WESTMINSTER PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
April 29th 2007
Rev. Mark R. Bradshaw-Miller
Revelation 7:9-17
“Revelation; It’s Not about Getting Left Behind” Part II
There are many things in the book of Revelation which invite wild interpretations and flights of fancy. However, the one place where that is not true is with worship. In fact, at the heart of the book of Revelation is worship. The concern for worship in the book of revelation is about doing worship well. Worshiping well, in this book, has little, if anything, to do with the content of worship. Instead, the central issue of worship in this book is about the object of our worship.
Although I had read the book of Revelation before going to seminary, I had never focused on the worship in the book. In fact, when the idea of worship being central to this book was presented to me I was rather unimpressed. After all, worship was something done once a week over the course of one hour. It was the time where we used ancient words which had little contemporary meaning. So when I heard this claim about the book of Revelation, it made this book even less interesting than I already found it.
This all changed when it was pointed out to me that my understanding of worship was too narrow. Worship, particularly in this book, was never meant to be confined to the private weekly affair, adorned with antiquated language which it has become. Biblical Scholar, seminary professor and organic intellectual, Stanley Saunders helped me to understand the truly political nature of worship in the book of Revelation. He says:
It is crucial for us to recognize the political character of the worship in the words spoken by the martyrs. The worship language that John cites in these verses may sound rather ordinary to us, but for John and the rest of the first-century church this language was the cultic and political language of the Roman Empire. The political rhetoric of the day claimed that salvation and peace were the gift – the grace – of the Caesars, that faith was a matter of putting one’s trust in the emperor. Justice and righteousness consisted in being a good citizen of the empire… John took the words being spoken about Caesar and the empire and related them instead to Jesus.
It is a powerfully illuminating statement that impacts all interpretations of this book. However, it also has challenging implications for all worship of the God we know in Jesus Christ.
The vision of worship John sees is amazing. There are so many faithful gathered worshiping God that he cannot count them all. Not only this, but this multitude of people comes from every nation, all tribes all peoples and all languages. The gathering of the faithful transcends all the divisions of this world. And, it means that no one nation, no one group of people, and no one language have favored status in God’s eyes.
The chorus raised by this faithful gathering is the outrageous, and seditious, claim that salvation does not come from the military or economic might of the empire but from God alone. As this chorus is echoed by the angels and creatures of heaven, it can be easy to get caught up in speculation about angels, beats and who is actually going to be ‘saved.’ However, all of those questions and speculations are distractions from the real issue which is fidelity to God alone. If we focus on the spectacular, here and elsewhere in the book, we will miss the fact that the claims about God in Jesus Christ are in direct conflict with the economic and military claims of empire.
Of the seven churches which received this book, a few of the churches, particularly the more privileged Christians had made peace with their complicity with the empire. They saw nothing wrong with worshiping Empire and Emperor along with worshiping Jesus. John reminds them of the conflict and risks of such syncretism and calls them to repentance. While these concerns appear to be relics of the past, I do believe there is contemporary relevance. However, the contemporary relevance is lost because our understanding of worship is too often narrow. As such we have a hard time differentiating worship from personal preferences for music, message, and even mission. This is why the book of Revelation can be so timely for the followers of the Lamb today.
I believe that we must look to the book of Revelation as a corrective to our modern forms of worship. Instead of struggling over the style of worship we like best, usually couched in the language – the right way to worship, we need to look to the world challenging worship in this book. I turn again to the work of Stan Saunders on worship in the book of Revelation:
In worship, God’s people gather to practice the peculiar forms of discernment and action that constituted right human responses to the God we know in Jesus Christ. Worship thus entails such practices as gathering, praise, thanksgiving, beseeching, naming God’s presence, and for forgiving, reconciling, and making space for the outsider, the marginal, and the enemy. (And) It reorders time and social relationships. It is the setting in which the gathered community retells its primary story in order to convey Christian meaning and culture.
So, worship is about reordering our lives for service and reforming our identity as children of God.
When we gather each week for worship it is a time to be conformed to the way of the lamb, to the way of Jesus, to the way of the cross. Worship is supposed reconstruct our understanding of the world and to reveal that the messages of the world do not have the last word. Worship is about reminding us that the claims of God and the claims of Jesus Christ upon our lives are not subordinate to anything, not even the claims of the market. Worship is about creating in us the belief that; “Salvation (alone) belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb.” Amen.
