Calling All Nations: Revelation 7:9-17
Fourth Sunday of Easter
After this I looked, and there was a great multitude
that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and
languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with
palm branches in their hands. 10 They cried out in
a loud voice, saying,
“Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the
throne and to the Lamb!”
11 And all the angels
stood around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures,
and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, 12 singing,
“Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom
and thanksgiving and honor
and power and might
be to our God forever and ever! Amen.”
13 Then one of the
elders addressed me, saying, “Who are these, robed in white, and where have
they come from?” 14 I said to him, “Sir, you are
the one who knows.” Then he said to me, “These are they who have come out of
the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood
of the Lamb.
15 For this reason they
are before the throne of God
and worship him day and night within his temple,
and the one who is seated on
the throne will shelter them.
16 They will hunger no more and thirst no more;
the sun will not strike them,
nor any scorching heat,
17 for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be
their shepherd,
and he will guide them to springs of the water of life,
and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.” (NRSVUE)
Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed!
Hosanna!
Wait; we’ve
already done that one, haven’t we.
“I looked, and
there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from
all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the
Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands.” I did not intentionally cosplay Revelation,
but I didn’t not intentionally do so, either.
We continue in
John’s letter to the churches that figuratively cries out against the violence
of Rome in order to bring hope to the fledgling Christian Church, and the
opening of this part of the vision feels a little like we’ve been transported
back to Palm Sunday. This is not
accidental; the story of Christ’s welcome to Jerusalem was circulating among
the faithful in recognition that it is rarely those in power who see Who Jesus
really is. It is often the ones who
gather at the city’s side gate with nothing more than their cloaks and some hastily-stolen
leaves shouting out to the only One Who bothers to listen to them. Here, in this parade with the enthroned Lamb
presiding over the whole world, the scene of slapdash supplication has
become a glorious triumph of celebration.
Not bad for a
boy from Nazareth.
This passage
is actually full of callbacks: there are the palm branches, sure, and that in
itself is possibly a reference to the Feast of Tabernacles as listed in the
Jewish celebrations in Leviticus.[1] But then one of the elders turns to John to
check in and make sure he knows what’s happening and John responds, “Sir, you
are the one who knows.” This rhythm of
question and answer is found several times throughout Scripture, notably used
in Ezekiel 37 when God asks whether the prophet thinks the dry bones will live. The washing of the robes may be a reference
to Isaiah’s message from the Lord that “though your sins are like scarlet, they
shall be as white as snow.”[2] And the promise of care is nodding to Isaiah
49, “the call to return home from exile: God’s people will not hunger or thirst
on their journey through the wilderness, nor will any scorching wind or sun
touch them”.[3]
John is
talking about the multitudes, but he knows that the people reading are a
knit-together people with a shared language of faith. They’ll hear what’s being said—and what
isn’t. They’ll hear the reassurance that
they are not alone, that their faith is something that will outlast them, will
outlast Rome, will outlast the pain of this moment. Part of the reason we anchor ourselves in the
promises of God is that trust in their durability, amen? A flimsy god is no help at all. We, too, long to hear the language that is comforting,
the promise that we also will come back from exile and be welcomed home to a
place that is safe, that is enough, where we are truly accepted.
But even while
writing to a specific audience with a specific message in mind, John makes it
very clear that this is God’s gathering of the nations for worship. “[T]he one who is seated on the throne will
shelter them. / They will hunger no more and thirst no more; / the sun will not
strike them, / nor any scorching heat, / for the Lamb at the center of the
throne will be their shepherd, / and he will guide them to springs of the water
of life, / and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”
It is a
phenomenal, wondrous, holy thing that here in our very own sacred text is the
announcement that no one is cut out of God’s compassion. People from every nation will hunger
no more, thirst no more, be burned no more, weep no more. For the ones hearing this vision all the way
back in the first century and for us now, this flattens every single attempt on
our part to guard against the people we don’t think fit. Everyone fits. Everyone is welcome. The only Person checking IDs at the door is
God.
Folks who are
Methodist or maybe have just hung out with Methodists enough to know, what is
the mission statement of The United Methodist Church? It’s “to make disciples of Jesus Christ for
the transformation of the world.”
Interesting, slightly vague, action-oriented. Cool.
