Revelation Chapter 8

Pentecost 8 year C Sermon 

Cast your mind back two weeks…

Remember how in John’s vision…six of the seven seals… on the scroll of God’s purposes…
are opened by the Lamb of God…the only one worthy

Remember how Jesus’ breaks the seals… not only exposing the evil powers and principalities of this world…but the things which prevent you and me… from fulfilling God’s purposes in our own lives …

And remember how the earth is momentarily protected
as angels hold back the four winds…

And how… before the seventh seal is opened…
a voice from the throne declares…

Don’t harm the land or the sea or the trees…
until we put a seal on the foreheads of the servants of our God.

Perhaps a violent wind will scorch the earth,
stir up the sea and uproot the trees…but more likely…
a great shaking will pass through the world of human affairs…
as powers and principalities are exposed for the evil they do…
by the Lamb of God.

at the end of the first century…God’s suffering people
need to be reassured … yes there will be suffering…
but John’s vision reveals God’s people…

will come through this time of tribulation…

And remember how suddenly…as heaven and earth await the opening of the seventh seal…the seal of the living God…
John sees before him… in the divine dimension…

Word slide

a great multitude no one can count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb…wearing white robes…holding palm branches how the great multitude of those who had been martyred in the name of Christ …crying out in a loud voice:

Slide words

Praise and glory and wisdom and thanks and honour and power and strength be to our God for ever and ever.

Revelation 8 slide

And now…as chapter 8 begins…
as the Lamb opens the seventh seal… [pause]

White slide

there is silence  [pause then quietly]

The constant ceaseless praise… of the four living creatures
dies away. The song of the elders, the angels…
and the multitude without number falls quiet…

This…is the moment we’ve all be waiting for. And we hardly dare to breathe. The praises of heaven must pause
for a while…

why?

so the prayers of humanity may be heard.

Everything in heaven goes silent…
so the prayers of the earth may be heard. [pause]

Along with the early Christians… at the end of the first century … hiding in terror…enduring terrible persecution for their allegiance to Christ over Caesar and his empire…

in the silence we are granted … a glimpse into God’s heavenly dimension…not distant and uncaring…but listening…
and compassionately engaged…

Instead of our little bedraggled house church in Ephesus…
beaten to a pulp by vicious mobs or tortured and killed in the arenas of an oppressive regime…We can see in John’s vision thousands upon thousands celebrating their deliverance.

And as the lamb opens the seventh seal…the seal of the living God…there is silence…

Something huge…something powerful is about to happen…

but before it does… before the angel’s trumpets
can sound the alarm… something else has to happen…
heaven and earth must intersect in a new way…

Angel with censer slide

So another angel with a golden censer…comes to stand at the altar before the throne…and together with swirling smoke of incense… the prayers of God’s people rise up before God. [pause]

Every one of our senses…is engaged in the silence…
the prayers and the incense rise…

One way or another…the prayers of God’s people…not least those already martyred…are coming before God’s throne.

Their prayers have been heard…and what is God’s answer?

There are echoes here of what Paul wrote to the Romans

In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We don’t know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.

So the prayers of God’s people rise like incense
from the golden censer…and the immediate answer is given… the same way. [pause]

Filling the censer with fire from the altar…

Earth slide

the angel hurls it onto the earth…the silence is broken…
and there is thunder and lightning… and the earth quakes.
Every section of John’s vision rumbles like this… when it ends. And we will hear this fearful noise again.

Until evil has been judged, condemned and radically uprooted from the earth…the only word the earth can hear from heaven
is a cosmic storm of judgment.

As long as earth remains the haunt of evil…
God’s answer to it must be fire.

Jesus himself declares he’d come ‘to throw fire upon the earth’ and here in John’s vision…the angel with the Golden censer continues the mysterious work of the lamb. [pause]

At now in seven angels appear…
and their trumpets sound the alarm…Be prepared…something terrible is about to unfold.

A sequence of God’s judgments… are about to be set in motion
necessary for evil to be conquered and God’s glorious new world to emerge …

…a sequence of judgments not mechanically grinding forever into the future… unrelated to human action. But in partnership with praying and faithful humanity.

Here we discover…that prayer …even the most anguished…
even from those who don’t understanding for one second
what’s happening…human prayer is a vital element in our mysterious cooperation with the purposes of God.

