April 29, 2007 At Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK
Acts 13:14,43-52 + Revelation 7:9, 14-17 + John 10:27-30
“Search for signs of intelligent life in the Universe” is the name of a play by JaneWagoner published in 1986. In it we find Trudy, a bag lady. She is a creative consultant for some alien visitors who are on an expedition searching for intelligent life in the universe. They are looking at us wondering if they have found any. Now Trudy used to be a creative consultant with Nabisco. Her job was simple: increase cracker sales. She says: “I got this idea to give Cracker consciousness to the world.I said, “Mr Nabisco, sir! You could be the first to sell the concept of munching to the Third World. We got an untapped market here! These countries got millions and millions of people don’t even know where their next mal is coming from. So, the idea of eatin’ between meals is something’ just never occurred to them!”
Before long she recognizes the evil of her plan, and her mind snaps. She describes then the problem she has with reality: “I refuse to be intimidated by reality anymore. After all, what is reality anyway? Nothin’ but a collective hunch. My space chums think reality was once a primitive method of crowd control that got out of hand. In my view, it’s absurdity dressed up in a three-piece business suit. I made some studies, and reality is the leading cause of stress amongst those in touch with it.”
The problem with “reality” as this world sees it, is that it is always there, insisting that we get with the program, face the facts, be practical, use common sense and be reconciled with this world’s power. This “reality” is the “Great Ordeal” which the saints endure as we just heard it in the second reading today. There is a great struggle, a struggle of loyalties that poses a bigger threat than death. It is a grim conflict of loyalties that leaves a follower of Christ in genuine doubt wondering where duty lies. How do we see the world: from what it seems to be or from the point of view of what God intends for the world?
The Book of Revelation is a case study in how the early church audaciously confronted the world through its worship. John’s communities are bold enough to set their worship head-to-head with the worship of the mighty Roman Empire. They do this in spite of what might be called; “common sense.” This “common sense” would say that the real superpower in the world is Babylon, or Rome, or if written today, the United States. Revelation insists that the true superpower in the world is the Lamb of God whose power is made manifest, not in weapons of violence but in the sword of truth that proceeds from his mouth.
The problem we face today is the same: how do we not cave in to a common sense that defines reality as the power of wealth, violence, and exploitation of the environment, rather than as the Lamb of God who is before the throne? The Book of Revelation is about Worship and getting worship right. What is it followers of Christ worship: prestige, power, wealth, success, national security? I guess any of us could answer that by looking at our check stubs. Then we’re back to “reality”.
In John’s Revelation followers of Christ call this “reality” into question. Their “common sense” calls them to get with a different program, one proposed by Jesus of Nazareth. Despite what some fundamentalists may try to tell you, Revelation is about the end of the world, but not about creation ending in some cataclysm that will transport the faithful into some spiritual “other world” distinct from this one. God does not intend escape, God intends victory. Revelation is about the end of this world as we know it…….. violent, cruel, selfish, unjust, hungry, lonely, and broken. Revelation is about the coming world, transformed not destroyed. It is about the world as God intends: a world where those who have washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb will hunger no more, will have shelter, suffer no more, and have their tears wiped away.
Seeing the world as God intends it to be is empowering. It gives us the courage to be angry at suffering not reconciled to it. It gives us the courage to be angry at injustice, not shrug and say that it’s just the way it is. It gives the church boldness when facing natural disasters like hurricanes or the smaller more intimate pain of human grief.
John’s vision can transform our understanding of the present. We can see God at work wherever captives are freed, the hungry fed, the homeless wrapped in the warmth of human love, or those fleeing poverty and oppression being welcomed with joy and respect not looked upon as a threat to jobs we won’t take anyway or as a drain on our “system”.
The white-robed: that’s us those Baptized and washed in the blood of the Lamb must not be intimidated by “reality” but rather begin to see this world as God sees it, and let that vision transform us, open our eyes, and make bold our witness. John’s vision of the future is proclaimed here to give us courage, to give us strength, to give us something more than life without end. It can give us the “fullness of life” which is what Jesus offers us, not unending life. It is a full life we are promised, not just one that goes on and on or starts up after death. John’s Gospel describes eternal life not in terms of duration but in terms of fullness. It is life with and for God which Jesus reveals, and it begins when people through faith and love commit themselves to the kind and quality of life that Jesus embodies.
Today the culture of death seems to envelop our lives at the very center of American life, and from the killing fields of political, ethnic, and religious wars, the plagues of pandemics, and even to schoolyards. The promise of present and future eternal life seems fragile. Yet the Good Shepherd promises his flock and those not of his fold that no human life is meaningless or forgotten by God. Love, joy, and life await even those whose lives, barely unfolding, were snatched away, when “God will wipe away every tear form their eyes.”