Revelation 5:8-14
May 4
David A. Davis
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Our second scripture lesson for this morning comes from the Book of Revelation, the Apocalypse to John, the last book of the New Testament. The apocalyptic literature of the bible, like Revelation, and in the Old Testament, Ezekiel and parts of Isaiah, can be rather inaccessible, dense, and even foreign to the reader. Sort of the epitome of the strange old world of the bible. Let me try to give some context to our reading this morning by describing the movement of the Book of Revelation. After an initial salutation and instruction from John the Revelator, the beginning sections of the work describe a breathtaking vision of the Heavenly Christ: “his eyes were like a flame of fire, his feet were like burnished bronze…his voice was like the sound of many waters”
The next view chapters include letters to seven churches with some memorable quotes like “I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had a first” and “I knoe your works- your love, service, and patient endurance. I know your last works are greater than the first” and “I have set before you and open door, which no one is able to shut” and “I know your works; you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were cold or hot. So because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I am about to spit you out of my mouth.”
After the letters, the scene shifts, the image shifts, and the reader is invited to look through the door of heaven into the very throne room of God. The word picture tells of colors as radiant as jewels, and a sea of glass, living creatures gathered around the throne, twenty-four elders casting their crowns before the throne of God in adoration and praise. As John encounters the very beauty of heaven, the focus again shifts to the scroll held in the right hand of the one seated upon the throne. An angel cries out “Who is worthy to open the scroll and break its seals?” No one is found either in heaven or on earth who can break open and reveal the plan of God. John weeps bitterly. But he is told to weep no more, but to turn and look at the Lion, the mighty conqueror, the Root of David. The Lion who can open the scroll of God.
John turns to look and sees not a lion, but a Lamb. The slaughtered Lamb with seven horns and seven eyes. A number, a symbol that speaks of all power and knowledge. John sees the Lamb, whose weakness and vulnerability only God could define as perfection. The Lamb takes the scroll from the One seated upon the throne. The Lamb steps forth to bear the will of God. All who surround the throne fall before the Lamb in adoration and praise.
Revelation 5:11-14
“Then I, John, looked, and I heard the voice of many angels surrounding the throne and the living creatures and the elders, they numbered myriads if myriads and thousands of thousands, singing with full voice, ‘Worthy is the Lamb that was slaughtered to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and blessing!’
Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and in 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 forever and ever!’ And the four living creatures said ‘Amen!’. And the elders fell down and worshiped.”
What follows in the Book of Revelation is the opening of the seals, and the four
horses of the Apocalypse, and the great gathering which no one could number, and the silence in heaven as the seventh seal is broken, and the plagues, and the beast and the pit, and the dragon and the seven bowls of God’s wrath, and the fall of Babylon, and the New Heaven and the New Earth, and God wiping away every tear, and the river of the water of life, and the throne of God and the Lamb and no more night, for God will be their light, and the Lamb together with the Lord God, shall reign forever and ever. What follows the text we just read is the intended chaos of apocalyptic literature and the always puzzling, often troubling piling up of image after image, symbol after symbol. This heavenly hymn of praise comes on the threshold of the Lamb’s rolling out the mystery of God and all hell about to break lose, and right then and there every creature in heaven and on earth and in the sea and under the earth; every creature pauses to join in a song of adoration and praise to the Worthy Lamb.
“Worthy is the Lamb that was slaughtered to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and blessing!…. Blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!” Reading the text this week, coming back to the Book of Revelation this week, pondering the biblical apocalyptic literature this week, it landed in my ear, my head, and my heart a bit differently this week. It all felt oddly relevant this week. The chaos and mystery that leaps off the page of the Book of Revelation, all that can be so disorienting and troubling to the reader, comes with a familiarity this week. These age-old chapters have a jarring unsettledness that has resonance when chaos, fear, and uncertainty are on the loose. The endless battle between good and evil never seems to stop. When death continues to be on the loose among the lives of people we love. When institutions teeter and long-held expectations shake. The jarring unsettledness of the Book of Revelation meets the jarring unsettledness of life.
In his commentary on the Book of Revelation, New Testament scholar Brian Blount argues that apocalyptic literature has an ethical motivation. “It implores people,” he writes, “to act in the present in a way that agrees with its understanding of the future.” Blount goes on to explain what that means. The followers of the Worthy Lamb “must put themselves on God’s side…They must live for God’s future in the present, even if making that choice means that they will come into conflict with the leaders of the present…”. Or to say it another way, there is something timeless about a community of faith struggling to live the faith in a hostile world. To read the Apocalypse to John these days is a lot less about trying to unlock God’s intended future and a lot more about discerning God’s call in the present. Because the Book of Revelation has less to do with what heaven is going to be like for you and me and a lot more to do with what it means to be a faithful follower of the Worthy Lamb here and now.
“Worthy is the Lamb that was slaughtered to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and blessing!…. Blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!” The jarring unsettledness of the Book of Revelation and the jarring unsettledness of life. The intersection comes in a timeless moment of all creation bowing before the Risen Christ, the Lamb who is worthy to be praised. Every now and then, the beauty of God’s resurrection promise and the mystery of God’s plan of salvation, and the assurance of God’s victory break through the tumult of our lives and the calamity of this world. Apocalyptic moments are not reserved for the end of time, rather for the inbreaking of God, when the distant holiness of the One on the throne once again shatters the darkness with light, and Lamb anoints the messiness o life with grace, and the faithful feast again on the breath of God forever singing God’ praise. “Worthy is the Lamb that was slaughtered to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and blessing!…. Blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!”
When I was in college and going through a rough patch, I decided to do something I had been doing since kindergarten. I joined a church choir. It was an auditioned choir that would sing every Sunday at Memorial Church on Harvard’s campus. I was actually paid to go to
church back then, too. My warm and fuzzy experience of church choir was soon rocked a bit when the conductor in the midst of a particularly frustrating rehearsal, stopped everything and called out for quartets. I didn’t know what that meant, except I knew those around me in the bass section were not happy. For the next hour, the conductor would randomly call out a bass, a tenor, an alto, and a soprano. We would proceed to the front of the room, and he would pick a part of the piece to be sung right there before him and God, and everybody. When the four were finished, they were told to go sit together. And the last thing we did that afternoon was to sing the piece through completely, sitting not in sections (basses, altos, sopranos, tenors) but in quartets. One
voice alone, surrounded by the other parts, together then, in full voice. And the sound was glorious; the uniqueness of voice, clearly bound to something greater that grew and grew with each quartet.
John’s vision of the faithful at worship includes that factor of multiplication. A growing choir, myriads upon myriads, thousands upon thousands. He hears every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea. The song burst forth from everywhere and everyone. Quartet after quartet after quartet. To stop amid the chaos when it seems like all hell is breaking loose, to stop and bow down to offer all praise and worship to the Worthy Lamb is a subversive act that affirms we are a part of something greater. So much greater. To join our voices with all creation’s praise right smack in the middle of trying to figure out what it means to be faithful in a hostile world is a bold commitment that we are choosing God’s side and choosing to live today. We are striving to act for, to live for, God’s future now in our life together and our discipleship out in the world. To stand together before the Lamb that was slaughtered and shout Christ is Risen! He is Risen Indeed! is an act of resistance when death’s power is on the loose.
To come to this table, to remember and give thanks for the Worthy Lamb and all that the Savior Lamb has done for us, is an act of praise and thanksgiving that testifies to something so much greater. Come, for the Worthy Lamb, invites us to be nourished by the grace and mercy ,and love of God that is so much greater than our hearts.