Worship
Every Family
Ephesians 3:14-20
June 22
David A. Davis
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I am not sure I have ever started a sermon like this, but I am going to give you a tip for listening to the sermon to follow. My hint is not about the content of the sermon. It is more of a glimpse into the movement of the sermon or the structure of the sermon I have attempted to shape. I know most of you are not preaching nerds like me. But I also know this congregation well, and you are full of really good, experienced listeners to sermons, not to mention the pastor emeriti among us who spent a lifetime writing sermons. There is no charge for this, so you can take it or leave it. The sermon, the homily, I am about to offer on the second half of Ephesians 3 is an example of expository preaching. Expository preaching is most common in more conservative traditions where preaching is synonymous with teaching. The preacher moves through the text verse by verse, often with the bible in hand, referring to the verses by number. I am going to work my way through Ephesians 3:14-21 verse by verse without the numbers. An expository sermon and just for fun, it is a three-point sermon as well for those who have ears to hear.
Every family. Every family in heaven and on earth. Every family. This prayer from the Apostle Paul in Ephesians ought to be a prayer for every family, every day. As memorized as deep within as the Lord’s Prayer. As routine as the nighttime prayers offered at a child’s bedside. As common as a table grace passed on from generation to generation. That, according to the lavishness of God’s glory, God would once again give you, give me, give all, a sense of strength and comfort and peace and purpose deep within. A kind of assurance deep inside that only comes from the power of the Holy Spirit. That Christ may continue to fill our hearts, to live in our hearts, to make a home within our hearts through the faith God gives. So that you and I, that all would be, would still be, would continue to be rooted and grounded in love. The very love of Jesus. The very love of God.
It really should be a once-a-day kind of prayer. At least once a day. A prayer we offer for our family, our extended family, the families that surround us, and yes, for all God’s people. That we might have the power, the means, the bandwidth to comprehend with all the children of God what is the breadth and length and height and depth, that we might have some inkling of what reaches from the east to the west, from the north to the south, that we might have some glimpse of that which is invisible, that we might have some sense of the weight that is beyond measure…that somehow we might see that the Lord is good. Every day.
And to know the love of Christ. To know the love of Christ. One can’t just know. You can’t just know love. You have to feel it. You have to live it. It’s not something to just figure out. The love of Christ surpasses all knowledge. Yes, it surpasses all knowledge but for goodness sake, for God’s sake, the love of Christ better have everything to do with what we think, what we conclude, what we decide, what we teach our children, how we live, how we act, how we treat our neighbor, how we respond to the stranger, how we see the world. Knowing the love of Christ and seeing the same world Jesus does. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind,” Jesus says in Matthew. There is no “either/or there. To know something that surpasses all knowledge. To know….love. It’s not an oxymoron. It’s a prayer. To know the love of Christ so that you, you and I, so that all might be filled with all the fullness of God. Which is to be filled with the love of Christ himself, which is to know the love of Christ, which surpasses all knowledge. Every day.
It’s everyday prayer and everyday praise. To God be the glory. To God be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus. To God be the glory in every generation, in every family in heaven and on earth. To God be the glory. All day long. All day long. This oh, so glorious God has a power at work within us to accomplish so much more, so abundantly more than all we can ask or imagine. God can do more in us than we can even dream about. The fullness of God so fills us. The love of Christ so overwhelms us. The piercing light of Christ so shines on us. The matchless grace of God so washes over us that God can use us, work with us, and transform us in ways beyond what we can see. It’s not just prayer. It’s not just praise. It’s a promise. God’s promise. Not just a promise but an expectation that, according to the riches of God’s glory, God is at work with us to accomplish abundantly far more than we can ask or imagine. Prayer. Praise. Promise. Everyday.
Some may remember me sharing what I learned about the Lord’s Prayer from leading worship in the Church of Scotland. The first few Sundays, I kept stumbling over the Lord’s Prayer. It took me a few weeks to realize why. My cadence of leading the prayer was out of sync with the congregation. It was the petition “thy will be done…on earth as it is in heaven.” When I say the Lord’s Prayer, the comma, the pause, and the breath come after “they will be done”. “Thy will be done…..on earth as it is in heaven. Folks in the Church of Scotland place the comma, the pause, the breath in a different spot. “Thy will be done on earth….as it is in heaven.” Not thy will be done…..on earth as it is in heaven.” But “Thy will be done on earth…as it is in heaven.” One Sunday morning, I just stayed silent. That’s when I heard the difference. The change in cadence bears some urgency, some expectation, some immediacy. A sense of right now. A timeliness that God has the power to work with us, through us, beyond us, despite us, to accomplish far more than we can even ask or imagine. Now.
Every day. Right now. No family, no lineage, no people, no one is beyond the reach of the love of God. You and I are called to live that now. God’s immutable glory, so distant, so awesome, manifests in hearts full of love. Now. The breadth and length and height and depth of the presence of God stretches to the world’s farthest corner and illumine life’s darkest places and breaks down death’s door. Now. The love Christ offers comes with such fullness that hearts and souls and minds can be inspired and sparked and changed and guided and protected and calmed and comforted now. Prayer. Praise. Promise. Every day. Every day.
