In my time with you at Rutgers Presbyterian Church I have often introduced the sermon by commenting on the challenge of connecting Biblical writings from two or three thousand years ago with our modern world—or post-modern world, to be politically correct. Throughout the liturgical year the challenge is at a certain level when we are dealing with passages from the four Gospels or the letters of Saint Paul. The challenge goes up several notches when the lectionary takes us into the Book of Revelation, as it does every three years for a few weeks after Easter.
The Book of Revelation is of the genre apocalypse, or revelation, a recognized type of literature. In fact, the title of the book in Greek is Apocalypse, which means Revelation. The book is best approached by way of serious study, and only a few parts of the whole lend themselves to use in Sunday sermons. The book is full of elaborate and graphic images that came to the author in dreams and visions. There is some consensus among scholars that the book was originally circulated to encourage the first-century Christians who were facing persecution because of their faith and as an exhortation to remain steadfast.
*[The Christian Church has struggled with the Book of Revelation from its earliest circulation toward the end of the first century of the Common Era. At the time of its writing and circulation the Roman emperor Domitian was requiring that people address him as "Lord and God" and worship his image or likeness. Many Christians refused to do so and were either executed or exiled as punishment.]
There is also agreement that some of the keys for unlocking the book's mysteries have been lost. The book has been subjected to various interpretations ranging from coded references to various nations and governments to a literal portrayal of "the end of the world." The book contains scenes of violent bloodshed as well as visions of transcendent hope. Mainstream American Protestantism has had a hard time with the Book of Revelation because of that group's strong tendency to intellectualize the Christian faith.
*[Many Presbyterians (and comparable groups) reacted against the emotional excesses of pietism by shutting down their feelings and choking off their imaginations. But imagination and emotion are part of who we are. Witness the popularity of Harry Potter, Star Trek, and The X-Files, to give just three examples, in recent years. We in the Church would do well to exercise the atrophied muscles of our imaginations if we are to move toward spiritual wholeness and make a connection with a world that yearns for truth like ours.]
There are parts of today's reading from Revelation that the NRSV publishes as poetry. This is a poetic hymn to an ultimate completion, a final fulfillment, which is what salvation can mean.
The picture of the great multitude gathered before the throne praising God is one that expresses the bedrock of our faith: that God is trustworthy, that we can base our lives and our hopes on the God of love and grace. The most recent statement of faith adopted by the PCUSA begins with the statement "In life and death we belong to God," and ends with the declaration that "nothing in life or in death can separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ our Lord." Every other aspect of who we are and what we do as a Christian Church is bracketed by those sentences and rests on what they affirm: the trustworthiness of God.
At any age we need to know that our lives matter, that we are more than fools strutting and fretting our brief hour on life's stage, as Shakespeare puts it in Macbeth. And, I can tell you, as we get older the importance of knowing that we matter takes on greater urgency. The picture of the great multitude before the throne in heaven who have come through great tribulation has special significance for people who have experienced wrenching sadness in life—people who have been degraded or abused, people who have been betrayed, people who have buried their children, their partners, or other loved ones at too early an age.
The description of the people dressed in white with palm branches in their hands having washed their garments in the lamb's blood points to the Jewish Passover and to the Christian Good Friday. These are people who recognize the loving nature of God, God who comforts and saves. They have been changed by what they have come to know of God. Use whatever language you choose: they have had an inward turning; they have repented; they have had a conversion experience. However we say it, their experience of God, of God's love, has transformed them. They have come out of "great tribulation" and have begun living in a new direction, a direction toward love of God, love of self, love of others, love of creation. They are aware of how they make decisions; they know what their priorities are, and they can articulate their self-understanding.
The first truth of the poem in Revelation is the reality of conversion, the essential nature of change. The second truth is that of completion. The poem points back to the Older Testament, particularly to the Twenty-third Psalm and its pastoral images. It is now not a person who guides sheep; it is a Lamb who shepherds people—the redeemed. The terrors of life in the ancient mid-east are done away with—hunger, thirst, sunstroke, and heat-exhaustion. God will wipe away all tears from human eyes that have known bitter disappointment and grief.
For me what the poem says is that the completion of human life will be good. We do matter. In the economy of God's creation we will not be lost, dissolved into nothingness. There is a consummation worthy of our trust in the God who made us, has loved us, and will complete us—and those we love, be they our parents, our children, our siblings, our spouses, partners, friends, or pets. The loved ones we have lost to death are in some mysterious way part of the heavenly host, singing songs and smiling.
