By What Vision

The book of Revelation from which today’s lesson comes is perhaps the most confusing and misinterpreted book in all of the Bible. St. Jerome (342-419), whose translation of the scriptures into Latin still serves as the foundation of all Catholic editions of the Bible, said of Revelation that it had as many mysteries as words. Martin Luther, the great reformer, didn’t like the book either. He openly commented on its deficiencies, felt it was not Christ-centered, and said he could not accommodate his spirit to it. And today there are all kinds of interpretations and misinterpretations of this strange and beautiful book. Some act as if Revelation were the most important thing in the whole Bible while others ignore it or scorn it.

A sermon affords us neither the time nor the proper setting to work through all the details of how Revelation should or should not be interpreted. Suffice it to say that the book purports to be a series of visions given to a man named John, sometimes identified with the writer of the Fourth Gospel although that is unlikely. The visions describe things that happen at the end of the world.

The particular vision I’m going read is one of several in Revelation about heaven. It describes a vast throng of people gathered around the throne of God, so many people that they are impossible to count. They have been gathered from every nation and race and language on earth. Each is wearing a white robe and all are waving palm branches in festive celebration. Then the vision says these are the saints who suffered on behalf of God’s kingdom. In fact, they suffered intensely, often as martyrs.

Now as we read this vision I want you to think about the central character. Who or what is this vision about? Try to answer that in your own mind as we read Revelation 7.

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!”

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, singing,

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.

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,

If you think the central character is the Lamb, then I agree with you. This great vision of God’s salvation centers in the sacrifice of a lamb and that is an amazing thought we too often take for granted. This profound insight means a couple of things and the first is this: we must not let our vision get too big. That may sound strange but you heard me right. We must not let our vision get too big.

When we think of importance we almost always think of bigness. We are impressed by size. Even in the natural world this holds true. The Grand Canyon overwhelms us because of its size. In my home state of Washington, Mt. Rainier impresses because of its size and how it towers over everything else around. In the human world we also equate bigness with importance. We build big monuments to honor important people. The pyramids were built to honor the glory of Egyptian kings. The Washington Monument is big to honor the importance of our first President. Big houses and big cars are more impressive and prestigious than little houses and little cars. We live in a world where big is important and important is big.

Is it not interesting, therefore, that Christianity really begins and ends with something not very big at all? The beginning and end of Christianity is a lamb, a lamb that was slain, a lamb whose blood was given as a sacrifice for us. The center of our faith is neither power, nor bigness, nor importance in worldly terms. The center of our belief is helplessness, weakness, and sacrifice. The center is a lamb who was slain.

Of course, the New Testament contains other images which also describe Jesus Christ but the lamb is a particularly important one, especially in the book of Revelation. This book was written to strengthen the faith of Christians who were facing persecution. It describes how in the end God’s power will overcome all that is evil. Is it not fascinating that in telling about God’s power Revelation places at its center the image of a lamb? The purpose of God is not accomplished by bigness and importance but by the sacrifice of a lamb and in his blood our robes of righteousness are washed pure and clean.

This is a vision that the little counts for something. The little, the weak, the unimportant may not count for much in the world but in God’s purpose they count for a great deal because at the center of our salvation is a little lamb who becomes our shepherd and leads us to living water. I think this is one of the most important insights for people like us who are children of the Protestant Reformation. Every Christian tradition has strengths and weaknesses. But one of the strengths of Reformed thinking is that the little and the ordinary count for something.

I mentioned Martin Luther who didn’t like this book. But reformers like him and Huldrych Zwingli and John Calvin lived in a time when the church had forgotten the individual. The Reformation said everyone was important. Everyone can go directly to God. You don’t need a priest or a saint or the Virgin to pray for you. You can pray. And all people can have the Bible in their own language and read it themselves. You need be neither rich nor important to get to God. For God’s love is for everyone. We must not let our vision get too big because God cares for little people like us.

