Revelation 7:9-17; A Respite

"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 worshipped God, 12 singing,
‘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?’ 14 I 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. 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.’"

Intro--The Lectionary and the Book of Revelation

The Book of Revelation is one of the most ignored books in mainline Protestant and Catholic preaching. Or, to put it differently, when we do preach on Revelation, we confine our sermons to predictable passages, such as the one here today, chs. 1, 3, 5 and then the great culminatory (my new coinage) visions in chs. 20-22. The Revised Common Lectionary ("RCL") feeds this selective reading of the Book by only giving us readings from these passages. In so doing, we really avoid both the wonder and some of the difficult interpretive issues of the Book of Revelation. For example, the opening of six of the seals in ch. 6 provides the context for understanding this great throne vision for today, but nary a mention is made of it in the RCL. Thus, by ignoring the "meat" of Revelation (apologies to vegetarians/vegans), and by focusing only on those scenes where the saints "win," we miss out on almost the entire nature of the drama before us. It is like reading Shakespeare's As You Like It and only focusing on the idyllic life in the Forest of Arden in Act II, rather than understanding the complex play of jealousy, fear and inadequacy that suffuses Act I. Thus, I exposit Rev. 7 today by putting it into the larger context of chs. 6 and 7 so that you will see more of its flow. While I love the words of the text cited above, my words today are thus a sort of "protest" sermon, not against Iraq or Darfur or other things people protest today, but against the narrow vision of the RCL.

The Action--Chs. 6 and 7

When we left the action in ch. 5, the heavenly chorus of elders and living creatures was rejoicing because someone was found worthy to open the seven-seals-sealed-scroll (say that ten times) in the hand of the one sitting on the throne. That someone was the slaughtered Lamb, who became the basis for my meditation on the Virginia Tech killings. The Lamb opens six of the seven seals in ch. 6, and with each of them fresh horrors appear. Horses of various colors are released with the opening of the first four seals, and they rush forth to conquer, to destroy and to bring sword, famine and pestilence on the earth. The Lamb continues to open the seals, however, and the fifth seal reveals the slain saints under the alter of God crying out about how long they had to wait until their promised vindication. Finally, the sixth seal was opened, and fear gripped both small and great. Kings and generals and the "rich and the powerful" hid in the moutains and caves, begging these inanimate objects to fall on them so that they could avoid the wrath betokened in the open seals. This wrath is denominated the "wrath of the Lamb" (6:16).

In other words, ch. 6 gives us a picture of a deity fed up with the world, a deity ready to inflict the most extreme plagues and punishments on the created world. In a sense ch. 6 is what we might call Genesis 6 in spades--it is a second decision of God to wreak vast destruction on the earth. Note that in Gen. 8 and 9 God promises never again to bring another flood to destroy everything. So, God has "covered Himself" adequately, and the destruction in Revelation doesn't violate the promise in Genesis. In place of a flood, however, which washed everything away, we have a picture in Revelation of almost unmitigated cruelty and destruction. Ch. 6 gives an indication of the horrors that will come.

Chapter 7 then describes those who will be delivered from this great destruction. The angels of God are hodling back the "winds" of judgment against the earth until they have had a chance to "seal" the servants of God with a seal on the forehead. In Revelation everyone seemingly will be marked with a seal on the forehead--either by the angels or by the beast (cf. 13:16)--but the angelically-designated people are then seen standing before the throne of God and before the Lamb. The number of these? 144,000. This is a "perfect number," a number of completeness, the multiple of 12,000 and 12. Just to show that the author doesn't mean this to be a precise number, we have 7:9--"after this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count." These are the ones who will sing a song to the Lamb and to the one on the throne.

Now, on to the "meaning" of Rev. 7:9-17.

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