April 21, 2013 – Psalm 23; Revelation 7:9-17
Psalm 23; Revelation 7:9-17
Follow the Fluffy
Fourth Sunday of Easter – April 21, 2013
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
So, really: where is this whole Revelation thing going?
For those of you who’ve been reading along and filling in the gaps at home,
things have gotten a little weird this week.
Last week we heard that Fluffy, the slaughtered but standing lamb, AKA Jesus,
was the only one with the authority to open the scroll with the seven seals.
Opening the scroll will lead the world into God’s intended future for it.
Opening the scroll will bring about the events that bring about the fulfillment of
God’s intentions for this world.
Jesus is the one who can bring the intended future into being.
Between last week and this week, Jesus the lamb begins to breaks the seals on the scroll.
This is when all hell breaks loose.
Breaking the first four seals gives a vision of the famous four horsemen of the apocalypse.
They are nasty, and they represent the four awful qualities of the Roman Empire:
conquest, war, famine, and death.
The fifth seal gives a vision of those who refuse to play Rome’s game and
worship its emperor: the vision is of Christian martyrs who are persecuted for
worshipping Jesus and the God who raised him rather than Caesar.
The sixth seal gives a vision of earthquake and natural disaster,
as if creation itself were reeling from the inhumaneness of Rome.
The sun becomes black, and even the lights of the heavens are put out as
the stars fall from the sky.
And then, and then, just as we expect even more destruction with the breaking of the
seventh seal, John pauses for a moment,
and instead of telling us about the breaking of the seventh seal, transports us to a vision of
the heavenly throne room, where God and the slaughtered but standing lamb Jesus,
are being worshipped.
And with John, what we see there are people of every tribe and nation,
of every race and colour, of every tongue and ability, women and men,
rich and poor, slave and free: and they’re all worshipping God and the lamb.
There is no conquest, and no war, and no famine, and no death.
There is no suffering and no destruction.
But there is singing.
Salvation [that is, the well-being of all things] belongs to God and the lamb.
Blessing and honour and wisdom and thanksgiving be to our God forever and ever. Amen
These, we learn, are the ones who have come through the great ordeal, the tribulation.
Yes: they may be those who paid for worshipping God and the lamb rather than
Caesar with their lives.
But they are also those who didn’t accommodate themselves to an unjust system.
They are those who refused to worship what Rome worshipped:
conquest, intimidation, force, violence.
They are those who refused to eat meat sacrificed to idols at all the best business dinners
where all the best deals were made.
They are those who remained faithful to the God who intends mercy for all and manna for all,
and paid for it with difficulties, degradation, and sometimes death.
John’s vision in this section assures us that violence, and threat, and intimidation,
and destruction are not the end.
John’s vision assures us that God does not will destruction.
John’s vision assures us that throughout everything that the saints suffer,
Jesus is still holding the scroll.
The slaughtered but standing one still stands, and he stands with those who stand with him.
In every commentary I’ve read, I have not read one that makes this most basic observation:
the scroll is not yet opened.
Usually commentators say that the four horsemen, the slaying of the faithful,
and the earthquakes and the destruction are part of God’s plan in the scroll.
But the scroll is not yet opened.
The good news is that Jesus is still and always will be holding the scroll,
and despite the worst that his followers suffer, he remains in charge,
and finally, finally, the scroll will be opened and
God’s intention for this world will be complete.
Through the difficulty and through the destruction, we are not abandoned,
although it may often feel like that.
Jesus is with us, and in the midst of all the pressures to accommodate ourselves to
the culture around us, despite all the pressures to think it doesn’t matter,
to not care about the world God made, its creatures, and
the vulnerable ones who surround us: despite all those pressures,
John’s vision encourages us to persevere in our witness.
Because God is in charge.
Because God has a plan.
