3rd November Trinity
Revelation 7: 9-17
Next I looked and saw a great
crowd beyond anyone’s power to count, from every nation and all races and
peoples and tongues standing before the throne and before the Lamb draped in
garments of white and with palm branches in their hands, and they shout with a
great voice saying, “Healing and help
[salvation] to our God who sits on the throne and through the Lamb.”
And all the angels were standing in a ring around the throne and the
elders and the four living beings, and they fell down in front of the throne
upon their faces and adored God saying,
Yea, so be it. Amen. [To our God be blessing and
glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and strength for an age
of ages. Amen.”]
All the blessing power of the Word, that creating permeates the world,
all the revealing might of the spirit, that enlightens the senses appearance,
all the light of wisdom that leads us to true knowledge, the secret of
transformation which gives worth to all being, that brings the world forward,
and all the strength and power of the spirit –they belong to our God from aeon
to aeon. Yea, so be it, Amen.
And one of the elders spoke up, asking me: “These people draped in
garments of white, who are they and where did they come from?”
And I said to him, “Good sir, you yourself know.”
And he said to me:
These are the ones just come from the great
Suffering. They washed their garments clean, and made them shining white in the
blood of the Lamb.
That is why they can stand here before the throne of God
And serve him day and night in his temple.
The One who sits on the throne shall settle down upon them [dwell upon
them].
They shall not hunger ever again, nor thirst again;
The sun shall not bear down too hard upon them, nor anything burn them,
Because the Lamb, in the midst of the throne, will be their shepherd
And guide them to the springs of the water of life,
And God will wipe away each teardrop from their eyes.
3rd November Trinity
Revelation 7: 9-17
When a child gets hurt, the grownup naturally responds with
empathy. He or she holds the child, rocks it, soothes it. The adult feels the
child’s pain, and accompanies the child’s suffering.
One of the central issues of human lives is the question of
suffering. Why does it exist? What is its purpose and meaning? This is the
question raised by the ancient story of Job. As Job’s story begins, he is a
wealthy and prosperous man. He loses everything.
Today’s reading suggests one answer: to suffer is to
cleanse, to strip away that which prevents us from seeing God. We have sunk so
deeply into earthly matter, into earthly matters. The way of being that allows
us to operate well in the earthly sphere closes the door to our perception of
God. We have shrunk to being mere humans on earth. We are no longer aware of
ourselves as a spirit among spirits. We have lost our perception of God. In
order to perceive Him, and our relationship to Him, we need to be cleansed of
our materialism. And such cleansing is accompanied by suffering.
It seems unfair in a way that God so made the world that his
creatures must
suffer on their way to Him. But the reading also presents our
seeing with an important picture. It is the image of God as the Lamb. The Lamb,
too, has suffered. This is God the Son, who here, today is with and within
every human being; who continues to suffer alongside, inside all who suffer. He offers us His own blood to cleanse
earthly matter. He leads us through our process of cleansing and suffering,
through all our greater and smaller deaths. He brings us to the wellspring of
the waters of ever renewing eternal life. He wipes away our tears as we undergo
our own cleansing, our own process of transformation. If we listen we can hear,
inside, His words in the words of the poet:
 |
| Ghent Altarpiece |
When your vision has gone
no part of the world can find you.
… Time to go into the dark….
There you can be sure
you are not beyond love….
You must learn one thing:
…Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.
Learn [that]…anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive
is too small for you.[1]
