Keep up the Good Fight

Revelation 22:12-21

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First and last words are memorable things.  Well, at least last words.  I don’t remember what William’s or Alice’s first words were.  We were talking about it a couple of months ago and even Dana wasn’t sure.  But for both of them, we were sure it was either mama or dada.  But I do have a specific memory of one of William’s first words.  We were driving and a truck passed in the other lane and William blurted out “tuck”.  He had a huge fascination with trucks, heavy equipment, and especially anything John Deere because Papa had a John Deere tractor that William oddly was scared to go near considering his love of such things.

Well, first words may be difficult to remember but last words are different.  Before my father died he pulled all us his kids and step-kids aside individually to say his last words.  To me, the conversation ended with him saying “I love you.  Keep up the good fight.”  He always understood my calling and knew who it was who was calling me and supported me going into the ministry 100%.  I have done my best to abide by those words.  He said them to me during my first pastorate in Marlinton, WV.  I was well valued by that congregation and also by the Marlinton community.  The church was reviving and beginning to grow like it had in the 60’s.  It was easy to keep up the good fight then.  

Well, some personal struggles came and abiding by those words found me in Canada. I had a nice ministry in Caledon for nine years.  We fought the good fight faithfully but the wealthy retiree/bedroom community around us no longer had much use for the church.  Now I’m in this four-church cooperative keeping up the good fight.  We all are keeping up the good fight.  But churches and ministers aren’t really valued members of our communities anymore.  The only stuff anyone hears about us is the scandalous stuff.  The media never reports on the good work we still try to do.  Pre-Covid people were leaving church and now so even more coming out of Covid so many have not come back.  They are done with the church.  The scant younger crowd that many churches had before Covid struggle to come back and are saying “Umm. Have you got anything better?”  

I have to admit that it is difficult for me to keep up the good fight when so many people close to me have walked off, lost faith, or simply died and aren’t here to support me. But I continue to keep the good fight understanding I am called and knowing the one who has called me.  Even if it does feel like we’re a small orchestra on the titanic.  We continue to play the music because love to play the music.  It is a comforting to us and to those who will stop and listen. But the ship is still sinking.  And the ship isn’t just a metaphor for the institution of the church.  It’s our whole culture in turmoil.  Indeed, our whole planet and humanity on it are at jeopardy.  200 years ago progress, exploration, adventure, and discovery were the name of the game.  People went forth boldly where no one had gone before.  Now, we’re realizing the need to clean up after the party, but the partiers just won’t quit.  Our way of life is in for a big adjustment.  It’s like we’re coming to the end of a book of insights written by a great historical figure and we’re holding out to hear the last words.

Well, here we go.  It’s Ascension Sunday the day we remember Jesus’ last words before he Ascended to take his throne in heaven.  Let’s look at them.  In Matthew he told his disciples that all authority had been given to him.  He told them to go make disciples, baptize, and teach.  His very last words were, “And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”  Similarly, in Mark he told his disciples to go into all the world and proclaim the gospel (The Kingdom of God has come near) to the whole creation and great signs would back it up.  Mark remarks that they did this and that the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message with signs. In Luke, Jesus sent the disciples out as witnesses to his death and resurrection to proclaim the forgiveness of sins and invite repentance.  Also, he promised that the Father would soon clothe them with power from on high.  Interestingly, in John’s Gospel there are no last words.  Jesus just shares a meal with his disciples and pulls Peter and John aside to address their relationship with him like my dad did with me.  In Acts, Jesus told the disciples that it’s not for them to now the times and periods that the Father has established, yet they will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon them and they are to be his witnesses to the ends of the Earth.

Jesus’ last words in the Book of Revelation reflect a coming to an end of the work on earth that the disciples were to do and encourages them to hold on just a bit longer amidst some very difficult often life or death circumstances.  When Jesus ascended, his last words gave the mandate “Go and spread my kingdom of peace in the power of the Holy Spirit and I will be with you.”  The disciples did that to surprising but moderate success.  The Book of Revelation began to circulate in the church about sixty years later.  By that time there were small fellowships of disciples of Jesus living the love of Jesus throughout the entirety of the Roman Empire and beyond.  But they were so often persecuted for their loyalty to Lord Jesus rather than the Roman Emperor or some other god.  It was especially bad for them when an Emperor came on the scene who believed himself a god and wanted to be worshipped throughout the Empire as such.  The Book of Revelation showed up in the 90’s AD during such a time. 

