Our scripture text this morning comes from Revelation chapter five. Listen for a Word from God. Then I saw a scroll in the right hand of the one seated on the throne. It had writing on the front and the back. It was sealed with seven seals. I saw a powerful angel who proclaimed in a loud voice, who is worthy to open the scroll and break its seals, but no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth could open the scroll or even look inside it. So I began to weep and weep because no one was found worthy to open the scroll or look inside it. Then one of the elders said to me, don't weep. Look the lion of the tribe of Judah. The root of David has emerged victorious so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals. Then in between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders, I saw a lamb standing as if it had been slain.
It had seven horns and seven eyes, which are God's seven spirits sent out to the whole earth. He came forward and took the scroll from the right hand of the one seated on the throne. When he took the scroll, the four living creatures and the 24 elders fell down before the lamb. Each held a harp and a gold bowl full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. They took up a new song, singing You are worthy to take the scroll and open its seals because you were slain and by your blood you purchased for God persons from every tribe, language, people and nation. You made them a kingdom and priests to our God and they will rule on earth. Then I looked and I heard the sound of many angels surrounding the throne, the living creatures and the elders. They numbered in the millions, thousands upon thousands, and they said in a loud voice, worthy is the slaughtered lamb. To receive power, wealth, wisdom might honor glory and blessing. I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea. I heard everything everywhere say blessing, honor, glory and power belong to the ones seated on the throne and to the lamb forever and always. Then the four living creatures said, amen. And the elders fell down and worshiped.
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Don't think about an elephant. Don't. I said, don't this, don't think about an elephant is a classic thought experiment that people have done for many, many years because of course, the moment that we hear that our minds just pop up with an elephant. It teaches us something fascinating about the human mind, that whatever we name and focus on, we give our attention to and it creates the reality for our mental world. What we give mental space to, we empower, and even when we think we're resisting something, if we keep it at the center of our attention, it still holds power over us. Don't think about an elephant for much of this summer.
As Pastor Garrett said, we are taking a deep dive into the book of Revelation, this very last book of the Bible, one that is very misunderstood but is also so beautiful and powerful and is so rich with imagery. And as Garrett talked about last week at its core really this book is a letter from John, two churches to seven churches in Asia who are struggling under Roman empire, who are being oppressed and who are being forced to pledge allegiance to this empire. And they're sort of trying to navigate what do we do? Can we give over partially to the empire? Should we escape it? Totally? How do we avoid the practices of injustice that are coming at the hand of the empire? How do we navigate? And John speaks poetically about what is going on as he is giving charges to these churches to tell them how to live in this time.
He's writing from an imprisoned island and he has to sort of write in code as Garrett said, so that this letter won't be intercepted. So he uses a lot of imagery that on the surface sounds very bizarre and scary, but these churches were entrenched in this imagery and they would've understood, and he uses Babylon as this poetic name for empire, for the Roman Empire in particular at the time, but also for any empire, even those that exist today. This book often is thought of as sort of a future predictor, end of times guidebook. But actually when we look into the context and the images, we see that John is speaking to this particular group of people to help them figure out how to live here and now on earth under empire. So it begins with Jesus coming down on a cloud and saying, God is the only alpha and omega beginning and end.
No empire actually will last. And from there, it goes on into a specific word for each church in particular. And we get to hear in chapters two and three what each of these different churches in these cities are struggling with, how in their own context they are feeling the pressure and the weight of empire. And then the vision begins in chapter four and chapter five. John goes into the call for what these churches can do here and now. And it begins with a vision of worship and not just a vision or an explanation of it, but actually an experience of worship. Even John as this sort of narrator of vision is drawn into the worship. He smells incense, he sees things he weeps. He is a part of this experience of worship.
We hear about this throne and these beautiful colors. There's rainbows surrounding it. It looks like shining gems. And there are 24 thrones surrounding the center throne of elders. There are living creatures around the throne, an ox, a lion, one like a human and an eagle. And they begin by singing Holy, holy, holy, worshiping the one. And then as we just read, John sees this scroll in the middle of the throne and nobody really seems able to open it to break the seals. And so people are projecting. One of the elders says, there's a lion. A lion will come. And as the vision gets a little more clear, John does see a creature, but it's not a lion. It's a lamb as if it had been slain, wounded, but standing with horns and eyes representing the spirit of God in the world. And when the lamb touches the scroll, suddenly everyone sings a new song. The elders, the living creatures, those on the earth of all tribes, nations, lambs, even those under the earth and creatures in the sea, everyone is singing and worshiping to the lamb of sacrifice.
Revelation does not begin with pictures of beasts or descriptions of battle. It begins with the story of worship with an open door to heaven and these beautiful lights and sounds and songs and smells. Before John says anything about what to do, he invites the churches into an experience to see who is at the center of the throne and to worship. We have to remember that these seven churches are in political crisis. Some of them feel at the end of their rope. There is evil surrounding them. They're desperate for instructions on what to do and how to defeat the empire. Many of us feel that way today too, even in 2025 and a political climate where we just feel a sense of urgency and stress, we wonder what do we do? Where do we begin? How can I act? Who should I call? What is the first thing I need to do? And John's message is very simple. Begin with worship, not with a strategy or an agenda or even a march, but with worship.
Now, even as a pastor, I have to admit that that sounds a little frustrating and anticlimactic. Isn't there a better use of our time? There is so much to do. There is evil to resist. There is empire to fight back against. And you're telling me to go to church. And yet, if this wasn't the most important place to start, John would not have started here, begin with worship. And I wonder what kind of worship he's thinking of. Worship, of course, is much more than just a church service or the hours that we spend opening hymnals and saying prayers together. So what does real worship look like?
