The point that apocalyptic makes is not only that people who wear crowns and who claim to foster justice by the swords are not as strong as they think –true as that is: we still sing,’0 where are Kings and Empires now of old that went and came?’ It is that people who bear crosses are working with the grain of the universe. One does not come to that belief by reducing social process to mechanical and statistical models, nor by winning some of one’s battles for the control of one’s own corner of the fallen world. One comes to it by sharing the life of those who sing about the Resurrection of the slain Lamb.
…Singing that song and walking that way is not a triumphalist life. But it is a life worth singing about. It is not a life of seeing God’s deliverance clearly, for we continue to see as though through a glass darkly. But it is a life of seeing God’s deliverance, because by the Spirit of the resurrection, we have been seized by the light of God’s creation healed from injustice and death, and enabled to see enough to live in hope and to taste the final victory.