The state of the church at that time after sixty years and two generations working on a third was varied.  Some churches were being persecuted for their faithfulness to Jesus.  Some had simply lost their passion to love.  Most churches had simply found ways to mingle and pollute their faith in Jesus with popular cultural beliefs such as we do today when we make faith in Jesus into a vehicle to wealth, or the servant of political parties and authoritarian figures, or self-helpism, or private spirituality…anything other than being about how we love ourselves and each other in the Jesus way. 

Back to last words.  Jesus’ last words in the Revelation are basically that he is coming soon with reward in hand meaning that the loyalty and service of his followers were not in vain.  He is the Beginning and End of everything.  God’s purpose and goal for everyone and everything, true life, is centered on and found in Jesus.  So, we are to live our lives loyal to him and by so doing, drink of the water of life, which is the presence of God himself in our lives assuring us we are his beloved children, his beloved family charged to reflect his honour and glory in this world.  Thus, we live the way of forgiveness in our lives doing the hard work of reconciliation in our broken relationships; speaking the truth in love; helping one another be the glorious, beautiful, dignified persons that God has meant us each to be.  

Similar to how the explorers, adventurers, entrepreneurs, and migrants at the beginning of the Industrial Age went forth greatly inspired by the myth of progress believing that wealth and things manufactured could make humanity what we were created to be, so the early disciples went forth in the first century as witnesses to Jesus’ Resurrection.  They were profoundly inspired by, truly compelled by the love of God in Christ which they experienced personally and in their fellowships by the presence and work of God the Holy Spirit dwelling in them each and in the midst of their fellowship.  Life lived according to the indwelling Holy Spirit, the sense of being beloved by God, and the Christ-like love they shared in their fellowships is what God has created us to be.  The apostles of the Industrial Age and the Enlightenment have left us with a self-destructive, seemingly never-ending, timebomb of a party that’s going to leave us with a beast of an after-mess to clean up.  But the disciples of Jesus, then and now…US…we have the water of life flowing through us and we must continue to live as Jesus’ invitation to everyone to “Come and drink”.  Our love for one another in Christ is an integral part of God’s saving of the whole Creation.  Our love is not in vain.

So, we must continue to “Keep up the good fight.”  He is coming soon with reward in hand.  Our efforts are not in vain.  I know that word “soon” is ambiguous.  Afterall, it’s been 2,000 years already.  Though the word in Greek isn’t definite about when, it does carry a strong emphasis that what will happen “soon” will for certain happen.  Jesus is coming.  We must prepare his way by focusing on coming to him ourselves and inviting everyone to come to him and drink the water of life.  At some point he will finally come.  It’s just not for us to know when.  In the meantime, we continue to come to him and let the water of life flow through us that everyone may come and drink.  

So, finally, what are we to do now about the obviousness that we are the stringband on the Titanic?  Frankly, we are in a time when churches must change and, in this time, it is imperative that change begin with we ourselves coming to Jesus to drink the water of life and to focus particularly on the prayerful way of forgiveness and there discover his presence in our lives.  Pay especial attention to the relationships in our lives and are we ourselves truly being Christ-like.  Authenticity is huge.  Are we ourselves being the glorious, beautiful, dignified persons God made us to be?  If not, what stands in the way?  What stands in the way of we each knowing ourselves to be glorious, beautiful, and dignified persons – beloved children of God?  Are we helping others to be the glorious, beautiful, dignified persons God made them to be especially in our families?  That’s a difficult question to answer and answering it is something we do together.  God has placed his Spirit in us to make it happen.  Jesus is with us.  All difficult times pass and for people of faith they culminate with a greater knowing of God and ourselves and how beloved and special we each are.  That’s the reward he’s coming with for all who came and drink.  So, keep up the good fight so that everyone may come.  Amen.

