4 Easter, Year C
Sunday, April 21, 2013
St. Mark’s, Bay City
Acts 9:36-43
Psalm 23
Revelation 7:9-17
John 10:22-30
I’ve been talking in several
classes and conversations lately about the lens through which we read
scripture. We could read scripture as a
something of a manual for how we’re supposed to live, basic rules or guidelines
for moral living. That’s not bad, but it
misses out entirely on God and has no mention of Jesus. Looking at the overall story, I see the
Gospel narrative, the narrative of scripture to be a story in five acts: Creation, Fall, Judgment, Redemption, and
Re-Creation. The overall lesion that I
see taught throughout this story is “Love God, and Love your Neighbor.” That’s the lens through which I believe we
would read scripture. The overall
narrative is creation, fall, judgment, redemption, and re-creation, and the
lens through which we read this story, the purpose of our lives would be “love
God, and love your neighbor.”
So then, within that narrative and
lens, we heard today this beautiful image from Revelation chapter 7. “For the Lamb at the center of the throne
will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of the water of life,
and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes." (Revelation 7:17) This feels like pure Easter joy: resurrection, and Jesus’ victory over
death. In our Revelation reading, we
have this beautiful image of a vast multitude of people gathering before God
singing their love and praise for him.
“They will hunger no more, and thirst no more; the sun will not strike
them, nor any scorching heat; for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be
their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God
will wipe away every tear from their eyes." (Revelation 7:16-17)
We see in this vision that John was
given, the re-creation, the last act of the story. We see “love God and love your neighbor”
lived without sin, harm, and death. We
see a restored creation where there is no suffering, no harm inflicted upon us
by each other, and no harm inflicted by creation. There will be no Bay City summers, just a
nice cool and breezy 78°. This is where
we believe all of life is headed, to a restored creation.
Now, in this vision that John was
given, he was told that this vast multitude are those who have come out of the
great ordeal which of course makes me wonder, what is the great ordeal? Is it simply death? Is it some persecution of the church? Well, in the overall narrative of the Gospel,
we would call the great ordeal judgment and part of redemption.
If you look on either side of this
story in Revelation, you find rather terrifying images of judgment and
destruction, much of it divine destruction.
Angels bring plague and destruction down upon the earth. Millions die.
The face of the earth itself is largely destroyed. That definitely seems to fit the judgment
piece of the story, but how do we view that aspect of the story through the
lens of “Love God and love your neighbor”?
Well, in Unabashedly Episcopalian, Bishop Andy Doyle writes about the fire
of God, the fire of Jesus about which Jesus speaks in Luke chapter 12. “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I
wish it were already kindled!” (Luke 12:49)
Bishop Doyle uses the image of a forest fire. He writes:
Fire, we understand today, renews
the forest. It builds diversity within
the trees, recycles nutrients that lie barren on the forest floor and decreases
diseases in plants. It destroy, creates, regenerates, recycles; and in fact,
some species depend on the fire to grow new seeds into trees. This is one of the many places where we see
God’s creative hand at work, and we still have much to learn from this
process. What is there to learn? That we need not be wholly afraid of
fire. That we must respect its
power. (The Rt. Rev. C. Andrew Doyle, Unabashedly Episcopalian, Chapter Four)
The judgment and calamity we see in
Revelation must be read in the context of the full Gospel narrative and with
the lens of “Love God and Love your neighbor.
The judgment and calamity of Revelation can be understood like a forest
fire which destroys in order to renew.
The purpose is not destruction, but to bring about re-creation.
Even so, we may wonder, what is the
great ordeal? When will it come? What will it be like? Is it every day life or is it some ultimate
cataclysmic event that God will bring?
Why don’t we have all the answers?
We don’t tend to continue striving once we have all the answers. We tend to need some mystery to keep our
interest. Mystery novels are fun to
read, trying to figure out what’s going to happen next. Once we’re finished, though, once we have all
the answers, we put the book back on the shelf and move on to something
else. I can’t help but think we’d do the
same with scripture with the Gospel story.
If it was totally clear and we had all the answers, we’d move on,
eventually forgetting the story.
So we wrestle with the unknowing,
looking forward with hope and peace and joy to the final re-creation when God
will wipe every tear from our eyes. In
the mean time, if we’re totally honest, the fire is still kinda
frightening. Even if the fire is
cleansing, even if the fire brings about new creation, we’re not particularly
fond of fire. Bishop Doyle goes on to
write that our natural response is to stand back from fire. How are we to live then, when, as he writes,
our lives are on fire. There are blazes
which can burn us daily. The world is
itself on fire. There are fires of
individual calamity, political unrest, economic woes. There are fires of terrorist bombs in Boston,
fires of explosions in west Texas, fires of murder and anger. The world is burning, Bishop Doyle writes,
and he writes amidst all of this fire:
Jesus walked into the flames to
heal the blind man. He walked into the
flames to save the adulterous woman. He
walked into the flames to feed a crowd of people who were hungry and thirsty,
to still the stormy waters, to face down death on Good Friday. Can we follow him?
Soaked in the waters of baptism,
[Bishop Doyle writes] we become impervious to the fire…We know that every child
of God will encounter the fires of life:
disappointment, heartache, injustice, sickness. But we also know Jesus Christ has promised to
be with them, always…when we pray for those to be baptized, we are together
proclaiming, “No harm will come to you.
The fire of Christ will not burn you but will burn within you.” Jesus and his church are gathered around us
to hold our hands, as we stand together in this all-consuming fire of
Christ. (The Rt. Rev. C. Andrew Doyle, Unabashedly Episcopalian, Chapter Four)
Our hope in Jesus is for how we
will choose to live in this life as disciples of Jesus. Clothed in the waters of baptism, will we
walk through the world with the fire of Christ burning within us, bringing
peace and healing where we go? Will we
walk through this life, unafraid of the fires which blaze all around us,
trusting in God to carry us through the great ordeal to the waters of life?
Will we let the lens through which
we view life be “Love God and love your neighbor,” trusting in the story of
creation, fall, judgment, redemption, and re-creation? Will we trust in the vision God gave to John,
believing in the beauty of the image we heard today from Revelation?
These are they who have come out of
the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood
of the Lamb. For this reason, they are
before the throne of God, and worship him day and night within his temple, and
the one who is seated on the throne will shelter them. They will hunger no more, and thirst no more;
the sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat; for the Lamb at the
center of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs
of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes."
(Revelation 7:14b-17)
Amen.
