I was talking to a friend this week about
lists.
Lists aren’t my thing,
at
least not like they are for some people.
I’ve been trying to use them more lately
because
I find that the older I get
the
fewer things I seem to be able to hold in my head at the same time.
Still, there’s room for improvement.
I could probably stand to have a list of
announcements
that I’ve been asked to make during worship,
instead
of relying on my memory
and
then realizing somewhere around the first hymn
that
I forgot to share something that needed to be said.
As we were talking,
I
confessed that when I do make a list of things that need to get done,
I
tend to jump on the easy things right away.
That way I can feel like I’ve done
something,
even
when I haven’t really done all that much.
The friend I was talking to was just the
opposite.
She dives right into the things that are a
little harder,
so
that she can get them out of the way.
Without the more difficult tasks hanging
over her,
she’s
free to enjoy the easier things she has to do.
That makes a lot of sense.
When it comes to reading scripture
that
doesn’t tend to be our habit.
Most of the time when we open our bibles,
if we open our bibles,
it’s
to find something comforting and uplifting-
something
that will inspire us and make us feel right with God.
We make a bee-line for things like the 23rd
Psalm
and
the Beatitudes.
As a consequence,
the
book of the bible that we rarely get around to,
the
one we avoid as much as we can
is
Revelation.
It’s just so strange
and
fantastic
and
violent-
seriously
violent.
Maybe if we close one eye,
and
just read the sections like the passage we heard this morning,
we
can find something inspirational.
That part about God wiping every tear,
that
sounds good.
There have been a lot of tears shed this
week.
It started with marathon bombings in
Boston,
followed
by the devastating explosion of a fertilizer plant in Texas,
and
concluded with a shootout,
a
manhunt,
and
the eventual capture
of
one of the bombing suspects.
And that’s just the national news.
Many more local,
personal
tragedies
played
out this week as well.
Thursday night came word of the untimely
death
of
a local young man
who
just graduated from East High last year.
With all that,
we
might very well go scrambling for something in scripture
to
make us feel better about it all,
something
to comfort us in our grief and distress.
We saw it the Sunday following the attacks
of September 11,
people
looking for answers,
people
looking for solace.
I saw it this past Thursday night,
young
people struggling to answer the question,
“why?”
Why this young man,
with
so much life ahead of him?
We can turn to platitudes,
we
can turn to gentle and reassuring words.
But somehow it feels inadequate,
somehow
it just doesn’t seem to rise to the level
of
the grief,
anger,
and
dread that fills us.
Earlier this week I was talking to someone
about the marathon bombings
and
we confessed to each other
that
we had been deliberately avoiding
much of the news coming out of Boston.
You know,
it
isn’t as though there aren’t bombings like this
that
take place on a regular basis in other parts of the world.
For over two years the nation of Syria and
its people
have
been quite literally torn apart by the violence there.
But that’s nearly half a world away.
Boston is just one time zone over.
Boston is just a little too close for
comfort.
In talking about it,
we
realized that we were doing what we could to maintain the distance,
to
keep the pain and the fear at arms-length
to
keep it from touching us.
Spiritually, that’s been the strategy
that
more reason-minded Christians have employed
in
dealing with Revelation.
This is a book that is filled with
calamity.
Huge, hyperbolic metaphors
filled
with swords,
blood,
violence
and
disaster.
Beasts rise up,
stars
fall from the sky.
It’s all just too much for folks like us
who
like to keep our world
a
little more orderly than that.
So we keep it at arms-length
and
look down our noses at the overly literal,
and
heavily embellished readings of this book
by
people like Hal Lindsey
and
Tim LeHaye
that
would have us cower in fear
at
the suggestion that we might be left behind.
That may be all well and good,
Until
the violence,
bloodshed,
and
disaster find us,
until
they get past our stiff arm
and
are only a hair’s breadth away
and
we find ourselves staring into the chaotic void
that
opens up and threatens to swallow us.
When that happens,
suddenly
the sharp contrast
and
dark strokes
of
a world falling apart don’t look all that crude any more.
When that happens,
we
recognize something
that
Revelation has been trying to show us all along-
that
there is a spiritual battle going on;
that
the powers and principalities of this world
are
nothing short of demonic.
How else do you explain a 19-year-old kid-
a
KID-
who
by all accounts was a polite,
good-natured
student athlete;
how
else do you explain someone like that
getting
swept up in a violent plot
to
destroy innocent lives?
How else do you explain the kind of evil
that
whispers in the dark
and
has someone believe
that
the only way to end the pain that they are feeling
is
to take their own life?
How else do you explain something as
insidious as crystal meth,
or
cancer,
or
the kind of profit-first, people-second thinking
that
leads to the explosion of deep water oil platforms
and
fertilizer plants?
It may not look the way they show it in the
movies.
It may not come with scary make-up
and
state-of-the-art digital effects,
but
make no mistake the battle is real-
and
we are fooling ourselves if we think that our money,
our
position,
our
education,
our
healthy lifestyle,
any
of it can protect us
from
becoming collateral damage
in
a world bent on its own destruction.
And that’s where Revelation has something
else to show us,
something
beyond the frightening
and
violent imagery
that
it is known for.
Prior to our reading this morning,
the
seven seals on the scroll of God
have
been progressively broken by the slain Lamb,
the
only one worthy to take the scroll.
As each is broken,
the
destruction of the world intensifies.
We cannot sit and pretend it isn’t
happening.
To see what God would have us see
means
that we cannot turn a blind eye
to
the pain and struggle of the world around us.
But then something extraordinary happens-
we
are back before the throne of God,
and
witness a crowd beyond number,
a
crowd of people from every nation,
tribe,
people
and
language.
There is no national exceptionalism here-
only
the vast sea of humanity
that
has known the hardship of this spiritual war
that
knows no boundary.
As a song I’ve been singing recently goes,
“Do
you hear the people sing/ lost in the valley of the night/
it is the music of a people who are rising to
the light/
for the wretched of the earth/ there is a
flame that never dies/
even the darkest night will end and the sun
will rise.”
Seven seals, and by the time the seventh is
broken
they
stand before the throne of God,
robed
in white
and
waving palm branches,
singing
and worshipping God.
Now I don’t want to lay on the guilt here-
it’s
an occupational hazard sometimes,
but
don’t you see what this is about?
In the midst of the spiritual war that
rages around us,
in the midst of a world that is almost
certainly doing battle for our souls,
we
need worship.
It isn’t just something to do when we can
get around to it,
if
we wake up on time,
before
we go to brunch and get on with our lives.
Worship is the essential practice in the
heat of battle
that
helps to secure where our truest loyalties lie,
but
more than that,
worship
claims us and assures us
when
it begins to look like we’re losing,
when
the bombs go off
and
the death count rises
and
we get the phone call or the text
that
causes our hearts to drop;
worship
is the essential practice of a people
who
are rising to the light,
who
will not be claimed by the darkness
but
who, as the confession puts it,
“belong
body and soul to our loving savior Jesus Christ.”
In
the act of worship
we
find our shelter in the storm that rages around us.
In the act of worship
we
feast on the bread of life
in
a world hungry for meaning.
In the act of worship
we
are led to the water that gives us life
and
washes us clean.
In the act of worship
we
return to the source of our lives
and
shout for joy even in the midst of sorrow and grief,
that
even when it feels like the battle is lost-
the
war has already been won.
Alleluia, amen.
