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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.