All in service to making the world more like what God intends. Now, even as the mind numbing, soul sucking, powers and principalities of this present darkness rage. Now, even this morning, as nations rise against nations and kingdom against kingdom. Seeking a world more like what God intends. A world where the children of God dare to believe in, pray for, and work toward what the prophet dreamed. Swords transformed into plowshares, spears into pruning hooks, and war being learned no more. A land where every family would dare to believe in, yearn for what the psalmist proclaimed. Steadfast love and faithfulness meet. Righteousness and peace kiss each other as faithfulness springs up from the ground and righteousness looks down from the sky. A world where the people of God dare to believe in, pray for, and work toward what Jesus prayed. God’s will being done on earth… as it is in heaven. Daring to believe in, praying for, and working toward, because… because… because, God is able to accomplish more abundantly than we can ask or imagine. Now.
My preaching professor, Tom Long (who used to teach six grade church school at Nassau church along with Old Testament professor Pat Miller and their spouses) was once asked in a Q and A session whether he believed preaching could really be taught or was it more of a skill, a gift some had and some didn’t. “Believe it?’ he responded, “I don’t just believe. I’ve seen it.” Among all of the graduation celebrations in our congregation these last weeks, Len Scales sent me pictures of Asma Hashimi graduating from Princeton High School. A family fleeing for their lives after the airport in Afghanistan fell to a few years later, joyfully celebrating a high school graduation. God is able to accomplish within us far more than all we can ask or imagine. I don’t just believe it, I have seen it. Time and time again, far more than I would wish, this congregation has surrounded a grieving family with love. Being for them the presence of the Risen Christ. Living resurrection hope now. God is able to accomplish within us far more than all we can ask or imagine. I don’t just believe it, I have seen it. Not long from now, more than fifty folks, a mix of youth and adults from our congregation, will travel to sleep on a gym floor and rebuild homes for families whose lives have been crushed by the power of poverty. God is able to accomplish within us far more than all we can ask or imagine. I don’t just believe it, I have seen it. Every week, from the lower level of our building at 61 Nassau Street, 250 to 300 families, mostly working families and seniors, receive food assistance in person or by delivery. God is able to accomplish within us far more than all we can ask or imagine. I don’t just believe it, I have seen it.
God’s power at work among us through the everyday prayer, the everyday promise, and the everyday praise of the “nowness” of the God we know in and through Jesus Christ. “Now to the One who by the power at work within us can accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to God be glory in the church and Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.” Every day. Every day. Every day.
Grace and Good Works
Ephesians 2:1-10
June 15
David A. Davis
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It must have happened somewhere, sometime, one day last week, about Wednesday. A group of kindergartners is working on a special arts and crafts project for Father’s Day. The entire classroom has a bit of a buzz as the school’s roaming art teacher, along with the classroom teacher and another parent helper, come alongside the children to make something very special. Of course, the children don’t know that what they make will be saved in a special box long after they are all grown up. The kids don’t write yet, so their helpers take the time one by one to write “Happy Father’s Day” on their painted, glittered, colored frame that surrounds the picture of themselves, stealthily sent from home. “Remember, Father’s Day isn’t until Sunday, so make sure to keep the surprise until then!” one of the adults says. At the end of the day, at dismissal, as the handcrafted Father’s Day gifts are carefully put into backpacks, the instruction is offered again. “Not until Sunday. Make it special. Keep it a secret!” The cars are lined up, and the kids are escorted out to the one that has their name on the placard on the dashboard. Jasmond’s backpack is pretty much bigger than she is as she bounds toward the car. On Wednesdays, her dad picks her up from school. The car door is opened, “Daddy, I made you something special for Father’s Day!” she blurts out. She pulls out the picture to proudly show him without waiting to get into the car seat. Father’s Day for Jasmond and her dad was on Wednesday. Some things are so important you just have to blurt them out.
“God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which God loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ – by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus”. It is an awkward, clunky sentence to read aloud. The sentence continues into the next verse; ““God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which God loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ – by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come God might show the immeasurable riches of God’s glory in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” “God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which God loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ – by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus”. Some things are so important you just have to blurt it out. “By grace you have been saved.”
That’s certainly how it sounds here from the Apostle Paul. Like a child who can’t keep the excitement of a sacred gift a secret. It is as if Paul found the words all of a sudden. Like intending to say something in your head, but saying it out loud too. He found the words all of a sudden. “By grace you have been saved.” Paul drops it here in the middle of that thought, that long sentence about the great love with which God loved us. Like he just thought about it, just came up with it. So he repeats it. “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God.”
You remember that the Apostle Paul is the one who crafts the most complex and coherent of theological arguments in Romans. The Apostle Paul is the one who creates the beautiful ode to love within the Body of Christ in I Corinthians. Paul offers those lists of spiritual gifts and the sins of the flesh, and the fruit of the spirit. Paul so artfully describes his own struggle, his own faith, his own conversion along the Damascus Road. But here this morning, in the beautiful, if not complex rhetoric of the Book of Ephesians, Paul on “the great love with which God loves us”, it is the awkward, clunky, dropped-in, blurted out line that leaps off the page. “By grace you have been saved….For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.”
It is not some parenthetical, passing, oh by way, footnote, kind of thought. Rather, it is as if Paul can’t help from blurting it out here at the end of verse 5. Almost like he could have blurted it out throughout the paragraph. God, who is rich in mercy, by grace you have been saved…out of the great love with which God loved us, by grace you have been saved….the immeasurable riches of God’s grace, by grace you have been saved….this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God, by grace you have been saved….we are what God has made us, by grace you have been saved.
