Third Sunday of Easter ? Revelation 5:1-14
Sermon by Rev. Rolf Svanoe
We all watched in horror this last week as events unfolded on the campus of Virginia Tech. The scope of the violence and the senseless slaughter of innocent students and faculty leave one reeling. Over the week we have learned the stories of those killed, their hopes and dreams that have now been snuffed out. Our heart goes out to those families who grieve and mourn. When we heard of this tragedy our first instinct was to call our kids in college. We needed to hear their voice and tell them we loved them. I can?t imagine the incredible pain these families are experiencing. We pray that God will surround them with strong loving arms to bring comfort.
When something like this happens it?s inevitable that we search for answers to the question ?why?? Why did this happen? If we can figure that out perhaps we can prevent it from happening again? We need to know that life is not just a series of random events, but that things happen for a reason. This week a few answers have come. We?ve learned the story of a sick and disturbed student who in spite of many warning signs fell through the cracks. We are shocked by such callous disregard for human life.
This latest shooting is just one of a series of school shootings we?ve experienced over the past ten years. Blacksburg will now go down in history along with Nickel Mines Pennsylvania, Bailey Colorado, Red Lake Minnesota, and Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, and many others. They seem to come with some regularity, like the start of hurricane season. We know how hurricanes form and we anticipate them, but every time a school shooting happens it shocks us and blows the roof off our national consciousness. Where does this evil come from?
The book of Revelation does a better job of answering that question than any other book in the Bible. On first reading Revelation many people are disturbed by its violent imagery. Catastrophes come one after another. Seven seals, seven trumpets, seven bowls filled with wrath and woe leave one reeling in horror. It?s like getting hit with one hurricane after another, one school shooting after another, one bloody car bombing on the streets of Baghdad after another. If the chapters of Revelation are violent it?s because that is part of our experience in this life. In naming our reality the Bible shows us that it is as relevant as the evening news- no matter how bad it gets. There is no place so bad, no act so violent where God is absent or uncaring.
But before all the violence takes place the author of Revelation wants us to see something. The prophet John takes us in a vision up to heaven to see what he has seen: At the heart of all things God is on the throne ruling in sublime majesty. Someone is in charge. The universe is not ruled by blind fate. John shows us a vision of the throne and the one seated on it. In front of the throne are seven spirits and four living creatures who day and night without ceasing sing?
?Holy, holy, holy, the Lord God the Almighty, who was and is and is to come.?
They are joined in song by 24 elders who cast their crowns before the throne, singing,
?You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.?
This is the vision John wants us to hang on to, that will keep us grounded in the midst of all the violence to come later in the book. The message is that no matter how bad it gets God is on the throne and God will act to deliver God?s people.
But John wants to show us something else about God. There is a scroll in God?s hands sealed with seven seals. It is the future that God wants to bring to the earth, except that no one is found worthy to open the seals- except one. The voice announces it:
Then one of the elders said to me, ?Do not weep. See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.?
John hears about a lion, a fierce symbol of strength and power, king of the jungle. The root of David reminds us of Israel?s golden age and her greatest king. This is what God?s people hoped and longed for, a Messiah who would conquer its enemies. John turned to look at the throne expecting to see a powerful lion, but what did he see?
?Then I saw between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders a Lamb standing as if it had been slaughtered??
A lamb is a pretty pathetic animal, weak and defenseless, at the bottom of the food chain. And John uses a particular word here- lambkins or lamby. He describes this lamb as if it had been slaughtered. It?s as if he wants to pull out of this symbol every last ounce of strength or pride. Ca you imagine a more weak or pathetic picture? Yet this is exactly the symbol John used to describe Christ. There is no question who lambkins is. The host of heaven worship lambkins with a new song.
?You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slaughtered and by your blood you ransomed for God saints from every tribe and language and people and nation; you have made them to be a kingdom and priests serving our God, and they will reign on earth.?
How does God change the world? How does God redeem the world from its evil and violent ways? It is not through what the world values, power and violence. In John?s time that?s how ancient Rome tried to change the world with the strongest military in history. But John reminds us that God?s ways are opposite our human ways. God changes and heals the world through self giving sacrificial love. God transforms the world with weakness- with lamb power. It?s the same message the Apostle Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 1 that ?God?s weakness is stronger than human strength? God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.?
Those gathered around the throne sang another song.
?Worthy is the Lamb that was slaughtered to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!?
After the events of this last week that word ?slaughtered? speaks with particular power. I thought of those students and faculty who were slaughtered at Virginia Tech. And the answer to the question ?Where was God? Does God care?? is given right here. God is present in the Lamb. God knows and understands and cares. And God will bring a new heaven and earth where there will be no more slaughter, crying or pain.
Last October our nation was rocked by another school shooting, this time in the quiet Amish community of Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania. Do you remember all the reporting at the time and how we learned so much about the Amish and their way of life. Rev. Rob Schenck, one of only two non-Amish invited to the funeral, tells how he watched as her mother prepared her daughter's body for burial. "It was while the family and community stood watching this mother tenderly care for her little girl's brutally damaged body that they spoke to me at length of forgiving the shooter. It was the most moving thing I've seen or heard in my 25 years as a minister of the Gospel. It was a living sermon on the power of God's mercy." One Amish religious leader explained to Schenck, "We forgive because God has forgiven us. God extends his forgiveness to us in Christ, then, we must receive it. Once we do, we must share it with others." The Amish are known for their commitment to non-violence. Evil must be resisted- but not with violence. The world is not changed by coercion or violence, but by forgiving love. The world is changed by lamb power.
We are people who have been ransomed for God by the blood of the Lamb. We are Easter people who celebrate the victory of Christ over the powers of sin, death and the devil. We are called to worship and adore our Lamb, Jesus Christ, to follow the Lamb into all the broken places of our world, and witness to the power of his love.
John ends his vision with these words. ?Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, singing, ?To the one seated on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might for ever and ever!? And the four living creatures said, ?Amen!? And the elders fell down and worshipped.? Let us too, fall down and worship the Lamb. Let us show a broken world the power of a Lamb?s love. Amen.