 

Flow with the River of Life

Revelation 21:10,22-22:5

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Whenever you preach from the Book of Revelation you have to do so with a bit of fear and trembling.  Not so much because of what it says, but because what you wind up saying will likely have you sounding like a nutbar.  Seriously, if you ever take a look at the history of interpretation of this letter even folks the likes of John Calvin and Martin Luther fell off the deep end.  So, permit me to take my plunge.

One thing you don’t do with the Book of Revelation is approach it as a road map to the endtimes and start looking for this little detail to happen and that little detail and from there make your prediction as to when the end will come. The Book of Revelation is a revelation, a making known, of the big picture of what God is doing in history right now in the wake of Jesus and it speaks more in generalities than particulars.

The passages that we read this morning and the images of the New Jerusalem coming to the new earth from the new heaven and the River of the Water of Life that flows forth from the throne of God and the Lamb, these are not so much literal things we can expect to see on some future day as they are rather images describing what is going on in God’s Creation in the wake of what God has done through and as Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit.  Through the work of Jesus and the Holy Spirit the first things (the first heaven and the first earth) have gone and the new has come.  The new “something” that these images portray is what God is doing in us, the church, the body and bride of Christ through the working of the Holy Spirit.

Before I get any more confusing let me just start working the text.  Chapter 21 starts with John saying that something utterly new has come about and it encompasses all of Creation.   He sees a new heaven and a new earth.  Then he sees the New Jerusalem coming down from the new heaven to the new earth and note that it is not the other way around.  The New Jerusalem is not ascending into heaven to escape earth.  It comes from heaven to earth.  “Thy kingdom come.  Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”  The end of, the fulfillment of Christian faith is not a mystical, spiritual disembodied escape to heaven.  It is embodied new life on a new earth that shines with the life of God.

 Something else to note here is that the city is adorned as a bride.  Quick thinking as we are, John wants us to get that the New Jerusalem is the Bride of Christ, the Church…us.  But, as I’ve said many times before let’s be careful not to think of the New Jerusalem in terms of the institution we’ve come to know as the Church with its buildings and its clergy and its doctrines and its enmeshment with Western culture and political power.  None of that, the New Jerusalem, the Church, is the people, the faithful followers of Jesus Christ indwelt by the Holy Spirit who is working in us changing us to be more and more in the image of Christ Jesus so that we can shine like him in the world. 

The New Jerusalem is the people of God in relationship, in relationship with God and with one another in Christ.  The New Jerusalem is in fact a new humanity made up of those who are adopted by God the Father to be his own people, to be his own children in Christ with whom God is now always present and comforting them.  Because of God’s presence with and in his people death and its ill effects for these are no more.  We know the comfort of God.

As I noted last week, verse five of chapter 21 is very important in the Book of Revelation.  It is the only time God the Father speaks.  At times throughout the Book there are great voices that come from the throne, but here John makes a point of saying that the One seated on the Throne is speaking.  Therefore, what he says here is of utmost importance.  He says “Behold, I am making all things new.  Write it down for these words are trustworthy and true.”  When your life is all messed up you’re finding it hard to believe, remember God is indeed present with you and is truly making things new in the sense that going through these things will deepen our relationship to God and make us more like Jesus.  

God goes on to say this new reality is a done deal.  All things in creation begin and end with him and what he’s doing now since Jesus is freely giving the Water of Life to the thirsty and making them his children.  When Paul says in 2 Corinthians “Anyone who is in Christ is new creation”, this is what he means.  God is freely giving his Spirit to people to strengthen and comfort us and quench our thirst with the Water of Life of Jesus Christ.  

For the rest of chapter 21 an angel comes and shows John the New Jerusalem and there are a couple of things to note here.  It is clothed in the glory and radiance of God.  As we are the New Jerusalem, this means that the presence and beautiful obviousness of God just radiates from us, his people.  The light of the love of God just shines from us.  But we need be careful not to put it under a basket.  

