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A separate newsletter on the Ordinary #31 readings will be sent tomorrow.
When Steve Jobs rejoined Apple after a slumping season, he hired some creative types to carve out a new campaign that was eventually called Think Different. Its 1997 launch included a one-minute video clip, with narration by actor Richard Dreyfuss:
Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in square holes. The ones who see things differently. … You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things.
The Book of Revelation is, at base, about the experiences of some of our earliest ancestors in the life of faith, about their sufferings and their vindication. It does not purport to predict the future. It is also a book about first-century Rome, the great beast that, through its emperors and other minions, engineered the suffering and sometimes the deaths of those ancestors. The main character, however, is Jesus, most often identified as the Lamb, as he is described four times in this week’s reading. And the vindication of those faithful members of the multitude has been brought about by this Lamb.
We are familiar with the term “Lamb of God” as an identifier for Jesus from the Fourth Gospel. When John, who has been busy baptizing at the Jordan, sees Jesus arriving, he points him out as “Lamb of God” (1:29); later with his own disciples, John spots Jesus again and repeats “Look! The Lamb of God” (1:36), prompting a couple of his own students to follow Jesus.
But here’s an interesting thing. In the gospel, the word translated “Lamb” is one Greek word (amnos), but the word used in Revelation is a different one (arnion). And it’s not a simple matter of roughly alternating between two synonyms to describe the same entity; I count 28 instances of Lamb in the book of Revelation, and in Greek each one is arnion.
And arnion doesn’t just mean “lamb.” It’s something more like “lambkin” or “little lamb.” One interpreter even translates it as “Fluffy.”
Picture this, then: The Roman Empire, that beast, is throughout this whole book the archenemy, responsible for raping, exploiting, oppressing, slaughtering. Rome is Empire. Empire divides its citizens into camps, favors fawning haves over have-nots, tolerates no dissent, foments suspicion of outsiders, and more, all the while arguing that Empire is the best of all the rest. And Empire has the vast might of the Roman military to back the bullying.
Set against this monolithic machine is that multitude of our text and the Lambkin, aka Fluffy. Talk about ludicrous odds. And yet. Led by the Lamb, this community opposes, by its life and allegiance, everything Empire is. This is a community with a vision that rejects the us-versus-them mentality and practices of the beast. This is a community that embraces diversity and practices inclusion and love. This is a community that has followed and now gathers around that Lamb who was once himself slaughtered by Empire. And they prevail.
“We need in every community a group of angelic troublemakers,” said Quaker and civil rights activist Bayard Rustin. “Our power is in our ability to make things workable. The only weapon we have is our bodies and we need to tuck them in places so wheels don’t turn.”
