A Match Made in Heaven

David Orendorff · Revelation 19:5-8 · October 15, 2006

For those who might not have been here the last couple of weeks, I begin with a brief review. Around 95 AD John was a traveling preacher in Asia Minor. He was arrested and sent into exile on the desolate island of Patmos by the Romans for heresy. He refused to worship the Roman Emperor Domitian. John knew only one God, and it wasn't Domitian. He ate insects, snakes, rodents and maybe an occasional fish. He drank rain water and prayed for the Christians left to the ongoing persecution of Rome.

In his prayers he had a vision. He was taken to heaven and saw what was happening and what would happen in heaven and on earth. Though originally written for his time and place the truth of his vision is greater than the immediate. His vision is a road map for the cosmic struggle between good and evil. John's vision was that God will win the struggle and we need not fear; only sing our praises of God.

Last week we saw that God would do this through the blood of the Lamb. He is the image of the meek who inherit the earth. The Lamb is a symbol of victorious and nonviolent innocence. As each new plague comes forth upon heaven and earth, the elders sing praise and the Lamb prevails. The Lamb, who we know as Christ, suffered, bled and died for the love of God and God’s people, and is now raised in heaven to open and conquer the future. Toward the end of the vision the Lamb gets married. This is where we pick up the story.

Revelation 19:5-8, 21:9-11

I confess to you that the Lamb’s bride surprised me.  I thought I remembered that he married the 24 elders, a marriage to faithful believers.  I mention my mistake because I think it is a common mistake.  We learn early in our lives that things are about us individually, that we are the navel of the world.  With rapt attention we stare at ourselves hoping we are happy, hoping God will save us, thinking it is all about me.  This “me-centered” faith is not John's revelation.

I am not the bride.  The Bride is the Holy City, Jerusalem.  Surprised?  I remind you that everything in John's revelation is symbolic.  So John is not seeing Jerusalem as a place, but as a symbol.  There are several clues as to what this symbol means.

The first clue is in joining the words “holy” and “city”.  “Holy” in Greek (αγισ) means to be “devoted to God” and “city” (πγλισ) means the body of citizens, that is, people who organize themselves for a common purpose.  So a “holy city” is a community which has organized itself to be devoted to God.

The name given this Holy City is Jerusalem.  Jerusalem literally means “to be founded upon peace/shalom.”  I know that many, if not all of you, know that the Hebrew “shalom” means not only the absence of violence, but also good health, fine children, contentment, justice, truth, wealth, love and all those things which make life worth living.

Putting all this together we get something like this:  The Bride of the Lamb is the community of believers who have devoted themselves to God in heaven and organized themselves for shalom on earth.  The Bride of the Lamb is the gathered people praising God and doing God's work of shalom.  This is only about me as far as I am a part of a community devoted to God and working for shalom.

John's point is this, the Bride of the Lamb, of the Christ who died in innocence for love of us, is the community devoted to God and making shalom.  I am a part of this marriage only as I am a part of a community worshiping God and working in compassion for shalom.

In our northwest tradition of the great and rugged individual we most often think of the saints as Lone Rangers, bravely fighting a lonely battle for truth and justice.  But a quick glance at history reminds us that God works in community.

Early in his ministry John Wesley tried to be a Lone Ranger in his mission to Georgia.  He failed miserably and had to flee in the middle of the night.  His ministry was successful later when he joined himself to the vision of his mother for the ministry of the laity, the musical genius of his brother and the wisdom and prayers of the holiness club.

St. Francis had Brother Leo, Sister Claire and others.  Martin Luther King Jr. was successful because of a community of folks who wed themselves to a nonviolent commitment to peace.  It was true for Gandhi as well.  Even Jesus had a community with who he prayed and served compassion.  Without community there is no wedding, no bride and no shalom.

And using the symbol of marriage makes the point even stronger.  Marriage is the uniting of those who were once separate and now choose to engage life as one.  Marriage is the uniting of God’s innocent love dying for us, and a community’s devotion to God and making shalom.  People whose lives were lived independent of each other now live jointly.  Marriage is a shared love with a shared purpose.

The marriage of the Lamb and Jerusalem is the joining of a willingness to suffer even death with our devotion to God and acts of shalom.  If John had written wedding vows for this marriage they might go something like this:

“I, the Lamb, take you, the holy city, to be my wife.  I promise to be your loving and faithful husband.  I will serve and save you with tenderness and respect, and encourage you to develop your gifts that together we might bring shalom to all creation.”

