Hunger
and Thirst No More
A
sermon by Brent J. Eelman
April
22, 2007
Abington,
Presbyterian Church
Revelation 7:9-17
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. 10They cried out in a loud
voice, saying,
‘Salvation belongs to our God who is seated
on the throne, and to the Lamb!’
11And 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
worshipped God, 12singing,
‘Amen! Blessing and
glory and wisdom
and thanksgiving and honour
and power and
might
be to our God for ever and ever! Amen.’
13 Then
one of the elders addressed me, saying, ‘Who are these, robed
in white, and where have they come from?’ 14I said
to him, ‘Sir, you are the one that 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.
15For 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.
16They will hunger no more, and
thirst no more;
the sun will not strike
them,
nor any scorching heat;
17for
the Lamb at the centre 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.’*
On Monday, our nation’s consciousness was assaulted by the mass murders at Virginia Tech. We are all aware of the details of the story, and there is no need for another description of the gruesome events of that day. Instead I wish to examine some of the profound questions that this event raises for us. The questions are theological in nature and go to the heart of what it means to be a human being. First, why do events like this have such a powerful impact upon our national consciousness? Second, what does our reaction to this event tell us? And finally: Where is God in the midst of all this?
I
Why
do events like this have such a powerful impact upon our national
consciousness? In no way do I mean to minimize the horror of this
event, yet on that same day a bombing in Baghdad killed over 100
people in a market place. Refugees by the hundreds continued to die
in settlement camps in Darfur. In our own Philadelphia, over one
hundred people have been murdered during the last three months. The
reason that this event receives so much psychic energy and attention
from us is that we have an un-nerving identification with the victims
of this tragedy.
The
human mind has a way of dividing the world into spheres. Some areas
are considered safe and sacred. Churches, schools, universities, the
work place, and the like are places where evil is not supposed to
occur. These are areas where we should feel safe. So when a student
brings a weapon to school, when sexual abuse occurs within the
church, when a worker brings a weapon to the workplace, (like at NASA
on Friday), we respond viscerally because it violates the way we
order our world. Rightly or wrongly, that is the difference (for us)
between the violence in the world and the violence in Blacksburg, Virginia.
We passively accept that violence and tragedy occur in war, in
ghettos, and in third world countries, but not in schools and
campuses.
Virginia Tech
reminds us that violence and evil are present in all the spheres of
our lives, and that is horribly disconcerting. It rocks the very
nature of our ordered existence. It reminds us that we cannot
shield our lives, our neighborhoods, our existence from the rest of
the world.
In the midst of World War II many people wondered how civilized Europe could be embroiled in such a horrible war. How could the place that gave us Bach, Beethoven, Goethe, Luther, Calvin, and so many others be the scene of such carnage and evil? This was primary question with which European theologians struggled during the last half of the twentieth century. The events of this week raise that question for us anew: How can such an idyllic campus, dedicated to learning and improving the human prospect, be the scene of such evil? That is why this event is in the forefront of our minds. It requires us to re-understand our world and the realities of it.
II
What
does our reaction tell us? I have puzzled at the reaction to this
event. In my Wednesday morning Bible Study, we discussed it in terms
of the biblical message. One of the participants related how he was
watching the news and they brought in some panelists to discuss the
event. One presented the “conservative view” and the
other the “liberal view”. “How can we politicize
our views and understanding of a horrible tragedy?” he asked.
We
have a “blame” mentality in our society that has been
compounded by our ideological differences. Within hours of the news
being shared, we were looking for causes and parties to blame.
Depending upon your point of view the fault is the gun lobby, the
laws restricting the carrying of concealed weapons, the
administration, the mental health system, and a host of other
different groups. I am sure that the pulpits this week will thunder
with how we have removed God from our educational system, and this is
what we get. Others will find some other reason for it.