God has entrusted that plan to Jesus, the slaughtered but standing lambkin:
God has entrusted the plan to Fluffy and his lamb power:
the power of self-giving love that
will overcome all the violence, all the death, all the mourning, all the addiction,
all the poverty, all the apathy, and all the destruction and lead us to
the full vision of the scroll.
I believe that what is actually contained in the scroll is in the last two chapters of Revelation:
John’s vision of a renewed earth where crying will be no more, and
hunger and mourning and death will be no more: that is God’s plan.
When war will cease and instead all nations will experience
the healing of being knit together in love: that is God’s plan.
When generosity will reign instead of greed: that is God’s plan.
John wants us to take our place in this story, and persist with all our might to that day.
That’s why he’s written this strange letter to us.
To invite us to leave behind the realm of Rome, and follow the lamb,
who becomes our shepherd in today’s vision, in an Exodus from all of that into
a new vision and new day.
Here, in the midst of so much difficulty, John wants us to follow the Fluffy.
In both John’s Gospel and the book of Revelation, Jesus is sheep as well as shepherd.
And maybe it’s helpful to know that the shepherd who is leading us knows what it’s like
to be a sheep.
We can trust Jesus, the shepherd and lamb, to lead us because he’s been there and done that.
He knows that where he leads us will not always be easy.
He knows firsthand about the difficulties and he knows firsthand about the tribulations.
But because he’s been through it all, he can lead us well.
He’s in charge and he holds the scroll of God’s promised future.
He can break the seventh seal.
When the seventh seal is finally broken, you sort of prepare yourself for
more chaos, more destruction, and more tribulation.
How could it get worse, you wonder, after the four awful horsemen,
the persecution of the faithful, and the devastations of the first six seals?
But what accompanies the breaking of the seventh seal is nothing if not surprising:
What accompanies the breaking of the seventh seal is a pure and wondrous silence.
Pure silence.
The silence that is a rebuke to all the noise.
The silence of the scroll.
The silence of peace.
It is the silence that expresses confidence in the God with whom
all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of all things shall be well.
It is the silence of the still waters and
it is the silence in the midst of the storm.
It is the silence of the table that is set so beautifully in the midst of
all that would confound and distract us.
It is the silence with which God listens to all our woes.
It is the silence of love.
It is the place of peace to which the shepherd lamb seeks to lead us.
It is not easy to be a follower of Jesus.
John in prison on Patmos knew that.
The people he was writing to knew that.
And we know that.
Jesus is always going to lead us out of our comfort zones for the sake of his mission to
love bless and bring to healing this whole world and every person in it.
And that is not easy.
And yet the promise of John’s vision is that Jesus is the alpha and omega,
the beginning and the end, the first and last who wants to lead us out of Empire and
into God’s reign.
He leads out in front of us, yes: but he also follows along behind us.
See: on this Christian journey we’re on, Jesus and his great love surround us.
Yes, says the 23rd Psalm, the shepherd leads us into green pastures and
leads us beside still waters and
leads us to a table he has set for us in the midst of our enemies and
in the midst of difficulty and devastation of the first six seals.
But, you note, he also follows us with goodness and mercy and love:
Surely, goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.
Only, it doesn’t exactly say that in Hebrew.
What it says it much more active:
surely goodness and mercy shall pursue us, is what it says,
surely goodness and mercy shall hound us,
surely goodness and mercy shall just never ever give up on us until,
until, finally, when the seventh seal is broken and the scroll is opened and
God’s intended future of healing and life is fully complete:
finally, goodness and mercy will catch us, and never let us go.
So with God’s love ahead and God’s love behind, I invite you this morning to come to
the beautiful table that is set before us with healing and strength and lovingkindness.
Come in the midst of all that would harm us.
Come in the midst of confusion and despair.
Come in the midst of apathy and guilt.
Come to the table that has been set for you.
Receive a foretaste of all that is to come as we feed one another, care for one another,
give to one another and receive from one another.
Come: receive the life that has emerged from death.
Come to where the whole thing is going.
And together let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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