November 27, 2011
Advent 1B
Mark 13:24-37
It’s happened once again, we’ve survived a weekend of Turkey and football and parades and door-buster deals and have run straight into the Christmas season or, as Johnny Mathis refers to it, “the most wonderful time of the year”. The Christmas trees and lights have been illuminated, Christmas music is now playing 24/7 in stores, Christmas movies have been dominating the television… punctuated by the oh so clever holiday commercials…and the holiday flavors are selling like hot cakes at Starbucks. Yes, the Christmas season is in full swing. Soon calendars will be filled with parties and get togethers, counters will be filled with baked goods, mailboxes will be filled with Christmas cards and Christmas trees loaded with lights. Yes, Johnny Mathis, a most wonderful time of the year, indeed. But wait, aren’t we missing something?
As the Black Friday deals fade into Cyber Monday and the Christmas season swings into action, we in the church begin our observation of Advent. It is a time of preparation and active waiting and watching for the coming of our Lord, whose birth we celebrate on Christmas. And while the world around us is singing “Jingle Bell Rock” and “Santa Claus is Coming to Town,” we sing hymns like “Savior of the Nations, Come” and “Wake, Awake”…hymns played in keys that cause a bit of eerie dissonance when heard. And while the world is reading stories like “Twas the Night before Christmas” and “Frosty the Snow Man,” we hear different tales from the Bible…tales that cause the same dissonance when heard as our Advent hymns. We hear uncomfortable tales about suffering and wars and stars falling from the heavens, the sun being darkened and the moon failing to give light…about prophets praying that God would tear open the heavens and come down so that mountains would quake. Doesn’t really fit next to “Have a Holly, Jolly, Christmas,” now does it?
And yet, as the year grows older, the hours of daylight reach their shortest, and the earth becomes dormant, we break from our cheery secular traditions and take a step back to hear reminders to keep awake, to watch and to hope.
We start Advent off this year in the year of Mark, the shortest of the Gospels. And our Gospel text for this morning puts us smack dab in the middle of a discourse of Jesus that consumes the entire thirteenth chapter of Mark and is called “the little apocalypse.” Exciting huh?
In the first half of the chapter, we hear Jesus speaking with the disciples about things that are to come. He tells of the destruction of the temple, about persecutions and false messiahs, about wars and rumors of wars, nations rising up against nations, peoples against peoples, earthquakes, famines…and I quote “great suffering such as has not been from the beginning of the creation that God created until now, no, and never will be.” (Mk 13:18). Fa La La La La, La La La La.
“But after those things, after that suffering, the sun will go dark, the moon will not shine, the stars will fall from the heavens and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in clouds’ with great power and glory. 27Then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.”
Some, like the writers of the Left Behind series, have co-opted Mark’s Little Apocalypse and have turned it into a prediction of what is to come with the rapture…likewise, when we look at this text, the temptation for us is to think about what is to come, to look at the signs around us and speak about the end being near. But here is the thing, Mark was writing to a people who were living in the midst of the dust that was the temple of Jerusalem. They were living in the midst of the desolating sacrilege that Jesus described in this text…and that’s part of what makes this text apocalyptic, it speaks to what was going on in the world using the language of the faithful.
For Mark’s audience, the end of the world as they knew it had come. The temple had been destroyed, they were being persecuted, false prophets where abundantly present. And yet, even at the heightened state of alertness that comes when the world seems to be falling apart around you, they were charged with the task of keeping alert, keeping awake. Keep awake for signs of God around you, know that in the incarnation, the temple is no longer God’s dwelling place…it is no longer the center of wisdom. In God’s coming into the world in Christ, God made his dwelling place amongst humans, and the center of wisdom is found in the wilderness. In the incarnation, God reminds us that God’s preferred mode of operation is in the unexpected places.
One of the most awesome things that the confirmation students have told me they have learned so far this year in studying the Old Testament ancestors is that God is present and works in unexpected places and people. One of the temptations of being people who live in the world and in sin is that we want to see God in people and places that we expect to see God…and we use human standards by which to frame our expectations of our God become human. And so we have a tendency to put God in a box, assign him or her attributes and stick a picture of God into our pocket so that we have a reference point for when we think we see God at work in the world. But we are Advent people, and as such, we need reminders like the one we have from Mark this morning. Reminders to keep awake and be alert to God’s work in the world where we least expect it. But also, keep alert for ways in which we think that we have figured God out.
