What a blessing it was this past week to not only join for worship, but to join for an ice cream social as a church family. Seeing all of your smiling faces in fellowship and laughter was such a joy. It reminded me of the words of the Psalmist, “When the Lord restored the fortunes of” God’s people “ we were like those who dream. Then our mouth was filled with laughter and our tongue with shouts of joy; then it was said among the nations, ‘The Lord has done great things for them.’ The Lord has done great things for us, and we rejoiced.” (Psalm 126:1-3).
I hope as we pause in the busyness of our weeks for a moment of reflection, that joy and laughter continues with us.
This past week, we looked at the challenging texts by John in Revelation in which our society’s failure to live with Christ-like compassion but to pursue oppressive systems like empire, like racism, like greedy seeking after the holy dollar as the only good are depicted as four horsemen roaming the byways of life, bringing mayhem. We looked at what it means to follow in the path of the Good Shepherd, both trusting in his care in the face of life’s ordeals, while also choosing his path of self-giving love over the false values that so often tempt us.
This coming week, we will continue our study of Revelation, by looking at John’s imagery of “beasts” which picture systems of oppression that can lead us to lose our humanity if we blindly follow them, and the way Christ shows us to join in him in working to resist and overcome such systems.
I don’t know about you, but when I hear of these themes of Revelation – the Bible’s call to stand in the gap against patterns of injustice that lead our society to be inhumane to the hurting – I often feel overwhelmed. There is so much to be done. Where to begin? At such moments I find the following words of Henri Nouwen’s from his book Here and Now: Life in the Spirit, which I have shared with you before, helpful “The more I think about the human suffering in our world and my desire to offer a healing response, the more I realize how crucial it is not to allow myself to become paralyzed by feelings of impotence and guilt. More important than ever is to be very faithful to my vocation to do well the few things I am called to do and hold on to the joy and peace they bring me. I must resist the temptation to let the forces of darkness pull me into despair and make me one more of their many victims.”
Henri Nouwen reminds us not to be overcome by all that is before us, throwing up our hands and giving up when things become difficult, nor becoming distracted by it all so we never really get started. Instead, pay attention to what small part we have to play.
Martin Luther famously wrote, when he faced persecution for his stand against oppressive religion and for people encountering God first and foremost as love – grace, free grace – that he would not be undaunted. “Even if the world were to end tomorrow,” he is said to have told people, “I would still plant my apple tree today.”
In other words, we must continue to do our small thing which in its own small way adds beauty, compassion, and kindness to our world. We must light our candle in the world, against the darkness, trusting if we do our part, God will provide the rest.
This week, let’s choose this optimism. Let’s choose possibility not passiveness, hope not fear. Let’s light our candle and plant our apple tree.
20 Very truly, I tell you, you will weep and mourn, but the world will rejoice; you will have pain, but your pain will turn into joy. 21 When a woman is in labor, she has pain because her hour has come. But when her child is born, she no longer remembers the anguish because of the joy of having brought a human being into the world. 22 So you have pain now, but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.
Scripture Revelation 6:1-8; 7:9-17
6:1
Then I saw the Lamb break one of the seven seals, and I heard one of the four living creatures call out, as with a voice of thunder, “Come!” 2 I looked, and there was a white horse! Its rider had a bow; a crown was given to him, and he came out conquering and to conquer.
3 When he broke the second seal, I heard the second living creature call out, “Come!” 4 And out came another horse, bright red; its rider was permitted to take peace from the earth, so that people would slaughter one another, and he was given a great sword.
5 When he broke the third seal, I heard the third living creature call out, “Come!” I looked, and there was a black horse! Its rider held a pair of scales in his hand, 6 and I heard what seemed to be a voice in the midst of the four living creatures saying, “A quart of wheat for a day’s pay and three quarts of barley for a day’s pay, but do not damage the olive oil and the wine!”
7 When he broke the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature call out, “Come!” 8 I looked, and there was a pale green horse! Its rider’s name was Death, and Hades followed with him; they were given authority over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword, famine, and pestilence and by the wild animals of the earth.
7:9
9 After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands. 10 They cried out in a loud voice, saying, “Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne and to the Lamb!”
11 And all the angels stood around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, 12 singing, “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.”
13 Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, “Who are these, robed in white, and where have they come from?” 14 I said to him, “Sir, you are the one who knows.” Then he said to me, “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.
15 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. 16 They will hunger no more and thirst no more; the sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat, 17 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.”
Sermon Christ Shepherds us through Life’s Great Ordeals
I struggled over how to approach today’s reading, until I remembered one particular hospice patient, an older black man with cancer, whose story illustrates the message of this text. He was one of the folks I visited as chaplain right as COVID-19 hit. He was the first person I saw die of COVID, though through the computer screen due to lockdown rules keeping me from coming in person, and it was a slow and painful death.
One of his regular complaints to me was, “Pastor, I just can’t sleep”. I thought it was fear of his disease, fear of leaving his wife alone, that kept him up at night. But one day, he surprised me, saying, “no, pastor, it’s not that. It’s the riders. I keep dreaming of those times the night riders came through my neighborhood”.
He described how, when he was growing up, they had to come in before it was too late, for fear that men with white hoods, on horses, would ride through his all black neighborhood looking for trouble. “Do you know why in the old days, our neighborhoods always had brick houses?” he asked. “No,” I said, never having noticed that myself. “Because we never knew when they might burn a cross and then turn that fire on one of our houses, and it takes alot more to make bricks burn.” He shared memories of houses aflame in their neighborhood. “Some nights, I can’t sleep, still feeling the fear that tonight, they might come for me, too”.
