Art and Imagination: the apocalyptic vision

Rev 12.7-12  Michael Defeats the Dragon

 And war broke out in heaven; Michael and his angels fought against the dragon. The dragon and his angels fought back, but they were defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. The great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.

 Then I heard a loud voice in heaven, proclaiming,
‘Now have come the salvation and the power
   and the kingdom of our God
   and the authority of his Messiah,
for the accuser of our comrades has been thrown down,
   who accuses them day and night before our God.
But they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb
   and by the word of their testimony,
for they did not cling to life even in the face of death.
Rejoice then, you heavens
   and those who dwell in them!
But woe to the earth and the sea,
   for the devil has come down to you
with great wrath,
   because he knows that his time is short!’

We cannot begin to understand the Book of Revelation unless we are willing to engage our spiritual, moral and artistic imaginations. ‘It doesn’t tell’, writes Kathleen Norris, it shows, over and over again, its images, unfolding, pushing hard against the limits of language and metaphor’.

The idea of a war between good and evil has been a pervasive one in the Christian tradition. It has seen the language of war and battle in, for instance, our hymnody and in our Christian self-understanding: ‘fight the good fight’; ‘onward Christian soldiers’; ‘and when the strife is fierce, the warfare long, Steals on the ear the distant triumphant song’…. ‘For all the saints, who from their labours rest’. In ages past it was normal to see oneself as a Christian soldier fighting against evil to save souls from eternal damnation. The Salvation Army is a reminder of this tradition. The passage from Revelation, in which Michael the Archangel fights heroically to expel Satan from Heaven, feeds such a Christian tradition and challenges us in a more tame age of Christian evangelism to reconsider our image.

If in ages past the valiant soldier was a typical image for a Christian, what might it be for us today? Contemporary media often portrays the Christian as the incompetent, directionless, woolly Vicar – a figure of fun. And we may need to reflect quite hard on that to think about where we as Christians have lost our courage…. the mother after all of all virtues.

To think about it another way, which image of Christ are you drawn to:

Christ the Shepherd; Christ the lamb; Christ the King; Christ the Servant? I imagine that the more triumphant and regal images of Christ are less prominent in our Christian self-understanding. Why is that? Are we missing something? In our turning away from the language of war to describe the Christian life have we forgotten an element of Christianity that should be remembered? Have we misremembered that Christian life is not only about service, but also about moral courage and strength? To be a Christian is to be a person of strong conviction, of determination, of valour. It means setting ourselves against evil – of fighting sin – and we need a robust language to describe the weight of that task.

Milton and C. S. Lewis both made good use of the Christian personifications of evil; they took evil and sin seriously. Milton dramatises the Fall of Adam and Eve by making Satan a great anti-hero who seeks revenge on God for his expulsion from Heaven in Paradise Lost. Satan is cast as the enemy who targets newly created humanity and tempts us away from the good. He is a fully-fledged thought-out character, one that makes us see and engage with the idea of temptation and sin. C. S Lewis explores the idea of evil and sin in The Screwtape Letters. In the story a senior demon, Screwtape, is writing letters tutoring a junior one in the art of tempting man away from faith towards banality and ultimately evil, even though it be a particularly mundane sort. “Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one--the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts,...Your affectionate uncle, Screwtape.”

 

The great victory of Screwtape is to downplay evil; to convince the human target that they need not do anything, need not worry, need not bother themselves - Satan doesn’t exist nor does evil. The idea that all it takes for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing, for example. To be good requires a very active sought of battle: it requires that we learn about the world, that we both take notice of others around us – and the effects of communal sin on their lives – and challenge it, advocate for others. In the present economic and political climate as Christians we need to be very alert to the effect of politics on the lives of the poorest and most vulnerable in our society.

The Feast of Michael and All Angels is a good day to reflect on what evil is and the Christian command to fight it. Where in our life do we need to take a stronger stand against the forces of evil? Where in our life are we guilty of turning a blind eye? Where are we lacking in moral courage? Let us reconsider the triumphant Christ – the victor against Satan – and our own calling to follow Christ into that battle.