Here’s something else.  There is no temple in the New Jerusalem, no building, no cinderblock and brick box for keeping God under wraps.  The city is huge and the gates are never shut.  Everyone, everyone is welcome in the New Jerusalem. The glorious things of the world will be brought into it.  Kings who previously gathered for war (Ch. 19) will come into it to learn the ways of the reign of God.  Nothing defiled can be brought into it.  Liars with a shameless attitude won’t come into it.  Only those who find life in the Lamb are there.  This means that humility and honesty are key virtues in the New Jerusalem.  When I’ve been in the midst of true life-giving Christian fellowship, humility and honesty were the markers of the people who brought healing to me.

This brings us to chapter 22 and the River of Living Water.  This is the healing and reconciling mission/ministry of Jesus Christ that we embody.  It shines like crystal in us in our relationships with each other and with others outside our fellowship and in our involvement in our families, and neighbourhoods and communities; through us God is working to heal this broken world as we each are a leave on the Tree of Life. 

Similarly, verse 5 says we reign, but it does not say what we reign over entailing that the church should not try to “lord” Jesus over the world.  We shouldn’t try to control politics or moral standards in the world.  Rather, we share in Jesus’ reign, which is the reign of self-sacrificing love.  We feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and visit the prisoner.  We give super generously.  We don’t look just after our own needs.  Since God has filled us with the Water of Life we pour ourselves into the lives of others with humility and honesty.

That River of the Water of Life that flows from the Throne of God and the Lamb flows through each of our churches and through each of us.  This river flows and the water doesn’t’ become stagnant.  When the church gets more concerned about itself as an institution rather than its mission in Christ it has stagnant. Institutional churches get stagnant with buildings, and clergy, and “the way things are done around here”.  We are stagnant when we are more concerned about judging what’s proper and acceptable to God rather than actually loving one another.  When we do this, and we are stagnant and the River of the Water of Life ceases to flow through us.

That being said, in these days and times when most of the people in our surrounding communities are negatively disposed to anything “institutional” and especially the church in its institutional forms, we the people of God, we the New Jerusalem need to especially attune ourselves to the River of the Water of Life flowing through us.  Coming out of this Pandemic so many people are all the more walking away from the institution of the church and even a simple belief in a God.  There is a particular need for us who have tasted of this Water of Life to drink more deeply of it.   We need to dive in and go with the flow of the Spirit carry us away from our comfortable ways of doing things and be able to say this is why I continue to be a follower of Jesus.  We need to gather together and read and study the Bible together and pray together.  We need to pay attention to being authentically Jesus-like in all our relationships.  Jesus bears our burdens and so that means we are free to bear the burdens of others and walk along beside them in their weaknesses just like Jesus does with us.

The River of the Water of Life is flowing through us.  The glory and light of God does shine through us.  But present circumstances dictate that we set aside our institutional ways and let the River carry us out into the world.  Each one of us is a leaf on the Tree of Life and God has made us his own not just for our own sakes but so that we can be for the healing of others.  Many have asked where has God been throughout this Pandemic.  Well, look around you at the people still sitting in this sanctuary.  God has been with us.  The River of the Water of life has been flowing through the love you have shown one another these past couple of years.  People look for a mighty wave of God’s had to fix everything, Well, that mighty wave has come in the form of the way you have loved and supported each other and your family and neighbours throughout this pandemic with the love and faithfulness of God you have tasted throughout your lives.  You are in the flow let the River widen.  Amen.

God Finally Spoke

 Revelation 21:1-6

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One afternoon while coming out of the Jerusalem temple one of Jesus’ disciples remarked how beautiful the temple was saying, “Look, Teacher, what wonderful stones and what wonderful buildings!"  And then Jesus dropped a bomb.  He prophesied saying, "Do you see these great buildings? There will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down."  In 70 AD that prophecy came to pass.  

Flavius Josephus was a Jewish historian in the first century AD.  In his book The Jewish Wars he recounts how the Romans destroyed Jerusalem in the year 70 AD.  He writes: “Now as soon as the army had no more people to slay or to plunder, because there remained none to be the objects of their fury, Titus Caesar gave orders that they should now demolish the entire city and Temple, but should leave the towers standing as they were of the greatest eminence as well as the wall on the west side…in order to demonstrate to posterity what kind of city it was, and how well fortified, which the Roman valour had subdued; but for all the rest of the wall surrounding Jerusalem, it was so thoroughly laid even with the ground by those that dug it up to the foundation, that there was left nothing to make those that came there believe Jerusalem had ever been inhabited.  This was the end which Jerusalem came to; a city otherwise of great magnificence, and of mighty fame among all mankind.” 