What the poem says to us can be heard in something forwarded to me a while ago from the internet.
Information Please
When I was quite young, my father had one of the first telephones in our neighborhood. I remember well the polished old case fastened to the wall. The shiny receiver hung on the side of the box. I was too little to reach the telephone but used to listen with fascination when my mother used to talk to it.
I discovered that somewhere inside the wonderful device lived an amazing person; her name was "Information Please," and there was nothing she did not know. "Information Please" could supply anybody's number and the correct time.
My first personal experience with this genie-in-the-bottle came one day while my mother was visiting a neighbor. Amusing myself at the tool bench in the basement, I whacked my finger with a hammer.
The pain was terrible, but there didn't seem to be any point in crying because there was no one home to give sympathy. I walked around the house sucking my throbbing finger, finally arriving at the stairway.
The telephone!
Quickly, I ran for the footstool in the parlor and dragged it to the landing. Climbing up, I unhooked the receiver in the parlor and held it to my ear. "Information Please," I said into the mouthpiece just above my head.
There followed a click or two, and a small clear voice spoke into my ear. "Information."
"I hurt my finger..." I wailed into the phone. The tears came readily enough now that I had an audience.
"Isn't your mother home?" came the question.
"Nobody's home but me." I blubbered.
"Are you bleeding?"
"No," I replied. "I hit my finger with the hammer and it hurts."
"Can you open your icebox?" she asked. I said I could. "Then chip off a little piece of ice and hold it to your finger," said the voice.
After that, I called "Information Please" for everything. I asked her for help with my geography and she told me where Philadelphia was. She helped me with my math. She told me my pet chipmunk that I had caught in the park just the day before would eat fruits and nuts.
Then there was the time Petey, our pet canary died. I called "Information Please" and told her the sad story. She listened and then said the usual things grown-ups say to soothe a child. But I was un-consoled. I asked her, "Why is it that birds should sing so beautifully and bring joy to all families, only to end up as a heap of feathers on the bottom of a cage?"
She must have sensed my deep concern, for she said quietly, "Paul, always remember that there are other worlds to sing in." Somehow I felt better.
Another day I was on the telephone. "Information Please."
"Information," said the now familiar voice.
"How do you spell fix?" I asked.
All this took place in a small town in the Pacific Northwest. When I was nine years old, we moved across the country to Boston. I missed my friend very much. "Information Please" belonged in that old wooden box back home, and I somehow never thought of trying the tall, shiny new phone that sat on the table in the hall.
As I grew into my teens, the memories of those childhood conversations never really left me. Often, in moments of doubt and perplexity I would recall the serene sense of security I'd had then. I appreciated now how patient, understanding, and kind she was to have spent her time on a little boy.
A few years later, on my way west to college, my plane put down in Seattle. I had about half an hour between planes. I spent 15 minutes or so on the phone with my sister, who lived there now. Then without thinking what I was doing, I dialed my hometown operator and said, "Information Please."
Miraculously, I heard the small, clear voice I knew so well, "Information." I hadn't planned this but I heard myself saying, "Could you please tell me how to spell fix?"
There was a long pause, then came the soft-spoken answer, "I guess your finger must have healed by now."
I laughed. "So it's really still you," I said. "I wonder if you have any idea how much you meant to me during that time."
"I wonder," she said, "if you know how much your calls meant to me. I never had any children, and I used to look forward to your calls."
I told her how often I had thought of her over the years and I asked if I could call her again when I came back to visit my sister.
"Please do," she said, "Just ask for Sally."
Three months later I was back in Seattle. A different voice answered "Information." I asked for Sally.
"Are you a friend?" she asked.
"Yes, a very old friend," I answered.
"I'm sorry to have to tell you this," she said. "Sally had been working part-time the last few years because she was sick. She died five weeks ago."
Before I could hang up she said, "Wait a minute. Did you say your name was Paul?"
"Yes."
"Well, Sally left a message for you. She wrote it down in case you called. Let me read it to you."
The note said, "Tell him I still say there are other worlds to sing in. He'll know what I mean."
I thanked her and hung up. I knew what Sally meant.
[Anonymous]
And so do I.
There are other worlds to sing in. The song is "Hallelujah!"
Nothing in life or in death can separate us, and those we love, from God's unfailing grace and unending, inclusive, and affirming love.
Amen.
* The bracketed paragraphs were not part of the preached sermon.