This
national predisposition to blame is pathological and avoids the
reality of tragedy. The columnist, Eugene Robinson wrote on
Wednesday in the Washington Post, “Don’t try to
make sense of the horrific killings at Virginia Tech, at least not
yet. Don’t try to make those involved into archetypes –
the gun-wielding lone, the valiant young heroes, the dithering
college officials – and fit them into a familiar, comfortable
narrative. Don’t rush to draw lessons about guns or alienation
or funding for mental health services. Not yet.” He
continued: “We want this tragedy to prove something. We want
it to fit some recognizable template. We want it to make sense
because, if there is logic to what Cho Seung Hui did, there should be
a logical way to keep such a thing from ever happening again.”
The
wisdom of Robinson’s column is that he underscores the tragic
nature of this.. and tragedy by its very nature shatters our
preconceived archetypes, be they social or ideological. Let me share
this plainly: This is sad, extremely sad. Can we stay in our sadness
for a while and allow that to speak its wisdom to us? Isn’t
this what the psalmist meant when he wrote: “I walk through the
valley of the shadow, and you are with me.” There is a
blessing there, in the valley of the shadow, in the moments of
sadness and even tragedy.
It is in the moments of tragedy, sorrow, and sadness, that the unique presence and wisdom of God is present. Can we recognize that there is such a thing as evil and that it occurs, not only in Darfur, Iraq, North Philadelphia, but in places that we have tried to insulate as safe. But just as evil can be present in all areas of life, God is present there also, walking with us through the valley of the shadow.
III
This anticipates the last question: where is God in the midst of this? The book of Revelation, that cryptic tome at the end of the Bible, is an attempt by its author to speak God’s Word in the midst of horrible tragedy. Rome had a series of unstable emperors, Tiberius, Caligula, Nero, and Domitian. They inflicted great evil upon the people, and particularly the Christians of the time. One of the questions that the followers of Jesus struggled with was: “why is this occurring to us if we are God’s people?” “Why is there no safety for us?” These are the questions that we ask in the face of “madness”. John, imprisoned on the island of Patmos, wrote the book of Revelation as a response to this suffering. Revelation beckons us to look up and beyond the horror of the moment, and see what God is doing, and how the events of the moment fit into the larger picture of God’s history. The vision that he shares is a great assembly of those who suffer. It is a universal group representing all the nations, all the tribes, indeed all who have suffered. At the center is a lamb. The lamb is the sacrificial animal of Judaism. We identify that lamb as Christ. John reminds his readers that salvation is rooted in the suffering and death of that lamb, Jesus. Irony is so much a part of this text. Consider: How can a white robe be made whiter by being washed in the blood of a lamb? That is downright strange, but it is the metaphor for how suffering can ultimately be redemptive and can give meaning a purpose to life. It is a metaphor that proclaims that pain and sorrow are the foundation of our salvation….
When this universal throng sings:
‘Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom
and thanksgiving and honour
and power and might
be to our God for ever and ever! Amen.’
It is not “rah, rah, Jesus!” It is rather a hymn of victory that declares this victory through pain, suffering and even death. The suffering of the lamb is the source of blessing, glory, honor, wisdom, power and might! It is within this context that the final promise is revealed:
They
will hunger no more, and thirst no more;
the sun
will not strike them,
nor any scorching heat;
for the Lamb at the centre 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.’
Christian faith is not a faith filled with easy answers to the questions of life. Christian faith is a path that we are called to follow. It is the way of cross, and it is not without its moments of sorrow, ambiguity, and pain. There is no promise that we will be insulated from the evil of the world, or from the horrors that we experienced on Monday in Virginia. Consequently, our eyes are often filled with tears and that is appropriate in the face of such horror. We live in a world that is filled with ambiguity, evil, and violence. There are times when our most idyllic places are assaulted. There is no promise that this will not happen… but there is a promise to which we hold…even now:
the
Lamb at the centre of the throne will be our
shepherd,
and he will guide us to
springs of the water of life,
and God will wipe away every tear
from our eyes.’
*The
New Revised Standard Version Bible, (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson
Publishers) 1989.
Abington Presbyterian Church, Abington, Pennsylvania, www.apcusa.org
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