I thought about this man’s story when, just a few months after he died, we heard of young black men and women like George Floyd and Breanna Taylor, who likewise faced fear of death, also due in large part to the color of their skin.
These night riders who haunted him as a child and continued to terrorize him in his memories, even at the end of his life, are an expression of what John is describing here with his imagery of four horse riders who likewise wreak havoc and fear on all they face.
Jesus describes what these four that bring fear and destruction represent in Mark 13, saying to his disciples, “Beware that no one leads you astray. Many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’ and they will lead many astray. When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come. For nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.” (Mark 13:5-8)
Jesus shows us that these four riders John describes are wrongly understood when we thought of as signs that point to the end of the world being at hand. No, Instead they are forces at work in every stage of human history, which every generation must grapple with. Jesus says when we see these things which the four horseriders are symbols of, not to be alarmed. The end is not yet. They will take place again and again and again. These are troubling, but they are not the end of the world.
When Jesus warns of ones who would come after him seeking to lead us astray, claiming “I am he”, claiming to be a Christ, or a Savior, whom we should build our lives around, when they are not, Jesus was saying plainly what this first horse and its rider represent: whoever and whatever takes the place of Christ, as the one guiding the path of our lives. The last three of these horseriders are led by and follow after that first figure on horseback. This is because, as I said in the children’s message, removing one block from the Jenga tower makes everything less steady. Just so, this first horserider pictures taking Jesus and his way out of the center of our lives and putting someone else there instead, which causes things to tumble.
This is why this first horse rider was described as appearing like Caesar, the emperor who ruled Rome, riding out on a white horse before the others, leading them to conquer. Caesar led armies to conquer in just this way and, like those Jesus said to be wary of, also claimed to be a Savior, Son of God, and the King of Kings – all titles reserved only for Jesus. John is imprisoned on Patmos for refusing to worship the emperor as God, putting him in the place of Christ.
In each person’s life and in each generation there are figures that will ride in claiming the right to take Christ’s place. In the case of the man I supported through cancer and through COVID, during his childhood, for far too many people racism and white supremacy took the same place in their lives that the emperor and his empire had taken in the hearts of those who threw John into prison on Patmos for worshiping Jesus alone as Savior and Lord.
In our own day, you can see how people do this, still. We see such idolatry in those who defend the racist attitudes, systems, and actions, that make the deaths of people like George Floyd and Brianna Taylor, who are killed largely for the color of their skin, more likely. Yet racism is not the only way we put something in the place of Christ and the path he taught. You can see it when individuals and when our society makes getting the holy dollar more important than compassion and treating others with kindness; and more important than keeping our earth and our air clean for future generations. You can see it when people embrace a political figure, waving flags with his or her name on it, to the point they look away and excuse their committing of heinous crimes. You see it when people put guns ahead of the lives of children and the safety of their communities.
Such choices, especially by society at large, have a way of knocking things over from how they are intended. Each of the three horses that follow after the first represent examples of this. The bright red horse and its sword bearing rider that takes peace from the earth are traditionally called “war”, but is an image that really speak of all kinds of violence. In the case of Caesar, the peace he brought came at the end of a sword. When people spoke up against injustice, the streets would be lined with blood. The cross upon which Jesus died was a tool of violence used by the state, by Rome, to fill people with fear so they’d not act out of line.
You can see from how the hospice patient I supported as chaplain was haunted by the violence he faced how the community he grew up chose to put racism and white supremacy in the place of Christ and that led to violence and fear. In our own day, we still see senseless killings of black and brown people in part because of how some refuse to change practices and laws that were made with racial discrimination still baked into them, thus keeping racism and white supremacy in a place that ought be reserved for Christ and his way alone. Similarly, there is a real link between us loosening gun laws over the last few. decades as we’ve done as a society and the increase we now see in school shootings and in gun violence in our streets. Though there are many responsible gun owners, there are also those who have made their guns an idol and a drug they are addicted to, forgetting that Jesus teaches us not to cling to swords and guns but to be peacemakers who beat our guns and swords into plowshares and pruning hooks.
The black horse whose rider carries the scales also pictures what follows after individuals and our society place something or someone who does not belong there in Christ’s place. This rider sometimes is called “famine”, but “scarcity” would be a better word. After all, the rider in the same breath says there is not enough grain and bread for the poor and working class and also says there is more than enough rich oil and wine, the food of the wealthy. Even in the face of famine, scarcity, or inflation, there is usually one group in most societies with far more than they could ever use, while others starve or at least struggle. It is not just that there is not enough food to go around. It is also that the bulk of what is available is hoarded by the few on top.
In Jesus’ day, this was the wealthy classes like the Roman emperor and his senators, who could feast even when others struggled to eat and, in the case of one emperor, could feast and make music while watching the city burn. In his childhood, the sleepless man I supported in his last days had faced laws of segregation, which meant white folks got a bigger piece of the pie, leaving black people and other racial minorities struggling more to get enough to care for their families. We still have most of the resources in the hands of the few, without it being equally available to all, in our society, a sign of the ways we have our own false Christs leading the way.
The final horse is a pale yellowish-green.If you’ve ever seen gangrene, that’s the color they had in mind, a color which was connected with disease in John’s culture and also today. Death and suffering by disease is what this horse and its rider picture. Now, disease and illness come to us all. I am a pastor through hospice chaplaincy to rich and poor alike. Yet the suffering is not equal. Rich and poor alike don’t get the same medical care. Even though night riders don’t ride through southern towns much anymore, the man I supported through cancer and COVID did not get the same care wealthy white people get. The nursing home he was at was never staffed well and its patients often suffered for it, in ways those in wealthy retirement homes did not, even long before COVID. During and since the COVID lockdowns, those who use that nursing home– exclusively people without much money, many of whom are people of color – face worse yet.
