The Child and the Dragon

A great sign in the sky. A woman shining like the sun. A child about to be born. And a dragon, red and enormous, crouched and waiting. This is Christmas as heaven sees it.

John is an old man now, on a rocky island called Patmos in the Aegean Sea. He tells us he is there because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus; most likely he has been sent there as a punishment for preaching. Christians on the mainland are under pressure. Some have been mocked, some imprisoned, some killed. And one Lord's day, John is given a series of visions, full of strange and powerful pictures, to encourage God's people to hold on. Revelation is that kind of book. Its pictures are signs, pointing to real things.

John writes: a great sign appeared in heaven. A woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. She is about to give birth, and she cries out in pain. Twelve stars, like the twelve tribes of Israel. Many readers see in her God's people, the faithful family of Israel from whom the Messiah would come; others also think of Mary, the mother who actually carried him. John's picture can hold both.

Then another sign. A great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns on his heads. His tail sweeps a third of the stars out of the sky and flings them to the earth. And the dragon stands in front of the woman, waiting. As soon as her child is born, he means to devour it. A few verses later John tells us plainly who the dragon is: that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan. Think of King Herod's soldiers on the road to Bethlehem. Behind the cruelty of a frightened king, John shows us a far older enemy.

But the dragon does not win. The woman gives birth to a son, a male child, who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron. And her child is caught up to God and to his throne. In one sentence, John leaps from the birth of the child to his rising up to God. The dragon's jaws close on nothing. And the woman flees into the wilderness, to a place prepared for her by God, where she will be cared for. The enemy is real and fierce, but the child is safe, and his people are kept.

The bishop Irenaeus, writing around the year 180, said John saw his revelation near the end of the reign of the emperor Domitian, which ended in AD 96. And the line about ruling the nations with a rod of iron is borrowed from Psalm two, a royal psalm about God's anointed king. John's first readers would have recognised it at once: this child is the promised Messiah.

The Child and the Dragon. You'll find it in Revelation chapter twelve, verses one to six. Christians read it at Christmas as a reminder that the birth in Bethlehem was part of a much bigger battle, and that the child won. So here is a question to carry with you. When evil seems big and frightening, what difference does it make that the child is on the throne?