Read:  Revelation11:1-14

"But after the three and a half days, the breath of life from God entered them, and they stood on their feet, and those who saw them were terrified. Then they heard a loud voice from heaven saying to them, 'Come up here!' And they went up to heaven in a cloud while their enemies watched them" (Revelation 11:11-12)

Revelation is seriously a kooky book. And there is no "easy" way to read it. That being said, there are more than enough easy ways to misread it and those must be avoided at all costs. We live in a culture where the Left Behind series - as both literature and two different cinematic iterations - have become wildly popular. As fiction, these works are (in my humble, Masters of Lit, opinion) not much better than most pulp fiction. The series knows how to tell a story, but it doesn't do much to advance the field of literature. It uses tried and true methods of building suspense. As theology, these works are anathema; they're heresy. They present a vision of what is to come in history, rather than understanding that it is a cosmic account of what has already happened in history.

            That's a key point. Revelation should not be read as God's "to do" list before the end times. We should not scour our newspapers in search for "signs" that the end times are near. The greatest sign of this time has already occurred in the Resurrection. No other sign is as meaningful or significant as this sign. And it is, not surprisingly, the one sign that the church returns to every week. We return to it in our prayers of confession and assurance of pardon. We return to it in the Eucharist. We return to it in the very structure of Sunday worship. Christians don't need to read John's letter to the seven churches (that is, Revelation) for a sign; we already have it.

            But then what are we to do with this book? How are we to read it and, especially, read it devotionally? There is no easy answer to this, but we are bettered in our attempts when we seek in its pages a reassurance of what we have already learned at the Cross. And this is what makes this passage hit so close to home.

            In this passage, we read of two great witnesses to Jesus Christ. They are protected in their witness... until they are not. Yet even when their protection is taken away - and their death results - they are not abandoned. Look at the way John makes us feel like they've been abandoned (for example: "peoples and tribes and languages and nations will gaze at their dead bodies and refuse to let them be placed in a tomb; and the inhabitants of the earth will gloat over them and celebrate and exchange presents"). Yet that isn't the end. John is using his own tried and true method of heightening the tension. After three and a half days, they are raised from the dead. Having been raised, they ascend to heaven at God's Word. Sound familiar? They are participating in Jesus' resurrection and ascension. Death has not mastered them. Death cannot gloat and celebrate and exchange gifts. Death has been conquered and their resurrection is the real celebration.

            We are these witnesses. These were words written for an afflicted and persecuted community (or seven communities, really). They are meant to remind us that this earthly life has been consumed (and "consumed" is a key word, because the "end times" is also known as Jesus' "consummation") by the cosmic life. We can witness without fear because God has already covered our "worst case scenario" with Jesus' Resurrection.