The inequality of the Roman empire was a part of what Jesus protested in his teachings. In a world where the rich had so much it went to waste while everyone else struggled, Jesus fed the thousands and healed all who came up to him, without requiring them to pay for either. He treated access to food and good healthcare not as a privilege of the well-established, but as a human right, which we all deserve as children of the King, children of God.
Being reminded when we see how disastrous it is when our society puts other things in the place reserved for Christ and his way can be overwhelming. When we face the inequities, the struggles, the violence, the disease that are made worse by how we miss the point, it can feel overwhelming and fill us with despair. Which is why, all the more, we must listen to the voice of the Lamb whom John reminds us is our Good Shepherd. In the face of all of this, Christ takes us by the hand and promises if we will follow, He will lead us through those valleys as dark as death that may lay ahead, keeping us safe and secure through this great ordeal, held in his love, guided by his staff and rod. In the face of such great ordeals, Christ whispers the promise of Isaiah 43, “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you, and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.”
As our Good Shepherd, Christ leads us beyond our suffering into good pastures, where we will hunger and thirst no more, and where God wipe the tears from our eyes. This of course speaks of heaven, but also as Jesus teaches us to pray “your will be done on earth as in heaven,” it is a picture too of what can happen here and now, if we choose to follow the Good Shepherd and not follow the false voices that try to lead us off Christ’s path.
We must remember it is the shepherd who is the lamb who laid his life down in love we should follow not the false Saviors promised by this world. Like Christ, we can reject the gun and the sword of violence as our solution and instead embrace peacemaking as our path. Like Christ, we can work to build a world not ruled by a mindset of scarcity but by a belief that if we share there can be more than enough for all – enough food for the multitudes, enough healing and help through access to health care for all. Like Christ, we can work to tear down rather than build barriers. We can work to build longer tables not higher walls. Let’s hear Christ’s call and take his hand, as he leads us forward, now and always. Amen and Amen.
After this I looked, and there in heaven a door stood open! And the first voice, which I had heard speaking to me like a trumpet, said, “Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this.” 2 At once I was in the spirit, and there in heaven stood a throne, with one seated on the throne! 3 And the one seated there looks like jasper and carnelian, and around the throne is a rainbow that looks like an emerald. 4 Around the throne are twenty-four thrones, and seated on the thrones are twenty-four elders, dressed in white robes, with golden crowns on their heads. 5 Coming from the throne are flashes of lightning and rumblings and peals of thunder, and in front of the throne burn seven flaming torches, which are the seven spirits of God, 6 and in front of the throne there is something like a sea of glass, like crystal.
Around the throne, and on each side of the throne, are four living creatures, full of eyes in front and back: 7 the first living creature like a lion, the second living creature like an ox, the third living creature with a face like a human, and the fourth living creature like a flying eagle. 8 And the four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are full of eyes all around and inside. Day and night without ceasing they sing, “Holy, holy, holy, the Lord God the Almighty, who was and is and is to come.”
9 And whenever the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to the one who is seated on the throne, who lives forever and ever, 10 the twenty-four elders fall before the one who is seated on the throne and worship the one who lives forever and ever; they cast their crowns before the throne, singing, 11 “You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.”
5:1
Then I saw in the right hand of the one seated on the throne a scroll written on the inside and on the back, sealed with seven seals, 2 and I saw a mighty angel proclaiming with a loud voice, “Who is worthy to open the scroll and break its seals?” 3 And no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll or to look into it. 4 And I began to weep bitterly because no one was found worthy to open the scroll or to look into it. 5 Then one of the elders said to me, “Do not weep. See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.”
6 Then I saw between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders a Lamb standing as if it had been slaughtered, with seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth. 7 He went and took the scroll from the right hand of the one who was seated on the throne. 8 When he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell before the Lamb, each holding a harp and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. 9 They sing a new song: “You are worthy to take the scroll and to break its seals, for you were slaughtered and by your blood you ransomed for God saints from every tribe and language and people and nation; 10 you have made them a kingdom and priests serving our God, and they will reign on earth.”
11 Then I looked, and I heard the voice of many angels surrounding the throne and the living creatures and the elders; they numbered myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands, 12 singing with full voice, “Worthy is the Lamb that was slaughtered to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!”
13 Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea and 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!”
Sermon Seeing Life From the Center
One of my favorite memories is how, every summer, dad would load all of us in his van, camper in tow, driving up the Blue Ridge parkway, to camp in the mountains. We camped in different parts of the mountains – one year in Cherokee, one year in Blowing Rock, a number of years in Boone. And we would play different games as kids on the trip – looking for out of state licenses, yelling out “blue punch buggee, no punch back” when we saw Volkswagon bugs on the road, and singing together. Yet, as the flatlands turned to hills and the hills turned to mountains, dad would always do that thing. He’d turn a little bit to mom and start to sing to her, “I’m on the top of the world lookin’ down on creation / And the only explanation I can find / Is the love that I’ve found, ever since you’ve been around / Your love’s put me at the top of the world”.
Last summer, my brother Matt and I took my dad, who by then had more than a touch of dementia, together with Matt’s wife Agnes and son Mark, up to the NC mountains again. Probably for the last time, daddy offered to hike with us up the Moses Cone Trail. Dad’s signature shuffle that he has developed as his health has gotten worse this past year had not yet come on the scene. He still was going to Planet Fitness a few hours every day and maybe in better shape than any of us. So, when Matt and I had agreed to hike just a short trail, dad wouldn’t have it. “Boys, if you are going to do a thing, don’t do it halfway”. We hiked to the very top, at his insistence. When we reached the top, I remember looking out and seeing other mountains, the hills and valleys of Appalachia surrounding us, as we all broke out together singing “I’m on top of the world looking down on creation”.
