Revelation 18.1-13
After this I saw another angel coming down from heaven, having great authority; and the earth was made bright with his splendour. He called out with a mighty voice,
‘Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great!
It has become a dwelling-place of demons, a haunt of every foul spirit,
a haunt of every foul bird, a haunt of every foul and hateful beast.
For all the nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication,
and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her,
and the merchants of the earth have grown rich from the power of her luxury.’
Then I heard another voice from heaven saying,
‘Come out of her, my people, so that you do not take part in her sins,
and so that you do not share in her plagues;
for her sins are heaped high as heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities.
Render to her as she herself has rendered, and repay her double for her deeds;
mix a double draught for her in the cup she mixed.
As she glorified herself and lived luxuriously, so give her a like measure of torment and grief.
Since in her heart she says,
“I rule as a queen; I am no widow, and I will never see grief”,
therefore her plagues will come in a single day — pestilence and mourning and famine —
and she will be burned with fire; for mighty is the Lord God who judges her.’
And the kings of the earth, who committed fornication and lived in luxury with her, will weep and wail over her when they see the smoke of her burning; they will stand far off, in fear of her torment, and say,
‘Alas, alas, the great city, Babylon, the mighty city! For in one hour your judgement has come.’
And the merchants of the earth weep and mourn for her, since no one buys their cargo any more, cargo of gold, silver, jewels and pearls, fine linen, purple, silk and scarlet, all kinds of scented wood, all articles of ivory, all articles of costly wood, bronze, iron, and marble, cinnamon, spice, incense, myrrh, frankincense, wine, olive oil, choice flour and wheat, cattle and sheep, horses and chariots, slaves—and human lives.
Reflection
Sometimes the values of the Church and those of the state are so far apart that conflict between the two is inevitable. The Bible ends with such a conflict, and the fall of the great empire of ‘Babylon’, probably a metaphor for the Roman Empire.
The Book of Revelation can be interpreted in multiple ways. Today I simply want to draw attention to the two groups of people who mourn the fall of Babylon. The first is “the kings of the earth” – rulers who, like Herod and Pilate, were subservient to the empire and did its bidding. They mourn their lost power.
The second group are “the merchants of the earth”, because the empire has facilitated the accumulation of wealth through trade. Raw materials have been exploited for financial gain, and some have made themselves very rich as a result of trading in precious stones, metals and fabrics; building materials; the ingredients for cosmetics; food and drink; domesticated animals; and “slaves – and human lives.” In this empire, everything has its price, and even human beings can be bought and sold.
Eventually, appealing to the better nature of slave owners (as Paul does to Philemon) is not enough. If an empire is built on slavery, God’s will can be done only when it falls. My first paid job was with the Southern Africa Coalition, of which the URC was a member, which in 1989-90 campaigned for continued sanctions against apartheid South Africa. There, the Church had to confront an evil state. Shortly after I left that job, Nelson Mandela was released and that evil regime began to crumble.
It is for today’s Church to identify where voracious greed and inhumanity are found now, and to work and pray for God’s will to be done and for today’s Babylon to fall.
Prayer
Powerful God,
Judge of all the Earth,
we find it easier to talk of compromise and tolerance
than to recognise the inevitability of your judgement.
But surely you cannot tolerate the greed
that leads to the rape of the earth
and the trade in human lives.
Help us to discern where in our world
the state is so evil that it must fall,
and to pray and work for Your will to be done.
Amen.