On Revelation 5 and Reading Literature

“You are worthy to take the scroll and open its seals”


With my son, I read Revelation 5:11-14 as part of the opening of worship at our church last Sunday. This time of year, worship services and my preparations for teaching literature converge. I mine sermons for teaching ideas, my prayers veer into to do lists, and every scripture is a text I might be teaching. Sometimes, it’s a fruitful distraction.

Here’s what I thought as I prepared, delivered, and reflected on part of John’s vision.

One way (not the only way) to read the book of Revelation is to see that it tells us very familiar things, but it does so in memorable, striking (okay, even weird) ways. And those ways have largely to do with images (scrolls, golden bowls, seven eyes and horns, a Lamb with its throat slit). This view respects the good old Reformed principle of interpretation which says that Scripture interprets Scripture: one book/passage/text is explained by/reinforces another.

So what does Revelation 5 tell us that’s old news—even if it’s good news?

• Jesus is Lord (10,0002 angels worship him; “To him who sits on the throne . . .”)
• Jesus is Savior (“Then I saw a Lamb”; “You are worthy . . . because you were slain”)
• Our universe is careening towards fulfillment, a consummation in which God is all in all and the universe unites in worship and praise (vss. 13-14, mostly)
• Whatever will be, our God reigns (the entire passage)

These truths—call them doctrines, if you will, or gospel—are presented to us as a kind of drama, as a story that involves a weeping man, a scroll, the appearance of a Lamb on a throne, loud voices, numberless creatures.

A couple of literary responses suggest themselves. One is that reading the chapter is a kind of experiencing of those doctrines—a participation through words and images of what those truths feel like. I take it as part of the high calling of literary studies that Scripture employs this kind of approach.

A second is that images tell the truth, that fiction (story) is as true as precept. I’m not implying that Revelation is made up, that it’s fiction. But it’s not a Pauline discourse on Christ’s supremacy; it’s a vivid illustration and engagement with those truths.

What’s the point? First, that studying literature—being attuned to images and story—brings in a harvest of rich reading of Scripture. My literary reading enhances my ability to read Scripture. And, second, as implied above, Scripture, by its method, sanctions a literary approach to truth. Telling a good story, wrapping a truth in vivid, allusive metaphors is a way to tell the truth. And engaging with a literary approach to Scripture as well as a truth-seeking approach to literature is a way to join the “four living creatures” who say “Amen” and fall down to worship the Lamb on the throne.