A former student of mine and an intern here at Nassau Church is now in the second call to a position as a head of staff. They began ministry as an associate pastor who started weeks before the pandemic in March of 2020, when in-person worship ceased. The position of head of staff began last Advent, right after the election. We were having a conversation about the challenges of preaching these days, and the younger colleague said to me, “I would just like to be a pastor in precented times.” Trying to offer a word of encouragement, I shared what an older pastor said to me decades ago. “Remember who you are and to whom you belong. You are a beloved child of God.” It occurs to me that, once in a while, that is something to blurt out and shout. “I am a beloved child of God! Woo!” More often, it is something to say in your head. To remind yourself on a tough day. To whisper in prayer. Sometimes maybe a guttural groan, deep down in the bones. Almost like the groan, the sigh of the Holy Spirit interceding is far deeper than words. That sigh Paul describes in Romans. The assurance deep, deep, down that God is at work in you, in me. Beloved child of God. Beloved child of God. Beloved child of God.
I wonder if that is closer to how to read Ephesians chapter 2 this morning. You see the same world, I see. You try to take in the same headlines I do. You must be asking, wondering, fretting just like me. Maybe some of you are doing a lot more crossword puzzles, like I am. So I wonder if these days, Paul’s awkward, clunky prose that ignores any rules of grammar ought to be read, ought to be heard as coming from a deeper place. Rather than blurting it out, or sneaking it in, or dropping the mic, what if it is more like a surprising groan, a kind of guttural affirmation about God’s love and mercy that comes from deep within. Like a sigh/grunt as you fall into your favorite chair at the end of a very long and hard day. It’s part weariness and part relief. One of those expressions that leaves the lips and someone says “You know I can hear you, right? Like the grandmother who passed on her faith to you and it wasn’t until you were long grown that you realized her half-whispering “my, my, my” was actually a faith statement for her. “By grace you have been saved, by grace you have been saved, by grace you have been saved.”
“For by grace you have been saved through faith and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God—not the result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are what God has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.” Beloved child of God. Beloved child of God. Beloved child of God, “created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life”. Our way of life.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer begins his book The Cost of Discipleship this way: “Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church.” Cheap grace is in contrast to costly grace, which, for Bonhoeffer, is understood as the giving of your life in discipleship in the following of Jesus Christ. Or as Paul put it: “created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life”. Cheap grace, for Bonhoeffer, is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate. Of course, the whole of Bonhoeffer’s seminal work is about cheap grace and costly grace. But right in the beginning, he defines cheap grace as a “doctrine, a principle, a system… forgiveness proclaimed as a general truth, the love of God taught as the Christian conception of God.” Cheap grace for Bonhoeffer begins as nothing other than a concept to talk about. Such grace flourishes when it is little more than an intellectual assent to a nice idea. A conversation starter instead of a guttural affirmation that comes from your very bones. Cheap grace suggests, in Bonhoeffer’s words, that “my only duty as a Christian is to leave the world for an hour or so on a Sunday morning and go to church to be assured that my sins are forgiven. I need no longer try to follow Christ, for cheap grace is the bitterest foe of discipleship.”
Or said another way, cheap grace is going out into the world after an hour in church and forgetting who you are and to whom you belong. For the beloved child of God yearning to live beneath the cross of Jesus, seeking to be a faithful disciple of the Incarnate, Risen Christ, wanting in the deepest part of the soul to “do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God”, if we’re honest, when it comes to a life in Christ out in a fallen world, has there ever been a precedented time?
The next time I have a conversation with one of you, with someone sharing with me the heaviness of heart and pondering what to do because of, because of…..because!! I will at least know a place to start. It starts with a deep sigh/groan/prayer deep within your bones, “by grace you have been saved”. And that sigh/groan/prayer doesn’t stop until “For we are what God made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.”
In unprecedented times, beloved child of God, our way of life doesn’t change.
The Eyes of Your Heart
Ephesians 1:15-23
June 8
David A. Davis
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As I mentioned with the children, on the first Day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit was at work in the act of speaking and hearing. According to the Book of Acts, “All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak other languages as the Spirit gave them ability. Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem…. the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each.” The first work of the Holy Spirit was to allow and enable people from every nation under heaven to hear in their own language. To hear, as we say just before we join the Lord’s Prayer, in the language closest to their hearts. To hear with their heart. To hear with the ears of their heart.
In Ephesians, Paul also describes the work of the Holy Spirit. “I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know God, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which God has called you” The eyes of your heart. It is a gift of the Holy Spirit to have the eyes to see with your heart.
Ephesians 1:18 is the only time the expression appears in scripture: the eyes of your heart. For some, the notion of a heart with eyes, that wisdom and revelation and enlightenment would be a matter of the heart rather than the mind, just doesn’t make sense. Some translations push against it. The King James translates it “the eyes of your understanding being enlightened”. Another contemporary translation puts it like this: “May God enlighten the eyes of your mind”. One New Testament scholar offers his own translation in his commentary: “May your spiritual eyesight be enlightened.” In his paraphrase, The Message, Eugene Peterson also offers a swing and a miss. “I ask the God of our Master, Jesus Christ, the God of glory, to make you intelligent and discerning in knowing him personally, your eyes focused and clear…” You don’t have to know Greek to read opthalmous and cardias in the passage. It is the eyes of your heart. Eyes and heart. Perhaps Professor Clifton Black puts it best: “so that the eyes of your heart may light up.”