In a way, we are witnessing a moment like this in our reading from Revelation today. Just as we could look out and see not just our limited perspective from our hiking path , but the big picture of how the whole landscape is laid out, from on top of the mountain, so John’s eyes are opened to see the world from the perspective of heaven. Seeing the big picture, seeing beyond his own perspective with all its limits, all its fears and pains, was something John needed in this moment.
As you might remember from previous messages, John had been arrested for preaching the Gospel as Jesus had called him to. His message that Christ alone is Savior, Son of God, and in him we all can be embraced equally as God’s own children with limitless potential, was not received warmly by the empire of Rome. Rome had its own faith, proudly proclaiming on coins and banners that the emperor alone was the god’s special child and he was the Savior of the world to be worshiped and adored. Saying that Christ was Savior and Son of God and that, through him, each and every one of us could likewise become God’s children, meant that the emperor was not special. John’s message meant that, rather than us being required to be servants and slaves to that great man, Domitian, we were created to be free, to be equal, each of us having limitless worth, none of us deserving to be a doormat.
So John was exiled to the island of Patmos to await either execution or a slow death in old age after years of isolation and mistreatment there. John had also seen others killed for their refusal to worship the emperor.
In such a moment, it can be unclear how to move forward. You can become full of fears and doubts. You can be shaken to your core. John’s eyes are opened, and he sees what is happening that moment in heaven and how what he is facing, what his churches are facing, looks from that vantage point and in light of the bigger picture such a view paints.
As we each face our own trials, our own challenges, our own moments of struggle and isolation, or – even on good days – our turning points and times of change, what does John’s experience teach us?
We are reminded of the need to not get caught up in the stress of the moment, but to look to connect with a bigger picture ourselves. I’ve mentioned many times the example of the late Henri Nouwen. In his book Life in the Spirit, Nouwen explains this principle by talking about the sort of large wagon wheels that are used in his home country for decoration — “These wheels help me to understand the importance of a life lived from the center,” he said. “When I move along the rim, I can reach one spoke after the other, but when I stay at the hub, I am in touch with all the spokes at once. To pray is to move to the center of all life and all love. The closer I come to the hub of life, the closer I come to all that receives its strength and energy from there. My tendency is to get so distracted by the diversity of the many spokes of life, that I am busy but not truly life-giving, all over the place but not focused. By directing my attention to the heart of life, I am connected with its rich variety while remaining centered. What does the hub represent? I think of it as my own heart, the heart of God, and the heart of the world. When I pray, I enter into the depth of my own heart and find there the heart of God, who speaks to me of love. And I recognize, right there, the place where all of my sisters and brothers are in communion with one another. The great paradox of the spiritual life is, indeed, that the most personal is most universal, that the most intimate, is most communal, and that the most contemplative is most active. The wagon wheel shows that the hub is the center of all energy and movement, even when it often seems not to be moving at all. In God all action and all rest are one. So too prayer!”
We often think of heaven as like the top of a mountain, far removed from what is happening here. But John’s experience is that, instead, as Nouwen suggests, it is more like this hub of a wheel – in the center of all things. This is part of why we talk about God as not just up there in heaven but also living in us through the Spirit, and in all living things. It is also why we talk about God being everywhere, so that Acts 17 can tell us in God we live and move and have our being. This is also why all kinds of people and living things in all places and times are pictured in Revelation as joining in this moment of praise. At the center of all of life is God.
When we open ourselves up to God’s experience, as John has been doing in his trials on Patmos by continuing to turn to God in prayer, we are inviting God to lift the blinders from our eyes so we can see our situation and our world through new eyes. And when we look through God’s eyes, as Nouwen says, we see from the center, where the big picture is visible. We see how our lives are connected to each other’s, to other people’s, to God’s creation and plan as a whole.
We also see who is in charge. John is imprisoned by a political leader – Domitian the emperor – who wants people to believe he is in charge. Like some political figures today, Domitian has put himself up as one above the law, saying he is one whom right and wrong don’t apply to. He wants everything to center on him. Yet in the center of it all, John sees Christ as the Lamb of God. who was slain. At the center of all, the one in charge is Christ who is our Good Shepherd. This suggests that, when we feel our lives are out of control, when it seems like it is all becoming unglued, we have to remember – everything we are facing is still in God’s hands,in the hands of our Good Shepherd. When we forget this, we can become ones who either throw up our hands and give up or, on the other hand, try to force things our way or the highway. Both paths can end up harming ourselves or others. Yet if, at the center of all things, Christ reigns, then whatever we face is held.
The fact we can easily lose sight of this vision, this big picture, suggests we need to choose every day, especially on the most difficult days or the times that we face big turning points, to choose to turn to the hub, to open ourselves to God showing us life through heaven’s eyes. This is what Scripture means when it talks of learning to hear our Good Shepherd’s voice, the voice of that One who comes not to steal and kill and destroy but so that we might have life and have it more abundantly.
What are some ways to do this? I wonder, do any of you have practices that help you, like John, connect with heaven to see your situation more from heaven’s eyes? That help you listen for the Good Shepherd’s voice?
The challenge I feel Revelation 4-5 gives us is to take time each day, even in trying times, to connect with God and open ourselves to see Life from heaven’s eyes.
