“A SONG WORTH SINGING”
Scripture Lesson: Revelation 5: 11-14
Dr. Matthew S. Brown
It’s five days before your
birthday and a package arrives in the mail.
It’s a wrapped present from your parents or from your children living in
another state. So do you savor the
experience of expectation and wait for your birthday or do you rip open the
package without a moment’s delay?
You are reading a
particularly taut and gripping suspense thriller. Someone’s been killed and there are a number
of intriguing suspects. Do you flip
ahead to the last couple of pages because you can’t live with the mystery or do
you enjoy the slow unraveling of the mystery along the way?
Do you remember in the movie When
Harry Met Sally when Harry, that angst driven, eternally pessimistic character
for whom Billy Crystal must own the copyright confesses one of his
idiosyncrasies. He cannot begin reading
a book without first turning to the last page to see how it ends. Early on, he says "When I buy a new
book, I always read the last page first. That way, in case I die before I
finish, I know how it ends. That, my
friend, is a dark side."
A dark side, indeed. You, Sally, or I would complain how that
ruins the pleasure of reading the story and experiencing the bumps, twists,
turns, and suspense along the way. But,
you see, that’s the perspective of a fairly contented, relatively affluent,
somewhat comfortable life. In fact, at
some level we are reading the books to experience the excitement or suspense
that we feel may be missing in our own lives.
We wouldn’t want to do anything to diminish the suspense. For us, that’s part of the joy of it all.
But what if you are
suffering? What if the world is beating
you down? What if you feel trapped,
persecuted, imprisoned by circumstances beyond your control and relief or
release seem nowhere near? What would it
mean to you to be able to read the last page and know that in the end, you will
overcome; in the end, you will experience victory; in the end, you will be
delivered from that which oppresses you?
What would it mean to know that your voice will join with all other
voices in a great victory song?
Think about it, what is our
first impulse when someone we love is hurt or suffering? We so want to wrap our arms around them and
tell them that everything’s going to be all right, that they are going to be
okay. In fact, we have to constrain
ourselves from saying it because we know that everything is not all right and
may not be all right for quite some time.
The suffering may continue, and so we know the more constructive/caring/pastoral
move is to not patronize them with false hope.
But, what if you knew, if you
clung to the conviction, if you had the vision that there would come a day when
fear and suffering and persecution and violence would be banished from your world? The throb of the toddler’s skinned knee; the
distress, nausea, and fear that come with a child’s cancer; the anguish of a
fallen soldier’s mother; the panic and pain of an abuse victim; the horror of
genocide; the many deaths discounted as the collateral damage of war; the
infirmities that come with aging; the fear of death - gone!
What if you knew, if you
clung to the conviction, if you had the vision that such a day would come? Why, it would be enough to make you want to
sing. And if you couldn’t carry a tune,
you wouldn’t care because the whole wide world would be singing with you.
“Then I looked, and I heard
the voice of many angels surrounding the throne and the living creatures and
the elders; they numbered myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands,
singing with full voice,
‘Worthy is the Lamb that was
slaughtered
to receive power and wealth
and wisdom and might
and honor and glory and
blessing!’
Then I heard every creature
in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in
them, singing...”
Singing. Everyone and everything from the jellyfish
out from
Why, because the worthy lamb
that was slain is risen in glorious victory over death and all that would
diminish or destroy God’s good creation.
Jesus, the lamb of God is risen from the dead, and so we do know, we can
cling to the conviction, we have been given the vision that there will come a
day...
So, as the old hymn asks, how
can I keep from singing? Revelation was
written to a people whose world was falling apart. Their faith was challenged, undermined,
denied, even forbidden. They had to be
wondering, “Who’s in control here?”
Their questions needed an answer.
To keep going their hearts needed hope.
And so in Revelation the vision is given. Because of the Lamb, the victory is won. There will come a day...
Contrary to much that is
written on the subject, Revelation is not of book of predictions about 21st
Century events. It is a proclamation to
people in a questioning world. God is
sovereign and God will redeem his creation.
In fact, in Jesus Christ, the lamb of God, that redemption has begun.
And so we sing. Don Saliers writes that, “Whatever people can
say with passion and in heightened speech they will end up singing in some
form. When our language is used to move
beyond the mere giving of information, we come to the threshold of song. When life is deeply felt or perceived, music
gives shape and voice to the very pattern of our experienced world...” (Don
Saliers, Practicing Our Faith).
Whether it’s the teenager’s
atonal lament (don’t you wonder when it will be popular to sing in tune again?)
of lost love or Handel’s Messiah, music gives shape and voice to what we feel
most deeply, what we hold most dearly, what we believe most fervently.
If we have felt the love of
Christ, there is at the core of our lives a song, a song that communicates a
hope in a kingdom that will prevail, a hope in a love that will not abandon us
no matter what we may face.
Bass tells a haunting story
of faith in the face of terror from
When we read in the
scriptures about the Last Supper, we see that after Jesus had eaten with the
disciples, and before they went out into the night where Jesus would face
arrest and persecution and death, they sang a hymn.
Yes, the old Quaker hymn
expresses it well:
My life flows on in endless
song
above earth’s lamentations;
I hear the real though far
off hymn
that hails a new creation.
No storm can shake my inmost
calm
while to that rock I’m
clinging;
while love is Lord o’er
heaven and earth
how can I stop from singing?
The film, The Long Walk Home,
is set during the 1955 bus boycott in
At first, Miriam is
distressed, not by
I won’t tell the whole story,
but at an important point in the movie, a crowd of angry white separatists are
confronting the boycotting African Americans in a parking lot where the
carpools had been organized to transport people to their work. Portents of violence hang heavy in the humid
Southern air as the mob threatens the boycotters. But just as the parking lot is about to
explode into brutality, a lone voice is heard singing, and soon the voice
becomes a chorus, piercing the cloud of abuse:
FATHER, I stretch my hands to
thee,
No other help I know;
If thou withdraw thyself from
me,
Ah! whither shall I go?
The weapons, the fists, and
the epithets drop, and the mob walks away.
The world can threaten you and beat you down, but the world will not
silence the song of salvation, the song of Revelation.
Did you realize that the book
of Revelation is used almost more than any other book of the Bible in the
liturgy, hymnody, and music of the church?
Do you understand why? Do you remember what I told you about the movie
character Harry Burns’ habit with books?
God has given us the last page of the book, so that in this uncertain,
confusing, often troubling world, we will know the end of the story.
After an Easter service at
Duke Chapel, during which the Chapel choir had sung so powerfully the songs of
resurrection and hope in Christ, a woman approached the pastor, William
Willimon, and said that because of that music she believed she could now endure
the immanent death of her beloved child without being destroyed by it.
It’s just a song, right? No, it’s more than that. And I know it’s a song worth singing. Amen.
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