I’m continuing to preach from the book of Revelation. The Revelation or Apocalypse of John, is an unveiling, an unmasking of the truth of who God is and what God is doing to redeem the world.
Last Sunday we heard the books’ opening verses, written by John, a 1st century Jewish follower of Jesus, exiled for his faith on the island of Patmos in the Aegean Sea. The wild vision John recorded might sound strange to our modern ears – but to the seven churches he addresses in present day western Turkey – it was an encouraging word. The symbols and images resonated with these communities, every worshipful “Amen” to a living God gave them strength to resist the violence of persecution and the temptation of collusion with the Roman Empire.
After the opening greeting we heard last week – John begins to share his vision – he glimpses Jesus, who appears with wooly hair and flaming eyes and words like a double-edged sword – and in Jesus’ hands are the keys to Death, because Jesus has overcome the power of the violence and the grave and is risen, alive forever. Jesus goes on to share, in the next two chapters – a specific message of encouragement to each of the seven churches of Ephesus and Smyrna and Pergamum and Thyatira and Sardis and Philadelphia and Laodecia.
We are not living not in 1st century Asia Minor but in this 21st century Research Triangle yet Revelation’s core affirmation still rings true for our time and place. We are called to worship along with all of creation because God in Christ Jesus is victorious over the powers of death. That’s the heart of Revelation’s glorious vision, an invitation to worship the only One worthy of a song of praise that knows no end.
So imagine… the biggest, boldest, brightest, loudest, most-over the top, most-extra, most worshipful experience you’ve ever had in your life. If you could be there… gathered with tens of thousands of other people, screaming your head off for hours on end…what would you want it to be for? Would you drop thousands of dollars to snag coveted tickets to Beyonce’s Cowboy Carter tour this upcoming summer?
Would you travel thousands of miles and put on special sunglasses with hordes of others to see a total eclipse? Would you crowd onto a boat to glimpse a retreating glacier that might not survive your lifetime? Or maybe you’re imagining a worship service closer to home – with courtside seats at one of our hometown temples to basketball – dressed in your chosen shade of blue?
All I’m asking you to wonder about is liturgy – a fancy word to describe how public worship is structured. What is the shape of worship? What are the rules of the game? Why do these particular symbols and songs mean so much to the musicians and players and participants and fans?
And most importantly, what is the cause for the mayhem? Who is at the center of the stage?
Worship services carry with them an internal rhythm and meaning that makes sense if you’re a part of it. But if you’re not – and you stumble into a worship service not of your own choosing – they can seem utterly confusing, confounding, or fanatically irrational.
Reading Revelation might feel like stepping into the Dean Smith Dome or Cameron Indoor Stadium if you’ve never seen a game of basketball before. Reading Revelation might feel like the strange experience of being at a concert where everyone else is grooving to the music and you’ve got no idea even what the beat is.
Our text from Revelation 5 throws us right into the middle of a wild worship service. And this is typical of this kind of the ancient apocalyptic genre – the writer goes on a visionary journey to the heavenly realm to share back encouragement for communities on earth.
And the scene that John glimpses is God on God’s heavenly throne, complete with flashing lightning and rumbling thunder and flaming torches. Without ceasing, four creatures sing day and night, “holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come.” These four creatures represent the four main categories of animals in biblical creation – birds that fly and fish that swim, wild land animals, domestic land animals, and humanity.
To add to the holy mayhem, twenty-four elders bow down and worship God… 24, a symbolic number, calling to mind the 12 tribes of Israel and the 12 disciples of Jesus, all joining in praise to God. And God – who is mysteriously named as the One who sits on the throne – holds a scroll sealed with seven seals that no one in all of creation is found worthy to open or even look at.
No one is capable of cracking open and revealing the plans and purposes of God. And that moves John, who glimpses all of this, to weep.
