Security

Revelation 5:1-14

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I’d like to say I’m a little bit concerned.  What about?  Economics, the cost of living, the cost of housing in particular.  I was already concerned about it a few years ago as the cost of real estate was in a huge bubble and…bubbles burst.  But the bubble has continued on biggering and biggering even now as we pull out of the pandemic.  People from urban centers are discovering they can work remotely from remote-ish places like ours.  They sell their million and a half or more dollar houses in the city and can pay way above asking price out here with quite a bit left over.  Meanwhile, we out here can’t compete.  The government says the bubble is a supply and demand issue; that there’s not enough housing and when supply is low and demand high, the price of the commodity will go up as things tend to sell to the highest bidder.  Tragically, there’s no regulation on the price of real estate.  Land and homes are something people can speculate on and make money.  

The only filter in this sewage treatment facility called the housing market seems to be whether the banks think the buyer can afford the inflated mortgage and no one ever says anything about the ethics or even the morality of something called a market inflated price.  I’m reminded of 2008 when the banks caused a lot of trouble for everybody but the very rich by letting people like you and me have high risk mortgages to buy that house that we really couldn’t afford.  The economy got tight and people started losing homes in a bad way.  It was brutal in the States but a little less brutal up here because thankfully the Canadian banking system is a bit more regulated, a bit.  

You may also remember that when all was said and done that the U.S. government’s Securities and Exchanges Commission charged Wall Street’s biggest investment firm, Goldman Sachs, with fraud.  To spell out the sickening nature of the crime committed; they speculated on people losing their homes, made money, and it was apparently legal to do that.  Goldman Sachs was charged with fraud because they weren’t telling other investors that the hedge funds involved, instead being a cushion to protect against other losses, was actually set up to lose money to get the insurers to pay the investors.  This sort of risky tricky business was one of the things that helped cause that nasty recession in 2008 that took years to recover from.

Honestly, I cannot understand why anybody with any moral or ethical sense would call the banking and investment business “securities and exchanges”.  There is nothing secure about it and the fact that people would speculate and indeed prosper on people losing homes just makes me sick.  Just because governments say they regulate this kind of stuff in no way makes it secure.  In this global free market economy, it seems the only certainty is that greed will find a way and that a few will prosper at the unfortunate expense of very many others.  Seriously, there are people who have made money off of this pandemic.  There are people making money on the supply chain issues that are causing inflation for us right now.  There are even people making money on the war in Ukraine and would dramatically benefit if it expanded.  Hardship for the many always seems to be lucrative for the few.  I’m really worried what’s going to happen when the current bubble bursts.  I don’t feel secure.

Well, the Book of Revelation is given to us to give us the security of knowing that the love and reign of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is at work behind the scenes of this twisted world in which we live and will in the end win out.  God will have his day and the culmination of it all is here beautifully summarized in the testimony of this elderly, exile named John the Beloved.  He says, “I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, saying, ‘To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!’”  Though it may appear to us that all Hell has broken loose in human history, what God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is doing in history will culminate in every creature everywhere, indeed all of creation, worshipping; worship that was, is and always will be undergirding creation.  The security that we have to lean on is that when all is said and done, whatever evil may befall us and it will, what God has in store for his creation is so unimaginably good that the universe and every creature therein will be spontaneously moved to worship.

This vision here in chapter five, believe it or not, is all about human history, indeed the history of creation, being integrally bound to Jesus Christ, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Lamb who was slain, God the Son become human, the one who is in himself the indestructible reconciliation of God and humanity, the one whose very existence as the union of God and humanity, says we are forgiven all things and all will be healed.  Jesus crucified and risen is the only one worthy to open the scroll which contains the will of God for his creation.  

So, what is the reality behind what is going on in this, our world, in which every person and every event is both good and evil?  Well, Jesus has conquered.  The cross was a victory.  It was a victory over sin and death that in the end reconciles us to God and cures our alienation from God.  The cross was a victory, a victory proved by Jesus’ resurrection.  Jesus has defeated sin and death and evil and is now calling forth a people who are to live as those freed from slavery to sin and death and who then proclaim and live out the Good News of Creation’s salvation in Christ Jesus.  This way of life is unconditional love, extravagant generosity, and unrestricted hospitality and it speaks loudly against the evil that’s in this world and threatens its hold on things.  But it comes with a cost.  Many faithful followers of Jesus have, do, and will die for him, lose jobs and friends, and lose spouses, and be ostracized from family on account of him. 