I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know God, so that, as the eyes of your heart light up, you may know what is the hope to which God has called you, what are the riches of God’s glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of God’s power for us who believe, according to the working of God’s great power. That you may know with the eyes of your heart, God’s hope, God’s glory, God’s power. God put this power to work in Christ when God raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come.
It is as if Paul is just singing now. Just like Colossians, He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. Just like Philippians: therefore God has highly exalted him and given him the name that is above every name. In the middle of the Apostle’s prayer for the faithful at Ephesus, in the middle of his pastoral prayer, as he prays for their hearts to have eyes, Paul starts to sing the doxology. Over lunch this week, Professor Nancy Lammers Gross shared with me that Ephesians is the only one of the Apostle’s letters that doesn’t start with the problems of the congregation. Paul starts with worship and praise. “He can’t help himself,” Nancy says, “three full chapters of worship”. It’s a hymn here in Ephesians chapter 1.
God has put all things under Christ’s feet and has made Christ the head over all things for the church, which is Christ’s body, the fullness of Christ, who fills all in all. That last line in the hymn of praise. Christ’s feet, Christ’s head, Christ’s body. As one commentator puts it, Christ, who is over the church, is also in it and fills it. The fullness of God resides in him, and from him the Body of Christ is constantly supplied with and by Christ’s presence. As Professor Black puts it, “Christians [as the body of Christ] are conduits of Christ’s immeasurably redemptive power: the church is the very body of his fullness that fills all things with loving goodness.”
“Conduits of Christ’s immeasurably redemptive power” filling all things with loving goodness. This afternoon, we are gathering to give thanks for Bill Wakefield’s life and offer him forever into the heart of God. As I discussed the service with Bill, he told me that what he cared about most was telling everyone how important Matthew 25 was to him. “Bill, you don’t think I would talk about Matthew 25 when you were part of the group that recommended it for the center panel in the new chancel texts? I know how important it is to you.” Bill chuckled and said, “I figured, but since I won’t be there, I didn’t want to take any chances. Jesus said, “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” Bearing the fullness of Christ into the world with loving goodness.
The church is Christ’s body bearing the fullness of his love to the world. Even as Paul breaks into song, his prayer for the body of Christ continues. Yes, it’s doxology, but it’s also discipleship. His song, his prayer, is praise and it is praxis. Singing, praying, and promising that the body of Christ would carry his fullness into the world. When the eyes of your heart light up with God’s hope, God’s glory, God’s power, according to Paul, as a follower of Christ so transformed by his fullness, how can you not turn and baptize the world with his grace, mercy, and love?
Baptize the world. When the eyes of your heart light up, how can you sow seeds of hatred, division, and bigotry? When the eyes of your heart light up, how can you demand that only Christians should speak in the highest halls of the land, as the Statue of Liberty still proclaims, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” When the eyes of your heart light up, how can you work to not feed the hungry, work to demonize the stranger, work to make it more difficult for the sick to be cared for? There is a danger of going numb, and understandably, trying one’s best to ignore all the nasty chaos being intentionally spun. But Christ alone is head of the church, and the fullness of him fills all in all. Fills us. With the eyes of your heart enlightened, you can still give a witness to the wonders of his love, you can still pass forward the selflessness of his compassion, you can still bear his light every day in your corner of life. It’s the discipleship in doxology; knowing that when it comes to God’s hope, God’s glory, God’s power, and the very fullness of Christ, you and I actually have a part to play.
One Sunday after worship in one of the congregations, the summer of 2016 in Scotland, a big burly man came up to me. He had a wonderful flow of white hair, a beard, and this weather-worn red face. He had to be either a ferry captain or maybe Santa Claus. He took both my hands in his and as he thanked me for the service, for the sermon, he said, “Now could you please just talk slower and use fewer words. You’re American, you know.” Then he got teary and with his voice breaking, he said, “There’s just so much there, you have to give us time to take it all in.” He wasn’t just talking about the sermon, of course. He was talking about the gospel. He was talking about God’s grace. He was talking about the fullness of Christ. God’s hope. God’s glory. God’s power. And one man’s yearning for the eyes of his heart to light up again and again and again. “There is just so much there.”
“There’s just so much there.” There’s so much more. The river of Christ’s love runs deep. The expanse of the grace of Jesus is vast. The strength of God’s foundation shall not be shaken. Bearing the fullness of Christ into the world with loving goodness. Remembering, clinging to, and claiming that there is always more where that comes from. A threat perhaps to the power, the spirit, the force that works against all that God intends in the here and now. But for you and me, struggling to be faithful both in our doxology and our discipleship, it’s a promise. There’s always more where that comes from.
Yesterday I participated in the installation of the Rev. Maureen Fitzgerald as the 12th pastor and second female pastor of the First Baptist Church of Princeton. One of the historic African American Churches in town is celebrating its 140th year. The service was 3.5 hours. I experienced firsthand the saying that I have always heard when it comes to worship in the Black church. When come to worship to offer your praise and adoration, to hear a Word from the Lord, to offer the prayers of the people, and to get yourself ready to go out into the broken world again, well, an hour just isn’t enough.