Maybe John weeps – because he, like us, deep down craves a clear and powerful vision of what the future holds and how things will turn out. He longs for some kind of certainty of God’s sure proclamation – but at this point what he sees is our profound inability to know for certain what is God’s ultimate promise, he witnesses the unworthiness of any of us to open the scroll. And so he weeps.
But an elder interjects telling John, “Don’t weep. Look! The Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David has conquered, so he can open the scroll.” At last! Some clarity and strength! Jesus – the Lion of Judah, the most powerful hunter of the animal kingdom, the strong Messianic hero in the line of David – can finally set the world right again, open the scroll, and reveal with clarity the purposes of God!
So John looks – but what he sees is not the promised Lion but a Lamb. And not just a Lamb, but “a Lamb standing as if it had been slaughtered.”
Instead of the expected, the certain, the strong hero… it is Jesus, the Lamb, who has endured torture and death at the hands of a brutal empire is the only One worthy to open the scroll.
And Jesus is an incredibly weird Lamb here – described as having seven horns and seven eyes – possessing a divine power and knowledge. And so Jesus, the slaughtered and risen Lamb goes and takes the sealed scroll from the right hand of God, who sits on the throne – and at this moment – all creation erupts in a symphonic crescendo of praise.
And if all of this sounds incredibly weird, that’s because it is.
It makes no sense to place a symbol of smallness and vulnerability and suffering and weakness, this symbol of a Lamb who was slaughtered – at the center of the arena, the center of the basketball court, the center of the universe or the center of our lives, and proclaim that this is the One is the one worthy of all praise and devotion.
It makes no sense to say that it is this One – this Lamb – reveals the power and purpose and truth of God’s love in the world. And it makes no sense to John of Patmos either – he has reached the limits of language in attempting to describe the truth and beauty and majesty of all creation in all times and places singing at the top of their lungs a new song to God and to the Lamb, who is Jesus.
Worship of the living God takes us beyond our sensibilities to a place of truth. And the truth of God seems strange in a world that has embraced the lie of violence and greed.
But when we join our voices with the chorus of all creation – we are participating in a radical act of worship, in a public liturgy – giving our allegiance to Jesus, the only One who fully reveals the love of God. And this worship that all creation participates in – is not about showing up often to church or knowing the right harmonies to the hymns we sing or the having the right prayers to say before bedtime.
To proclaim with our voices and lives that, “Worthy is the Lamb that was slaughtered to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing for ever and ever!” is a life-altering, world-reorienting refrain.
To sing that Jesus, the Lamb is worthy to receive power – is to proclaim that the Roman Empire or the American Empire does not hold ultimate power. It is to proclaim that the resurrecting love of God is the ultimate power in the universe.
To sing that Jesus the Lamb is worthy to receive wealth – is to reinvision the currency of our lives and put our hope in the One who had no place to lie his head and who told the wealthy ruler to give all he had to the poor.
To sing that the Jesus Lamb is worthy to receive wisdom – is to embrace the carefree trust of the sparrow and the beauty of the flowers of the field, and to welcome the wisdom of the children and the bold dreams of our elders.
To sing that Jesus the Lamb is worthy to receive might – means that we will have to do a reckoning with what true strength means and that God’s victory in the world might often look more like a weird sheep than a proud Lion.
To sing that Jesus the Lamb is worthy to receive honor – is to honor in our homes and in this church community, all the discredited and cast-aside of our society – the poor, the sick, those without documentation, those struggling to hold their heads up above the waves of despair.
To sing that Jesus the Lamb is worthy to receive glory – means that we do not look away from pain or suffering or the wounds left on Jesus’ body or inflicted on anybody – but it means that we work to make a world that no longer preys upon the weak or crucifies the vulnerable.
Jesus the Lamb is worthy to receive the glory of God and our worship – because the strange, weird, mysterious and powerful Love of God has triumphed over death and empire and hopelessness.
God’s love looks like a Lamb who was slaughtered and has risen, and holds the story of this world’s redemption in his hand. God’s love looks like Jesus.
May our praise and worship of this God never cease.