Revelation 5: 6-14 (links validated 4/20/25a)

This Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson brings to mind a video that portrays a group of Christians who are incarcerated singing the first stanzas of Amazing Grace. These participants in the Calvin University Prison Initiative sing about God’s grace with wonderful enthusiasm and skill that’s heightened by the challenging circumstances in which they sing it. However, as this glorious chorus completes the hymn’s opening stanzas, another group of men who are incarcerated encircles them to join them in singing the stirring final stanzas of a hymn of praise to the Lamb that was slain to redeem every square inch of creation. It is a breathtaking testimony to the power of the Spirit to elicit praise from every corner of God’s world.

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Revelation 5’s movement reminds me of some choir members’ gathering to sing together on Zoom. I’m especially thinking of a rendition of “Down at the River” that’s been posted on YouTube. It begins with a soloist singing its first stanza. Then images of two singers joining her in song appear on each side of her. Those three are joined by three more singers. And so on until the screen fills with people together “Down at the River.” It’s a stirring picture, not just of the spread of the gospel, but also the praise that results from that spread. That online rendition of “Down at the River,” in addition to Revelation 5 is also a harbinger of the New Creation. There, after all, the praise to the Lamb will no longer spread any farther. The worship of the Lamb will already have reached every corner of the new earth and heaven.

The anonymous sixth-century mosaicists of San Vitale in Ravenna, Italy, gloriously visualized this passage in the cross-ribbed vault of the church’s chancel, just above the altar. Tens of thousands of tesserae (tiny pieces of colored glass, and clear glass sandwiching gold leaf) come together to image Christ high and lifted up as the sacrificial Lamb of God. Can you imagine worshipping in this space? It must have been so transporting for those early Christians of Ravenna: to enter and move toward their promised end in Christ. To be enfolded in this glimmering vision of paradise that they enacted below in the liturgy.

In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Lucy, who is the youngest of four siblings, discovers a pathway into the magical land of Narnia. When Lucy returns from her visit to Narnia, she shares her discovery with her older brother and sister. They dismiss her report as a mere tall tale. When she shows them the wardrobe, all they find is a wardrobe filled with old coats. There is no pathway, no portal, just the wooden back wall of the wardrobe. You see. They weren’t ready to set their imaginations free.

Neal Plantinga once preached a sermon with the curious title “The Wrath of the Lamb.” We don’t usually expect lambs to roar any more than we could anticipate being frightened by a puppy or getting beat up by a baby who had just been baptized in a church service. Lambs, puppies, and babies inspire us to coo, to make exclamations of “Awww, how cute, how adorable, how cuddly!” Yet John gives us a Lamb that has been to hell and back, and if those scars are not enough to take us aback, there is also a fire burning now in that Lamb’s eyes–a fire that lets you know that an all-powerful Lion is in there, too. And in fact, were you to read on into Revelation 6 and 7 as those seven seals of the scroll are undone, you would discover that just about every one of those seals unleashes terrible (and terrifying) forces of darkness, destruction, death, and judgment. It is not a pretty picture. But then, this world itself seldom presents what anyone would call a pretty picture. That’s why everything that is wrong with this world–its warfare and terrorism, its injustices and inequities, its love affair with murder and violence, its racism and discrimination of all kinds–all of it is going to be dealt with by the very Lamb of God who himself became a victim of this planet’s ugliness. Just that is the key, however: the Lamb now receives accolades beyond the telling of it. Apparently you could not possibly exaggerate the honors due to Jesus. So we are told that all power, wealth, wisdom, strength, honor, glory, and praise get drawn toward Jesus like iron filings to a powerful magnet. But the reason is his bloody death, his awful sacrifice. Jesus rose to the top by sinking first to the bottom. For all the resplendent glory of Revelation 5, despite all the wonderful songs and choruses that have been composed based on these words, there can be no missing the prevalence of all that talk about death, about being slain, about being killed, and about the spilling of blood.