In my Revelation study for Sunday School I’ve now arrived at chapter 17, the closeup of the whore of Babylon. She is the mother of whores, contrasted with the another woman found in the wilderness who is the mother of that male child who fulfills Psalm 2. The language here (as it has been before) is one of intoxication with sex and alcohol. She has power of the nations because she allures them, pulls them in and creates of them and with them an economic, political, and cultural system that amazes the world. It’s striking that in verse 6 when John sees her he too is amazed until the angel shocks him back to reality by asking “Why are you so amazed?”

How are we to think about this? How does it touch us? I think intoxicated is exactly the right image. The Christian right was intoxicated by their political power and the election of their presidents. The Christian left was intoxicated by the election of Obama. Pastors get intoxicated by popularity, church growth, new buildings, more followers in Facebook, Twitter, book deals, etc.

Why intoxication? We lose our heads. We begin to imagine we have moved beyond our need of Jesus Christ or the cross. Our deepest desire to replace God and be Lord of heaven and earth is momentarily tasted and experienced and it thrills us like few other things. We taste power, importance, meaning, and the things that money through popularity can buy. Fortunately for most of us the high is very brief and the realities of life quickly impose themselves. That’s grace to us.

I love the angel’s response to John’s momentary intoxication by the whore. “Why are you so amazed? I’ll tell you the secret of the woman and the beast…” He’s so matter of fact about the whole business. The light of God brings the reality of the whore to light.

A few years ago there were a couple of prostitutes that used to sit on the church steps outside my office. They’d meet there a bit before it would get dark. They didn’t wear a sign, but it wasn’t too hard to tell what they were about. I doubt they got much work before sunset, light didn’t favor their self-promotion. That’s how I imagine John and the angel. John’s making eyes at the whore, he’s getting intoxicated, but the angel basically turns on the light. There is one far more beautiful, whose love won’t take from you but give you to, whose light heals rather than ages. Who in their right mind would sleep with Babylon?!

We do. The world is drunk with her wine, beguiled by her presentation and her song and we can be miserably lost in her allure. Paul’s prayer in Ephesians one is that the light comes on and that the eyes of our heart be opened and we become the bride of a much better lover.