Josephus claims that 1,100,000 people were killed during the siege, of which the majority were Jews, and that 97,000 were captured and enslaved and most of those were made gladiators to fight in arenas throughout the empire.  The Jews that were left mostly fled to areas around the Mediterranean. Josephus reported that Titus refused to accept a wreath of victory for his routing of Jerusalem, as there is "no merit in vanquishing a people forsaken by their own God".  

Building further on that note, the God forsaken note.  We have to ask where God was in all this.  Was he or was he not in his Temple?  Apparently, he wasn’t.  An interesting bit of trivia is that the Romans destroyed the temple in Jerusalem on the last day of the Jewish month of Av (our July), a day Jews call the Day of Five Calamities.  On that same date in 586 BC, the Babylonians destroyed the first temple, the temple Solomon built.  In those days the prophet Ezekiel had a vision in which he saw the glory of the Lord leaving the temple in Jerusalem and heading east to be with the exiles in Babylon.  A very touching message proclaiming that God had not abandoned his people even though he had cast them off of the land.  Seventy years later according to prophesy and God’s direction a remnant began to return to Jerusalem.  But, none of the prophets in that day claim a vision of the glory of the Lord ever returning to the temple.  In fact, Isaiah 65:1 which dates to this time indicates that God didn’t want to live in a temple anymore.  God said to Isaiah, “Heaven is my throne, earth is my footstool.  What is this house that you would build for me?”  Closer to Jesus’ day, there were chief Rabbis who wrote that there was no mention made anywhere of the Presence of God at returning to the Temple any time since the return from exile.  The Presence God did not return to the temple after the Exile.  It was not until Jesus that the presence of the LORD God of Israel again dwells among his people.  God wasn’t in the temple.  God was somewhere else and we’ll get to that in a moment.

If we read the Book of Revelation from with an ear to how those who first heard it would have heard it, Rome’s destruction of Jerusalem and the Jewish Temple is huge.  Though it may have felt like it, God’s people were not, are not, and will never be God-forsaken.  Even Jerusalem will be raised from the dead and at the center of God’s reign in a new creation, a new Heaven and a new Earth.  The old had passed.  Jerusalem, the centerpiece of the identity of the people of God that John knew was gone, destroyed, never to be again.  The old was gone yet here John sees it made new and coming again.  There in the midst of this utterly new creation where heaven and earth are now openly joined as one, where it finally is on earth as it is in heaven, John sees the New Jerusalem coming from God from heaven.  Don’t miss the magnitude of that.  The heart of John the Jew must have leapt for joy.  “Thy Kingdom come.  Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

Then, as John watches the New Jerusalem descend, he hears a voice.  For the very first time in the Revelation a voice comes from the throne of God saying that God himself is with his people and he himself will comfort them.  God would once again be with his people and this time personally.  He was going to intimately involve himself with each of his people to heal and comfort them.  God himself will wipe away their tears.  Moreover, death will be no more and mourning, crying out the cries of injustice, and toilsome suffering will be no more.  This is far from being God-forsaken.

Then, God himself speaks, the one seated on the throne declares, “Behold, I am making all things new.  Write this down.  It is trustworthy and the Truth.”  This is the most important word spoken in the entire book, indeed in history.  In the midst of all the destruction, God was, is, will be making all things new.  The outcome of all that destruction is that God has made things new.  John sees what is and what is to be.  It is God making all things new.  

This is the way we should see our world, our lives right now.  In this world that is a mess, God is presently working to make all things new until the day comes when the old is utterly gone and everything is made utterly new with the glory and presence of God.  It may not seem like it to us, but behind the scenes of history God is making all things new.  That’s the Truth; capital “T”.