Sun moon and earth slide

Ok now you can strap yourselves into your seats my friends
…you have been warned…

The first angel sounded his trumpet, and there came hail and fire mixed with blood, and it was hurled down on the earth.
A third of the earth was burned up, a third of the trees were burned up, and all the green grass was burned up.

8 The second angel sounded his trumpet, and something like a huge mountain, all ablaze, was thrown into the sea. A third of the sea turned into blood, 9 a third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships were destroyed.

10 The third angel sounded his trumpet, and a great star, blazing like a torch, fell from the sky on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water— 11 the name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters turned bitter, and many people died from the waters that had become bitter.

12 The fourth angel sounded his trumpet, and a third of the sun was struck, a third of the moon, and a third of the stars, so that a third of them turned dark. A third of the day was without light, and also a third of the night.

13 As I watched, I heard an eagle that was flying in mid-air call out in a loud voice: “Woe! Woe! Woe to the inhabitants of the earth, because of the trumpet blasts about to be sounded by the other three angels!”

[pause]

You know there’s a church out there somewhere with a sign out the front…that reads…

Sign slide

Many people want to serve God…
but only in an advisory capacity.

Now this is one of those moments in the book of Revelation …when some of us at least…
would like to give God some firm advice… ‘don’t do it God! How does all this destruction gel with what we know of you?’
We’ve been reassured… it’s your creation…you made it and made it good and you love it and you love us…we know that…

Sun moon and earth slide

So how then can you allow such an apparently meaningless destruction of the universe …a third of the earth…the trees…the sea and its creatures…the rivers…even the sun and the moon and the stars?

Well my favourite biblical scholar Tom Wright…
ffers us three points… that might just help us…
with our very real confusion and our very important questions?

First point: As a wise old writer put it…you haven’t yet considered

Slide words Point 1.

the seriousness of sin’.

However great the evidence to the contrary…
don’t some of us still cling to the modern myth…
that evil will be wiped out through education and enlightenment
leaving only a few mopping up operations in the world…
preferably far far away from where we live…

The very idea of God having to do anything powerful and destructive to address the problem…
is regarded as way too drastic…

but none of the early Christians and certainly not Jesus…
would have colluded with such a glossing over
of the seriousness of human sin.

Reveal point 2

Point 2 as always in the Book of Revelation…
we should never mistake symbolism for reality.

The stylised way John describes the effects of the seven trumpet blasts… ought to remind us…
what Johns first readers certainly knew …

John isn’t actually talking about a third of the earth the seas. But he is talking about God’s drastic action to purify the world.

what do you do to a dangerously diseased tree in your garden…

[wait for response]

That’s right…you cut it back…you remove the deadly cancer
so the rest of the tree may be saved…only major surgery will do.

The necessary work of radically upsetting evil human systems by which millions are enslaved and degraded

Third point: As we read about these plagues [and more to come] something stirs in our ancient collective memory…isn’t it.

[check for response]

Reveal third point

That’s right they intentionally remind us of the plagues God sends in Egypt after four hundred years of slavery for God’s people. Plagues sent as a warning to the Pharaoh
of the power of Israel’s God…

And how do the plagues in Egypt end…
Israel is saved from death by the blood of the lamb.

Already revealed in Johns vision…
the Lamb of God is the true Passover lamb…
John’s vision has a history etched deep in the psyche of Jesus’ suffering first century followers…

Just as the nation of Egypt was hit with plagues… to warn and to liberate …so the whole world will be

Maybe these three points can help us keep our heads…
and our faith…as we navigate the most difficult passages
in the book of Revelation.  As we take seriously this divine warning…meant not just for Pharoah or for Caesar’s empire but for all nations…including ours.

Blank slide

And eventually… if we have the courage and strength to read on…we will hear in chapter 15… the rescued people of God singing the song of Moses and the song of the lamb. [pause]

But for the moment in John’s vision…
following the prayers of God’s suffering people…
fire is cast upon the earth… The process of catastrophic events begins…as a warning to those who dwell on earth…

From beginning to end…the stunning sweep of John’s vision proclaims the re-establishment of the rule of heaven on earth…
a radical change of regime…is coming…and those who profit from the present one… need very dire warnings indeed
if they are to realise… in what jeopardy they have put the earth and it’s creatures.

Many live on earth… as though there is no heavenly dimension

In light of John’s vision…I’d call that fool hardy…God has always called for confession and repentance…
Next week we’ll see if we can find any.