So what does this mean? When we think this way, by what vision do we start living as a people and as a church? I caught a glimpse of that vision last week in one of Anne Lamott’s books. As you know, she is one of my favorite authors and one of my favorites among her books is called Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts On Faith which came out in 1999. She just published a new book called Grace (Eventually) and when it arrived I realized that I had not finished a book she wrote two years ago called Plan B: Further Thoughts On Faith. I had read parts but not all of it. So last week I did.

Anne is a member of the St. Andrew Presbyterian Church in Marin City, California. It’s a little church of less than a 100 members that struggles like many small churches. She felt burdened to have a better Sunday School for the dozen or so kids who came. In helping get that going she realized that, as she put it, she didn’t really like children. They made her very nervous and she had nothing to share with them except that Jesus loved them and she tried to, even when she was in a bad mood.

So they started this Sunday School and Anne imagined it as a wacky sort of rainbow love fest. (Anne Lamott is kind of wacky herself.) She thought they could throw around a beach ball while we memorizing a line of scripture — calling out one sentence, like “Come unto me, all ye who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.” But the kids had the attention spans of fruit bats, and the boys would throw the ball too hard at one another, as if playing dodge ball. So she quickly switched to “God is love,” but the children could barely remember that, either, and wanted it to be their turn only so they could try to hurt the others with the beach ball. “God is love,” she said through clenched teeth, and then threw the ball too hard to a girl, who froze, and the ball hit her smack in the face.[1]

However, things improved gradually and Anne wrote about a girl who came to Sunday School for awhile who rarely spoke and even seemed retarded. Anne wondered what they had to offer her. Juice boxes, yes. Decent art supplies, yes. And their belief that love and patience would be like Holiness Helper in her life. Yes, all these things but would they be enough?

The girl appeared to be very sad much of the time. One difficult day, Anne let her sit in her lap next to the open window, while the other teacher read the children their Bible story. As they sat in the dappling sunlight the girl studied the dust motes in floating in the air while they listened. She kept putting her finger out, like E.T., to touch the glitter. It was like the dust was letting her see the air, suspended as we all are, held and blown about, even though we appear to be sitting, planted. The dust made the invisible visible, for a few moments anyway, immersing both Anne and that young girl in another dimension, beyond what could usually be seen.[2]

That’s our vision. Because the scriptures picture Jesus as a little lamb who died for all, we see, at least some of the time, that the little things and the little ones count. We see beyond what can usually be seen. This church is here because we believe that little, ordinary people are important. They are important to God and they are important to us. And by that vision we know that God loves us and one day will wipe away every tear.

I’ve always remembered this story told by my good friend Morgan Roberts in a sermon he preached many years ago. There was ordinary church somewhere in the Northeast in an ordinary town where a group of ordinary church women were working in the kitchen getting ready for an ordinary church supper. While they worked they suddenly noticed that through the door had come two tiny children, about ages 2 and 4. They were ragged looking and a little fearful. On the oldest a note was pinned and this is what it said: “These are my children. I can no longer care for them. My husband is desperately addicted to drugs. He abuses these children. I can no longer protect them and I know that somehow or other the church will find a way to care for them.”[3]

You see, sometimes we get to thinking that the church is just a place where increasingly older people get together to diddle away the time because they have nothing more important to do than have meetings and church potlucks and hear old Bible stories. But the world still knows that when the chips are down, when things have come undone, the church is there and it will help.

Those two little kids didn’t arrive on this church’s doorstep. But had they or were they to, I know we would do all that was necessary to take care of them. We are not a perfect church, of course, but we do try to live by the vision of the Lamb who was slain, dying in weakness but rising to reign, a reign not of crushing power but of a love tender enough to wipe away every tear.

[1] Anne Lamott, Plan B: Further Thoughts On Faith (New York: Riverhead Books, 2005) 65.

[2] Lamott, 69-70.

[3] F. Morgan Roberts, “The Church Will Help,” sermon, Shadyside Presbyterian Church, 27 Sep. 1987, cassette recording.