Jesus has bought, ransomed, redeemed people from slavery to sin and death to be the people of God and he did it, as John says, at the price of his own blood.  That’s not some sort of revivalist conversion gimmick to get us all to feel guilty because somebody died for us.  To the Hebrew, blood is the life of a person or animal.  The sin/atonement sacrifices in Old Testament times involved blood(life) passing through death by the death of a sacrificial slaughter to be sprinkled on the Ark of the Covenant where God was believed to be seated in heaven and then also on the one bringing the sacrifice.  This union in blood (life) between a person and God kept the Israelites rightly related to God.  So and thus, Jesus’ life passed through his own death and is now sprinkled on us as the Holy Spirit who unites and thus rightly relates us to God.  This union in the life/blood of Jesus is God’s means of defeating sin and death that we might now live knowing God personally, something which John in his Gospel called eternal life (Jn. 17:3).  God uniting himself to his sin diseased creation can have no other end than Creations healing.  Death will thus end in Resurrection.

Moving on, Jesus bought us so that we might be the people through whom God’s work of reconciling all people to himself takes place.  As God’s people, we are a kingdom and priests.  We are an organized realm spread all over this earth where God’s reign becomes evident in communities of faith readily practicing unconditional love, indiscriminate hospitality, and extravagant generosity.  And yes, the church has failed miserably at this.  Unfortunately, the church is still a fallen, human organization where good and evil happen.  But even still, within this institution called the church are the people of God through whom the reign of God breaks forth.  

Last week, I said Jesus has paid the price and made us to be priests who lead Creation’s worship of its Maker.  We have immediate access to God.  We proclaim forgiveness.  We pray.  We worship.  We are those who give voice to the worship of God that undergirds all of creation.  When all hell is breaking forth on earth, we are those who hear and see and sense the worship that is going on in and behind everything, the worship that transcends time and place.  This worship confronts and subverts the powers that be. 

You know, and here I will wrap up, what’s behind the free-market economy and driving it exists in the hidden, speculative realm of conspiracy theorists because it has to remain hidden to do the evil that it does.  In this Revelation of Jesus Christ in the Book of Revelation God is freely making known what he is doing to save his creation and us with it. It may sound lame or far-fetched to say that reality is that God the Father loves his creation and us so much that God the Son became human and was crucified to defeat the powers of sin, death, and evil; and by this God has purchased people from all peoples by giving us the gift of God the Holy Spirit that we may be God’s kingdom and priests; and though Hell may break lose now in the end every creature on earth and in heaven will worship God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in New Creation.  

It may sound lame and far-fetched to profess that God’s love and will are where our security is, but…look at the alternative.  Do we live and die for the security of securities and exchanges where greedy people full of power lust do things like speculate and make money on people losing their homes because they can and, God help us, because they can get away with it.  Not me.  I look around and sense and listen to the powerful, peaceful calm of the Creation at worship and I join in saying, “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!  To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!”  Let God’s creation say, “Amen”.  Amen.

Then I Heard Every Creature in Heaven and on Earth

Text: Revelation 5:1-14

In the wake of the near total collapse of the U.S. banking industry in 2008 the U.S. government went looking for culprits to blame, culprits who took advantage of the U.S. Government's negligence to appropriately regulate the banking industry in ways that protect the little people. It took two years for the U.S. government’s Securities and Exchanges Commission to finally find a culprit and it was Goldman Sachs, Wall Street’s biggest investment firm whom they charged only with fraud.

Oddly, catching people at Goldman Sachs in a criminal act was a bit of a shocker on the streets. We the investors like to assume that the biggest, wealthiest, and most powerful investment firm in the world who has a hand in just about everybody's financial security in one way or another would be or must be somehow impeccably honest. In this world of "Onceler's" who go on biggering and BIGGERING and BIGGERING at all cost, why would we assume that the biggest of the big guys got there honestly and without eating a lot of puppies in this dog eat dog world. We are truly naive when it comes to the assumptions we make about the people and the institutions in whom we must place ultimate trust. We so often do so without question particularly if it appears that there is a better than average payoff.

