Continuing the Celebration?
Text: Revelation 5:11-14
I need to eat a bit of crow this week. Last week I remarked as to how rare it is that the Book of Revelation shows up in the three year cycle of readings. I said that statistically 1.6% of all of the readings in the lectionary come from the last book of the Bible… while by comparison 20% of the Book of Praise draws its inspiration from the same source. Strictly speaking, that’s still entirely true… it’s just as valid… but what I failed to remember is that the readings show up in clusters. You might have noticed that this morning’s New Testament reading also comes from Revelation… and so is next week’s, and the week after that… and well… pretty much every Sunday clear on up to May 16th… the week before Pentecost. So not only does the lectionary have just a handful of places that Revelation shows up, but it clusters most of them together in one place!
Unfortunately it adds to the challenge, because frankly, many mainline ministers aren’t all that prepared to preach on Revelation as a one-shot kind of thing, much less a whole series of sermons on that mysterious book back there. In some ways, I’ve painted myself into a bit of a corner on this, given that I have constantly say that Revelation is not a book that we should fear or dismiss. In fact, with the possible exception of the Psalms, no other book celebrates the wonder of God in quite the same way… and the readings over the next several weeks all hit on those moments of celebration that Revelation has.
What heard from Revelation earlier was the conclusion to a scene of heavenly worship, that re-introduces us to Jesus in a way that is actually quite jarring, but not in the way that we might expect. Chapters four and five introduce us to this magnificent scene of heavenly worship that again has influenced so many of our hymns of faith. The symbols are attempting to describe something that is truly indescribable It brings up these wondrous images the throne, symbolic of God’s authority, but it does so by using words to describe an impressionistic style painting. It is less helpful to take them literally, and far more important to see how the symbols would encourage the early church.
There is this wonderful set up early in chapter five, that describes Jesus in metaphorical ways… the one who is worthy to bring order to chaos. He is described in these powerful, majestic terms… “The lion of the tribe of Judah… the Root of David…” the one who conquered… This is an extraordinarily powerful image. For those of us who grew up with CS Lewis’ Narnia series, Aslan the Lion wears this mantle so well… The theatrical film release not only presents this image of a Lion in all of its grandeur, Aslan is presented as being much larger than an actual adult male African Lion.
But in the very next paragraph, after this grand introduction of the Lion of Judah, Christ then appears not as a Lion, but as a tiny lamb… but John makes a play on words here that we totally miss in translation. We think of a lamb as being small and vulnerable… but in the language that John uses to describe this lamb image, it is as if he is describing the smallest and most vulnerable image of a lamb as possible. If anything, John describes something that we would best understand as a desperately cute lamb plush toy… a desperately cute lamb plush toy that is imbued and entrusted with all of God’s power and wisdom.
It’s a deliberate description, because it shows that God as his most vulnerable, in the life and work of Jesus Christ, is more powerful than anything the world and its powers can throw at it.
This is what all the celebrating is about. God even at the weakest and most vulnerable is infinitely power powerful than all the powers-that-be in the world and in the cosmos. Even the most powerful forces that seem to be present in the universe, chaos and death, ultimately have no power to stop what God has done in Jesus Christ.
For the early church trying to survive in some extraordinarily dark times, these were powerful words of encouragement.
It also sets things into perspective for us. We now live in a time where the church no longer enjoys the position of power and privilege it once had. In fact, as a church we are still coming to terms with how we abused that power and privilege, and are living with the consequence of becoming less relevant in western society. If anything Revelation is a reminder of how corrupting being in the midst of power and privilege can be.
In practical terms, Revelation is actually a call for optimism and encouragement when everyone else sees doom and gloom. For us in the 21st Century North American mainline church, we tend to look at aging congregations and dwindling numbers, and we are panicking. We suddenly start looking around for a quick-fix solution that will suddenly restore our churches to the glory days that some of us might remember when we were children, where churches played a much more central role. We blame sports… we blame a permissive society, we blame lots of things… but we don’t take responsibility for the one thing that we can… how we respond to these changing circumstances in faith and trust that ultimately God is the one who is in control.
