The Rev. Ryan Fischer
Sermon, Easter 4C
Location: Gethsemane Cathedral, Fargo, ND Text: Revelation 7:9-17
Alleluia! Christ is risen! (The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!)
The Book of Revelation gets plenty of attention in this cycle of lectionary readings, which might be a way for us to counteract the attention it gets in other parts of the religious landscape – where it is often used as code book to be deciphered by those who can see signs of the End Times in seemingly any era of history. For those who received their seminary education in more mainstream academic contexts, there have usually been efforts to reverse what have been seen as misuses and misinterpretations of the Book of Revelation; speaking personally, that was my experience right down to devoting an entire semester course to the study of Revelation with, among other goals, the understanding of its historical and cultural context. Surely, the text is one thing, but the context is quite another.
Going back to the days of the Early Church, the Book of Revelation was not immediately accepted as “scripture,” likely because of its unusual style and esoteric content. And one might observe that, when it lands in the lap of the wrong person, it can be misused and even abused in ways that present Christianity poorly, if not misrepresent Christianity altogether.
We’re going to attempt to not do that today! We’re going to, instead, remember that Revelation unfolds in a series of visions had by a first-century exile known as John of Patmos – who is not to be confused with John the Evangelist or John the Apostle (one of the Twelve Disciples of Jesus), although early Christians assumed that all three were the same person. This particular John had been sent to the island of Patmos in the Aegean Sea during a time of persecution of Christians instigated by the Roman emperor Domitian. At a time when Christians risked life and limb for their faith, Christianity had a much different character than what we know today. The vision that John of Patmos lays out in the Book of Revelation is one that promises a just and jubilant future – precisely the sort of vision that persecuted Christians would be hungry for!
In my experience, having been raised in a stable, theologically responsible, mainline church, I recall the Book of Revelation offering a glimpse of what heaven and the afterlife will look and feel like. And that was about it. It was not used for fiery predictions of The End that was about to come, nor were we sent to leaf through it for some kind of correlation between the words of that book and recent geopolitical events. In those days, I think you had to go to some kind of independent “Bible Church” for that sort of thing. But we had the Book of Revelation in our liturgy, whether we knew it or not; the canticle Worthy Is Christ (better known as “This Is the Feast”) contained stanzas like “Worthy is Christ the Lamb who was slain” and “Blessing, honor, glory, and might be to God and the Lamb forever. Amen.” Maybe we didn’t identify them as such, but we were singing of visions of the world to come…
This morning’s text from Revelation has us in an “interlude,” as it is called, between the opening of the Sixth and Seventh Seals; the seals are far too symbolically complicated to unpack here, and this particular sermon wouldn’t benefit from it that much, either. But this “interlude” depicts a scene in which a multitude of the faithful are before the Throne of God, giving us a glimpse of the heavenly kingdom. Most striking are the verses with which we open this morning: “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. They cried out in a loud voice, saying, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!’” (Revelation 7:9-10).
The vision of the world to come looks a lot like…worship!
Years ago, I heard a comment that heaven would be, based on this text, rather boring. After devoting our lives to God, we go to heaven for what amounts to be an eternal church service! In the Episcopal Church, we’ve turned this around, one could say, by offering church services whose beauty is a little slice of heaven itself. The point of the vision contained in Revelation, however, relates more to the celebration that is to come – which follows the persecutions, the injustices, and the horrors – than to the apparent boringness or undesirability of worshiping eternally. We can find further evidence to this point a few verses farther down in the text; here, we read: “Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, ‘Who are these, robed in white, and where have they come from?’ I said to him, ‘Sir, you are the one that 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. 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” (Revelation 7:13-15). Yes, those who have endured great suffering receive the promise granted to them by the Lord himself; now, their suffering has given way to eternal rejoicing at the throne of God, as well as shelter from adversity provided by the One seated on the throne.
On a very basic level, tough times prompt visions of better times; indeed, hope of a brighter future has motivated saints of both old and new to persevere in spite of how bleak the present situation might be. As a record collector (of the vinyl variety), I’ve encountered the music of the Sixties and its frequent appeals for justice and peace, and one song in my collection stands out in that regard – “A Change Is Gonna Come” by Sam Cooke. I would describe it as a plaintive soul ballad, which appeared as the B-side of the brassy, swinging “Shake,” released in 1964. But “A Change Is Gonna Come” gives us a downtempo, yet hopeful, vision of a Black man who experienced continual discrimination and harassment in the American South; it’s refrain is a simple “It’s been a long, a long time coming, but I know, a change gon’ come. Oh yes, it will.”
A change gon’ come. Oh yes, it will.
Before we go down the esoteric rabbit holes that the Book of Revelation might invite us into, we need to get beyond our urges to decipher and decode and see what this text means in its “plain sense.” To me, Sam Cooke says it best, “A change gon’ come. Oh yes, it will.” And yes, the change is for the better. It might not have us worshiping at the throne of God tomorrow, but it most certainly could manifest itself in ends to war, to violence, to discrimination, and to persecution. The Book of Revelation reminds us, however, that there is no guarantee of an easy life without these things – on the contrary, the faithful pass right through them and persevere in faith. They press on, assured that the promise grounded in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ will be real for them, too.
This past week, the world witnessed the election of a new Pope, and whether you’re a member of the Roman Catholic Church or not, these events assume a monumental significance. It seems fitting to be reminded at this time of the words the newly elected Leo XIV spoke in his first address as Pope; allow me at this time to read the following excerpt:
Help us, too, and help each other to build bridges, with dialogue, with meetings, uniting us all to be one people, always in peace. Thank you, Pope Francis! I also want to thank all my brother cardinals who have chosen me to be Peter’s successor, and to walk together with you, as a united Church always seeking peace, justice…always seeking to work as men and women who are faithful to Jesus Christ, without fear, to proclaim the Gospel, to be missionaries.
I believe the new Pope was painting with some rather broad brush strokes, but his appeal to unity – at least in a moral and spiritual sense (if not in an ecclesiastical sense) – reflects something that is urgently needed. We are reminded of the words of Jesus himself: “If a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand” (Mark 3:25). Yet, again, perhaps the tribulations of which the Book of Revelation speak remind us that unity requires hard work; much trauma and division precede the unity that we long for.
And we might occasionally long for different things when we say we long for the same things. When Pope Leo XIV speaks of “a united Church always seeking peace [and] justice,” would those of us gathered here this morning come to the same conclusions of what peace and justice are or what they look like? Probably not. Yet if unity precedes any of our pursuits, those pursuits might have more similarities than differences…
Lest we despair in anything, however, we both remember and treasure the words we are left with in the final verses of our text. These are, perhaps, the most hope-filled words of all; we read, “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” (Revelation 7:16-17). Now, think of the hunger, the thirst, the heat, the sorrow, and the unjust suffering that John of Patmos had in mind – and that he likely experienced himself – and of how his faith-filled vision could turn all that around. We may not be seeing the world the way we’d like it to look today, but we remember the words that Sam Cooke sang in 1964 – “A change is gonna come!” If we can see how a man was able to endure nearly two thousand years ago amid unthinkable persecution – and endure in hope – we might just be able to see ourselves endure in hope. And hope itself is grounded in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ that we celebrate today and throughout these Fifty Days.
Thus, we say…
Alleluia! Christ is risen! (The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!)
Amen.
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