Jubilee and Revelation
A Homily for the Sixth Sunday of Easter
Yesterday, I had a great afternoon. Our parish scout troop was working on their merit badge for the Jubilee Year of Hope. They asked me to speak about the Jubilee, and spending time with our young people was wonderful. Let me share a bit of the lesson from the scouts.
Pope Francis proclaimed the Jubilee year near the end of his life by opening the Jubilee door of St. Peter’s. Jubilees date back to the Mosaic Law. Every seventh year was to be a year of forgiveness. The seventh set of seven years was to be celebrated on the 50th year as a Jubilee year.
Jubilees are celebrations. But they also work. In the Jubilee Year, we are supposed to look around. We know that God’s Kingdom in Heaven already is. But when we look around, we see that the kingdom on Earth is not yet like the Kingdom in Heaven. And we are supposed to do something about it.
Captives are to be set free. Debts are forgiven. Old arguments are set aside. Land that has been confiscated is returned to its owners. Sins are forgiven. We are to forgive sins so that people might know hope.
This is a Jubilee Year of Hope. Hope can mean several things. For me, hope is the well-founded faith that God will enter into my life now and in the future. Simply put, hope is the belief that “God’s Got This.”
We celebrate Jubilees with a pilgrimage. Pilgrimages often involve repentance, penance, and walking. The walking part is important. It gets us out of our normal routine. Pilgrimages are often difficult and far from home. But they can also be simple and close to home. I challenged the scouts to walk up to our Catholic Cemetery and remember our fallen soldiers, on this our Memorial Day weekend. That is a pilgrimage.
We step away from our sufferings and sorrows and look for signs of the Kingdom present here among us. The Kingdom is already present if we walk out and seek it. That is the Hope. We need to find it and share it.
We need to see that life has more than sorrow. We need to experience hope through the forgiveness of sins, then go out and see the Kingdom revealed. We need to share that vision of hope.
The Jubilee is a celebration of unveiling. That is the meaning of the word Revelation and helps to explain our reading from Revelation today. The Kingdom is already present, and the Lamb of God presides at the heavenly Mass. We simply don’t fully recognize it yet. However, we can see a glimpse of it in our Earthly Mass. The solution to our sorrows and trials is already present and with us.
Let me explain a bit. We don’t preach on Revelations because it is complicated. The symbology is like an ecstatic code. It is intended to capture the power of the forces at work in the world. The symbolism is not meant to be pictured realistically. For example, one would find it difficult and repulsive to visualize a lamb with seven horns and seven eyes. Seven horns and seven eyes on a Lamb, and that is how Christ is portrayed in Revelation, Chapter 5. Seven, though, is the perfect number for completeness. John used the image of a lamb to suggest Christ’s universal (seven) power (horns) and knowledge (seven eyes).
The Book of Revelation was probably completed in the last decade of the first century, 60 years after Jesus’ Crucifixion and Resurrection. Domitian is the emperor of Rome, which is at the peak of its power. The Romans destroyed the Jewish Temple and Jerusalem. As Jesus predicted, not a stone was left on top of another. Christian persecution is at its greatest level under Emperor Domitian.
This is the backdrop to the Book of Revelation. The fearful signs in the Book are intended as allegories for the terrifying time that the church is enduring under the Romans. Revelation alternates between descriptions of heaven and earth. The plagues and dragons are symbols of the spiritual warfare the church was enduring in the world. This contrasts with the beautiful heavenly liturgies of the Saints and God’s holy ones. Both are happening side-by-side. John’s vision is amazing. It describes an almost unimaginable heaven that is happening before his eyes.
Our reading today from Revelation leaves out a section describing the New Jerusalem. The psalms frequently praise the walls of the earthly city of Jerusalem. But the Heavenly Jerusalem is beyond compare.
This week, take some time to read the whole passage from Revelation. The immense City of God, the Heavenly Jerusalem, is fifteen hundred miles in length, width, and height. Its beauty is beyond words.
The Book of Revelation tells us that our earthly sorrows are real. It does not deny that we must each find our way through the forest. But we do not do it alone. The Glory of God is already present, and if we seek Christ in the Spirit, we can see it and taste it in the Eucharist.
This is at the center of the Gospel reading. Jesus tells us, “Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him.” The Heavenly Christ, through the Spirit, is already indwelling within us if we keep His Word.
Friends, this week, I invite you to celebrate a Jubilee. Let’s call it a Spiritual lab assignment. Go out for a walk to someplace meaningful. After the rain, the flowers will be out, and it will be beautiful. Our work is to seek and learn how Christ accomplished our present salvation. For he has already solved it.
In the Weeds,
Normally, I don’t print my drafts, but I originally wrote a different introduction to this homily. It wasn’t as accessible as the final form. But I added it on, just in case it is helpful to someone. Below is the original introduction.
Years ago, when I was a young college professor, I was impressed by a Hungarian food chemist, Y. Pomeranz. He worked at a nearby university. Pomeranz was legendary for how he did his research.
Pomeranz was so meticulous that he would conceive the entire experiment, write up the research paper with tables and graphs before ever walking into the lab. The tables and graphs would be empty of data. Pomeranz would give the paper to the technician to conduct the experiment. They would fill in the graphs and tables with the lab results. Then, with actual data, he would write the last paragraphs, the conclusion. Pomeranz approached a problem with the attitude of “The answer exists., I just don’t know it yet.”
This is the same strategy often used by the renowned Hungarian mathematician George Polya. George Polya would solve a complex math problem by assuming it was already solved. He would imagine what the end would look like and work backwards with confidence. The solution was already known to God and Polya’s future self. It was just that he had yet to learn how they did it.
I don’t really want to turn you all into scientists, although that would be pretty cool. But these stories helped me understand something about the Kingdom of God and the purpose of the Book of Revelation. The Kingdom is already present, and the Lamb of God presides at the heavenly Mass. We just don’t fully recognize it yet. But we can see a bit of it with our Earthly mass. The solution to our sorrows and trials is already present and with us.