This panic is entirely misplaced… because we are worrying about something we should not be worried about: the preservation of the institutional church. Our faith is not about institutional preservation. ...which unfortunately power and privilege engenders. Our faith is about celebrating the power of God in life, and that no earthly power, not even death itself is capable of destroying that. If we can let go of this institutional preservation neurosis, we then free ourselves to let ourselves be the people that Christ is calling us to be.
We shouldn't be about what will help us “survive” as a church but what we can do to actually live out our lives in hope and faith. Oddly enough, if we become less concerned about our own survival and more about living, reflecting and celebrating God in life, we become what Christ calls us to be. We become people unafraid of death, and ready to embrace and live out our lives as they truly are: a gift of God.
We are in the midst of the Easter season… and I think the danger for us is that we’ve taken it all in stride, as we always do every spring… It has become routine, and it really shouldn’t be. Maybe it’s time for us to embrace this season for how truly revolutionary it really is. Even though it is something that all of us will face, Easter proclaims that death does not have the final say over who we are, and who we can be. But it is one thing to talk abstractly about resurrection, and quite another to live it out. Part of living out resurrection is to not be afraid of what the future holds, but to trust that God is very much in control of that. When we get into institutional survival mode, we can really lose sight of that.x
But here’s something to consider: Of all the churches and congregations that Paul helped found as part of the early church, how many of them are still around? Do we actually have a congregation somewhere in Greece or Turkey that still worships in the same building that Paul or John of Patmos once did? Do those congregations still exist? If you were wondering… no they don’t… earthquakes, natural disasters, and invasions by marauding Visigoths, Huns, and Vandals made sure of that. Yet what lives on is not the individual congregations, but the ongoing gospel message of hope. It’s not the institution where the reality of the resurrection lives, but in the hearts and minds of the people who follow Christ... who try to make the world a better place in his name... and remains a message as relevant today as when it echoed in the hearts of that first handful of followers.
It is through our continuing the celebration of Easter that the hope of resurrection really lives... and I hope that it continues on in us!
Happy Easter.
Amen.
I need to eat a bit of crow this week. Last week I remarked as to how rare it is that the Book of Revelation shows up in the three year cycle of readings. I said that statistically 1.6% of all of the readings in the lectionary come from the last book of the Bible… while by comparison 20% of the Book of Praise draws its inspiration from the same source. Strictly speaking, that’s still entirely true… it’s just as valid… but what I failed to remember is that the readings show up in clusters. You might have noticed that this morning’s New Testament reading also comes from Revelation… and so is next week’s, and the week after that… and well… pretty much every Sunday clear on up to May 16th… the week before Pentecost. So not only does the lectionary have just a handful of places that Revelation shows up, but it clusters most of them together in one place!
Unfortunately it adds to the challenge, because frankly, many mainline ministers aren’t all that prepared to preach on Revelation as a one-shot kind of thing, much less a whole series of sermons on that mysterious book back there. In some ways, I’ve painted myself into a bit of a corner on this, given that I have constantly say that Revelation is not a book that we should fear or dismiss. In fact, with the possible exception of the Psalms, no other book celebrates the wonder of God in quite the same way… and the readings over the next several weeks all hit on those moments of celebration that Revelation has.
What heard from Revelation earlier was the conclusion to a scene of heavenly worship, that re-introduces us to Jesus in a way that is actually quite jarring, but not in the way that we might expect. Chapters four and five introduce us to this magnificent scene of heavenly worship that again has influenced so many of our hymns of faith. The symbols are attempting to describe something that is truly indescribable It brings up these wondrous images the throne, symbolic of God’s authority, but it does so by using words to describe an impressionistic style painting. It is less helpful to take them literally, and far more important to see how the symbols would encourage the early church.
There is this wonderful set up early in chapter five, that describes Jesus in metaphorical ways… the one who is worthy to bring order to chaos. He is described in these powerful, majestic terms… “The lion of the tribe of Judah… the Root of David…” the one who conquered… This is an extraordinarily powerful image. For those of us who grew up with CS Lewis’ Narnia series, Aslan the Lion wears this mantle so well… The theatrical film release not only presents this image of a Lion in all of its grandeur, Aslan is presented as being much larger than an actual adult male African Lion.
