A Revelation
by Mark Andersen

I was driving to Schenectady for a meeting on a Tuesday morning. It was a fairly normal winter morning. It was cold, breezy, and it had snowed the night before.

My car, which sits out in the driveway, had required some ice-scraping and snow-brushing before I could leave the house. The defrost was on full blast on both the front and the rear as I backed out, and the wipers were still frozen in place.

The throughway was wet, of course, since it had snowed the night before, and before long my windshield began to collect dirty, sandy spray from the passing cars (and the cars I was passing). The defroster had since been able to free my wipers, so I pushed the level to spray the windshield with glass cleaning fluid that would clear up my vision.

The wipers leapt across my windshield, smearing the dirty, sandy spray across my windshield, but no wiper fluid came. I tried again, further streaking the dirt on the glass, but still no wiper fluid.

The sprayers were still frozen. I couldn’t get the windshield clean. The wipers just made it worse. I had to get to Schenectady, though, so I just kept driving.

Eventually it got pretty bad. I tried every once in a while, when I thought I had enough water on the windshield to wipe it clean, but the wipers weren’t working properly either.

Eventually it got to the point where I could barely see. I’d passed seeing clearly several miles back, but now I could barely see at all. It was time to stop.

I pulled over at the next travel plaza, filled up with gas and washed my windshield. When I got back in the car to drive away, I could see the world clearly.

This month, we will be beginning a studying of the book of Revelation. Revelation will be focus of our study together in worship as well as after worship in our discussion time and on Monday evenings at 7:00 pm.

Revelation is one of those books of which much has been said. In popular culture, Revelation is associated with fire and brimstone, apocalyptic, end-of-the-world kind of imagery. In the church, many people have given their two cents worth about the strange and unusual symbols (giant locusts with scorpion tails being Apache helicopters, among many strange and unusual interpretations). Most of the things we have been said about Revelation are about as useful for understanding Revelation as that sandy, dirty spray was to my windshield. They cloud up what was meant to be clear.

What we need to do to better understand Revelation is to stop and wipe away all the stuff we think we know about what it says or means, and come to the text again, with clear vision. Revelation is about making things clear. It’s about seeing the world clearly and revealing mysteries that have been long from view.

What we find in Revelation is a view of the world as it exists underneath its material form. Jesus Christ, who gives this revelation to the church, provides a word of encouragement to a suffering church and a word of challenge to remain faithful to Jesus, who suffered and through his suffering, conquered even death.

May your windshield always be clean and your vision of the world always be clear and true.

To him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.