Canter Bridge

There seems to be an inverse relationship between the repugance we feel over bloody scenes of vindication, on the one hand, and the weight of evil’s crush that we have known or observed from close corners, on the other. It is easy to become too precious about gore when life has not pressed our noses into the human cost of evil unbound. When oppression is just a notion, the blood of vindication running up to the horse’s bridles seems per se a grotesque and unnecessary image.

Showing no signs of squeamishness, the book of Revelation leads its reader into just such a violent dénouement. In its pages, the fall of Babylon—for example—is seen as a cause of cosmic celebration because she has made the nations drunk with her power and has monitored a system where too many of Jesus’ followers have become martyrs to the intolerant mono-ideology of Babylon’s measurable, unstoppable Success.

When her fall is glimpsed on the horizon, a ‘new song’ breaks out, one that can be learned only by those 144,000 early martyrs who from above encourage the faithful not to give up but to perservere in their unlikely task and testimony.

A new song …

Like all that is important in this apocalyptic treatise, the phrase is deeply redolent of ancient faith as this is expressed in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. Contrary to what a superficial reading of the phrase might suggest, the new song is not dismissive of the antecedent expression, liturgy, or praise that it might be seen to replace. Rather, it builds upon those ancient articulations from a posture of astonishment at what YHWH has done this time.

It is an implicit recognition that, fine as those old melodies have served us in their time, this latest nifla’, this most recent redemptive surprise, calls for fresh and vigorous praise that must overtake and even, if it must be so, supercede the fine old songs that sang well until, well, just this morning.

The recurrent biblical mention of a new song cut from the cloth of consecutive redemptive moments in the people’s journey with YHWH allows the reader to discern the notion’s deep redemptive continuities and—more prominently in the nature of the case—its eruptive and open-futured spontaneity. It recognizes a linearity, a consecutiveness in the people’s experience of their covenanted Lord.

In Revelation, this Old Testament expression is gathered up as a song that somehow originates in heaven and is taught on a restricted basis in the first instance to those who have given their lives for their messianic faith.

The trajectory of the book encourages its reader to believe that this moment of musical exclusivism is both temporary and preparatory.

In but a moment, the whole earth will sing.