I have been listening to a gospel playlist on my daily walks. It feeds my soul and picks up my pace. One song is titled “The presence of the Lord is here. I feel it in the atmosphere. The presence of the Lord is here.” The presence of the Lord is here. Then the spirit of the Lord is here. Then the power of the Lord is here. Pretty simple text. In the live recording, at one point, the musicians keep going up a half-step while they repeat. The presence of the Lord is here. The Spirit of the Lord is here. The power of the Lord is here. Over and over again. It occurs to me that it is a musical way, a choral way of affirming, proclaiming that when it comes to the presence, the spirit, the power of the Lord. Yes, there is always more where that comes from. There is just so much there. Or in the Apostle Paul’s words, “the fullness of him who fills all in all.”
As you turn to face, see, and live in the world today, join me in this prayer…Holy God, give of all mercy, light up the eyes of my heart today so that I can bear even a crumb of the fullness of Christ into the world with loving goodness.
God’s Good Pleasure
Ephesians 1:1-14
June 1
David A. Davis
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Our granddaughter Franny celebrated her fourth birthday in April. Her mother broke the rule of inviting the same number of children to the party as the age of the one celebrating. But there is a rule in Franny’s pre-k class that if you invite one, you understandably have to invite all. Cathy and I went to the Bronx a day early on a stunningly beautiful spring Friday to help set the backyard for a party of 15 four-year-olds and their families. Saturday, the day of the party, was, of course, cold and rainy. So we spent the morning moving furniture around the house and getting the toy room formerly known as a home office ready for the afternoon guests.
As the children started to arrive, they represented all the diversity of a NYC pre-school one can imagine. Otto had brown skin and came with her two abuelas, who spoke little English. Rachel came with both parents after Shabbat services. Malachi, with black skin, came with both his Puerto Rican moms. Dillan, who looked a bit like me when I was his age, was stocky, and his blond hair was sticking out pretty much in every direction. At one point during the exhausting afternoon, I stuck my head into the toy room. I think all fifteen four-year-olds were in there. Most of the parents were just in the next room getting to know each other. The toy room, though, was strangely quiet. There was no arguing about toys. No tiffs about space. Then I realized that the children were all playing by themselves. Surrounded by Franny and her little sister’s toys, which were all new to the classmates. It was like being in a toy store. But they weren’t playing with each other. It was like speed dating with toys as they moved around the room. Each child is playing with a toy of some sort. They all seemed to rotate to the next toy like gymnasts rotating around the various pieces of equipment. They were together, but they weren’t. They were playing but not collaborating. They were all in the same room while being in their own four-year-old world.
My observation must have still been hanging around in my head as I read the first chapter of Ephesians over and over this week in my office. “…blessed us in Christ…God chose us in Christ…God destined us for adoption as God’s children…the glorious grace that God freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption…the riches of his grace that he lavished on us…God has made known to us the mystery of God’s will…In Christ we have also obtained an inheritance…we, who were the first to set our hope on Christ…as God’s own people, to the praise of God’s glory.” Us. Us. Us. We. We. We. God’s children through Jesus Christ, “according to the good pleasure of God’s will”. God’s good pleasure made known in and through Jesus Christ to us. Us. Us. Us. It’s not the royal we but it is the “holy we”.
Another observation hanging around in my head for a few weeks was the morning of Confirmation two Sundays ago. The incredible morning of worship and affirming faith in Jesus Christ included the baptisms of Sterling, Isaac, and Nico. Like Mark Edwards in his sermon, I was focused on getting through the baptisms without too many of my own tears. A choir member told me afterward how meaningful it was to be up here in the chancel and able to see the faces of the parents and siblings. I had to try not to look and focus solely on the young men standing before me. I joked with the families about having to reach up for the baptisms. You probably have observed that our common practice at Nassau Church for infant baptism is one family, one child, one baptism per service. But that trinity of baptisms underscored the “holy we” to which God calls us. As the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (USA) puts it, “No one comes to Baptism alone; we are encouraged by family or friends and surrounded by the community of faith.”
The community of faith, together, standing along the river bank of God’s grace, affirming over and over again the reach of God’s mercy, the first touch of God’s love, and the endless nature of God’s compassion. Here at the fount, basking in what one liturgical theologian describes as “the kiss of God.” Hearing not once, not twice, but three times, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” Celebrating our adoption as God’s children in triple forte. Marking with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit, “the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption as God’s own people, to the praise of God’s glory.” The “holy we”, experiencing in sacramental form what the Apostle Paul tries to express in words in the first chapter of Ephesians. The inexpressible giftedness of our life in Christ. The seal of God’s love. Marked forever as children of God. We are God’s own forever etched with the Holy Spirit. The Spirit’s mark given in the very fullness of God’s time, in all the mystery of God’s will, far beyond our comprehension, affirming deep within that we know far more than we can ever say about our life in God. About belonging to God now and forever. That you and I, we, us, are indeed God’s good pleasure.