But in the very next paragraph, after this grand introduction of the Lion of Judah, Christ then appears not as a Lion, but as a tiny lamb… but John makes a play on words here that we totally miss in translation. We think of a lamb as being small and vulnerable… but in the language that John uses to describe this lamb image, it is as if he is describing the smallest and most vulnerable image of a lamb as possible. If anything, John describes something that we would best understand as a desperately cute lamb plush toy… a desperately cute lamb plush toy that is imbued and entrusted with all of God’s power and wisdom.
It’s a deliberate description, because it shows that God as his most vulnerable, in the life and work of Jesus Christ, is more powerful than anything the world and its powers can throw at it.
This is what all the celebrating is about. God even at the weakest and most vulnerable is infinitely power powerful than all the powers-that-be in the world and in the cosmos. Even the most powerful forces that seem to be present in the universe, chaos and death, ultimately have no power to stop what God has done in Jesus Christ.
For the early church trying to survive in some extraordinarily dark times, these were powerful words of encouragement.
It also sets things into perspective for us. We now live in a time where the church no longer enjoys the position of power and privilege it once had. In fact, as a church we are still coming to terms with how we abused that power and privilege, and are living with the consequence of becoming less relevant in western society. If anything Revelation is a reminder of how corrupting being in the midst of power and privilege can be.
In practical terms, Revelation is actually a call for optimism and encouragement when everyone else sees doom and gloom. For us in the 21st Century North American mainline church, we tend to look at aging congregations and dwindling numbers, and we are panicking. We suddenly start looking around for a quick-fix solution that will suddenly restore our churches to the glory days that some of us might remember when we were children, where churches played a much more central role. We blame sports… we blame a permissive society, we blame lots of things… but we don’t take responsibility for the one thing that we can… how we respond to these changing circumstances in faith and trust that ultimately God is the one who is in control.
This panic is entirely misplaced… because we are worrying about something we should not be worried about: the preservation of the institutional church. Our faith is not about institutional preservation. ...which unfortunately power and privilege engenders. Our faith is about celebrating the power of God in life, and that no earthly power, not even death itself is capable of destroying that. If we can let go of this institutional preservation neurosis, we then free ourselves to let ourselves be the people that Christ is calling us to be.
We shouldn't be about what will help us “survive” as a church but what we can do to actually live out our lives in hope and faith. Oddly enough, if we become less concerned about our own survival and more about living, reflecting and celebrating God in life, we become what Christ calls us to be. We become people unafraid of death, and ready to embrace and live out our lives as they truly are: a gift of God.
We are in the midst of the Easter season… and I think the danger for us is that we’ve taken it all in stride, as we always do every spring… It has become routine, and it really shouldn’t be. Maybe it’s time for us to embrace this season for how truly revolutionary it really is. Even though it is something that all of us will face, Easter proclaims that death does not have the final say over who we are, and who we can be. But it is one thing to talk abstractly about resurrection, and quite another to live it out. Part of living out resurrection is to not be afraid of what the future holds, but to trust that God is very much in control of that. When we get into institutional survival mode, we can really lose sight of that.x
But here’s something to consider: Of all the churches and congregations that Paul helped found as part of the early church, how many of them are still around? Do we actually have a congregation somewhere in Greece or Turkey that still worships in the same building that Paul or John of Patmos once did? Do those congregations still exist? If you were wondering… no they don’t… earthquakes, natural disasters, and invasions by marauding Visigoths, Huns, and Vandals made sure of that. Yet what lives on is not the individual congregations, but the ongoing gospel message of hope. It’s not the institution where the reality of the resurrection lives, but in the hearts and minds of the people who follow Christ... who try to make the world a better place in his name... and remains a message as relevant today as when it echoed in the hearts of that first handful of followers.
It is through our continuing the celebration of Easter that the hope of resurrection really lives... and I hope that it continues on in us!
Happy Easter.
Amen.
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