I want to close my sermon today by reading words of a Muslim poet, Rumi, when he describes his own move in a time of struggle and challenge — his grief at the loss of Shams the man who was his soul mate who had been brutally murdered — and how he was able to toward praise and prayer anyway , in a way that opened him up. “Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.”
May we each, too, like John and like Rumi, find our ways to connect with God and have our eyes opened to all the beauty and possibility, all the fulness God has for us, seeing our lives afresh through heaven’s eyes. Amen and Amen.
2 John 1-6, New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition
1 The elder to the elect lady and her children, whom I love in the truth, and not only I but also all who know the truth, 2 because of the truth that abides in us and will be with us forever:
3 Grace, mercy, and peace will be with us from God the Father and from[a] Jesus Christ, the Father’s Son, in truth and love.
4 I was overjoyed to find some of your children walking in the truth, just as we have been commanded by the Father. 5 But now, dear lady, I ask you, not as though I were writing you a new commandment but one we have had from the beginning: let us love one another. 6 And this is love, that we walk according to his commandments; this is the commandment just as you have heard it from the beginning—you must walk in it
3 John 1-4, New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition
1 The elder to the beloved Gaius, whom I love in truth. 2 Beloved, I pray that all may go well with you and that you may be in good health, just as it is well with your soul. 3 For I was overjoyed when some brothers and sisters arrived and testified to your faithfulness to the truth, how you walk in the truth. 4 I have no greater joy than this, to hear that my children are walking in the truth.
Revelation 1:9–2:7, New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition
9 I, John, your brother who share with you the persecution and the kingdom and the endurance in Jesus, was on the island called Patmos because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. 10 I was in the spirit on the Lord’s day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet 11 saying, “Write in a book what you see, and send it to the seven churches, to Ephesus, to Smyrna, to Pergamum, to Thyatira, to Sardis, to Philadelphia, and to Laodicea.”
12 Then I turned to see whose voice it was that spoke to me, and on turning I saw seven golden lampstands, 13 and in the midst of the lampstands I saw one like the Son of Man, clothed with a long robe and with a golden sash across his chest. 14 His head and his hair were white as white wool, white as snow; his eyes were like a flame of fire; 15 his feet were like burnished bronze, refined as in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of many waters. 16 In his right hand he held seven stars, and from his mouth came a sharp, two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining with full force.
17 When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. But he placed his right hand on me, saying, “Do not be afraid; I am the First and the Last 18 and the Living One. I was dead, and see, I am alive forever and ever, and I have the keys of Death and of Hades. 19 Now write what you have seen, what is, and what is to take place after this. 20 As for the mystery of the seven stars that you saw in my right hand and the seven golden lampstands: the seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands are the seven churches.
2 “To the angel of the church in Ephesus write: These are the words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks among the seven golden lampstands:
2 “I know your works, your toil and your endurance. I know that you cannot tolerate evildoers; you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not and have found them to be false. 3 I also know that you are enduring and bearing up for the sake of my name and that you have not grown weary. 4 But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first. 5 Remember, then, from where you have fallen; repent and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent. 6 Yet this is to your credit: you hate the works of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate. 7 Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches. To everyone who conquers, I will give permission to eat from the tree of life that is in the paradise of God.
SermonChrist our Shepherd
As most of you know, Paula and I went to Maine for our honeymoon in June. While we were there, we stayed in a cozy little bed and breakfast run by an actual shepherd. Karen, our host, wowed us every morning not only with fresh food grown on her own farm, but also with her stories of all the animals she cared for. Karen cared for a flock of sheep and, each morning, as we sipped our coffee and ate our food, we also heard stories of each and every sheep on her farm. Karen knew each by name, could describe their personalities in detail. She knew which needed a shearing and also knew which were ailing and sick. Each morning as we sipped our coffee she told us the lengths she went to in order to nurse them back to health.
Karen’s love for the creatures in her care extended further than just the sheep. The moment we walked onto her property, we were greeted by her official welcoming committee, a pug named Mrs. Magoo. Mrs. Magoo had been abandoned while young due to being blind and having a limp. When no one was willing to take in Mrs. Magoo, Karen did. Her love for Mrs. Magoo made the pup thrive. Mrs. Magoo grew strong and bold, bold enough to greet every guest who walked onto the property enthusiastically , begging for a scratch.
I would have wondered if Karen’s care for animals knew any bounds, if not for the final animal of her little menagerie, Uno, made me realize they did not. Uno was a snapping turtle who hatched on the shore by her bed and breakfast. He had a broken beak and could not fend for himself. Feeling sorry for the little turtle, Karen took him in and rehabilitated him, so now he is her pet snapping turtle she feeds by hand. A hand fed pet snapping turtle! If I had not seen it, I would not have believed it!
Karen, a good shepherd, sees good even in snapping turtles! She sees potential in all the animals in her care. She does all she can so they might thrive and find a full life. As we wrap up a year of studying the writings of the apostle John and his communities togehter, we now turn to the most challenging of the books associated with him and his churches – the book of Revelation. Karen’s example as a good shepherd helps set a context for studying this book together. When we read Revelation, it is important that we notice who its main character is: Jesus, the same Jesus who says “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” (John 10)
Christ as our Good Shepherd is also the message of Revelation. This is why I had Annette read us an excerpt of 2 John and of 3 John. In each of these final letters of the apostle John, John is writing advice to pastors to whom he is a mentor. In 2 John, he writes to a woman whom he calls the elect or dear woman. This un-named woman is, like John, a pastor who relates to her parishioners like a mother does her children and like Karen did her animals. In 3 John, John writes to another church leader, likely a pastor, named Gaius, who is navigating his church through a time of division and confusion. The pastor’s heart John shows in these two letters is the same heart that inspires him to write Revelation and is something which, if we miss, will lead us, like so many who read Revelation, to totally miss the point.
