I spent a year in the United States when I was thirteen. We attended my grandmother’s church, where the sermons sometimes lasted for forty-five minutes. Most of the children looked for things to read. Each seat had its own bible and hymn book, and it didn’t take me long to find the Book of Revelation. What marvellous, extravagant imagery! It filled me with the delicious dread only experienced by a thirteen-year-old who had been worried about the End Times ever since the church youth group had watched a low-budget film about the Rapture during an all-night “lock-in pizza party” on December 31st, 1999. Somebody clearly thought the Rapture might actually happen that night. I wish I’d been reading 'Good Omens' instead.
If you find yourself in evensong this Sunday you’ll probably hear a passage from Revelation. It has everything: rainbows, emerald thrones, elders in white raiment with golden crowns, lamps, lightning and thunder, a sea of glass, and (my personal favourite) four living creatures covered in eyes. These six-winged creatures -- an ox, a lion, a man, and an eagle -- are sometimes called Cherubim, and have also been used as a
tetramorph to symbolise the four evangelists.
Neither you nor I are likely to use Revelation as an Apocalypse-spotter’s handbook, but we can find the origin of familiar and beloved things there, lines used in much later poems, hymns, and even the Sanctus, which we sing or say every time we celebrate the Eucharist. The four beasts cry, “Holy, holy, holy”, and the twenty-four elders cast their crowns before the throne, declaring that God is worthy to receive glory and honour and power. What we can take from it is that the central point of the Book of Revelation the idea of worship; it's rich with temple imagery. Worship isn't all about noise and light, though: in chapter 8, St John pauses. "When the Lamb opened the seventh seal, was silence in heaven for about half an hour."
Compline, or night prayer, is a little like that. The day is completed; our worship part prayerful silence, part plainchant, punctuated by readings. There is time to breathe between each half-verse of the psalms. Tonight's service, at 9pm in the University Parks, will take place on the Rainbow Bridge, which I think St John the Divine would have liked, given how often he mentions rainbows. We will carry on regardless of the weather -- there will even be a punt. The great cathedral of the outdoors awaits!