Then God speaks directly to John and it is a message for John to give to his churches in Turkey who are about to undergo great persecution for refusing to call Emperor Domitian “Lord” as if he were a god.  God says, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.” This means the buck stops with God.  God has the final word in every matter and his final word is that all things are being made new; all things on earth will be as they are in heaven.  He says to those Christians about to suffer and some even to be martyred as were the people of Jerusalem by the Romans that the one who conquers, which means who keeps the faith even unto death, will be given freely of the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Living Water. 

Well, breaking into the code-like imagery of the Book of Revelation, the New Jerusalem, the new heaven and new earth are not things we should simply ascribe to the future and then forget until they come about.   The new heaven and the new earth are as much present realities as they are future.  God has made us alive in Christ Jesus by giving the Holy Spirit to dwell in us with the new life of Christ so that we know ourselves as beloved by God, God’s own children.  This new sense of God’s presence and love is our small taste now of heaven and earth being made new.  The full meal is what we’ve got to look forward to. 

Let me tell you a secret, you know, since the Book of Revelation is all about revealing something secret, something hidden.  Since God dwells in us now, what we are as a gathering of believers is the New Jerusalem.  Ever since the Day of Pentecost the New Jerusalem has been coming from God from heaven to earth.  God has come to dwell with his people.  We are the New Jerusalem you and I, this congregation, all congregations, the church all over the world is the New Jerusalem.  

Yet, don't think about the New Jerusalem in terms of the institution called the church.  Think of it in terms of a relational network of people and peoples bonded together in the new humanity in Jesus Christ formed by means of the “communioning” work of the Hoy Spirit.  The glory of God shines through us, through our relational bond in Christ, through our unity, through our love for one another.  The light of Christ shines through us.  The light of God’s glory shines through our God-glorifying, other-centered, self-sacrificing love.  No matter how small and insignificant we may appear we are part of the New Jerusalem coming from God from heaven to earth.  In us and among us is the place on earth where God dwells among the nations, where he wipes away every tear.  Our faithful, loving, generous, hospitable participation in our congregation matters.  Even in this present time when the communities around us have little regard for us, our continuing to worship and to reach out in love matters for it is a glimpse of how God is and finally will make all things new. 

Therefore, follow the impulse God has given us to love one another.  Comfort one another in grief.  It’s important.  Feed the hungry. Give drink to the thirsty.  Give home to the homeless.  Clothe the naked.  Visit the prisoner.  Care for the orphaned and the widowed.  Make things just and beautiful.  These things prove God is making all things new.  We are a vital part of what God is doing to heal his Creation of sin and death and to make things here on earth as they are in heaven.   We are the New Jerusalem.  You can go ahead and say “Wow!”  Amen.

Salvation Belongs to our God

Revelation 7:9-17

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Twenty or so years ago the Monty Python cast made a movie called The Meaning of Life in which they attempted to address the question of “What is the meaning of life?” by means of the route of absurdity.  They got into a wide variety of issues.  One was the Roman Catholic Church and birth control.  The question that arose in that segment was, “If the meaning of life is procreation, what do you do with all the excess children?”  The Monty Python answer was donate them for scientific experimentation.  They then asked is the meaning of life simply to eat, drink, and be merry.  For this, they did a skit of an extremely heavy man going to a restaurant and eating everything on the menu.  Pardon my crudeness, but he ate and called for the bucket and ate and called for the bucket.  At the end of the meal after eating everything on the menu, the waiter taunted him with an after-dinner mint which he repeatedly refused not being able to eat another bite.  But he finally gave in, ate the mint, and exploded.  All that was left of him was a rib cage containing an alarm clock for a heart.  Then they asked what if the meaning of life is pursuing wealth.  Their answer involved pirates in business suits conducting hostile corporate take-overs.  The pirate ships were skyscrapers moving about the streets of Manhattan.  The pirate skyscraper would ram the skyscraper of the corporation it wanted to take over and corporate exec pirates would jump aboard and after much sword fighting, take over.  The destruction was as you would imagine.  Their point with the movie, I think, was that we are not going to find the meaning of life with our current approaches because they are in the end absurd.  Nevertheless, the meaning of life is still a difficult question in the broad spectrum of things.  We all do search for meaning.