In today’s reading, in particular, John reminds the members of seven churches whose pastors he mentors, that they – and we – are not alone – never alone. No, instead, Jesus the Good Shepherd walks with them and with us in the midst of whatever trying times they and we face.
When John writes Revelation, he is in a trying time himself. The Roman authorities have exiled him to Patmos, a deserted island used to imprison those deemed as a danger to the empire. His crime? Refusing to worship the emperor as God and choosing instead to continue to worship Jesus alone as Son of God and Savior of the world. John is, quite literally, all alone. He must have felt this especially hard in our text, which begins on the day of the Lord, or Sunday. He is alone at the exact time he normally would have joined in worship at one of the churches in Asia Minor that looked to him as a spiritual leader. Now, it is just him, alone, in prayer, at that time.
Those churches, too, which he is cut off from, may have felt alone in their trials and crises, feeling forsaken and abandoned. In his moment of utter aloneness, the Spirit pulls back the veil so John can see Christ his Good Shepherd is right there with him, right beside him. And by picturing Jesus as in the midst of the lampstands which each represent one of John’s churches, the Spirit is showing John that Christ, their Good Shepherd is not far away from anyone in any of those churches – nor far from any of us — but right in their midst, right in ours.
This is something we need to hear. This week, at different points, I’ve talked to different ones of you facing challenges. Some of you are facing challenges in your partnership, marriage, or family. For some of you, it is health trials – yours or ones of those whom you love. Some of you face financial fears. Some face work related trials. It is easy in the midst of these trials that each of us face to feel alone, forsaken, with nowhere to turn. Yet Christ stands in the midst of us, just as he did in the midst of John and his seven churches. There is nowhere you or I can go, no matter how far you or I wander, without Christ being right in reach. Just reach out your hand and call out his name. You are never alone; never forsaken.
So it is on Jesus we need to fix our eyes. This is why Jesus lists names for himself that no one else can use – names like the First, the Last; the Living One who was dead but can die no more; the one with the Keys of Death and hades. Jesus is reminding John and his churches, together with each of us, that, he, Jesus is the Good Shepherd, not you or I. I am reminded of a sermon preached by Rev. Milton from Union Chapel at a pastoral installation service. He said you have to remember only Jesus is the Good Shepherd. The problem with far too many pastors and church leaders, he said, is far too often we start to act like we are the Good Shepherd, when we aren’t. It isn’t about us. Our wisdom, our strength, our direction, may fail us. Christ won’t. At best all we leaders can ever be are sheepdogs, who bark and corral the sheep, just pointing them in the direction the Good Shepherd is going. And at worst, if we make it about ourselves and what makes us comfortable , we can become wolves leading people astray from the good shepherd’s lead.
Our reading describes the first of seven different messages Jesus tells John to pass on. In the verses that follow our reading, Jesus relays a different message for John to share with each of the other six churches that are in John’s care. In some of these messages, Jesus gives praise. In some, warnings. In all of them Jesus reminds the members of those churches – it is not about you and what makes you comfortable. It is about me, and where I lead. I am only ever leading you where you need to go to grow, to thrive, to touch this world in a life-giving way, even if the path I lay ahead for you seems scary.
Christ reminds John, his churches, and us, that where he guides us is the only path that will bring life. This reminder has a down side: Jesus warns those he addresses that if they don’t listen, their candlestick will be snuffed out. Ignoring Christ’s call ends in disaster. Their church community will lie in ruin. Their lives may crash into a dead-end.
Candles being snuffed out is a real thing. I have a group of pastors I meet with regularly, to support each other. In this group, there is one pastor who has spent five to ten years trying to work with a church he saw promise in, to challenge its members to think outside the box in order to reach out into their community, so they can grow again, after facing crises and downturns in that church. I’ve listened to my friend pour out his heart to us over many years about how, despite his best efforts, that church’s leaders dug in their heels and said “we don’t want to try anything new. We want to keep doing things the way we’ve always done them”. Then, with emotion in his voice, last year he shared with us all “well, we’ve set a date for our final service.” After not reaching out nor being willing to try new things, his church has finally shrunk to the point they can’t deny their fate anymore. They now have too few people left to go on.
Our individual lives too can flame out. One of my first experiences as a chaplain was sitting and holding the hand of someone dying of a drug overdose. Our lives flaming out is not always so stark, but we’ve all seen people whose partnerships, families, jobs, break apart because someone lost sight of what was important. If we do not listen and open to the voice of the Good Shepherd calling us to new ways of living and relating, we can miss out on opportunities for growth and new life personally too.
Yet, having a pastor’s heart, John does not just emphasize such bad news of warning but also Good News. In each of these seven addresses Jesus gives, Jesus tells John to pass not only to pass on this warning but also to offer the blessing and gifts that will happen if they listen and follow. If we listen to Christ our Good Shepherd and follow his lead, we can see our lives, our relationships, our families, our partnerships, open up and become even more fully alive than ever before, even after trial or loss.
So, to get to this place of blessing, we all must take time to pause, to listen, to open ourselves up to looking for and listening for Christ’s voice in our lives. We must do it individually. We must do it as a church. As couples. As families. We must be willing to let Christ call us out of our comfort zones, to where we can grow and make an impact. As we do so, we can find ourselves, too, becoming as Christ promised, more than conquerors for anything we face. May we, too, like John, open our ears to the voice of the Good Shepherd and follow. Amen and Amen.