Poet Andrea Gibson died this past week, and if you are familiar at all with their work, you will know what a loss that is. They were an amazing poet, an artist and soul. And I was first introduced to their work a few years ago, shortly after they were diagnosed with incurable ovarian cancer. And I heard this interview with Andrea and they were describing the experience of being diagnosed with beautiful vulnerability and pain and openness. And it just touched me so deeply that I couldn't help but pay attention. Andrea talked about how up until the diagnosis, they had been an extreme hypochondriac and worrier, particularly around health. They spent all of their life and attention on avoiding pain, avoiding bad things, avoiding hard diagnoses like the rest of their family had received. Sort of like the elephant, don't think about it, don't think about it. Don't get sick, don't get sick.
Avoid pain, avoid hardship. And so when the worst actually happened and Andrea was diagnosed, it almost felt like freedom. Suddenly, Andrea was able to focus on living life and not just avoiding suffering. Andrea said they could focus on gratitude for the first time and living in the moment in a new way. And this quote in particular caught me. This attitude is not about turning my head away from the grief of our world. I don't believe healing ever comes from ignoring what aches, but orienting toward beauty fuels me and reminds me why this precious earth and these precious lives of ours are so worth fighting for.
After diagnosis, Andrea's life became more full. And the way that I see it, it was a life of worship. It's my term one. I don't put in Andrea's mouth, but listen to the life and love. Andrea says, when you tap into the brevity of something, suddenly everything is special. There's so much time in a moment, as much as in a decade if you pay attention, lifespan is no longer a word I use to measure length but width. The poet's job is to remind us that we were born astonished. We were never ever supposed to grow out of that. Sometimes the break in your heart is like the hole in the flute. Sometimes it's the place where the music comes through.
I know you think this world is too dark to even dream in color, but I've seen flowers bloom at midnight. I've seen kites fly in gray skies, and they were real close to looking like the sunrise. And sometimes it takes the most wounded wings, the most broken things to notice how strong the breeze is, how precious the flight. In the end, Andrea says, I want my heart to be covered in stretch marks. Worship is about our attention, about what we focus on, what we give energy to, what we repeat in our heads over and over and over, the things that we give weight to. I wonder what your attention is on avoiding pain, worry, your own success, maybe even taking down the empire. But John reminds us, even if our minds are fixated on resisting empire, it still holds the central space in our imagination. Worship is a radical act of putting something else. Someone else at the center, the lamb of sacrifice focus, John says to these churches on the Christ, the one who gave, the one who sacrificed, the one who won by losing. And in this sense, worship isn't just an escape or a break from doing justice or activism, but it's a means of resistance.
The lamb is such an unexpected image. We expect something mighty, something with power that will take over and it's jarring. It's like preparing for battle and walking into the battlefield only to find a banquet table laid out for you to feast at. It's like my friend Ryan, who lives in Los Angeles, who was walking to work the other day and saw this car expertly parallel park in a teeny tiny parking spot, and he walked up to the side to see who this amazing driver was and there was nobody in the car. It was one of the self-driving cars that can parallel park, and he just stared at it so confused. It was jarring. When you expect to see someone of power and might, but instead you see a lamb, what do you worship? Where's your attention? What are the things most repeated in your mind? I was unsettled when I started answering that question this week. Often I wake up and my mind is filled with things like to-do lists, worries, should have, would've, could have. Imagining things that are the worst case scenario.
What if instead a worshipful mind was focused on things like gratitude and wonder and prayer? Start with worship. It doesn't mean we don't also act to take down empire. It doesn't mean we don't also do direct action against things that are unjust in our world. But to begin with, the imagination of the lamb of sacrifice means we reorient our hope and that hope never leaves. It's the kind of hope that gives our life with and not just length. It's the kind of hope that allows our hearts to break. As Andrea Gibson says, not apart but open.
I want to end with a short story about an experience of worship that was so meaningful in my own life. And as a pastor, I go to church every Sunday. I have had a lot of experiences of worship, but the worship that I experience that has touched me the most actually happened in a hospital room. As part of pastoral training, we are all required to go through a season of chaplaincy. So I spent a summer working as a hospital chaplain in New York City and I was assigned to the oncology ward. There was a woman who was in and out of the hospital quite a lot the summer that I worked there. And she had a very aggressive type of cancer and knew that she likely was not going to live for very long. I got to know her well because she was in and out of the hospital so much, but also because she was a former ballerina and so we had a lot to talk about.
So near the end of my chaplaincy program, she was in the hospital. She'd been there for several days and she knew the end was coming. She called me specifically to her room the day before I was going to leave the chaplaincy program. And I knew that this was going to be goodbye, not only because my program was over, but because she had been told she would likely only have a few more days to live. So I remember walking to her hospital room and just sort of imagining the conversation we were going to have. And I was imagining that we would be focusing a lot on the end of her life, that maybe she would have questions, that we would probably pray, that we would be thinking about this end point. But instead, when I got there, she had her iPad out and she said, I want you to watch something with me. Her sister had sent her a video of ballerina, Misty Copeland performing Firebird, and she said, I've been saving it to watch with you. So I sat down next to her and we held hands and we watched Misty Copeland perform Fire Her Bird. And we both cried and we hugged and she said, see, life is beautiful.
And that was the most worshipful moment I could have imagined. We didn't focus on the end, we focused on what is so beautiful about living. That's what deserves our attention. There is empire weighing down on a lot of us right now in the beginning of resistance is to worship, to recognize that we have a God who comes as lamb, who loves, who gives, who's lasting, and when that is at the center, we can't go wrong.
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