CHRIST THE REDEEMER ANGLICAN CHURCH, DANVERS, MA

SUNDAY APRIL 21, 2013

LECTIONARY TEXTS 4TH SUNDAY OF EASTER: ACTS 9: 36-43,
REVELATION 7: 9-17, JOHN 10:22-30.
FOCUS TEXT: I looked again. I saw a huge crowd, too huge
to count. Everyone was thereall nations and tribes, all
races and languages. And they were standing, dressed in
white robes and waving palm branches, standing before
the throne and heartily singing: Salvation to God on his
throne! Salvation to the Lamb!
All who were standing around the ThroneAngels,
Elders, Animalsfell on their faces before the Throne and
worshipped God, singing: Oh Yes! The blessing and power
and strength, to our God forever and ever and ever! Oh
Yes!
And the Lamb on the throne will shepherd them, will
lead them to springs of running water. And God will wipe
every last tear from their eyes.
PRAYER: In the name of God the Father, God the Son and
God the Holy Spirit. Amen
INTRODUCTION
Every preacher knows well what it is to feel utterly
inadequate to convey the full meaning and truth, the full authority
and bright beauty of the biblical texts for the day. I certainly felt
that way preparing this sermon and feel it now too.
Of course Fr. Tim is chiefly to blame for my predicament. He
has asked all preachers for the Sundays of the Easter season to
preach on the reading from the last book of the Bible, the
Revelation of Jesus the Messiah to the apostle John.

But blame, Fr. Malcolm! What are you talking about? Surely
you know that a good pastor makes sure that his flock hears the
whole Word of God opened up from Genesis to Revelation. As
central as the four Gospels are they are not the whole of
Scripture. So thank you Fr. Tim. You have challenged the
preachers to preach and you my dear sisters and brothers to
hear, read, mark, learn and inwardly digest this revelation of
Jesus the Messiah to his servant John.
PAUSE
Our text today presents a stunning vision of the throne room
of God and the Lamb. Representatives of the whole of creation
surround the throne. And there too is everyone who has been
redeemed through the blood of the Lamb and has been faithful
through great suffering.
I saw a huge crowd, too huge to count. Everyone was
thereall nations and tribes, all races and languages. And
they were standing, dressed in white robes and waving
palm branches, standing before the throne and heartily
singing: Salvation to God on his throne! Salvation to the
Lamb!
But before we focus on this glorious scene of heartfelt
worship we need to do two things. First, we need to remind
ourselves of the purpose of this last book of the Bible. And
second we need to set a context, not just for understanding our
reading but also for feeling deeply the beauty, the power, and the

glory of God and the Lamb and the salvation they have won for
us.
PAUSE
In his splendid little commentary, Revelation for Everyone,
the greatest living Anglican biblical scholar N. T. Wright says this:
This book in fact offers one of the clearest and sharpest
visions
of
Gods ultimate purpose for the whole creation, and of the way in
which the powerful forces of evil, at work in thousands of ways
but not least in idolatrous and tyrannous political systems, can be
and are being overthrown through the victory of Jesus the Messiah
and the consequent costly victory of his followers. (N. T. Wright,
Revelation for Everyone, p. xi.)
We have just witnessed powerful forces of evil, at work in
Boston this past week. This has been heart-wrenching for many
and sobering and sorrowful for all. It is in fact a very real taste of
the great suffering, the great tribulation that has been going on
and intensifying since Gods own great tribulation in the death of
his Son on the cross. And there, thanks be to God, the Lamb of
God took away the sins of the world.
PAUSE
Chapter four is where the story really starts. And chapter
seven, our text for today, repeats its themes. But in doing so it
presupposes that we have been sobered by the new vision of the
Lion/Lamb of chapter five. John looks and sees that the Messiah
Gods anointed one who is both the Lion of the Tribe of Judah and
the sacrificial Lamb is now the Lord of Creation. The Lamb is risen

indeed! Alleluia. And he alone is worthy to open the seven seals

of the scroll of human history.
Reading chapter six we are astounded at the horrors
revealed behind the first six seals. First, the four horsemen ride
out. The first one with a superficial appearance of peace but
carrying a great sword of continual war on earth; another follows
with a rider carrying a pair of scales, the symbol of justice, who in
fact defrauds the poor to further enrich the powerful. Then the
Lamb opens the fourth seal revealing the pale horse whose rider
is death. He represents all those, from ancient cultures until now,
who have approved of abortion, infanticide and euthanasia, and
all those who have willfully neglected the hungry, the
handicapped and the helpless.
The lamb opens the fifth seal and John now gazes on a very
different scene. Under the altar John sees the souls of those who
had been killed because of their faithful witness to God and the
Lamb. They cry out for justice and for God to bring just judgment
on those responsible for their death. They are told they must be
patient until the full number of those to be killed, as they have
been, was reached. (6: 11)
The opening of the sixth seal is the prelude to this judgment.
John sees a stupendous transformation of the whole of creation:
the sun turns black, the moon became like blood, comets rain on
the earth, every mountain and island moves around, and all the
political power-brokers, the military brass, and the captains of
industry and everyone else cry out for the rocks and mountains to

fall on them so they will not have to face the one who sits on the
throne and the Lamb. And they ask, Who can stand before the
wrath of God?
This echoes the words of the prophet Hosea to the idolatry,
apostasy, and oppression of Israels leaders who, when judgment
comes, will say to the mountains cover us and to the hills, fall on
us. (Hosea 10:8) Everyone is thrown into panic and realize that
they are entirely at the mercy of the God who rules the world. All
their schemes have come to nothing and what now is to become
of them? (Wright, p. 67)
PAUSE
To know the answer to that, you have to follow the saga of
Revelation to its end. John is keeping us in suspense about what
the seventh seal, chapter eight will reveal. This will be followed by
all the other seven woes: the seven trumpets of chapters 8-11,
the seven signs of chapters 11-15, the seven bowls or plagues of
chapters 15-16, the seven last judgments of chapters 17-19 and
finally the seven visions of chapters 19-21.
Some interpreters of Revelation have taught readers to
think of these as a series of sequential events coming in the
future. But most early Fathers and modern scholars make the
compelling case that John is witnessing the intensity and the
finality of Gods judgment on all creatures who have spurned his
love from Adam and Eve to Satan himself. The great tribulation,
the great suffering, is as much now as it is in the future. The
message to the seven churches then and all churches now is this.

