Sermon on Revelation 7:9-17

I. Why come to church? Why take time to come here and worship God together? Couldn’t we experience God at home or on a hike? After all, God is everywhere and in those places too.

Maybe you came for the breakfast, but Sawyer’s has breakfast, too. Maybe you came for the coffee later, but Flight Cafe has coffee and they don’t brew Maxwell House. Maybe you come for the supportive community, but you can build caring relationships at the Y or a yoga studio. Maybe you came for the sermon or the spiritual formation, but I’m humble enough to know that there’s better preachers and teacher on YouTube.

See, if that’s all that happens at church, then it’s nothing we have a monopoly on. All of it we might be able to find it better (or maybe at least as good) somewhere else. No, there is something that happens here that can’t happen anywhere else. There are things we need that Swayer’s and Flight and the YMCA, as good as they are, cannot give us. There are things that happen here that can change us and change the world in a way that nothing else can.

There’s lots of reasons to come to church. You have your own reason for being here this morning, but for now we will work on one reason together. And we’ll get started with one of today’s Bible readings from Revelation and also a hymn in the hymnal, number 24.

It’s a hymn for the evening, so we don’t sing it much on Sunday morning, but is starts like this:

The day Thou gavest, Lord, is ended,
The darkness falls at Thy behest;
To Thee our morning hymns ascended,
Thy praise shall sanctify our rest.

II. The hymn goes on to talk about the world turning from daylight to night and then from dark back to day. The poetry asks for our imagination, so that we can picture in our minds the round earth, either in the sun or the shade.

It’s eight o’clock now for our worship service, but we know that the other side of the globe, it is dark and night. You only need a little imagination to think that in one hour, it’s going be time for eight o’clock church in the Central Time Zone. Later, it’ll be time for eight o’clock church in California, when you are well into your afternoon. And when we were in bed in the middle of the night, people in Jerusalem, Rome and London each took their turns to worship. And so the hymn goes on:

We thank Thee that Thy church, unsleeping While earth rolls onward into light, Through all the world her watch is keeping, And never rests by day or night.

As o’er each continent and island
The dawn leads on another day,
The voice of prayer is never silent,
Nor dies the strain of praise away.

And so the whole world gets it’s time to worship. While some of us get the rest we need, others are praying. And while we pray, we let other people get the rest they need. Whenever we are kept awake at night, we know there’s someone on the other side of the world praying. And when we each in our own turn take our part, we know that someone, somewhere on this earth is in an act of worship and God’s praise goes on at every moment.

So, that’s kind of cool, right? That’s one reason we come to church on a Sunday morning, because we are simply taking our part to chime in with the worship that happens all around the globe, as the Bible says, “from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages.”

III. It’s a beautiful poetic image for us who exist in time and space. But we can do better, because as Christians, we know there are things in the universe is not limited by time and space. That’s what this reading from Revelation 7 is showing us here. In this season of Easter, we have several readings from Revelation, where the figure of John gets called by a voice up into heaven where he gets a guided tour of what heaven is like.

Sometimes I think we don’t talk enough about what heaven is like but we should since we will all be spending eternity there, we might want to know about it now.

So what does John see when he gets there? He sees a great multitude of people, robed in white and holding victory branches, singing and worshiping God. He sees angels and elder and four weird “living creatures,” also singing and worshiping. He sees the object of their worship: the Lamb, Jesus himself, on the throne.

And what happens in heaven is detached from time. It’s hard for our brains to capture just what it’s like for there only to be a “here” without really being a “there” or “now” without there really being a “earlier” or “later.” But as it is, there are no time zones in heaven so you never have to ask the question “When I call mom later today, what time is it in California?” And, thank God, if there’s no time zones, then there can be no jetlag there.

But for our time of worship, we get to join ourselves with the cosmic worship that is going on in heaven in eternity. Every Sunday when we pray the Great Thanksgiving prayer we have words something like, “Therefore we praise you, joining our voices with Angels and Archangels and with all the company of heaven, who for ever sing this hymn,” Holy, holy, holy… (BCP, p. 362)

When we come to church, when we come to worship, we do something that we cannot find anywhere else: ourselves, creatures living in spacetime, elevated right up into eternity itself with the angels and saints who are always there.

IV. But there’s more in John’s guided tour of heaven and that’s good because for some people, knowing that heaven is an eternal worship service is great news and, for other people, that sounds not so great. So here’s a few other things that we know will be in heaven and that we are praying for every time we say, “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” We should know what we are asking for, right?

John shows us: diversity! It’s essential to have “every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages.” It’s essential that they keep their languages and their cultures. God loves the rich diversity of the human race so much it will last forever in heaven. Maybe that’s one thing we pray for when we say, “on earth as it is in heaven.”

John shows us the worship of the Lamb! The center of worship is the meek and vulnerable Jesus, the crucified and resurrected one. The world down here might worship power and wealth, but not up there. Maybe that’s one thing we pray for when we say, “on earth as it is in heaven.”

John shows us the martyrs who endured “the great ordeal,” those who suffered unjustly at the hands of powerful kings. Now they are at the center, close to the throne, and there’s no mention of any of those earthly kings for here there is a higher authority.

John shows us God’s “shelter” and protection. Up in heaven, there is no more hunger like we see down here. As much as I love our Goffstown Network Food Pantry, there will be no more need for it in heaven. There will be no more striking sun and scorching heat, so the climate change activists won’t have much to do, because there’s apparently no global warming in heaven. Maybe that’s one thing we pray for when we say, “on earth as it is in heaven.”

John shows us at last that there are no tears in heaven. Whatever it is that’s causing those tears will be made whole. Whatever it is that’s keeping us up at night will no longer be allowed to cause us worry and anxiety. This is thought in the final verse of that hymn:

So be it, Lord! Thy throne shall never,
Like earth’s proud empires, pass away:
Thy kingdom stands and grows forever,
Till all Thy creatures own Thy sway.

What a vision of what heaven is like! What a vision for what we pray for “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

John shows us at last that there are no tears in heaven. Whatever it is that’s causing those tears will be made whole. Whatever it is that’s keeping us up at night will no longer be allowed to cause us worry and anxiety. This is thought in the final verse of that hymn:

V. And that is what this hour of worship connects us to, when we come to sing “Holy, holy, holy” and get lifted up into it all just for one hour. And a vision like that, a ralm where all the diversity of humanity is honored, where the weak and vulnerable are at the center and not the rich and powerful, where there is no more hunger, where there are no more tears...that is a vision that can change you just to see it, it can change you just to imagine it. It’s a vision that I don’t think we can truly find anywhere else and that’s why we need this time because it might just change you and if it changes you, then it might just change the world.

Watch the video here.