Rev. Jared Buss
Pittsburgh New Church; June 9, 2024
Readings: Revelation 12:1-10 (children’s talk); Apocalypse Explained §714; Secrets of Heaven §2063.3
The woman clothed with the sun is a picture of what the Lord hopes we will become. She’s described in just a few lines, but those few lines present us with an awesome image. This woman is clothed with the sun (Rev. 12:1). Not with a golden dress: her clothing is sunlight. The fire of the sun envelops her. She is radiant as the sun.
She’s contrasted with another compelling character: a great, fiery red dragon (Rev. 12:3). The word that’s used in the original Greek to describe this dragon’s color comes from the Greek word for fire. Picture a great seven-headed serpent that burns red like embers.
The woman and the dragon make a pair. They often appear together in New Church art. The fact that both of them are fiery only strengthens the impression that they “go together.” They are alike and yet completely unalike; they are two contrasting fires, representing two diametrically opposed kinds of love. Today’s talk is about the contrast between the woman and the dragon.
Anyone looking at a picture of these two characters would say that they’re a classic depiction of good versus evil, or beauty versus ugliness. In the story, the woman gives birth to a child, and the dragon wants to eat that child; so she embodies maternal tenderness, and he embodies violence (Rev. 12:4, 5). These sort of black-and-white contrasts between these two characters are real—they are completely different from each other. Yet they have some things in common—both with regard to their appearance, and with regard to their symbolism in the spiritual sense of the Word. And those similarities make the qualities that the woman and the dragon don’t share even more conspicuous.
Fundamentally, the woman and the dragon stand for two very different kinds of love, and for the people who are motivated by those loves. That’s why they’re both fiery: throughout the Word, fire symbolizes love. The woman clothed with the sun stands for the New Church that the Lord is creating, and the fire of the sun that clothes her stands for love to the Lord. In the Heavenly Doctrine of the New Church we’re told: “The woman here appeared clothed with the sun because the church is governed by love toward the Lord; for it acknowledges Him and keeps His commandments, and that is loving Him” (AR §533; cf. John 14:21).
The fieriness of the dragon symbolizes selfish love. We read: “The dragon is called fiery red because a fiery red color symbolizes falsity arising from the evils attendant on lusts, which is a falsity of hell” (AR §537.4). But the dragon represents something more specific than “evil people,” just as the woman represents something more specific than “good people.” The woman stands for the New Church, and the dragon stands for… something that is specifically opposed to the New Church.
In some parts of the Heavenly Doctrine, the dragon is said to symbolize the doctrine of salvation by faith alone (AR §537). That is, it’s said to symbolize people who think that their faith—though that faith is nothing more than an idea—has saved them, and that because they’re saved, they can “indulge [their] appetites … without any fear of hell” (§539). In other words, the dragon is said to symbolize people whose faith is turned into an excuse, or a blanket that they can use to cover their evils. Obviously this is bad. The trouble with focusing too much on this particular explanation of the symbolism of the dragon is that this church doesn’t teach that a person is saved by faith alone. This church teaches that a person is saved by a marriage of faith and charity (TCR §393, et al.). This can lead us to assume that the dragon is conveniently far away. The spirit of the dragon is something that exists in other people—those people who teach faith alone—not in ourselves. Ironically, these assumptions are themselves the work of the dragon. The dragon is a deceiver: the reading refers to it as, “that serpent of old, called the devil and satan, who deceives the whole world” (Rev. 12:9). And the dragon is an accuser: the reading calls it, “the accuser of our brethren” (v. 10). The dragon points fingers at other people and says, “You’re the dragon.”
The truth is that the dragon is something that tries to rise up in every heart; the dragon is something that has always preyed on all religions. It is “that old serpent” (Rev. 12:9). Simply put, the dragon is selfishness—selfishness like a hot ember—but selfishness that uses the truths of religion as a mask. If we tell ourselves that the bad things we do are of no consequence, because we’re obviously good people, because we have the Word, that’s the dragon. In the Heavenly Doctrines we read: [AE §714]. The emphasis in this passage is on knowledge from the Word. The difference between the dragon and selfish love in general is that the dragon is armed with knowledge from the Word.
This knowledge is symbolized by the seven diadems that are on the seven heads of the dragon (Rev. 12:3). Ordinarily we would understand diadems to mean “crowns,” and in artwork the dragon is usually shown with seven crowns on its heads. But the Heavenly Doctrine equates the diadems on the heads of the dragon with precious stones: in more than one place it uses the phrase “diadems or precious stones,” as though the two terms are interchangeable (AR §540; AE 717). And it explains that diadems or precious stones symbolize truths taken from the literal sense of the Word. And it says that they have this symbolism because they’re translucent: just as earthly light shines through a gem, so spiritual light shines through a teaching from the Word (ibid.).