April 29th 2007
Rev. Mark R. Bradshaw-Miller
Revelation 7:9-17
“Revelation; It’s Not about Getting Left Behind” Part II
There are many things in the book of Revelation which invite wild interpretations and flights of fancy. However, the one place where that is not true is with worship. In fact, at the heart of the book of Revelation is worship. The concern for worship in the book of revelation is about doing worship well. Worshiping well, in this book, has little, if anything, to do with the content of worship. Instead, the central issue of worship in this book is about the object of our worship.
Although I had read the book of Revelation before going to seminary, I had never focused on the worship in the book. In fact, when the idea of worship being central to this book was presented to me I was rather unimpressed. After all, worship was something done once a week over the course of one hour. It was the time where we used ancient words which had little contemporary meaning. So when I heard this claim about the book of Revelation, it made this book even less interesting than I already found it.
This all changed when it was pointed out to me that my understanding of worship was too narrow. Worship, particularly in this book, was never meant to be confined to the private weekly affair, adorned with antiquated language which it has become. Biblical Scholar, seminary professor and organic intellectual, Stanley Saunders helped me to understand the truly political nature of worship in the book of Revelation. He says:
It is crucial for us to recognize the political character of the worship in the words spoken by the martyrs. The worship language that John cites in these verses may sound rather ordinary to us, but for John and the rest of the first-century church this language was the cultic and political language of the Roman Empire. The political rhetoric of the day claimed that salvation and peace were the gift – the grace – of the Caesars, that faith was a matter of putting one’s trust in the emperor. Justice and righteousness consisted in being a good citizen of the empire… John took the words being spoken about Caesar and the empire and related them instead to Jesus.
It is a powerfully illuminating statement that impacts all interpretations of this book. However, it also has challenging implications for all worship of the God we know in Jesus Christ.
The vision of worship John sees is amazing. There are so many faithful gathered worshiping God that he cannot count them all. Not only this, but this multitude of people comes from every nation, all tribes all peoples and all languages. The gathering of the faithful transcends all the divisions of this world. And, it means that no one nation, no one group of people, and no one language have favored status in God’s eyes.
The chorus raised by this faithful gathering is the outrageous, and seditious, claim that salvation does not come from the military or economic might of the empire but from God alone. As this chorus is echoed by the angels and creatures of heaven, it can be easy to get caught up in speculation about angels, beats and who is actually going to be ‘saved.’ However, all of those questions and speculations are distractions from the real issue which is fidelity to God alone. If we focus on the spectacular, here and elsewhere in the book, we will miss the fact that the claims about God in Jesus Christ are in direct conflict with the economic and military claims of empire.
Of the seven churches which received this book, a few of the churches, particularly the more privileged Christians had made peace with their complicity with the empire. They saw nothing wrong with worshiping Empire and Emperor along with worshiping Jesus. John reminds them of the conflict and risks of such syncretism and calls them to repentance. While these concerns appear to be relics of the past, I do believe there is contemporary relevance. However, the contemporary relevance is lost because our understanding of worship is too often narrow. As such we have a hard time differentiating worship from personal preferences for music, message, and even mission. This is why the book of Revelation can be so timely for the followers of the Lamb today.
I believe that we must look to the book of Revelation as a corrective to our modern forms of worship. Instead of struggling over the style of worship we like best, usually couched in the language – the right way to worship, we need to look to the world challenging worship in this book. I turn again to the work of Stan Saunders on worship in the book of Revelation:
In worship, God’s people gather to practice the peculiar forms of discernment and action that constituted right human responses to the God we know in Jesus Christ. Worship thus entails such practices as gathering, praise, thanksgiving, beseeching, naming God’s presence, and for forgiving, reconciling, and making space for the outsider, the marginal, and the enemy. (And) It reorders time and social relationships. It is the setting in which the gathered community retells its primary story in order to convey Christian meaning and culture.
So, worship is about reordering our lives for service and reforming our identity as children of God.
When we gather each week for worship it is a time to be conformed to the way of the lamb, to the way of Jesus, to the way of the cross. Worship is supposed reconstruct our understanding of the world and to reveal that the messages of the world do not have the last word. Worship is about reminding us that the claims of God and the claims of Jesus Christ upon our lives are not subordinate to anything, not even the claims of the market. Worship is about creating in us the belief that; “Salvation (alone) belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb.” Amen.
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