So, what did the big dog do? Well, it appears that another company came to Goldman Sachs to get them to create a hedge fund in mortgages at the time when the housing market was starting to collapse. This other company knew the hedge fund would loose heavily and so they bought insurance to protect themselves and when the inevitable collapse happened they wound up making a lot of money; i.e., they were speculating on people losing their homes and made a lot of money doing it; and, its apparently legal to do that. Goldman Sachs was charged with fraud because they weren’t telling other investors that this hedge fund was actually set up to lose money. You see, hedge funds are supposed to protect against losses. This sort of risky tricky business was one of the puppy-eating practices in the banking industry that helped cause the recession from which the global economy is still recovering. One wonders if the collapse of the housing market in the U.S. would have been less devastating if the world's biggest wealth generator had done more to protect homeowners rahtering than appearing to have had an interest in wanting to see the housing market collapse. Nevertheless, a handful of very wealthy and powerful big dogs profited from it while everyone else suffered.

To rant a little more, for the life of me I cannot understand why anybody with any moral or ethical sense would call the investment business “securities and exchanges”. There is nothing secure about it and the fact that people would speculate and indeed prosper on people losing something as fundamental to their existence as their jobs and their homes just makes me want to vomit. Just because governments say they regulate these exchanges in no way makes them secure. We live in the midst of and are vulnerable to a global economy in which the only certainty is that greed and power lust will find a way and that a few will inevitably prosper at the unfortunate expense of the multitude of others. Indeed, Capitalism needs greed to thrive.

Speaking for myself as a puppy who is ultimately powerless before power and greed, I tend to become a bit of a conspiracy theorist and ask what or who is behind it all. It is staggering that a couple of big and powerful Wall Street wolves can have the means to nearly destroy the global economy and yet profit from it. Should we call the whole business Satanic or evil? It certainly seems that way. Yet, let's not be so brazen. There is good behind it all too. The global free market economy has proven thus far to be the best way to raise the living standards of all peoples. The one thing we can say for sure is that this global economy is fallen just as we each are. It is good and evil at the same time, just as we each are. But anyway, what is the really real reality behind this economy in which we are forced to find security? Is it truly free, simply blown by the winds of “market forces”? Or, are there really some people, just a handful of people behind it who make a game of making it do what they want? Who can know?

Well, in the face of global economic insecurities and exchanges the Book of Revelation leads us to make the bold assertion that the will and reign of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is ultimately driving the reality behind the world in which we live. Though it may appear to us that all Hell has broken loose in human history, what the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is doing in history will culminate in every creature every where, and indeed all of creation, worshipping him in wonder, love, and praise. The culmination of history is beautifully summarized in the testimony of this elderly, exile named John the Beloved. He says, “I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, saying, ‘To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honour and glory and might forever and ever!’” The security that we have to lean on in the midst of overwhelming insecurities is that no matter whatever evil may befall us (and it will) when all is said and done what the Trinity has in store for his creation is so unimaginably good that the universe and every creature therein will be spontaneously moved to worship Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

This “vision” here in chapter five of the Revelation is about human history, indeed the history of all creation, that it is integrally bound to Jesus Christ, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Lamb who was slain, God the Son become human, the one who is in his very being the indestructible reconciliation of God and humanity (Col. 1:22), the one whose very existence says we are forgiven of the evil we have done and will be healed of this disease of Sin which perpetrates Evil and leads only to Death. Jesus crucified and risen, as John the Beloved says, is the only one worthy to open the scroll which contains the will of the Trinity for his creation in history. Human history is integrally bound to Jesus Christ. Only Jesus can reveal and effect the will of the Trinity. He is the Risen Lord of the universe. The Apostle Paul says that he is "the icon of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. All things in the heavens and on the earth were created by him, things visible and things invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers. All things were created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things are held together so that he himself may become the first in everything." (Col. 1:15-18).