In the next few weeks we will be preparing to celebrate the birth of a King who was born in a barn, not in a royal palace. He was a king who exercised his power by going outside of the social norms and boundaries and reaching out to the outcast, the sick, the unclean, the prostitutes. He was a king who showed the world his glory by dying on a cross, a crown of thorns on his head. The king we look for and celebrate a king who doesn’t rule in the way that we expect him to…there are no conventional tactics used by Jesus. And that is why Jesus asks us to keep awake…not just now, in this advent season, but always. Keep awake for the signs of God that you normally would not expect. Be alert and keep watch for a God who has brought an end to the world as we know it, and a beginning to a better world.
As Advent people in a Christmas world, let us live fully into the dissonance, let us look for the fullness of the incarnation around us and let us look for the presence of God in the unexpected places…it’s a greater gift than dreams of a White Christmas.
Wishing you a blessed and dissonant Advent. Amen
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Sunday, November 13, 2011
“The Kingdom of Subversives” - Sermon for Confirmation Sunday
Pentecost 22A
November 13, 2011
Matthew 25:14-30
How much do you tell people when they ask about your weekends? Are there certain people that you are willing to tell anything to? Are there others to whom your only response is “it was good”? Rachel, Nick and Sidney, what will you tell your friends about what you are about to do this morning? Will you talk about the details of what confirmation is and how God was at work this morning? Or will it just be something you did at church? And what will the rest of us tell folks about what we are about to witness these three young people do and God do in them?
I ask these questions because the stories we tell on Monday morning about what happens on Sunday morning speak volumes to the power of how God is at work on Sunday mornings…that is, if we let them.
When we meet up with Jesus this morning, he is in the middle of a series of teachings that began in chapter 21 of Matthew. There are responses to questions and parables and the further he gets into this discourse, the more and more he speaks of the end times and the quicker he segues from one parable to another as if he knew he was being timed and that time was about to run out so he has to squeeze everything in that he had planned to say into this short amount of time. And it’s near the very end of this discourse that Jesus tells those who are with him the parable of the talents.
For it is as if a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them; to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. When he returned, the slave with the five talents came back with ten, and the slave with the two talents came back with four…but the slave who had been given one talent returned with only that one talent after having buried it in a field to keep it safe so that he wouldn’t lose it while his master was gone. The two slaves who returned with more than they had been given were praised…while the one who hid his talent had it taken from him and was cast into outer darkness.
Some text for confirmation Sunday, isn’t it? Nothing like Reformation Sunday where the texts lift us up, speaking of God as our fortress and our rock and about Jesus being the truth that sets us free.
But, here we are, a master, three slaves and some talents. Happy Confirmation…
Actually, there is a lot of good news in this story…but it’s one of those where you have to dig a little deeper to get to the nugget of the good news that it very present. When the master goes out on his journey, he entrusts these three slaves with gifts…each talent representing about one year’s worth of wages. Just imagine what you would do if you had been given five years’ worth of wages, or even two or even one year’s wages…all in one shot. Now, pull this parable into modern times. Say the slaves who had been given the five talents and two talents played the market…and what if they lost it all?? It would be a totally different parable, but given the times we live in, it would have been a distinct possibility with stocks fluctuating on a daily basis. And yet, they took those risks, played those odds, and came out on top…doubling the gift that their master had given them, and they are told to enter into the joy of their master. The slave who had the one talent, however, was so afraid of what his master would do if he lost the talent, that he played it safe and hid it in a field until his master returned…and it is this one who gets the short end of the stick, as it were, losing his talent and getting tossed into the outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Is there good news there? There sure is…but like I said, we just have to dig a little deeper to get to it.
You see, if you take a look at Jesus’ teachings as a whole, you will find that there is a certain element of subversion to them…a kicking back against the established order of things…and that’s what gives Jesus’ teachings the power that they have. Jesus wasn’t afraid to question the status quo and then he offers something better. This parable comes right before Jesus’ arrest, his trial, his death and resurrection. He knew his time was at an end when he began his discourse and so he just keeps talking and talking and hoping that someone will soak things up. And so, when read in the context of Jesus’ death and resurrection, this parable oozes good news…it oozes good news because the ultimate gift that we receive as servants of God is the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We can play the market all we want with our talents, allowing God to use them to change the world…or we can squander them and keep them hidden…but the gift of life through Christ and the joy of our Lord is something that we will never lose.