Here at St. Luke’s, we are shifting into a new mission statement of our
own: “share love, give hope.” Snappy, easily remembered, also
action-oriented. Expect to hear more
about it in the coming weeks leading up to Pentecost.
The thing
about the UMC mission statement is that it is about transforming the world but
it is not about conforming the world.
Nowhere in that mission statement does it say anything about how the
disciples of Jesus Christ all have to have the same ideas about what worship
looks like, or how broad or narrow discipleship is defined, or who gets to sit
where with their traditions and ideas and palm branches kept inside the vehicle
at all times. In the UMC, we are called
to transform the world because it is the world that Christ invites to
this spectacular vision of praise that John gives us. All tribes, all nations, all languages are
welcome in front of the throne to worship in their own tongues, their own ways,
this vast multitude of voices showcasing just how diverse God’s creation is.
Professor Eric
Mathis writes that, “This passage reminds us that being a faithful witness—like
the great multitude—is the baptismal vocation of us all. It also reminds us
that when we live out our Christian vocation, we find freedom in the Lamb of
God who sustains all of us.
“Most importantly, this passage
reminds us that the vision for sainthood is all encompassing. It is
all-inclusive…The ‘great multitude’ might include those who ‘washed their robes’
by living lives worthy of standing around the throne of God, but never named
the name of Jesus.
“Herein, this apocalyptic text…reminds
us that Christianity…can’t always be reduced to a theological formula. Indeed,
it was Jesus who said, ‘Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter
the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in
heaven’ (Matthew 7:21).”[4]
We have no idea who will be standing next
to us in worship in the heavenly Church, whatever that ends up looking
like. Honestly, we may not have any real
idea about who is standing next to us in worship here in this church, especially
given the fact that our online presence makes us a literal global church. Our siblings in faith may not look like us,
think like us, sing like us, pray like us, dream like us, but they and we gather
anyway in the caretaking of the Lamb Who becomes the Shepherd, Who loves beyond
measure as we find home after exile.
That concept of home—“the one who is
seated on the throne will shelter them”—is “also translated as dwell. God’s presence, God’s shekinah in Old
Testament terms, will remain with [the ones reading this text]. Old Testament
associations lie behind almost every statement in the interpretation of the
elder, especially Isaiah 49:10 and 25:8. In a world in which subsistence was
the normal pattern of life, the vision of no more hunger or thirst communicated
at a visceral level.”[5]
Perhaps, on this sunny day in the
season of Easter, you have packed away your palm branches and your songs of
worship because there is simply too much being asked of you and that kind of
grind is all you can focus on. Perhaps
there is an exile in which you feel you find yourself now where the sun burns
too hot and there is hunger for more than just food and there are too many
tears to count. One of the things that
is important to note about this part of John’s vision is that the ones who are
robed in white, who gather from every corner of the earth, have “come out of
the great ordeal”—there is never a time when our faith should pretend that
there is no such thing as suffering, and neither John nor God asks us to be
okay all the time.
But this promise of rest, of shelter,
of a place to let our weary souls be healed is also real. This vision of all the ones who have suffered
finding a place at the throne of the One Who calls them reminded the first
century church and reminds us that the suffering is not the end of the
story. We are still in the season of
Easter, a season of resurrection, a season of our reminding ourselves that death
is not the last word. God will draw all
nations to Godself in whatever way we cannot currently describe and will
transform the world such that we will pick up our palm branches and shout “blessing
and glory and wisdom” to the One Who loves us, Who hears us, Who brings life
back to us. All are welcome to the life
and life abundant, to the celebration that exile is not forever, to the
recognition that salvation, salve, healing belongs to the Lamb Who leads
us as the Good Shepherd. What a promise,
that kind of belonging, that kind of resurrection.
It is not just a later thing,
either. There is grief now, and death
now, and suffering now, yes. And there
is also life now, and hope now, and healing now. There are the glimpses of the Spirit at work,
transforming the world, in the overwhelming wonders like Ukraine’s continued
perseverance and the small miracles like friends gathering to hold each other
together in the grief of loss. There is
the moment of not being hungry, not being thirsty, the moment that proves to us
that what is momentary now will be permanent one day, and oh how good it is to help
work toward that with anyone who is willing.
May we ease our own divisions to join
in praise with the multitudes; may we find the life within and around us that
reminds us death does not win the day; and may we hear God’s reassurance in our
own great ordeals, telling us that we are loved, loved beyond measure. Amen.
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