Text: Rev 1:1-20
In the name of + Jesus. Amen.
St. Lucia was executed by the sword for her Christian faith in the year 304 under Emperor Diocletian. She had a reputation of charity and purity. Since her name means “light,” she is often portrayed artistically as wearing a wreath of candles on her head. Her witness calls to mind the testimony of St. John the Evangelist in his Gospel that Jesus is the light that “shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5).
John also wrote three letters that are in the New Testament, as well as penning the final book, the Apocalypse, or the Revelation, toward the end of his life on this side of glory. John’s Revelation is the final prophetic vision given to the church, and has yet to be completely fulfilled before the return of our Lord, who is “the Alpha and the Omega… who is and who was and who is to come.” The text includes this blessing: “Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear, and who keep what is written in it, for the time is near.”
John writes during a time of “tribulation,” a time similar to the persecution in the later days of Lucia. John is suffering exile on the Greek island of Patmos. And it is there that our Lord appears to him and tells him to “write what you see in a book.” He is instructed to send this book to seven churches in the Roman province of Asia Minor (which is today within the Muslim nation of Turkey). Although those seven churches no longer exist, John’s Revelation is read by Christians all over the world as they await the return of our Lord, who is “coming with the clouds.”
The vision shown to John is a series of strange things, like a dream, symbols of things to come in the history of the world and of the church. St. John obediently writes down the strange vision. The voice he hears on the “Lord’s day” (Sunday) is none other than that of his believed Lord, surrounded by “seven golden lampstands” and wearing a “long robe” and a “golden sash.” This indeed sounds suspiciously like the Sunday Divine Service of the church. And in this act of Sunday worship “in the Spirit,” John sees the Lord’s face “like the sun shining in full strength” – as the Lord had previously appeared to him, along with Peter and James, on the Mount of Transfiguration.
John’s book of Revelation – which is really Jesus’ Revelation – rallies the church to hope – even in times of persecution. And even in the parts of it that we are not yet able to understand, it provides hope, strength, and comfort to the Holy Christian Church, especially in times of persecution. St. Lucia was given the gift of steadfastness and strength even as she faced death for the sake of her confession of Jesus, and she was certainly one of those who was blessed to hear “the words of this prophecy” and who kept “what is written in it” – especially when her time was near.
And let the church continue to worship her Lord with His very Word: “to Him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by His blood and made us a kingdom, priests to His God and Father, to Him be glory and dominion forever and ever.”
Amen.
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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