We all have our questions but, and honestly, “what's the meaning of life” probably does not top our lists.  At the top of many of our lists is “Why, God, do you let so much evil happen?”  The Trinity does have an answer, but I’m afraid the answer is a bit wanting from our perspective here in the midst of the absurdity, and for the most part, not what we want to hear.  Myself, I’m convinced that the Trinity’s answer is, was, and will be in the form of Revelation 7:10; an innumerable number of redeemed people standing in the presence of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in white robes, holding palm branches, and shouting loudly, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”  The answer goes along the lines of everything needs to play out the way that it plays out.  There will be justice.  There will be salvation.  There will be worship.

Now if I were a non-believer, I think I would laugh at this point in the sermon.  It certainly does sound as if I just surpassed Monty Python in the absurdity department.  If I were agnostic and somewhat antagonistic against the church, I would say, “Why do you Christians always have to start talking about who’s saved and who isn’t and try to convert people to your culture controlling big business religion?”  But, you know, I think the Revelation 7:10 answer is relevant especially when we begin to consider why in the first place there is futility in the world so that we ask questions with respect to meaning and why we have this desire to hold God accountable for all that’s wrong in the world.  These are difficult, emotion-laden questions that recognize that if there is a God then either something has gone drastically wrong in this so-called good God’s creation and/or this so-called good God just doesn’t care.  Seriously, why is that we have to search for meaning?  Why is it that in the Trinity’s good creation we find ourselves feeling abandoned?  Why is it that in the Trinity’s good creation everything has to suffer violence and be violent…everything?  

The answer to those questions is that humanity is sick with an addiction like disease of the mind best diagnosed as Sin.  We instinctually and willfully fall short of our created purpose of bearing the image of God on earth and what a Hell on earth has come about from it.  Paul Achtemeier, one of my former New Testament professors, used to say, “The consequence of sin is having to live with the consequences of sin”.  So, let’s not be so quick to blame God.  The better question to ask would be along the lines of “What does this so-called good God do about our disease of sin?”  The answer is Rev. 7:10: “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne and to the Lamb.”  Due to our sickness, our lives, human history are a mess.  We are powerless to fix it ourselves.  At some point we are going to have to realize that only a power greater than ourselves can free us and restore sanity to us so to speak.  So, if we are looking for things to be put to right in this world then our Father who sits on the throne and Jesus the Lamb by the power and presence of the Holy Spirit are who are going to, in their great love for us, make things right. 

Let’s step into the Revelation for a moment.  There are two questions that this acclamation/proclamation of praise in Revelation 7:10 addresses.  Give me a minute to root them out.  At the beginning of chapter six the Lamb begins to open the seven seals that were on the scroll of the Father’s sovereign will for his creation as it will be played out in the context of our history.  It involves wars resulting in plagues, economic and environmental disaster, and the suffering of the faithful.  We must avoid the temptation to say that these things are God’s will and he’s smiting us with such things.  The things that happen when the seals are peeled off are descriptive of what has always been going on, what is presently going on, and what will continue to go on as the consequence of our disease of sin until God says “Enough!”.  They are not God’s will.  What’s being said is that God’s will has been, is being, and will be done in the midst of our warring ways that result in plagues and famine and environmental destruction God has still got a hold on things and his will is going to be to save as many as possible.  Please let me explain the seals.  

The first seal brought a white horse that came to conquer.  He is imperialistic war.  We are presently seeing this one in Ukraine.  The second seal was a red horse wielding the sword of wanton violence.  The third seal brought a black horse that let loose unjust and unfair economic practices.  The fourth seal brought a pale horse who unleashed wanton death on a fourth of the earth.  In a nutshell, these horses and riders are not the Trinity’s wrath poured upon the earth.  Rather, they represent the consequence of sin, and particularly the consequence of war.  The consequence of sin is having to live with the consequences of sin and it is a mess. The four horses are what have happened because we humans became alienated from our Creator and tried to rule as if we were gods.

The fifth seal brought forth the voice of those who have been martyred for being faithful in the midst of all the haywire.  They ask the first question.  “How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?”  Indeed, has their faithfulness mattered?  Does the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit simply wink at evil or will he pass judgement on it?  Oddly and maybe unsatisfactorily, as an answer they are given white robes and told to wait a little longer until the number of the martyrs is complete.  The witness of faith has a purpose in our Hell hole.