This past Sunday we looked at 1 John’s challenge to walk in the path of love. This coming week we will be beginning a look at what the book of Revelation can teach us about God’s love and care for us as our good shepherd.
As we pause midweek I think about God’s call to live love. You know I grew up in an army town that said “real men don’t cry. You better toughen up” so if I’m not careful talking of love being the path can sound a little soft and squishy for me.
This is not what John means at all by love. Instead of being soft and squishy – just a feeling – love is a way we act, that we can learn to do by doing – just like we only learn to ride a bike by getting on one. And the more we ride it, the better we are at it.
Notice how some of those known for not just talking about love but living it out, describe love. Fred Rogers, from the Mr. Rogers TV show, puts it like this “Love isn’t a state of perfect caring. It is an active noun like struggle. To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now.”
James Baldwin, an activist known for being a voice for both the black and gay community, wrote “Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced” so “Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word “love” here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace – not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.”
Cornel West adds, ““Justice is what love looks like in public, just like tenderness is what love feels like in private”.
Real love then is gritty and takes work. We cannot just say we love others without going where they are, rolling up our sleeves and getting dirty with them, lending a hand to make a difference. Jesus never just said “I love you” or “thoughts and prayers” and did nothing else, but instead Jesus showed his love by what he did. If someone was hungry, he fed them; if someone was sick, he did what was needed to help them feel or get better. When he saw an injustice, like people being ripped off by moneychangers in the temple, he spoke and acted in ways that called out the injustice and how to end it.
Dorothy Day, who, once she met Jesus personally for herself, left a life of wealth and comfort to work among the poorest and most forsaken of her day puts it well, saying, “”The greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has to start with each one of us? When we begin to take the lowest place, to wash the feet of others, to love our brothers [and sisters] with that burning love, that passion, which led” Jesus “to the Cross, then we can truly say, ‘Now I have begun.'”
“We cannot love God unless we love each other, and to love we must know each other. We know God in the breaking of bread and we know each other in the breaking of bread, and we are not alone anymore… We have all known the long loneliness and… the only solution is … love comes with community…”
This is why to really be the people Jesus calls us to be, to build our life on Christ’s blueprint, we need to not just voice the right words in a creed or a prayer or by quoting Bible verses. What counts is not whether you can say the right words but whether or not we are doing the gritty work of love – whether or not we are taking time to connect, to build relationships, to lend a listening ear, to lend a hand to help. As we talked about in our book club a few weeks ago, it is one thing to say “I’m not a racist” or “I’m not a bigot”. But it is another thing altogether to ask yourself – how many times do I actually spend time with people who have a different skin color than me, who speak a different first language than my own, or who might have a different sexual orientation or gender identity that I do? How often do I have folks different from me over to my own house to have supper, play a board game, or watch a movie? How often do I go with them to their preferred hang out spots, hearing their story in their own words and getting to know their communities?
Let’s hear the challenge of embracing the gritty work of love together this week. See you Sunday!
7 Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. 9 God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us, and his love is perfected in us.
13 By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and do testify that the Father has sent his Son as the Savior of the world. 15 God abides in those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and they abide in God. 16 So we have known and believe the love that God has for us.
God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. 17 Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world. 18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. 19 We love, because he first loved us. 20 Those who say, “I love God,” and hate a brother or sister are liars, for those who do not love a brother or sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. 21 The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.
Sermon: A Blueprint for Living
Last Sunday was a big day at the Hardy-Royal house. After weeks of living in boxes and not feeling our home was fit for company, we finally got things to the point we felt we could have company, and so hosted some family for a birthday party and game night for my brother Matt. It was a fun time, and it felt so good to finally be enough out of boxes we could invite some people we love over comfortably.
Some of the work of moving in has been emptying boxes, of course. But some has been building things. We’ve set up exercise equipment. We’ve installed new shelves in the closet and hope to in the garage. Just yesterday we put together a new set of bookshelves. You wouldn’t believe the amount of books we have between us – with Paula being an English teacher and I being a pastor!
This time around these projects building furniture and shelves has gone pretty well. But, sometimes when I’ve set up new things in a new home, I have found myself half-way through the project, staring at some monstrosity I’ve made that did not vaguely resemble what I saw on the box. A shelf might be coming out of the furniture’s top rather than its side where it belongs. The furniture might be a hunch-back mixed up creature that barely looks use-able.
Hold up a set of directions for building furniture.
When this happens, I pull out my trusty instructions, and re-trace my steps. I take what I’ve built apart until I reach the point I went wrong, then do it over again, this time the right way.
Our lives can be like this, with us sliding along thinking things are going great and suddenly being shocked at how our lives are ending up. I think of some people I met when I was being trained as a chaplain at Wake Med Hospital. A part of my training was at the domestic violence shelter and the men’s shelter in Raleigh. So much of the pastoral counseling I offered in that setting involved hearing stories of people whose lives had come together differently than they’d hoped: men who had gotten swept up in drugs but did not realize they had developed an addiction that was stealing their life away until they lost it all and ended up on the streets; and women at the domestic violence shelter, who had been manipulated by promises of love into situations of control, abuse, and loss they did not know how to get out of on their own.
These aren’t the only ways we can lose our path. In our book group, I mentioned a mentor of a dear friend of mine, Hugh Hollowell, who now pastors in Mississippi but used to pastor in Raleigh, NC, telling the book group how Hugh once said that far too many Christians love the idea of helping homeless people but don’t know or actually love real homeless people themselves. Hugh turned toward ministry, particularly ministry focused on those experiencing poverty and discrimination, when he faced his life becoming what felt to him to be a monstrosity. In his case it was not because he was homeless or going without. No, instead, Hugh was successful in business, making money hand over fist. But when he looked at his life, it was empty. He discovered he was building his life on the wrong foundation, and so turned to the example of Jesus to ask what a life that was meaningful looked like. He ended up devoting his life, not on making money for himself, but on helping others.
