Revelation
7:9-17
9 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 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. 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."
for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd
· The Book of
Revelation is one strange piece of work. It contains some of the weirdest
visions ever put on paper, weirder than many movies and TV shows. I’ve told
people that it might be compared to a “fever dream.”
· Having said all that,
I need to remember that the book was written for a specific reason and for a
specific group at a particular time. In some way or another the community of
the church the writer was part of was undergoing a period of persecution. Hope
was scarce for them and the writer, called John, received a vision that was
full of hope… in the end. Modern scholars call this sort of writing “apocalyptic”
which mean “unveiling.” It can be interpreted as both aimed at the past
– to John’s community – and to the future, as a prophecy of what is to come.
· The images found in
the book are disturbing and often frightening. There are, however, some parts
of the book that were meant to fill the readers with hope despite the dire
circumstance in which they found themselves.
· The scene of heavenly
worship found in our reading today is made all the greater in the last few
chapters of the book, where a new heaven and a new earth are made and a new
Jerusalem descends from heaven with 12 gates of pearl (‘the pearly gates’) and
a life-giving river flowing through the city from the throne of God and the Lamb.
· The message includes
hope for everyone in the world since there was a great multitude that no one
could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages,
for no one – NO ONE of any tribe, race, nation, or language – will be excluded
from the grace and reign of God. They are identified as those who come through
the ‘great ordeal’ and remained faithful.
· These faithful show
that God is ultimately and still in charge despite the persecution and the
terror that surrounds them. God - the one who is seated on the throne
– is the one who will shelter them. They will hunger no more, and thirst no more; the
sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat. Of course these
images of hunger, thirst, of heat and sunstroke, are natural and are found
everywhere. (Many of you know these things very well.)
· Then comes a sort of revelation, an unveiling - 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.
· The Lamb, an
important figure in this book, is both sacrificial lamb and shepherd. This can
be looked from two vantage points: the good shepherd lays down his life for the
sheep, so the shepherd becomes the lamb of sacrifice, while the lamb of
sacrifice becomes the shepherd.
· This Sunday, the
fourth Sunday of Easter, is called “Good Shepherd Sunday” and the readings
every year speak of Jesus as the Good Shepherd. In the readings this year, the
Book of Revelation is used to speak of this.
· This book has been
used to comfort the oppressed in the early days of the Church’s history. It’s
used (and honestly, often abused) as a window of prophecy to see the future or
a possible future.
· For us here today, in
this place where the Church is not persecuted, we can apply it to the terrors
of everyday life – uncertainty, over-work, overwhelming worry, the loss of loved
ones – and it makes the same sense. 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.
· Easter puts us in a
place of waiting. We live in the time of the Resurrection, yet we wait for the
fullness of all that the Resurrection means.
· Restoration and
renewal is coming. It’s been promised and even today, we need that promise as
much as our grand-parents in the faith did. The Resurrection inaugurates it.
The new heavens and new earth of Revelation points to it.
· If hunger, thirst,
sunstroke, and tears have no place in the heavenly realm John unveils in this
writing, they will have no place in the new creation that has been promised to
us. We live in the light of that promise and we wait for all of God’s promises
to be fulfilled.
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.
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