Yes, of course, God’s good pleasure, this “holy we”, is much, much more than Nassau Presbyterian Church. The embrace of God’s everlasting arms reaches far and wide. Every time we gather at the fount, every time we come to the Table, it is a splash, a taste of the kingdom God intends for the world. One of the reasons the we, we, we, and the us, us, us leap off the scripture’s page this week is the gospel teaching that “we” and “us” in the eyes and heart of Jesus is always bigger, broader, greater than you and I can comprehend. God’s promise and God’s mercy stretch far beyond what you and I can imagine. The we, we, we, and the us, us, us leap off the page this week because the powers and principalities are in the business right now of demonizing, dismissing, dehumanizing, threatening, harming, getting rid of “THEM”. Hundreds of thousands of “them” near and whose lives and families and children are at risk with mass layoffs in the blink of an eye, benefits being crushed buried deep within budgets, decisions released unsigned by courts late on a Friday afternoon, and orders callously signed and celebrated by the wealthiest and most powerful in the world. You and I know in the deepest parts of our soul, way down in our bones, you and I know and dare to believe and so live, that “THEM” is and will always be “US”, we, the children of God. They, too, are God’s good pleasure. All of humankind. All is God’s good pleasure. All within the embrace of the everlasting arms.
A couple in my first congregation had a farm in Maine where they would spend the summers. The husband once described to me the small country church they attended each Sunday. It was a Methodist Church that could seat maybe 100 people, and it was about a third full, he said. “I still sit in the back, though,” he told me, knowing that I knew exactly where he sat when they were in New Jersey. “But up there, I don’t sit on the right, I sit on the left. That way, I can see the cows in the pasture next to the church.” The son of a Methodist preacher, he went on to say that when the preacher was going on too long, he enjoyed looking out the window. “With all due respect”, he said with a chuckle, “the beauty of creation proclaims the gospel promise of God better than the preacher.” I can’t disagree. As Norman Maclean put it in his description of the beauty of creation in his book “A River Runs Through it”: “Every afternoon I was set free, untouched and untutored to learn on my own the natural side of God’s order. And there can be no better place to learn than the Montana of my youth. It was a world with dew still on it, more touched by wonder and possibility than any I have since known.” The world with dew still on it.
Have you noticed that most, if not all, the Sundays we have been worshipping here at the Seminary Chapel have been stunningly beautiful? Like that Methodist Church in Maine, here in the Chapel, we can look out at the world. There are no cows to look at, but there is creation in full bloom. This morning, with a sky so blue that it points to “a world with dew still on it, touched by wonder and possibility.” A sky that whispers of the world God intends. Creation can proclaim the gospel promise of God.
No one comes to the fount of baptism alone. No one comes to the table of the Lord’s Supper alone. Coming forward for communion this morning puts an exclamation point on that. Our Savior invites each one of us to this table prepared for us. The table of his promise. The meal of his grace, mercy, and love. A foretaste not just of glory divine but a foretaste of the kingdom come on earth, as it is in heaven. Jesus invites us here to remind us that we are indeed God’s good pleasure. Jesus invites us here, for when the earth shakes and the nations totter, we still feast on his love, crave his mercy, and are nourished by his grace. For as Jesus says in the of times like this in gospel of Luke, “This will be a time for you to bear testimony”.
Come to the Table this morning. And before and after you receive the bread and cup, look around and give thanks for the “holy we” to which we have been called. Don’t taste and see that God is good by yourself. And when you turn from the table, toward the outer aisles, make sure to look out the window. Look out at the world God created. For it is by the wonder and mystery of God, still a world with dew still on it touched by the wonder and possibility. A world of God’s promise. A new heaven and a new earth. Take a look out the window and remember that in Jesus Christ, our best days are always yet to come.
The Healing of the Nations
Revelation 22:1-5
May 25
Len Scales
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For those of us who were journeying through the season of Lent with Nassau, we will remember that we started with the beginning of Genesis and found our way through the Garden of Eden. In the garden, there was a tree of life.
Now near the end of the Easter season, we are in the last chapter of Revelation. We’ve gone from the starting point of the Bible to its conclusion and we are in a beautiful city, radiating because of God’s light, the Lamb of God sits on the throne and living water of crystal flows through the city. Here, the tree of life reappears, and this time it’s not one tree eventually cordoned off from humanity, but an arcade with the tree of life on either side of the river, and it bears fruit continually, the abundance is new in every month, and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.
Brian Blount in his commentary on Revelation, points out “John’s new Jerusalem out-Edens Eden!”[1]
God’s proclamation of all of creation as “very good” in Genesis is bookended here with healing of the nations. God’s healing is not for 1 individual, nor is it for 1 group of people, it is inclusive and sufficient for all.
It can be hard to imagine the healing of the nations when we know there is such grave suffering being inflicted across the world. Children are cut off from humanitarian aid, hospitals attacked, corruption and violence seem to take the day all too often.
Revelation was written when Rome was teetering on the edge of self-destruction due to its injustices.[2]
While the new Jerusalem with perpetual light, life-giving water, and leaves of healing may seem far off from our imagination, perhaps that wider context doesn’t. There are injustices in every age that are moral wounds in society. So much so that it can be hard to metabolize all the horror in our news cycle, lack of care for the neighbor in our country, and personal losses we each experience.
The tree of life along with the crystal river flowing from the throne of God is a relief and a promise. When the wild world seems to be spinning apart, we are led back to the refreshing waters provided by God. This image, this promise is not made so that we can hang back and say God’s got it and not do anything in response. It gives us a reassurance of what will be and a model of what we can work toward.
One of the greatest gifts of working with the campus ministry Princeton Presbyterians is seeing the diversity of how students and alums follow God’s call to “do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly.” There isn’t one profession or one region of the world that is the center of what God is doing. Rather, through the power of the Holy Spirit, God can be at work anywhere. We have the privilege of seeing the goodness of God everywhere the fruits of the Spirit are present—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.[3]
We can test what is of God and what is not by whether healing is a part of the impact. So where people’s access to healthcare and food and housing are cut off, that is not where God is leading us. Where creation is abused, that is not of God. God is present in the support of community, the flourishing of creation, a vision for life-giving future.