This is what gives what we do and what God does on Sunday morning its power…and makes us subversives along with Jesus. I mean, think about it…where else do we celebrate a king who gained his victory by dying? Where else do we talk about a Lord who teaches us about the importance of caring for the poor and reaching out to the outcast? Where else do people bring their children so that they can be bound with Christ in his death and, in essence, enact a dying to sin and rising to new life, as St. Ambrose once said “we’d baptize you with dirt, if it didn’t kill you”? Where else to people come to a table to eat and drink the body and blood of their savior and do so next to people that they wouldn’t have anything to do with the rest of the week?
Where else, do teenagers…still at the beginning on their lives…come and stand before their faith family and re-affirm the vows that their parents made at their baptism…vows that join them in Christ to his death and resurrection?
When you were baptized, your parents brought you forward to have you washed in water…but it was much more than that. In that moment you were joined with Christ into his death and brought to new life in Christ, one where you have the freedom to live and trust in God’s love that has been working and will continue to work in you to make you the people that God made you to be.
As confirmands, you will stand before us shortly and be subversives…young people challenging the status quo by affirming the vows made for you the day you died to sin and were made alive again in Christ through his own death and resurrection. The day you were free to live in the joy of your master. This is not the end of something, it isn’t a graduation of sorts…but rather a beginning, where you will continue to grow and be challenged and be changed by the love of God.
So, what story are going to tell tomorrow at the water fountain, the coffee pot, the lockers? Are going to going tell a quick story that hints at what happened today, or are you going to tell the story of the transforming power of the love of God, who has given you the ultimate gift in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, so that you may live as his servants and trust that God is going to love you from death into life and God is going use you and your talents to transform the world?
Amen
November 13, 2011
Matthew 25:14-30
How much do you tell people when they ask about your weekends? Are there certain people that you are willing to tell anything to? Are there others to whom your only response is “it was good”? Rachel, Nick and Sidney, what will you tell your friends about what you are about to do this morning? Will you talk about the details of what confirmation is and how God was at work this morning? Or will it just be something you did at church? And what will the rest of us tell folks about what we are about to witness these three young people do and God do in them?
I ask these questions because the stories we tell on Monday morning about what happens on Sunday morning speak volumes to the power of how God is at work on Sunday mornings…that is, if we let them.
When we meet up with Jesus this morning, he is in the middle of a series of teachings that began in chapter 21 of Matthew. There are responses to questions and parables and the further he gets into this discourse, the more and more he speaks of the end times and the quicker he segues from one parable to another as if he knew he was being timed and that time was about to run out so he has to squeeze everything in that he had planned to say into this short amount of time. And it’s near the very end of this discourse that Jesus tells those who are with him the parable of the talents.
For it is as if a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them; to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. When he returned, the slave with the five talents came back with ten, and the slave with the two talents came back with four…but the slave who had been given one talent returned with only that one talent after having buried it in a field to keep it safe so that he wouldn’t lose it while his master was gone. The two slaves who returned with more than they had been given were praised…while the one who hid his talent had it taken from him and was cast into outer darkness.
Some text for confirmation Sunday, isn’t it? Nothing like Reformation Sunday where the texts lift us up, speaking of God as our fortress and our rock and about Jesus being the truth that sets us free.
But, here we are, a master, three slaves and some talents. Happy Confirmation…
Actually, there is a lot of good news in this story…but it’s one of those where you have to dig a little deeper to get to the nugget of the good news that it very present. When the master goes out on his journey, he entrusts these three slaves with gifts…each talent representing about one year’s worth of wages. Just imagine what you would do if you had been given five years’ worth of wages, or even two or even one year’s wages…all in one shot. Now, pull this parable into modern times. Say the slaves who had been given the five talents and two talents played the market…and what if they lost it all?? It would be a totally different parable, but given the times we live in, it would have been a distinct possibility with stocks fluctuating on a daily basis. And yet, they took those risks, played those odds, and came out on top…doubling the gift that their master had given them, and they are told to enter into the joy of their master. The slave who had the one talent, however, was so afraid of what his master would do if he lost the talent, that he played it safe and hid it in a field until his master returned…and it is this one who gets the short end of the stick, as it were, losing his talent and getting tossed into the outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Is there good news there? There sure is…but like I said, we just have to dig a little deeper to get to it.
