"Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise."

         I suppose for me it began with the death of John Kennedy. The memory is still clear in my mind, sitting in a large study hall in high school, and the news coming from the office. Not only had the unthinkable happened, the President shot, but even then a vague sense that our national life would not be the same again.

         After the death of Martin Luther King Jr. I remember the impassioned and eloquent lecture Dr. Wiberg gave in American History class at North Park. He discerned a tearing of the social fabric in America. I have carried that image with me through each tragic incident ever since: Oklahoma City and Columbine and 9/11 and now Virginia Tech. Each one like the cloth tearing, a hole in the location of the attack, and the unraveling that reaches across the land. There is the grief of those who have lost family and friends to senseless action, the fear that comes to us as one more safe place has been violated, and the sorrow for the life of this nation, mixed with anger. The responses come later, meaning tighter security, more lines to stand in, more ID badges to wear, more sign-in sheets.

         We open the scripture for a word of comfort, for some assurance or guidance. Now we see more clearly that the people in the first century lived with a social fabric that was torn, too. They lived with Roman occupation of their land, with various crushed rebellions, with reformers who failed, with the presence of false teachers who led people astray, and with the practice of tradition in religion that did not seem to renew their spirits.

         In the torn fabric we meet Saul, a Pharisee, a brilliant student of Scripture, filled with zeal. His desire was to serve God and to see the Kingdom of God arrive. He saw what he was doing, I suppose, as patching cloth: finding the wayward and forcing them to return to the fold.

         His deep conviction that he was needed to get the world ready for God's Kingdom sent him down the wrong road. He had, in his desire to be righteous, instead become violent, taking the role of a persecutor. He had become an angry man.

         Sometimes our most deeply held convictions can lead us to become hard of heart. Sometimes our concern for others can cause in us a blindness, so that we feel we always need to get our way. Sometimes we move beyond the love of neighbor to harsh actions that have really to do with self-justification. Paul found himself on a road that took him far from God. If Paul had stayed on that road, what would have become of his life?

         But it was on that road that Paul met the Risen Lord Jesus Christ. And the Risen Lord gave Paul a new life, and new roads to walk on and new reasons to travel. In his life as an apostle of Jesus Christ, he never persecuted anyone. The Risen Christ re-shaped his life, and gave him, not old cloth to patch, but new cloth. Paul wrote, "If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation." That can also be translated, "If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation."

         When we truly meet the Risen Lord and are re-shaped by him, we do not become violent or angry or demanding or controlling or focused on gaining power over others. In Christ, there is a new creation, there is new cloth.

         In Revelation, John writes about a vision of worship in heaven. This is the new cloth, the new social fabric. In his vision, he hears a new song. In the Roman Empire, there were regional choirs that were formed for the purpose of singing the emperor's praises at public events. The songs they sang extolled the power of Rome. John, in his vision, sees different kinds of choirs, choirs numbering "thousands upon thousands, and ten thousand times ten thousand." These choirs were made up of heavenly beings and angels and every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea. They sang at the throne of God in heaven.

         It is as if our choir members came to church one Sunday morning and noticed a bit of a bottleneck at the robe closet, and then realized the line stretched several hundred thousand long, and some of the choir were angels, and some heavenly creatures and people from every nation and tribe, and even some walruses and water buffalo and Beluga whales. As William Willimon said at our Midwinter Conference, in a different context, "This God is bigger than the one we had planned on worshipping today."

         The vision of the throne of God focuses our attention on three symbols: the Lamb, the scroll, and the new song.

         Leon Morris helps us with the context. "The world's agony is real. And the world's inability to break free from the consequences of its guilt is real. This chapter with its seals which no one can break stresses our inability. But it does not stop there. More important is the fact that through the Lamb the victory is won. The seals are opened and God's purpose is worked out."

         The sealed scroll is the first symbol we encounter. What is written in the scroll is not specifically identified. But in Jewish tradition of the time, a sealed scroll in heaven would be carried by angels to God, and breaking the seal would lead to an action of God upon the earth, a judgment or saving work. Eugene Peterson says that the scroll holds the Word of God, who God is and what God does. To unseal the scroll is to obey what is in it, to believe God's word and do it. Jesus Christ is the one who unseals the scroll, who reveals and obeys the word of God, so that it can be understood personally. Notice that in verse nine, the unsealing of the scroll takes us directly to the cross: "With your blood you purchased for God members of every tribe and language and people and nation."

         This leads us to the Lamb on the throne. Craig Keener says "this is the central paradox of Revelation and the Christian faith." In Verse 5, John is told that "the Lion of the tribe of Judah has triumphed." And so John turns to see the lion, the symbol of power and kingship and authority; and when he looks he sees instead a lamb, looking as if it had been slain, on the center of the throne. Keener writes, "Jesus conquered not by force, but by death, not by violence but by martyrdom. The Lion is a Lamb!"

         The nations of the earth choose mighty beasts and birds of prey for their symbols. Russia has the bear, Britain the lion, France the tiger and the U.S.A. the eagle. Leon Morris says, "It is only the Kingdom of Heaven that would dare to use as its symbol of might, not the Lion for which John was looking, but the helpless Lamb, and at that, a slain Lamb."

         What are we to make of this? It is in the new song, the worship of heaven, that we come to see the power of the Risen Lord Jesus in our lives. The song states that the lamb is worthy. Leon Morris says that in the ancient world, the word "worthy" was used to ascribe excellence to someone. It was not so much a religious word, but a secular one. Here the song states that the Lamb is excellent, is worthy, not in worldly power or majesty, like the emperor, but in his death and resurrection. He is worthy. There is the center of power in the universe.

         So what this says to us, in plainer language, is that we must stay near the cross. In the torn fabric of our lives, we move to the power of the cross: "Jesus, keep me near the cross." We are not moving to greater earthly power. Rather we are giving praise and honor and glory and power to Christ. We are not moving into isolating fear, rather we are receiving strength from Christ to be faithful and to do his will. It is the power of the cross, and not that of the world, that we seek. In that power we serve our community with the love of Christ, in many ways, and joined with many others, so that the community will be drawn to the Lamb.

         Amen.