The sixth seal is then opened. I call it the seal of the Gospel for the Word of the Trinity’s grace and love spoken in the incarnation of God the Son in Jesus Christ is a “catastrophic” Word that shakes the powers and utterly turns them upside down and inside out and lays them bare so that they hide in fear.  Everyone who is not under the altar asks the second question, “Who can stand?”.  The Revelation reads, “They called to the mountains and the rocks, ‘Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb!  For the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?’” Who can stand by their own merit before the Triune God of grace, love, and glory revealed to us in Jesus Christ which exposes us for who we really are?

Well apparently, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit will make it so that an innumerable multitude will stand before him, this great ordeal of having to live with the consequences of sin ended, praising him and shouting, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne and to the Lamb.”  Nowhere else is there salvation; not in Christianity (the religion), not in Mohammed, not in Moses (though salvation comes from the Jews), not in Buddha, not in Spirituality, not in Nature, not in Progress, not in Technology, not in Wealth, not in Power, not in Politics, not in Altruism, and certainly not in Self.  Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne and to the Lamb.  This is what so many churches are either not saying today as a message of hope or are totally saying wrongly as a means of coercion.

Let’s talk about salvation.  John leans on the Old Testament for his definition of salvation; something that the church in the West has not done since the fourth century when the Roman empire ceased persecuting us and instead institutionalized us.  A survey of the Old Testament on what it is to be saved or delivered discloses that Salvation is the Trinity's actively delivering his people from evil, from oppression, from the consequences of sin as I mentioned earlier, and even from our own idolatry, and then ultimately from death.  The Trinity presently acts in our lives to deliver us, to rescue us from our own demise in sin.  

John’s imagery is beautiful.  He says the Trinity will spread his tent over us to protect us.  This is metaphorical language for the Trinity sheltering us with his own presence, the Holy Spirit, now and forever.  This sheltering is the washing of our robes in the blood/life of the Lamb that reconciles us to the Trinity, the washing made possible only by Jesus’ once and for all atoning death on the cross by which he has made us able to stand.  The Trinity does not remove us from the trial of faith that this world brings against us.  Rather, he saves us by sheltering us with his very self until we come out the other side of it.  Only in true biblical faith do we find a God so actively present with his people as to shelter them within his very self.

Finally, in the midst of God’s sheltering we have Jesus the Lamb as our shepherd who leads us to living water.  The Trinity does not shelter us so that we can do our own thing.  The way to living water, water that heals, is in following Jesus Christ who sets us the example of being faithful even unto death and makes us able to be faithful.  Healing is another strong, more New Testament understanding of salvation.  The way of the cross is the way of new life in Christ.  This way is a total reorientation of our self’s, in fact, a dying to the self for it is in the self that this disease of sin abides.  The way of the cross is lived by actively seeking to love the Lord our God with our entire mind, being, heart, and capabilities and our neighbour as ourselves.  It’s training the mind to pray and meditate upon Scripture.  It’s letting our entire being, our self, be present to the Lord who knows us best.  It’s training our hearts to worship.  It’s using our capabilities to serve the Lord and one another.  It’s the obedience of wasteful, unconditional, and extravagant love, generosity, and hospitality for others.  

Back to where I started, we do have difficult painful questions that overshadow our lives and that, in most cases, seek to destroy not only our faith but our self’s also in the process unless we ask those questions in the context of God’s love for us.  What is the meaning of life when so much seems meaningless? Why does the Trinity let so much senseless evil persist in his Creation? In a nutshell, the disease of sin is a reality and the consequence of sin is having to live with the consequences of sin and it becomes evil. Why the Trinity doesn't act immediately to end it is a question still left hanging. Yet, do know that in the midst of our brokenness the Father is sheltering us with the presence of the Holy Spirit, God’s very self.  Therefore, stand up and follow the Lamb to the living water, the spring of healing that is in him; and join the multitude in worship and live your lives according to the small taste you’ve been given of the indescribably good salvation that is coming. Amen.