The dragon wears gemstones on its head. The dragon is crowned with truths from the Word. In the Heavenly Doctrine we read: “Diadems were seen upon the seven heads of the dragon, because the truths of the sense of the letter of the Word shine wherever they are, as well with the evil as with the good” (AE §717.3).
The woman clothed with the sun is also crowned with truths from the Word. She wears a garland of twelve stars; and we’re told that this crown of stars symbolizes, “wisdom and intelligence from knowledges of Divine good and Divine truth from the Word” (AR §534; cf. AE §709). This gives us a second visual parallel between the woman and the dragon: both of them are fiery, and both of them are crowned with points of light. If we picture the diadems on the heads of the dragon as shining precious stones, they become a strong visual echo of the stars that crown the woman.
Both the woman and the dragon know the teachings of the Word. Knowledge of the Word is not what distinguishes them: knowledge of the Word does not separate the New Church from the things that hate it. The truth does shine brighter with the woman than it does with the dragon: she is crowned with stars, which are living lights. The dragon, on the other hand, is crowned with stones, which have no light of their own. The woman’s crown of stars symbolizes an understanding of piercingly beautiful heavenly truths. This understanding is a gift that the Lord is offering to the people of His New Church—and clearly it’s a good thing. To know the truths of the Word does not make somebody a dragon; to love the truths of the Word does not make somebody a dragon. But these things, by themselves, also don’t make us into the woman clothed with the sun.
Whenever we turn to the Word, both of these forces are present. Within the Word the Lord speaks to us, inviting us to be part of the thing that the woman symbolizes. And the dragon lurks in all of us. The dragon preys on religion. When we learn something true, the dragon whispers, “you’re saved now.” It says, “Look at you—you know things that other people don’t know. You’re one of the spiritual elite. The things you know make you better than other people. And if you sin, so what? You’ll still be a superior being.” The truths of the Word are from the Lord, and we should learn them. Bu the dragon can use those truths. It’s clear that what actually moves us in one direction or the other is how we use the truth. The woman clothed with the sun stands for a spirit that uses the truth to bring love out. The dragon stands for a spirit that uses the truth to lift selfishness up.
What is a dragon anyway? There are thousands of depictions of dragons out there, and they’re all over the map. Some dragons breathe fire, some don’t; some have four legs and some have none, and so on. But there are two qualities that almost all depictions of dragons have in common: a long, reptilian body, and the ability to fly. The Heavenly Doctrine identifies these two qualities as the essential characteristics of a dragon: a dragon is a flying serpent (AE §714.3, 5). A serpent, which slithers on the ground, represents the lowest level of human life: it represents thoughts and feelings that are all about our physical senses. Sensual thoughts and feelings aren’t inherently bad. But when they become a dragon, then they are bad: a dragon is a serpent that flies up and pretends that it belongs in heaven. A dragon is something low that uses the truths of the Word to exalt itself. When we use our knowledge of the Word to tell ourselves that we’re better than other people, or to convince ourselves that our selfishness and pride are actually righteousness and wisdom, that’s a serpent flying up into the heavens. The dragon is something that uses the truth to lift selfishness up.
But the woman clothed with the sun uses the truth to bring love out. As I said earlier, the sun with which she is clothed represents love to the Lord (AR §533). To be more precise, the sun that surrounds her represents love to the Lord from the Lord (AE §707). It represents the Lord’s own love filling and surrounding the people of His church. When we love the Lord, by keeping His commandments, then we receive His love, and His love envelops us. And then we love our neighbors—because He loves our neighbors (ibid.). To be clothed with the sun is to let His love move us—and when His love moves us, we strive to do good for His people, whom He loves.
It’s easy enough to see why the sun symbolizes this kind of love. What’s a little less clear is what it means to be clothed with the sun. Most of the time, clothing in the Word symbolizes truth (AC §5248, et al.), because truths clothe our loves, and give form to them. So clothing has to do with truth, whereas the sun has to do with love—but in the case of the woman clothed with the sun, they’re the same thing. And that’s the point: the woman clothed with the sun represents a state in which love and truth have become virtually the same thing. Our final reading for today is a passage from the Heavenly Doctrine that hints at how this works: [read AC §2063.3]. The truth is meant to serve as a vessel for goodness. The truth teaches us how to love, it gives us the ability to love effectively, and it is meant to be used to communicate love. And when the truths we know are used this way, love fills them. Love shines through them, until at last the truthiness of the truth fades from view; love suffuses what we know and what we do. We are clothed with love.
That’s what the Lord wants for us. That’s what He calls us to become—the woman clothed with the sun. She and the dragon are diametrically opposed: to move towards one is to move away from the other. If we separate our knowledge of the Word from the Lord’s love then we move towards the dragon. If we join them together then we enter into the New Church, and the Lord surrounds us with love like fire.
Amen.