You see, if you take a look at Jesus’ teachings as a whole, you will find that there is a certain element of subversion to them…a kicking back against the established order of things…and that’s what gives Jesus’ teachings the power that they have. Jesus wasn’t afraid to question the status quo and then he offers something better. This parable comes right before Jesus’ arrest, his trial, his death and resurrection. He knew his time was at an end when he began his discourse and so he just keeps talking and talking and hoping that someone will soak things up. And so, when read in the context of Jesus’ death and resurrection, this parable oozes good news…it oozes good news because the ultimate gift that we receive as servants of God is the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We can play the market all we want with our talents, allowing God to use them to change the world…or we can squander them and keep them hidden…but the gift of life through Christ and the joy of our Lord is something that we will never lose.
This is what gives what we do and what God does on Sunday morning its power…and makes us subversives along with Jesus. I mean, think about it…where else do we celebrate a king who gained his victory by dying? Where else do we talk about a Lord who teaches us about the importance of caring for the poor and reaching out to the outcast? Where else do people bring their children so that they can be bound with Christ in his death and, in essence, enact a dying to sin and rising to new life, as St. Ambrose once said “we’d baptize you with dirt, if it didn’t kill you”? Where else to people come to a table to eat and drink the body and blood of their savior and do so next to people that they wouldn’t have anything to do with the rest of the week?
Where else, do teenagers…still at the beginning on their lives…come and stand before their faith family and re-affirm the vows that their parents made at their baptism…vows that join them in Christ to his death and resurrection?
When you were baptized, your parents brought you forward to have you washed in water…but it was much more than that. In that moment you were joined with Christ into his death and brought to new life in Christ, one where you have the freedom to live and trust in God’s love that has been working and will continue to work in you to make you the people that God made you to be.
As confirmands, you will stand before us shortly and be subversives…young people challenging the status quo by affirming the vows made for you the day you died to sin and were made alive again in Christ through his own death and resurrection. The day you were free to live in the joy of your master. This is not the end of something, it isn’t a graduation of sorts…but rather a beginning, where you will continue to grow and be challenged and be changed by the love of God.
So, what story are going to tell tomorrow at the water fountain, the coffee pot, the lockers? Are going to going tell a quick story that hints at what happened today, or are you going to tell the story of the transforming power of the love of God, who has given you the ultimate gift in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, so that you may live as his servants and trust that God is going to love you from death into life and God is going use you and your talents to transform the world?
Amen
Sunday, November 6, 2011
“Remember, Remember”
All Saints Day
Revelation 7:9-17
Remember, remember the fifth of November,
Gunpowder, treason and plot
I see no reason why gunpowder, treason
Should ever be forgot.
This poem, which originated in the 17th century in England, was inspired by the day in which Guido Fawkes was caught guarding explosives in the House of Lords which were intended to be used by Fawkes and his partners in an assassination plot against King James I. The poem was written to remind future generations that treason was not an act that would be praised. However, the reason that Guido Fawkes and his compatriots attempted to assassinate the King was in reaction to the injustice they saw enacted by the crown. All the members of the Gunpowder plot were Catholics living in a country that, under King James, had become intolerant at the least, and at best, dangerous to Catholics. Priests who remained in England and continued to practice their religious tradition did so under threat of torture or death. The men who engineered this plot hoped that it would bring about greater religious tolerance…the plot failed however, and to this day the 5th of November is celebrated in England by fireworks, bonfires and burning effigies of Guido Fawkes, a man reacting to an injustice of his day.
Today, the 6th of November, is also a day of remembrance…but for a different reason. We remember and celebrate all the saints, the saints who are here now, the saints that have gone before us and the saints who are not yet born. And as we do so, another poem rings in our ears. “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.”