John is caught up in a dream in Revelation, he is angry at the injustices tearing his people and community apart. In the midst of the rubble, he is taken up and shown an apocalyptic story. It is not polite, nor the maintenance of the status quo. It is a complete turning over of all that is against God and a prophetic call for repentance. In the end, John is shown the vision we read today—a city of God, the Lamb that laid his life down for us all is sitting on the throne. There is no need to have gates that protect or fear of running out of water or fruit. There is abundance with a promise of healing what is broken and hurting and raw.
Revelation comes to John when it seems like life is falling apart. It is then the angel shows up and reveals a promise that imagines a new world.
In her book, Imagination: A Manifesto, Ruha Benjamin calls on the power of collective imagination to bring about a life-giving world. The stories we tell and the dreams we fan matter. Benjamin says, “So, one of the things we can all do starting yesterday is to actively work to topple the steel curtains and bulldoze the wire fences lurking in our own imaginations—confronting the treacherous ‘aliens’ and dangerous boogeymen distorting how we see others and warping how we understand ourselves. … We must populate our imaginations with images and stories of our shared humanity, of our interconnectedness, of our solidarity as people—a poetics of welcome, not walls.”[4]
So where are those positive avenues for your imagination to run? Is it through reading or enjoying art or playing with a three-year-old or listening to a young person share their vision for the world? Where might God be catching us up into a vision that is beyond the horizon of what we can see on earth? Who are the conversation partners that help you envision a world that is in line with the love and justice of God?
I invite you to take moment, stare out the windows and daydream.
A worship space like this is built with clear windows so that the world can see the church at worship, AND it also allows the church to look out at creation.
The leaves of these trees on either side of the chapel help change the color scape in each season. Whether it is buds in the spring, steady green in the summer, the turning of leaves in the fall, or the bare branches in the winter, these trees stand as testament to God’s good creation.
See God’s goodness and hear God’s vision:
Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life,
bright as crystal,
flowing from the throne of God and of the lamb
through the middle of the street of the city.
On either side of the river is the tree of life
with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month,
and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.
May it be so.
[1] Brian Blount, The New Testament Library: Revelation, (Westminster John Knox, 2009) 397.
[2] Christianity and White Supremacy: Heresy and Hope Conference at Princeton University, opening panel in the University Chapel, March 20, 2019.
[3] Galatians 5:22-23
[4] Ruha Benjamin, Imagination: A Manifesto, (W. W. Norton & Company, 2024) 102.
To The Thirsty
The Tears God Wipes
Revelation 7:9-17
May 11
David A. Davis
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I have admitted it before in a sermon. Some may remember it. I own up to it. I am not ashamed to admit it. I embrace it without bragging about it. It is part of who I am. I come by it honestly. It comes from my father, and I passed it on to one of our two children. Cathy no longer rolls her eyes at me. She has rather come to expect it. I am a crier. I cry at commercials. I cry at standing ovations. I cry at ESPN 30 for 30 documentaries. Not a sobbing sort of thing, but enough for a tear or two to run down my cheek. I cry at sappy sports movies like “Rudy”. I cry at acceptance speeches. I cried Wednesday night at the Farminary listening to Nate Stucky share his testimony. And I have heard Nate share it on multiple occasions.
So I took great comfort, great encouragement, this week as I did my homework in preparing for this sermon this morning. I discovered what I already knew, but I discovered it as if for the very first time. There are a whole lot of tears in the bible. More often than not, when I share some of my homework, like the study of a particular word and where it shows up on the scriptures’ page, more often than not, I am pointing out how rare or unique the use of the word may be. On Easter morning just a few weeks ago, I argued that the use of the word “Greetings”, as in the Risen Christ saying “greetings” to the women outside the empty tomb, only occurs three times in the gospel. But this morning, I rise before you to tell you what I think you already know as well, there are a whole lot of tears in the bible.
“Hear my prayer, O LORD, and give ear to my cry; do not hold your peace at my tears. For I am your passing guest, an alien, like all my forebears. (Ps 39)…My tears have been my food day and night, while people say to me continually, “Where is your God?” (Psa 42)…Again, I saw all the oppressions that are practiced under the sun. Look, the tears of the oppressed– with no one to comfort them! (Ecc). “A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.” (Mat 2). “Therefore, be alert, remembering that for three years I did not cease night or day to warn everyone with tears.” Paul in the Book of Acts. “Recalling your tears, I long to see you so that I may be filled with joy.” (II Tim)
In the Book of Genesis, at one point in the dramatic reconciliation with his brothers, Joseph wept so loudly that the Egyptians could hear him. Hannah wept so hard in the first Samuel that Eli the priest thought she was drunk. There was the woman who anointed Jesus’ feet with her tears. The weeping that filled the house when Jesus arrived to heal the daughter of Jairus. You remember that when Peter heard the cock crow the second time, he “broke down and wept.” In John’s gospel, after Mary Magdalene had told the disciples about the empty tomb, after they ran to look in and then returned to their homes, Mary stayed at the tomb. “Mary stood weeping outside the tomb.”