In today’s Scripture, John reminds us too that, whether we are beginning our journey of life or whether we, like these individuals I’ve described, are facing into the fact our lives are not what we feel deep down they are meant to be, either we have a blue-print or a roadmap to turn to for how our lives are to be lived.
I mentioned last week that I grew up in a church that liked to say “blow the dust off your Bibles” and would say the Bible is “basic instructions before leaving earth”. Well, instead of pointing to a book like the Bible and saying “follow its rules” John points instead to a person, Jesus, and says “know him, and walk as he walked”. That’s the kind of Christianity my friend Hugh discovered that changed the direction of his life. John says in our reading, “God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent God’s only Son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that God loved us and sent God’s Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.”
The difference between seeing Jesus’ life as our blueprint, rather than rules in a book like the Bible as our blueprint, is summed up well, by a Facebook post that’s been going around:
“Genocide is biblical. Loving your enemy is biblical. BUT ONLY ONE IS CHRISTLIKE.
“Slavery is biblical. Chainbreaking is biblical. BUT ONLY ONE IS CHRISTLIKE.
“Patriarchy is biblical. Counter-cultural elevation of women is biblical. BUT ONLY ONE IS CHRISTLIKE.
“Retributive violence is biblical. Grace-filled restoration is biblical. BUT ONLY ONE IS CHRISTLIKE.
“Segregation is biblical.” Tearing down walls that divide to bring “Unity is biblical. BUT ONLY ONE IS CHRISTLIKE.
“Christ transforms, not the Bible. Be wary of those who know one but not the other.”
In my work as a hospice chaplain I encounter so many people traumatized by Christians who focus on quoting Bible verses, rather than looking to and following this example of Jesus. The challenge we are called to, whatever point in our lives we are in, is to step away from two pitfalls, two ditches that lay on either side of life’s road. In the first ditch we can fall in, are ways of living where we live like we are not loved by God and don’t matter. This kind of ditch is what many I met in the shelters I served during my chaplain training had been caught in, and is why they fell into addiction on the one hand and abusive relationships on the other. They had trouble believing they deserved more, deserved all God intended them to have. The other ditch which can make you lose your way is living as if life is about obeying rules that leave some people out. This can be like living life on a hamster wheel of performance to gain God and other’s acceptance and is also a trap. This is the kind of Christianity some of us grew up with that focused on the Bible as a rule book, while forgetting it all has to be about God’s love for us and our love for others to ever be life giving. Instead of falling into either of these two ditches we should aim to walk the narrow path laid down by Jesus instead. He invites us on a path where we can learn to see ourselves as loved with a love that has no limit and will never give up on us, a love that goes the distance with us, come what way, a path that reminds us each day we are not deserving of any less than God’s best. It also is a path that will set us free. It is a path that can transform our lives to be outpourings of love for others.
Hold up sign of family name, given for wedding.
Finally, I want to show you all something a friend gave Paula and me at our wedding – it is a sign that says “Hardy-Royals”, the new last name we both have after getting married. Our name identifies us. When John calls us “born of God’, or “children of God”, not only is he saying we are loved by God as children but also that, when people see us, they are meant to see God, the God who is love, in us. That we are identifiable as God’s family, like we are carrying a new name.
Pay attention to what John says does this. John does not say the Bible verses we quote make us identifiable as God’s own family. John does not say it is what church we go to, or what religion if any we practice. He does not even say being Christian is required. He says everyone who truly lives out love is identified in this way as God’s own child. It is our lives being lived from a place of love.
Friends, let’s return our sights to Jesus’ example, our blueprint for living – asking how we can walk in Jesus’ steps by living love, the kind of gritty down in the trenches love which we are made for, today and all our days. As we do so, we will stand out, our lives – individually and in our life together as a church – we will stand out, pointing people to all that is possible for them, when moved and touched by God’s love. Amen and Amen.
After this I looked, and there in heaven a door stood open! And the first voice, which I had heard speaking to me like a trumpet, said, “Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this.” 2 At once I was in the spirit, and there in heaven stood a throne, with one seated on the throne! 3 And the one seated there looks like jasper and carnelian, and around the throne is a rainbow that looks like an emerald. 4 Around the throne are twenty-four thrones, and seated on the thrones are twenty-four elders, dressed in white robes, with golden crowns on their heads. 5 Coming from the throne are flashes of lightning and rumblings and peals of thunder, and in front of the throne burn seven flaming torches, which are the seven spirits of God, 6 and in front of the throne there is something like a sea of glass, like crystal.
The challenge I feel Revelation 4-5 gives us is to take time each day, even in trying times, to connect with God and open ourselves to see Life from heaven’s eyes. 
As most of you know, Paula and I went to Maine for our honeymoon in June. While we were there, we stayed in a cozy little bed and breakfast run by an actual shepherd. Karen, our host, wowed us every morning not only with fresh food grown on her own farm, but also with her stories of all the animals she cared for. Karen cared for a flock of sheep and, each morning, as we sipped our coffee and ate our food, we also heard stories of each and every sheep on her farm. Karen knew each by name, could describe their personalities in detail. She knew which needed a shearing and also knew which were ailing and sick. Each morning as we sipped our coffee she told us the lengths she went to in order to nurse them back to health.
progressiveredneckpreacher 