In our reading from Revelation, John of Patmos shares with us a vision of what is to come in the end. It is a vision of people from every tribe and language and nation gathered together at the throne of God worshiping God and the lamb. A multitude dressed in white and palm branches in their hands indicating the victory of their King. A song arises from this gathering telling of the salvation that belongs to their God and to the lamb. It is a beautiful scene, one that serves as an interlude between the judgment and destruction that come in John’s vision in chapters 6 and 8. In chapter 6, we hear about the opening of the first six seals that secured the scroll of Revelation and the judgments that they release…the four horsemen of the apocalypse, the cries of the martyrs, a devastating earthquake that turned the sun black, the moon the color of blood and caused the stars to fall from heaven to earth. (Anyone who says the bible is boring has not read the book of Revelation)
But before the seventh and final seal is opened, unleashing more judgment and wrath, John sees a vision of the angels of the four winds holding those winds back from destroying the earth…and of an angel ascending with the rising sun with the seal of God ordering the angels of the four winds to hold the winds back until the servants of the Lord have been sealed. John reports of hearing that there were 144,000 sealed…12,000 from each of the tribes of the 12 sons of Israel.
And then his vision turns to that which we heard this morning, a vision of a multitude so big that no one could count of all tribes, all nations…a vision of martyrs who had come out of the great ordeal and had washed their robes white in the blood of the lamb…a vision of adoration of God and the lamb that speaks to the salvation that belongs to God. A vision of a conversation that reveals what salvation looks like in the eyes of God.
Most frequently, we hear John’s description of the multitudes robed in white when we gather together to celebrate the life of someone who has left this life for life eternal. There are words of comfort in this passage that can help us as we mourn a loss of a loved one, words about an end to tears and about streams of the waters of life, all wonderful images to conjure when tears seem endless and waters of life seem far away.
And it seems that words of comfort are what John intended it when he wrote of these visions to the people of the seven churches in Asia. At the time that John was writing, the people were literally going through a great ordeal. They were being persecuted and killed by Rome because they were followers of the lamb. Their robes were soaked red in their own blood and it is quite possible that to these people it seemed as if the sun had turned black and the moon the color of blood. And yet, the members of the seven churches that John was writing to did not cease their worship of God…even if that worship was a little lukewarm at times.
The vision that John shared with them and that he shares with us is one that is totally countercultural to how the world was seen, both then and now. It speaks of Salvation that belongs to God and to God alone and what that salvation looks like.
In its original form, salvation is a word that is not limited to just the spiritual realm, but instead it refers to total wellbeing and wholeness. For the people living in the grasp of the Roman Empire, the “official” source of salvation, of wellbeing, was Rome...but that was not the experience of John’s audience who routinely were the victims of injustice. There is no wholeness and wellbeing when you are being persecuted and slaughtered. So John shows them a vision of God’s empire, where salvation comes from God and God alone.
In God’s empire, there is no room for the injustices and persecutions that the Roman Empire used to dehumanize the early Christians. In God’s empire, salvation means the end of injustice and the restoration of every aspect of human wellbeing for people of all nations and tribes and tongues. In God’s empire, there is no more hunger or thirst…there is no more threat of scorching heat, a wonderful promise for desert dwellers…and God will wipe away every tear, tears of anger, of distress, of sorrow, of bitterness and anguish. Every tear will be wiped away by God himself.
As people who live in the midst of very visible, worldwide, outcries against the injustices of our day and our own great ordeal, we do well to remember, remember the vision of John of a day when there will no longer be room for the things that divide us. Of a day when racism, sexism, ageism and all the other –isms that bring about injustice will no longer have a place where they can thrive and cause people to be seen as less than human in any way, shape, or form. It will be a day in which people of all tribes and nations and peoples and tongues will all come together around throne of God and sing of the salvation that comes from God and God alone and of the victory that has been won for us by the lamb in whose blood we have been washed. And as we remember the saints that have gone before us, the saints with us now, and the saints yet to be born, we remember the song that binds us all - “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.”
Revelation 7:9-17
Remember, remember the fifth of November,
Gunpowder, treason and plot
I see no reason why gunpowder, treason
Should ever be forgot.
This poem, which originated in the 17th century in England, was inspired by the day in which Guido Fawkes was caught guarding explosives in the House of Lords which were intended to be used by Fawkes and his partners in an assassination plot against King James I. The poem was written to remind future generations that treason was not an act that would be praised. However, the reason that Guido Fawkes and his compatriots attempted to assassinate the King was in reaction to the injustice they saw enacted by the crown. All the members of the Gunpowder plot were Catholics living in a country that, under King James, had become intolerant at the least, and at best, dangerous to Catholics. Priests who remained in England and continued to practice their religious tradition did so under threat of torture or death. The men who engineered this plot hoped that it would bring about greater religious tolerance…the plot failed however, and to this day the 5th of November is celebrated in England by fireworks, bonfires and burning effigies of Guido Fawkes, a man reacting to an injustice of his day.
