Below, for your consideration and reflection, is the sermon from Bethel's November 6, 2005 Sunday worship service.

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Whitewashed

Revelation 7:9-17

Bethel 11/06/05

The Reverend Marc Sherrod

Just the other day, riding home from tennis practice, on I-40, about the time we reached the Lawnville exit, my daughter turned and asked me, “Are we supposed to believe in hell?” Flat out. No warning. No preamble about yet another theological fight at Roane County High School pitting the Presbyterians vs. the Baptists and Church of Christers. Just an honest, searching question. We talked for awhile about what the Church has always believed, namely that Easter morning is the good news that sin, death, and Satan have been completely and utterly defeated, that the idea of hell, especially as a literal place, doesn’t square all that well with what the New Testament teaches about God’s universal love for everyone, and we finally concluded that if we are wrong and it turns out there is a place called hell, then there must be only a very few people in it, the ones who have done some pretty horrible and terrible things.

Afterwards, I decided that maybe the biggest part of learning how to be a disciple of Jesus is learning how to unlearn what needs to be rejected or just plain ignored, including the penchant so many Christians seem to have for dividing the world into the saved and the wicked, the good and the evil, those who will go to heaven and those headed straight for hell. But, too often, unfortunately, the only way we are able to validate our own beliefs is by demeaning someone else’s. But, I, for one, take great solace in the old saying: there’s more mercy in God than sin in us, and the important question is not who believes in God, but in whom does God believe? I’m betting that the answer to that one is a whole lot bigger than many think possible.

It’s not surprising that the run-up to the secular holiday of Halloween and the fact that horror has become a multi-billion dollar industry in our society would raise questions in young people’s minds about hell. I find rather troubling the popularity of church dramatizations of hell, sometimes called Judgment House or Virtual Hell, in which children and youth pay to witness a fake drunk-driving crash, hear about a young girl’s post-abortion guilt, or see a reenactment of a homosexual young person dying with AIDS, theatrics that often include red spotlights, the moans and groans of the eternally lost, and a devil with tail, pitchfork, and horns on his head.

While I hope we would not endorse this scare tactic version of spreading the good news, the truth is that horror and judgment sell in our society, and they sell even in some parts of the church. Like the highway billboard sign that reads, “Don’t make me come down there” and signed “God,” we live in a time when some Christians will say and do just about anything to remind unbelievers and the wayward alike that God’s patience wears thin and that eternal torment awaits those who don’t toe the line and walk the straight and narrow.

Many people believe that the Bible is “loaded with little trap doors to hell,” (Norris, Amazing Grace, 314), an interpretation of scripture that I think is hardly justified or justifiable, but yet remains very popular, nonetheless. Some have said that hell is the absence of God, although one wonders if God is God, then how in the heck can God ever be absent from anywhere, even from hell itself? Others, namely the existentialist philosopher Jean Paul Sartre has said, famously, that “hell is other people,” a truth that probably we all have tasted at one time or another.

As with many things of ultimate importance, Jesus has some things to say about hell, perhaps the best known being the one where he declares that those who don’t feed the hungry, don’t visit the prisoner, don’t cloth the naked will be cast into the outer darkness where there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth. But Jesus, and the New Testament more generally, actually have much to say about heaven and very little to almost nothing to say about hell.

It is finally on gospel promise, not the peril of virtual hells or judgment houses, that we place our trust and invite others to place their hope.

Which leads us to this passage from Revelation and its description of heavenly worship. It is a vision without parallel in scripture as the redeemed, robed in white, waving their palm branches, are gathered around the throne of God and worship God day and night, continuously.

Unfortunately, this amazing vision of glory and redemption has been hijacked by those who believe that eternal salvation in heaven means one has to first have the hell scared out of him or her. Contrary to misguided readings of this final book of the New Testament canon such as those contained in the fictional and, I believe, anti-Christian Left Behind series of popular novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, contrary to misguided attempts to use Revelation to predict the end times such as reading predictions about a coming bird flu virus as an apocalyptic plague which will be used by God to bring judgment, Revelation is less about a future of gloom and doom and punishment than it is about a vision of redemption and eternal communion and fellowship with God.

