While We Were Worshipping: Revelation 5:11-14

 Third Sunday of Easter

Then I looked, and I heard the sound of many angels surrounding the throne, the living creatures, and the elders. They numbered in the millions—thousands upon thousands. 12 They said in a loud voice,

“Worthy is the slaughtered Lamb
        to receive power, wealth, wisdom, and might,
        and honor, glory, and blessing.”

13 And I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea—I heard everything everywhere say,

“Blessing, honor, glory, and power
belong to the one seated on the throne
    and to the Lamb
        forever and always.”

14 Then the four living creatures said, “Amen,” and the elders fell down and worshipped.  (CEB)

 

          Christ is risen!  Christ is risen indeed!

          We are firmly in the season of Easter—it’s more than a single day, after all.  It is the fifty days between the day we call Easter and the day we call Pentecost.  And last Sunday, our Orthodox siblings joined us in that season.  Those of us who are in denominational traditions that stem from the Roman Catholic Church have a different way of counting Easter than those who stem from the Eastern Orthodox Church.  On this past Sunday, a day that marked exactly two months after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Orthodox faithful in both Russia and Ukraine gathered to say that Christ is risen, Christ is risen indeed.

          It was a difficult day for many to celebrate resurrection.  With fighting escalating in the south and east of Ukraine, some returned to see their families from neighboring Poland—where more than five million people have sought refuge.[1]  Leading up to the holy day, “officials in the Luhansk and Sumy regions urged residents to attend virtual services, citing possible Russian ‘provocations,’ while noting many churches have been destroyed in the invasion.”[2]

          “People need the holiday desperately,” said one woman waiting for a blessing from a priest in Lviv.  Another man said, “People often think that holidays should be merry, bring relief, and make it easier…Now we are going through hard times, people are starting to come closer to God, there are more people here than before”.[3]

          “They numbered in the millions—thousands upon thousands,” writes John in this letter of revelation.  Professor Luke Powery writes that, “The hymns of Revelation occur in the middle of oppression…Despite a lack of consensus on the exact social situation of Revelation, it is clear by the tone of John, the revelator, that there is a crisis, whether it is an actual, perceived, or future crisis. The neighbors are not being so nice to the Christians. From the outset, John speaks about his persecution and patient endurance (Rev. 1:9), even enduring exile on Patmos ‘because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus’ (1:10; cf. Rev. 6:9)…The troubled existence of the Christians is hinted at throughout John’s hymns which function as a political polemic against Roman imperialism on one level. The presence of a polemic implies pain. His hymns are interested in God, but also in fighting Roman politics.”[4]

          This vision of a Lamb enthroned and receiving worship from millions is not some sweet big-tent revival in the mists of a gilded heaven; this is a political statement of Who John sees as the ultimate power in the world.  “Worthy is the slaughtered Lamb / to receive power, wealth, wisdom, and might, / and honor, glory, and blessing.”  Not “worthy is Caesar”; not “worthy is Putin”; not “worthy is Zelensky,” even, or Trump or Biden or Merkel or Macron.  Worthy is the Lamb, the slaughtered Lamb Who reigns over the world.  Professor Walter Taylor, Jr., writes, “And what they sing is, ‘Worthy is the Lamb.’  Worthy (the Greek axios) was a well-known political term in the Greek-speaking part of the Roman Empire.  Just as today the band plays ‘Hail to the Chief’ when the President of the United States enters a large gathering, so in the first centuries the crowds were trained to shout, ‘Worthy!  Worthy!  Worthy is the emperor!’ when the Roman emperor appeared in public.  Revelation constantly engages in a struggle with the powers of evil, symbolized and centered in the Roman Empire.  It is the Lamb, Jesus, who is worthy, not the emperor, no matter how much power he claims.”[5]

That is Who the millions worship, Who “every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea” calls blessed.  John’s vision is not a really good church service but a declaration of power and intent about what—and Who—our focus should be. 

          That is the faith we inherit.  It is with a mindset like that that people can cross back into a literal warzone to gather together and worship.  It is with a faith like that that we can look at a broken world and get up to go work on bringing it to wholeness over and over and over.  Professor Israel Kamudzandu (ka-mud-ZAN-du) writes, “In the deep valley of pain and struggle, Revelation calls upon its readers and interpreters to sing a new song—a song that transcends the present pain and reaches into the divine future. The song of a worshipping congregation overturns the present reality of pain and transforms that reality into a prophetic reality—where God is in control. Worship penetrates the present darkness and transforms it into a world where God’s vision is realized.”[6]

          For those of us who gather in this season of resurrection in a nation where being Christian is not only not a dangerous thing but has hundreds of years of being the acceptable thing backing it up, it is tempting to come to worship and think of it as merely the thing to do on a Sunday morning.  It is tempting to forget that worship is meant to be a countercultural announcement of our loyalties—but we who read this revelation of John are called to remember Who the Lamb is, Whose name we claim when we gather.  This One called Christ is not a hobby but an eternal commitment of our deepest selves at every level of our public and private lives.