And, of course, when Mary confronted Jesus about the death of her brother Lazarus, and Jesus saw her and everyone else weeping, “Jesus wept.” When Jesus came near to the city of Jerusalem in the Palm Sunday procession, “he wept over it.” The verb used to describe Jesus’ last words in the gospels is “cried”. “He cried out in a loud voice.” The preacher in the Book of Hebrews proclaims, “In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death.” (Heb 5).
Yes, there are a whole lot of tears in the bible. There is a whole lot of weeping on the scripture’s page. That’s because the bible says as much about God’s people as it says about God. Though in the tears of Jesus we see the very tears of God. As Nicholas Wolterstorff writes in his moving memoir Lament for a Son, a memoir dripping with his own tears: “How is faith to endure, O God, when you allow all this scraping and tearing on us? You have allowed rivers of blood to flow, mountains of suffering to pile up, sobs to become humanity’s song–all without lifting a finger that we could see…. If you have not abandoned us, explain yourself. We strain to hear. But instead of hearing an answer, we catch sight of God [In Christ himself] scraped and torn. Through our tears we see the tears of God.”
In a similar way, William Sloan Coffin points to the tears of God in the first sermon he preached after coming back to the pulpit after the death of son. “For some reason, nothing so infuriates me,” Coffin preached, “as the incapacity of seemingly intelligent people to get it through their heads that God doesn’t go around with God’s fingers on triggers, God’s first around knives, God’s hands on steering wheels….My own consolation lies in knowing that it was not the will of God that Alex die…that [on that night] God’s heart was the first of all our hearts to break.”
We had around a hundred people at the Seminary’s Farminary for the tour and worship, and potluck dinner. Once again, I heard Nate say a version of what I have heard him say multiple times: “Farmers and pastors have a lot in common. They both have to learn a lot about life and death.” You won’t be surprised that I have had a multitude of conversations that no one can number about dying, death, and eternity. The older I get, as the conversations keep coming, I find myself willing to say less when the topic turns to what heaven will be like. As Dan Migliore writes in his seminal work “Faith Seeking Understanding”, “We should not pretend to have precise language and detailed information about the future.” He argues that we can only speak in images, metaphors, and parables. Here, Professor Migliore quotes Martin Luther: “As little children know in their mother’s womb about their birth, so little do we know about life everlasting.”
Saying less for me about is not a reflection of a lack of faith or rising doubt in a grizzled old pastor. I cling ever more and more to the resurrection promise of God for you and me and this broken world. I will admit that some of the biblical imagery regarding heaven is less compelling to my own hopes and longings. Or maybe better said, the imagery surrounding eternal life with God has shifted for me. Life forever nestled into the beauty of the very heart of God. Well, I find myself praying that with people, proclaiming that more and more. But there is one biblical image about heaven that I won’t let go of. “God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”
When the bible is so full of tears, is there a more compelling resurrection promise? The Word of God is so full of tears. The tears of humankind. The tears of creation. The tears of Jesus. The tears of God. So many tears. So many tears. Yes, the tears of the sacred page. But yes, the tears that define humanity then and now and every time in between, so full of tears. You can’t miss, you ought not miss, you better not miss this eternal promise of God in and through the Risen Lamb upon the throne. That by grace and his righteousness, and the everlasting mercy of God, one day. One day. God will wipe away every tear from our eyes. God will wipe away every tear but the tears of joy. For weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes in the morning.
Cathy and I fell in love on this campus forty years ago this spring semester. Part of our romance was sneaking into this chapel later at night. Believe it or not, it wasn’t locked. The piano was locked, but I knew where the key was hanging. I would sit at the piano and play, and we would sing. One of the few songs I knew how to play was a song by Andre Crouch. Noel Werner has chosen it for our final hymn. Noel didn’t know this part of our story when he planned the hymns for this morning. “No more crying there, we are going to see the King.”. Here is another one: “Blessed Assurance, Jesus is mine. O, what a foretaste of glory divine. Heir of salvation, purchase of God, born of his spirit, washed in his blood. This is my story; this is my song, praising my Savior all the day long”.
Stick with me here, church. If our life in Christ is a foretaste of glory divine, if God in God’s infinite love and mercy offers just a glimpse of the kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven, if Jesus with a grace that greets us fresh every day, invites us to taste and see now the love he has for us, if the Holy Spirit is on the loose in our lives planting a seed deep within us of the knowledge of God’s dwelling place, the Wonderful Counselor reminding us today and tomorrow and the next day that the Savior has gone to prepare a place for us, if this life we live together as the body of Christ is somehow a foretaste of glory divine, than that means God is wipe your tears and mine this side of glory.
The wordless comfort of the Holy Spirit at work when really, no words should be said. The Savior’s love tends to a broken heart and allows just a bit of light to shine in the darkness. The resurrection promise of God that even in the chaos and turmoil of this blasted, broken world still points to an open door that no one can shut. Luther seems right when he writes about “how little do we know about eternal life”. But when it comes to this foretaste that I am trying to describe, when it comes to God wiping away, receiving, sharing, joining the tears of God’s children in this life? Maybe I can’t describe it. Maybe I can’t give you a great sermon illustration. But that’s because too many of you would be in it. Because when it comes to God and your tears and my tears now, I believe, I know it, because I’ve seen it.
A whole multitude of times that no one can count. The tears God wipes.
“God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”
Worthy Lamb
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.