3d Sunday of Easter
April 9, 1989
Rev 5: 11-14
St. Theresa, Bronx
This Sunday (April 10) I celebrated Mass for Scouts doing the NYLT course at Putnam Valley, N.Y., and preached on the gospel from an outline. Here's a written-out homily on the 2d reading from "olden days."
“I
heard every creature … saying, ‘To him who sits upon the throne and to the Lamb
be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!’” (Rev 5: 13).
The
Revelation of John uses many symbols to convey the Christian message. In today’s 4 verses, e.g., we have a throne,
living creatures, elders, and a Lamb.
John’s
vision pictures heaven as an imperial court where God the Father rules the
universe. All the angels and every
bodily creature pay him homage.
The
living creatures mentioned here ch. 5 are described more fully in ch. 4. Their imagery is borrowed from the OT
prophets. There are 4 creatures, and
each of them has a different visage. One
appears like a lion, one like an ox, one like and eagle, and one like a
man. They represent the wild and the
domestic animals, the birds of the air, and human beings—the whole of earthly
creation. In a slightly different
interpretation, they represent certain qualities: nobility (that’s the lion), strength (the
ox), swiftness (the eagle), and wisdom (the man); in this interpretation, these
are the most outstanding qualities of living creatures. In either case, the whole of earthly creation
and all its qualities are at heaven’s throne worshiping God.
 |
| The 4 living creatures and the elders worship the Lamb (source unknown) |
The
elders—again, according to ch. 4, there are 24 of them—represent all of God’s
chosen people. Jacob’s 12 sons became
the patriarchs of the 12 tribes of Israel in the OT. Jesus’ 12 apostles are the patriarchs of the
new Israel, the Church. The new Israel
of Christianity grows from the old Israel of Judaism. Both are God’s people. Both worship the living God and sing his
praises in a way unique among all of earthly creation. And the elders represent us who are here this
morning.
The
Lamb that had been slain has a prominent place in the heavenly court. Like God the Father, it is worshiped. This, of course, is the Lamb of God that was
sacrificed in atonement for the sins of mankind. This is the Lamb of God who takes away the
sins of the world. This is the Lamb whom
“God exalted at his right hand as Ruler and Savior, to give repentance to
Israel and forgiveness of sins” (Acts 5:31).
When
you listen to the final parts of Handel’s Messiah,
you hear some beautiful renditions of the hymns from Revelation, including
these from ch. 5. Every creature in
heaven, on earth, and in the sea sings these hymns to God the Father and to
Jesus Christ, the Lamb that was slain for us.
Every creature acknowledges the sovereignty of God and the Lamb over all
of us. We shout joyfully: “Blessing and honor and glory and might
forever and ever.” Heaven, if you like,
has become a giant pep rally.
Our
liturgy attempts to echo the heavenly liturgy.
The scene painted by John is a liturgical one, one of public
worship. Ideally, crowds of grateful
Christians would fill our churches and sing out God’s praises, communing heart
and soul with their Lord and Savior each resurrection day, each Sunday.
There’s
a little story about conversion of the people of Ukraine to Christianity. It seems that Vladimir, prince of Kiev, wanted
his subjects to adopt the most sublime religion they could find. He sent deputations far and wide to see how
his neighbors worshiped God. They
visited the Moslems along the Volga, and the Khazars of the Crimea, who had
adopted Judaism. In Germany they found
Latin Christianity—that’s our kind. But when
they met Byzantine or Greek Christianity in the great cathedral of Holy Wisdom
in Constantinople, with its clouds of incense, its chanting and ritual, its
mosaics, icons, and vestments, they thought they’d surely found heaven: “We did not know,” they reported, “whether we
were in heaven or on earth. It would be
impossible to find on earth any splendor greater than this, and it is vain to
attempt to describe it…. Never shall we
be able to forget so great a beauty.”[1] So Prince Vladimir and the people of Kiev
became Christians with Eastern liturgy and laws. And so the Ukrainians and the Russians
remained until the persecutions of Lenin and Stalin, and so many of them have remained
despite Communist persecution, like the apostles of old.
I
doubt that many non-Christians entering a Catholic church today would think
they were in heaven. But if heaven on
earth isn’t here around the altar of the Lamb, around God’s living Word, then
where shall we find it? We won’t, until
we become convinced that God loves us and desires our presence; until we desire
his presence and want to be part of
those “thousands and tens of thousands” of creatures shouting and singing
before him, thanking him for our sisters and brothers, our community, our local
church, thanking him for wiping out our sins, thanking him for Jesus. Isn’t that why we came out in this miserable
weather this morning?
Our
weekly worship, our weekly communion with Jesus, is a dress rehearsal for
eternity. In heaven, of course, our love
will be perfected. In the meantime, we
love and we worship as best we can, and we try to turn the world around us—all
of it, not just this building—in to a little bit of heaven by our faith, our
hope, our love, and our worship.
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