          If you come to a worship service at church because your highest priority is to see your friends, go to the Y; this is not the place for that.  If you come to a worship service at church because your highest priority is to sing uplifting music, get a subscription to Spotify; this is not the place for that.  If you come to a worship service at church because your highest priority is to have a reliable place to take a nap, get a better mattress and stay home; this is not the place for that.  “Blessing, honor, glory, and power / belong to the one seated on the throne / and to the Lamb / forever and always.”  Our highest priority in these times of gathering together for worship must be nothing more nor less than the praise of the God Who broke the power of Death out of love for us, God’s cherished creations.  If we are bringing anything else above that, this is not the place.  It is here that we declare ourselves Christ-followers, worshipping the Lamb Who is worthy above all other names and contenders for the throne amidst the millions.

          That’s not to say that the church can never have fun or music or the creation of community; we should indeed have all three.  But it is to say that those things are not the highest priority, not the reason we gather.  It is also not to say that every Sunday must be this scene of the millions in full-throated adoration—that’s unsustainable by the human heart.  We cannot make ourselves feel the same thing at the same time every week.  There will be some Sundays where we arrive in church to worship on automatic mode, where our hearts and minds are on the fight with our spouse or the difficult employee at work or on our parents’ health or on the meeting on Wednesday or, or, or.  I confess that there are Sundays when I am here because it is literally my job to be so and I am not all that interested in falling down and worshipping.

          But those are some Sundays.  Those are moments when we humans are being human.  John celebrates millions whose undergirding connection to the act of worship is awe, is glorification, is reverence of the One Who is King of kings and Lord of lords.  If we bring hearts filled with other gods than the slain Lamb, we need to seriously rethink why we bother getting up this early on a Sunday morning or setting aside this much time to watch a video online.

          We will be staying in the book of Revelation for the full season of Easter, unpacking John’s vision of what it looks like to acknowledge Christ’s kingship over creation.  It is a strange book that has been interpreted in baffling and, sometimes, incredibly harmful ways, but at its core is the reassurance to the Christians then and to us now that “[t]he glimpse of heaven also reminds us that the decisive victory has indeed already been won—which is why we are in the season of Easter.  The future triumph is already present in heaven.  What is left for us to do is to join in the worship.”[7]

          We gather on this Sunday of Easter and prepare to take communion together, another countercultural act that says we do not get to shut people out of the grace and love of God.  On this Sunday there are some churches who are choosing to leave The United Methodist Church to join the Global Methodist Church, a breakaway denomination that stakes its heart in the exclusion of gay and lesbian people from the rites and rituals of the Church.  On this Sunday the armies of Russia are still battering the people of Ukraine.  On this Sunday transgender youth are fighting to be seen as full and sane people around the world and in specific American states targeting their health and wellbeing.  On this Sunday we mourn 582 COVID deaths here in Bay County; 36,002 deaths in the state of Michigan; 992,740 deaths in the United States; 6,228,621 deaths globally in this pandemic that is not at all over.[8]  It may be hard, on this Sunday, to understand how the Lamb is worthy when the world is broken.

          So on this Sunday, we gather at the table that is not ours but God’s and say that this is the body given freely, this is the blood shed in love.  We say that all are welcome, all are welcome because it is not our body or blood that we give and it is not our understanding that death has the last word.  We celebrate communion in worship of the One Who draws us together into restoration, reverence, and resurrection.  Christ is risen; Christ is risen indeed and in that hope we can worship, fully worship in warzones with wonder because honor, glory, and blessing are God’s and God’s alone.

          Worthy is the Lamb that was slain; praise be to the God above all the other gods this world attempts to elevate, for all that is in heaven and on earth shouts blessings that governments are not greater, oppression is not fiercer, death is not stronger than our God.

          That is a worthy thing to praise, indeed.

          May our hearts be focused on the God Who made them; may our hands be open to the people who need them; and may our tongues shape praise, and ever praise, to the living One Who is worthy of it.  Amen.

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