So, what is the reality behind what is going on in this, our world, in which every person and every event is both good and evil? The question might be better stated as who is the reality behind this fallen reality because everything that goes on in this universe is integrally tied to him. Reality is that Jesus the Lord has conquered so let us worship. The Trinity gave Sin, Death, Evil, and the Evil One enough rope and we hung the Incarnate Lord of the universe instead of ourselves. Yet, the cross was a victory. It was a victory over Sin and Death that in the end reconciles us to the Trinity curing us of our alienation from him, each other and the whole Creation. The cross was a victory, a victory proved when God the Father in the power of the Holy Spirit raised Jesus from the dead publicly declaring him to be the Son and making a public spectacle of all other powers. There was nothing private about the resurrection, no "believe it and you will see it". Indeed, the bodily resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth is better attested than nearly any other event of the first century. Jesus was raised and therefore has defeated Sin and Death and Evil at its own game. He absorbed it to himself and died with it. God the Son, became fallen human being, sinful human flesh and suffered death yet subjecting it all to the power of his indestructible life (Heb. 7:16). He took Sin and Death into death and the Father ever loving, ever faithful did not leave him there. Rather, in the power of the bond of the Trinity's indestructible relationship within himself the Father, by the powerful power of love raised Jesus the Son from death still incarnate, still with a human body and the scars to prove it. Jesus is the firstborn from the dead and the Seed of the New Creation. In him, through him, as him Humanity has been saved.

Now, in the power of the Holy Spirit Jesus is calling forth people to live in his resurrected life, his life that has passed through death; to live freed from slavery to sin and death and to proclaim the Good News of Creation’s salvation. He calls us forth from the tomb of Adam to speak prophetically and to live prophetically against Sin, Death, and Evil in this world even at the expense of their own lives. In the way of the cross lies the reality of the New Life in Christ.

Jesus has bought, ransomed, redeemed people from the slavery of sin to be people of God and he did it at the price of his own blood. My saying "the price of his blood" is not some sort of revivalist gimmick to get us all to feel guilty. To the Hebrew, the blood was the life of a person or animal. On the annually recurring Day of Atonement blood from a bull and a goat sacrificially slaughtered was life that had passed through the death. The High Priest took that blood-life that had passed through death and sprinkled it on the people, all over the Temple, and finally on the Mercy Seat which was the lid of he Ark of the Covenant where the Presence of he LORD abided so that the people and the LORD were united in that blood-life that had passed through death. Also on that day, the High Priest would whisper the sins of the people upon another goat, the scapegoat, who would bear them off into the wilderness where it was certain to be devoured. Accordingly, Jesus gave his life once and for all, passed through death, and has sprinkled us with the Holy Spirit uniting us to himself and bringing us to share in his relationship with the Father. He absorbed to himself our sin and death and bore it out into the wilderness of death where it has been destroyed. No longer shall we fear it.

Moving on, Jesus bought us so that we might be the people through whom the Trinity's will is being done on earth as it is in heaven; God’s people. As God’s people, we are a kingdom of priests called to lead the entire Creation in worship. We are an organized realm of blood-life sprinkled all over this earth through whem the reign of God is becoming evident. Unfortunately, there is a lot in the news that tells the world that the church is still a fallen, human organization where good and evil happen; but even still, within this institution called the church, the reign of God breaks forth.

I once went to a healing service at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian in Brampton. The Trinity actually healed people. Some physically, some emotionally; people got healed – in a Presbyterian church of all places. This wasn’t at some snake-handling-quasi-faith-healing-freaky-deaky-TV preacher-for profit revival. It was Saint Andrew’s, the Presbyterian big steeple in Brampton. Jesus is alive and reigns and his reign is breaking through in the church despite the church!

Jesus has paid the price and made us to be priests who lead Creation’s worship. We have immediate access to God. We proclaim forgiveness. We pray. We worship. In this fallen world we are those who say “worthy is the lamb who was slain” and we do so boldly in the face of those who slaughter the innocents for greed and power lust.

Wrapping up, what’s behind the free market economy is in the speculative realm of conspiracy theorists because it has to remain hidden to do the evil that it does. Yet, the Revelation of Jesus Christ, the Who of the What that the Trinity is doing to save his creation and us with it is made known freely. It may sound lame or far-fetched to say that reality is that God the Father loves his creation and us so much that God the Son willingly became human and was crucified to defeat the powers of Sin, Death, and Evil through death and resurrection; and that he has purchased people from among all peoples by the gift of God the Holy Spirit to be God’s kingdom and his priests. In the end every creature on earth and in heaven will worship Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in New Creation. It may sound weak and far-fetched to profess that the Trinity's love and will are where our security is, but…look at the alternative. Do we live and die for the security of securities and exchanges where greedy people full of power lust do things like speculate and make money on people losing their homes because they can and because they can get away with it? Not me. I say, “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honour and glory and blessing! To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honour and glory and might forever and ever!” Let us take up the way of the cross and in living proclamation live the abundant life of Jesus' and his empty tomb. Let the whole creation say, “Amen”. Amen.