The tribulation consists of pressures to compromise the faith.

These pressures come from both within the church community
through seductive teaching and from without through overt
oppression. That is the state of the church at any time and in any
culture. The details may differ but that is as true of the church in
North America as it is of the church in South America or South
Africa.
PAUSE
To prepare for that we, like the souls of the martyrs, have to
be patient as God in his great mercy is patient. And it is the
patience of God with the wicked and his concern to protect us
from the coming judgment that chapter seven opens. John now
sees one angel who shouts to four avenging angels who are
standing at the four corners of the earth, Dont harm the earth
just yet. Dont do it until we have sealed the servants of our God
on their foreheads. Here we have a preliminary answer to the
question, Who shall stand before the great judgment? It is those
who are sealed by God just as the Israelites were sealed by the
blood on the lintel and doorpost from the judgment on Egypt.
Much more could be said about the significance of the seal
on the forehead, but here is a summary. What is the seal? It is the
name of the father and of the Lamb. And what does it signify? It
protects us from Gods judgment and it confirms and strengthens
us in our faith. To be sealed with the seal of God is to have the
very character of the living God and of the Lamb engraved on our
minds and hearts, imprinted on the very fabric of our being. This

what began for all of us at our baptism. Mary or Joe, you are
sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christs own
forever. (BCP p. 308)
PAUSE
And then we read that the number of those sealed is
144,000, 12,000 from each of the 12 tribes of Israel multiplied by
10 x10x10. All this is rich with symbolism and with direct or
indirect references to the prophecies of the Old Testament.
Since much of this has been interpreted literally as referring
only to the future and to ethnic Jews let me help us all to head in
a right direction that fits much better what previous prophets
have said and what the vast majority of modern scholars say.
First, most interpreters agree that the 144,000 who are
sealed in verses 4-8, are the same as the vast, indeed
uncountable crowd mentioned in verse 9.
Few of the numbers in Revelation are to be taken literally. The 12
times 12 times 10 times 10 times 10 is a typical Hebrew way of
expressing a very large number. Its a symbol not a statistic.
Jesus, you will recall, used this way of speaking when he replied to
Peters question about how many times he should forgive, seven
times. Jesus replied not seven times but 70 times 7. In saying this
he is not inviting us to do the math and conclude that were done
when the 491st time comes up. The times we are to forgive are
numberless.
Next, there is no precedent in the OT for the way John lists
the tribes. The sons of Jacob are usually listed in birth order

beginning with Reuben the oldest son. But John begins with Judah
the tribe from which Jesus, the lion of the tribe of Judah, comes.
Strangely too, he leaves out the tribe of Dan and substitutes
Mannaseh who was one of Josephs sons. Without going into more
detail all this suggests that John has in mind not ethnic Jews only
but Gods original covenant with Abraham. I will make of you a
great nation and in you shall all the families of the earth be
blessed. This is consistent with him seeing that the vast crowd
around the throne which no one could count is from every nation
and tribe and people and language.
PAUSE
We have come back to where we began. And in drawing to a
close let us take to heart and enter fully into this heavenly
worship and especially the singing.
John sees this vast crowd standing before the throne and heartily
singing: Salvation to God on his throne! Salvation to the Lamb!
Genuine worship is the most central and satisfying of all
human activities and certainly this is true of Christian worship.
Many of us busy ourselves with many religious activities like
studying scripture, teaching others, evangelism, and serving the
needs of the weak and the sick. But this heavenly vision in our
text today tells us that worship is what we are made for; this is
what marks us out from all the rest of creation. The animals
worship God in their own way that we are not privileged to fully
understand. But the contrast between them and the worship of
the twenty four elders is striking. The elders understand what

they do. In chapter four we hear them say, as the animals do not;
O lord our God, you deserve to receive glory and honor and
power, because you created all things, because of your will they
existed and were created. And in our text, one of the elders asks
John if he knows where this vast throne comes from. He doesnt
know. The elder says they are all those who have suffered for
their faith, whose clothes have been washed white in the blood of
the lamb. Because they have been sealed God shelters them with
his presence and that means that no tears caused by suffering
will ever afflict them again.
You will perhaps think it very strange for me to say that the
Book of Revelation is the happiest book ever written. If we only
look at the judgment on human history it isnt, but if you share
Johns vision of heaven then it is. The Redeemed and the angels
are always breaking out in glorious song. Amen! The blessing and
power and strength, to our God forever and ever and ever!
Amen!
The music of eternity sends it triumphant joy back into
human history. There is always something wrong with a Christian
community gathered for worship that doesnt sing. What we sing
and how we sing are important. But that we sing is the clearest
sign of a live faith in Christ the Lamb who is Christ the Redeemer,
and in God the Father who sits on the throne, and in God the Holy
Spirit, the Lord the giver of life.
I looked again. I saw a huge crowd, too huge to
count. Everyone was thereall nations and tribes, all

races and languages. And they were standing, dressed in

white robes and waving palm branches, standing before
the throne and heartily singing: Salvation to God on his
throne! Salvation to the Lamb!