in the sense that he lives out the Reign of God even when it is difficult, even when others bailed out on him, even when the crowds turn against him and the religious and political powers conspire to make him disappear.  Jesus remains faithful to the way set out in front of him--the way of God--even to the point of death.  And in a world where we are used to people letting us down, disappointing us, flaking out when things get difficult, or backtracking when it turns out that all their big talk was empty hot air, Jesus stands out as a faithful witness.  He doesn't give up on the vision of God's Reign when others turn against him, or even when we bail out on him.  His whole life is a promise--a pledge--that God's Reign will come in its fullness, even though it comes unexpectedly by way of a cross and a borrowed grave. That's at least part of what it means to call Jesus "the faithful witness."

The other title John of Patmos uses points even more clearly to new creation.  When he calls Jesus "the firstborn of the dead," it is again a reminder that Jesus' resurrection is not the end of something, but the beginning.  The resurrection of Jesus is a guarantee--again, a pledge, you might say--of more to come.  To call Jesus "firstborn of the dead" is not only a title of prominence and honor (like so many ancient cultures put on the firstborn child of a family), but to point to the "birth" of others.  And ultimately, that's the promise of the resurrection: because Jesus has risen, we shall rise.  Because he lives, we will live.  We are siblings--brothers and sisters of the new creation--and our place in that restored universe is assured because he is risen.  Like the ancient Israelite practice of offering up the first fruits of their harvest as a sign that there was more to come, Jesus is the "firstfruit" of the resurrection, embodying the promise of God that we, too, will be raised to new life.

All of this is to say, once again, that Jesus' resurrection has done something to change the universe.  God's new creation has begun through Jesus' resurrection from the dead, and it points ahead to the assurance that God's victory is accomplished, and that death does not get the last word.  The disciples in John of Patmos' day needed to hear that, because the headlines of the day certainly gave the impression that the rotten empire and the crooked authorities would rule forever (in fact, that was one more of their imperial slogans: "Eternal Rome," which announced an endless golden age run by Caesar).  And over against all the empire's propaganda, Jesus "the faithful witness" and "the firstborn of the dead" was a living promise that God's Reign would still outlast it all and make all things new.

I suspect we need the same assurance today, too.  So when you need it, hold onto these words from Revelation. The one we confess as Lord and Savior is also the faithful witness of God's in-breaking Reing and the firstborn of the resurrection promised to us all.

Lord Jesus, give us the courage and assurance that come from knowing you are risen and that you bring God's Reign among us.