The Book of Revelation was written when Christians near the end of the first century in Asia Minor experienced persecution for their refusal to worship the emperors. Some became martyrs, a word in Greek that translates “witness.” Others weakened and left the faith. Left unchecked, the large number of defections could have resulted in the disappearance of Christianity, for indeed it is true that the Church is always only one generation away from extinction. Amid this crisis in the early church, the writer of Revelation wants to sharpen the alternatives of worshiping either Ceasar or God. The vision of angels, elders, and that multi-lingual multitude worshiping around the throne was meant to inspire and comfort early Christians who suffered persecution and tribulations from the hand of the government.

Revelation. It is perhaps the most puzzling and mysterious book of the Bible. Yet those willing to probe its cryptic codes will find at its core, words of worship and some of the best music ever produced by and for the church. Central to our text is the word “ordeal” sometimes translated the “great persecution,” or “tribulation.”

“Who are these clothed in white robes and where have they come from?” one of the elders of heaven asked John. “They are the ones who are coming out of the great tribulation.” That word tribulation literally means “grinding” – derived from the Latin word “Tribulun,” which was a threshing sledge used in farming for beating the stems and husks of grain. This passage from Revelation 7 contains words for those who strive to be faithful, but who are ground down by life.

Who are these clothed in white robes? They are the ones coming out of the great persecution. And then there is a paradoxical image: the blood of persecution which is upon the martyrs has been washed from the robes by the blood of the lamb – and the robes have become dazzling white. Whitewashed.

“Washed in the blood of the lamb.” That language of substitutionary atonement embarrasses perhaps our post-Enlightenment sensibilities. The words conjure images of a revival tent on a hot humid summer night, vivid portrayals of the agonies of hell, or “Just as I am” sung for the umpteenth time. “The blood of the lamb!” Sweat pours down the preacher’s face, saliva sprays from his mouth. “There is no salvation apart from the blood of the lamb!” he shouts. And something recoils deep within us, for surely, we think, we have progressed beyond this rendering of the faith.

But yet, Revelation 7 asks us to reconsider. We should be cautious about relinquishing the rich language of biblical metaphor. The therapeutic language of self-esteem or finding the inner child, this language will not help us pass through the great tribulation. There are still some things we cannot do on our own, that we cannot do for ourselves.

Who are they who stand among the great multitude of redeemed waving their palm branches victoriously, worshiping day and night around the throne? There is Steven who was stoned and St. Peter who was crucified. There is Oscar Romero, Dietrich Bonhoeffer triumphant over the Nazi gallows, Martin Luther King Jr still praying that his dream will come true. Nuns and priests from El Salvador, Sudanese Christian boys slain in their streets, martyred workers from a Presbyterian hospital and school in Pakistan. A girl at Columbine High School. They are all there. And there are many more of these of whom we have heard.

But also there are those of whom we know nothing, whose tribulations and suffering are private. Will they not also be in that great multitude?

This vision of heaven speaks powerfully to those of us who face not martyrdom, necessarily, but simply death, as all of us must face death one day.

Even if we have not been persecuted, we have been beaten enough by the threshing machine of life so that the hope contained in these words should seem relevant to all of us. Death is the great measure of our lives, and it is tempting to worship death as the Lord of life instead of the Lord as the Lord of life. We often behave as if life on earth is all there is, and perhaps it will never be otherwise given the way we spend our time and energy.

Yet in Revelation 7, death no longer has its grip, nor does hunger or thirst or drought. In this glimpse of heaven, there are no tears.

The activity of the redeemed, according to this vision, is really just one thing: singing and praising God without ceasing. Worship for the saints is not asking and requesting, as we are accustomed to do in our earthly worship, but heavenly worship is simply reflecting on and praising God’s perfection. This kind of unceasing worship is the goal of our being. It is the best worship ever offered, and those of us on earth who check our watches after one hour of worship on Sunday morning might better take notice.

That is, of course, the future, and we are here. In this moment , as we remember with thanksgiving all those who have gone before us and obtained their heavenly reward, we realize that this is a moment to have a foretaste of heaven, for we are united with that great communion of the saints who have passed through tribulation and who now taste fully in their unceasing worship.

May God grant us grace to worship the one who has been slain for us so that one day, the blood upon our hands will be washed clean by the blood of the lamb. Amen.