And the community might respond:

“We, the community of devotion and shalom, take you, the Lamb, to be our husband.  We promise to be your loving and faithful wife.  We will serve you with tenderness and respect, and encourage you to develop your gifts in us, that together we might bring shalom to all creation.”

In the marriage of the Lamb and the Holy City, both God and the community become more than either could be alone.  This marriage results in the new heaven and the new earth.  Which we will explore next week.

One of my favorite songs from the musical “Les Miserable” captures for me the strength of what happens when we align ourselves as a community with a willingness to suffer for shalom. This song is sung by peasants and students who have barricaded themselves in a street, protesting their poverty and the injustice of the French government.  Theirs appears to be a hopeless cause against a cold enemy.  But still they sing:

Do you hear the people sing, singing the song of angry men?
It is the music of a people who will not be slaves again!
When the beating of your heart echoes the beating of the drums,
there is a life about to start when tomorrow comes.
Will you join in our crusade?  Who will be strong and stand with me?
Beyond the barricade is there a world you long to see?
Then join in the fight that will give you the right to be free! 1 Kretzmer, Boublil, Natel and Schonberg, “Can You Hear the People Sing” from Les Miserable

 

John’s Revelation is a call to fight not with guns and barricades, but with the weapons of the Lamb of God, with compassion, with hearts, minds and doors open to a suffering world.

Bear Creek United Methodist Church is for me a community where “the beating of our hearts echo the beating of the drums.”  Married to Christ’s suffering innocence, we are remaking the world.

In the Thursday email a week ago I asked, “What would be missing from our community if this congregation did not exist.” I invited you to email me your thoughts. I only got one email which said much of what I think. Though we are not unique in our ministries to our community, we are unique in the way we do it. No one else does it the way we do.

Since 1992 we have worshipped God and taught children, youth and adults in Sunday School and a variety of small groups to be devoted to God and the desire for peace.  In this holy marriage we have built and taught schools; created, served and sustained hospitals; counseled thousands in the offices of our social workers and therapists; built businesses, law practices and banks that serve our communities faithfully with quality; saved hundreds of lives at the Deaconess Children's Home, at the orphanage we support in the Congo, by the missionaries we support in Honduras and around the world, at the Senior Center, Matthew House, Africa University, the Food Bank; to name only a few ways we have made shalom.  We are active in politics and in a variety of service clubs.  We are and always will be a community devoted to God and making shalom in world.

Because you know I am prejudiced in our favor I will quote someone outside our tradition.  Rabbi Marc Tannenbaum, a well-known national religious leader, writes about United Methodists:

Everywhere I go in the world, I meet Methodists who are making peace.  I see leaders of the rising African nations and learn that they were trained in your mission school.  I find educated populations who stand up and call their leaders to accountability and discover they, too, were trained in your schools.

Everywhere I go in Africa, there are Methodist missionaries at work where they have been for more than 100 years, making peace, giving people hope and dignity, building community.  I see the same thing in South America and Asia.  You people are the peacemakers of the world.

But I never see you celebrating it.  You ought to be shouting from the roofs.  You ought to be telling the world what you are doing.  But you just give your money and forget it.  I ask Methodists around here what you are doing and no one seems to know.  Why aren't you celebrating?! 2 from the newsletter of Covenant United Methodist Church, Helena, MT.

 

But the marriage of the Lamb and Jerusalem is bigger than any one congregation, denomination or religion.  We belong to the community of all believers devoted to God and making shalom.  The Bride is Roman Catholic, Baptist, Lutheran, Kol Ami and perhaps Hindu, Moslem and Buddhist.  Wherever a community marries itself to suffering nonviolence, has devoted its life to God and served creation with shalom, there is the Holy City who marries the Lamb.  The Bride married to the Lamb is a community much, much bigger than I will ever be, and which does greater things than any of us can do alone.

If you are not already a part of a community devoted to God and acting for shalom, I beg you to do so.  I beg you to be regular in worship.  I plead with you to find a small group that suits you in your study.  I am not asking this for the sake of Bear Creek UMC.  Only you know if this is the right community for you.  Which community you join is not important, as long as it is devoted to God and is creating shalom.  I ask it for your sake and the sake of the world.  If we, and the whole of creation, are to not only survive, but are to be victorious over life’s terror, if there is to be a new heaven and new earth, a place without grief or tears, then it is absolutely essential that we join each other in a marriage with God's saving power.

Amen and Shalom.