Today, the 6th of November, is also a day of remembrance…but for a different reason. We remember and celebrate all the saints, the saints who are here now, the saints that have gone before us and the saints who are not yet born. And as we do so, another poem rings in our ears. “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.”
In our reading from Revelation, John of Patmos shares with us a vision of what is to come in the end. It is a vision of people from every tribe and language and nation gathered together at the throne of God worshiping God and the lamb. A multitude dressed in white and palm branches in their hands indicating the victory of their King. A song arises from this gathering telling of the salvation that belongs to their God and to the lamb. It is a beautiful scene, one that serves as an interlude between the judgment and destruction that come in John’s vision in chapters 6 and 8. In chapter 6, we hear about the opening of the first six seals that secured the scroll of Revelation and the judgments that they release…the four horsemen of the apocalypse, the cries of the martyrs, a devastating earthquake that turned the sun black, the moon the color of blood and caused the stars to fall from heaven to earth. (Anyone who says the bible is boring has not read the book of Revelation)
But before the seventh and final seal is opened, unleashing more judgment and wrath, John sees a vision of the angels of the four winds holding those winds back from destroying the earth…and of an angel ascending with the rising sun with the seal of God ordering the angels of the four winds to hold the winds back until the servants of the Lord have been sealed. John reports of hearing that there were 144,000 sealed…12,000 from each of the tribes of the 12 sons of Israel.
And then his vision turns to that which we heard this morning, a vision of a multitude so big that no one could count of all tribes, all nations…a vision of martyrs who had come out of the great ordeal and had washed their robes white in the blood of the lamb…a vision of adoration of God and the lamb that speaks to the salvation that belongs to God. A vision of a conversation that reveals what salvation looks like in the eyes of God.
Most frequently, we hear John’s description of the multitudes robed in white when we gather together to celebrate the life of someone who has left this life for life eternal. There are words of comfort in this passage that can help us as we mourn a loss of a loved one, words about an end to tears and about streams of the waters of life, all wonderful images to conjure when tears seem endless and waters of life seem far away.
And it seems that words of comfort are what John intended it when he wrote of these visions to the people of the seven churches in Asia. At the time that John was writing, the people were literally going through a great ordeal. They were being persecuted and killed by Rome because they were followers of the lamb. Their robes were soaked red in their own blood and it is quite possible that to these people it seemed as if the sun had turned black and the moon the color of blood. And yet, the members of the seven churches that John was writing to did not cease their worship of God…even if that worship was a little lukewarm at times.
The vision that John shared with them and that he shares with us is one that is totally countercultural to how the world was seen, both then and now. It speaks of Salvation that belongs to God and to God alone and what that salvation looks like.
In its original form, salvation is a word that is not limited to just the spiritual realm, but instead it refers to total wellbeing and wholeness. For the people living in the grasp of the Roman Empire, the “official” source of salvation, of wellbeing, was Rome...but that was not the experience of John’s audience who routinely were the victims of injustice. There is no wholeness and wellbeing when you are being persecuted and slaughtered. So John shows them a vision of God’s empire, where salvation comes from God and God alone.
In God’s empire, there is no room for the injustices and persecutions that the Roman Empire used to dehumanize the early Christians. In God’s empire, salvation means the end of injustice and the restoration of every aspect of human wellbeing for people of all nations and tribes and tongues. In God’s empire, there is no more hunger or thirst…there is no more threat of scorching heat, a wonderful promise for desert dwellers…and God will wipe away every tear, tears of anger, of distress, of sorrow, of bitterness and anguish. Every tear will be wiped away by God himself.
As people who live in the midst of very visible, worldwide, outcries against the injustices of our day and our own great ordeal, we do well to remember, remember the vision of John of a day when there will no longer be room for the things that divide us. Of a day when racism, sexism, ageism and all the other –isms that bring about injustice will no longer have a place where they can thrive and cause people to be seen as less than human in any way, shape, or form. It will be a day in which people of all tribes and nations and peoples and tongues will all come together around throne of God and sing of the salvation that comes from God and God alone and of the victory that has been won for us by the lamb in whose blood we have been washed. And as we remember the saints that have gone before us, the saints with us now, and the saints yet to be born, we remember the song that binds us all - “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.”
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