Revelation 7:9-17
11.15.2020
A few years ago, I had the opportunity to spend almost a month in Malawi, a country tucked in the Southeast corner of the continent of Africa in between Tanzania, Mozambique, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Known as the warm heart of Africa, because of the kindness expressed by many of its inhabitants towards visitors, it is not difficult to fall in love with the people of this tiny country and after a scant few hours on the ground, I became enraptured with it. For, in addition to friendly and beautiful children of God all around, Malawi has breathtaking natural beauty year-round. In the hills to the South of Lilongwe, the capital, are views from high atop mountains that would rival any seen in any other mountainous region of the world. During many of our hikes in the area outside of Nkoma, the village in which we stayed for some time, we saw both animal and nature that could just as easily have been seen in the pages of National Geographic. And to walk back in the trails that ran in between the larger villages was to step back in time to a era when electricity was unheard of, running water was a luxury that no one had, and the most basic of homemade farming equipment was treasured throughout these agrarian communities. Moreover, we were transported back to a time in the story of the world in which tribal distinction mattered to a far greater degree than any sort of national allegiance and even to this day tribes would compete with one another for the meager bounty of their land. This reality was testified to by the guardhouses that dotted the landscape of the fields were used to keep both neighboring tribesmen and animals out of your crops. It is truly a sight that defies explanation. The people of Malawi also possessed a devotion to their religious commitments in a way that bore witness to the faith that we are all called to have. One of the first days that we were there, my dad and I bribed our way into a church. (Yes, you heard that right. On a walk through one of the villages, we came upon a church and trying to go in, we discovered that the whole building was locked up. As it would happen, a gentleman was walking by and saw us in our predicament and told us that while he himself did not have a key, he knew someone who did if we could make it worth his while to go find the person. 3 minutes and 20 kwatcha later we were in the sanctuary) And in the sanctuary, we found huge piles of the first harvests of the season. Beans and corn and other crops that neither of us knew what exactly it was, all sitting just off the front of the sanctuary where folks, the previous Sunday, had literally brought forth their offering to the church and dumped it in the assigned piles.
In the larger villages, one finds many dedicated people both volunteers and workers many of whom had left the comfort of their western homes to practice medicine, or to teach, or to preach to groups of people halfway around the world. And the people there, too, were children of God, both those serving and those being served. They were children of God with hopes and dreams and aspirations for their lives. But this was Malawi, and for all its natural beauty, for all its generosity, for all its kindness, the warm heart of Africa was (and is, still) also the epicenter of poverty in Africa.
While there, I had the opportunity to get to know our driver, Godfrey, quite well, and as we drove around the country, and he took me from one Mountain Dew to the next. Malawi, like most of the rest of the developing world has water that is not really intended for consumption, certainly not by westerners visiting for a relatively short period of time, and so I had sworn off the coffee in the villages, but one thing that is as dependable in Africa as it is anywhere else is Lumberton, NC’s own, Mountain Dew. (Look it up). And so, while on these, at times, longer drives from one store to the next, we had the opportunity to talk about the experience of the Malawian people. And the thing that stuck with me about the conversations I had with him, even more than the patience that he showed to me in answering the bazillion or so questions that I peppered him with, was the presence, in everything he said, of the specter of death. It seemed to hang around him and really the rest of the nation, in toto. For because the nation as a whole lacked so many resources, possessed so little infrastructure, and struggled so mightily to educate and retain any native medical professionals that it was impossible to attain the level of healthcare that those of us in the Western world often take for granted. So it is that diseases that haven’t been seen in the United States in decades still run rampant over there. Food and, as I noted before, clean water are in such short supply over there that even drinking out of the river becomes something that could potentially kill you. And as he spoke, it was clear that even in his late forties, early fifties, (he didn’t actually know because they don’t mark birthdays there) that life was wearing down on him, that he was tired. He told me that both of his parents had died at relatively early ages, as had one of his brothers. It was just part of the culture over there, life and death, connected in an intimate dance.
When I came home and began to try to process all that I had seen, all that I had heard, all that I had experienced, all there was, for the longest time was a profound sadness. Many people, young and old, who I had seen, who I had talked to, who I had played soccer with, were now either ill or dead. Children that I had hung out with at the school had now returned to God. And this was a small sliver of a country in the 2nd largest continent on earth. An infinitesimal number of the overall population, overcome by cycles of poverty and struggle with no end in sight and no clear answer as to what, if anything could change that. A whole quarter or so of the world living in a deep and intimate dance between life and death knowing, always, that the latter could cut into the former at anytime with little reason or rhyme. And yet, in all things, they gave thanks.
I wonder if this was not something of the experience of the exiled John of Patmos as he sat in the sand on the coastline of the island. He had been sent away from the church that he had started after watching the persecution of his people go on for decades. He had watched as Christians were convicted of sedition against the Empire because they had no king but King Jesus. He had watched those same Christians disappear in the middle of the night only to appear again in the center of the Colosseum for the entertainment of those in the capital city. Like those that I had met on my trip, he had witnessed the intimate dance between life and death that had become the sole experience of so many in the movement. Perhaps he himself had talked to his followers about finding life and life in abundance only to see that abundance cut miserably short. I wonder if, as he listened to the crash off waves onto the sand enveloping his toes, staring up into the night sky as one tends to do when sitting on a coastline, I wonder if the darkness at that moment felt completely and utterly suffocating as he considered whether everything that he had claimed to be true for the totality of his ministry was a complete lie and he an outright fool. It’s said that we can only ever really see the power of light when we are sitting in a blinding darkness that makes everything in this life and in this world and in this cosmos disappear. It is only then, once we have been divested of all the things that we cling to for safety and security that we can really experience the presence of God in our lives. So it was for the writer of Patmos that the visions and the words seemed to surround his entire being as he struggled to place as many markers along the way so that when he journeyed back he could try and recount what he had seen. What he had heard. For our part, today, we read of the vision that he had of all the nations, from every tribe, and people, and language come before the throne of the most high and speaking with one voice they say the words that John needs desperately to hear. “Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne and to the Lamb!” My old professor and friend, Stephen Ray, often says that Christianity comes down to a single decision that each person has to make for herself, for himself. Do you believe that God is in control? Because if you do, then none of the incidentals and accidentals in each of our lives ever gets the last word on creation. No earthly power or principality can ever have sway over any of our souls. No angel or demon can ever wreak permanent havoc on God’s children if we only believe that come what may from this existence, God is in control. And that must have been the experience that John had that evening when he heard again and anew that, “Salvation belongs to our God.” That is not Rome, not the church, not world, not our lives or anything we do or leave undone but salvation belongs to God. And at that declaration we are told that John saw angels falling on their faces and singing back to God, to the Lamb, “Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and power and might be to our God forever and ever!” Finally, we hear about a final interaction had between John and one of the elders in attendance to God as the one before God tells John of all those in his presence who have gone through the “great ordeal, and their robes have been made clean in the presence of God and of the Lamb.” And in response, they have come before God, stepping into eternity to praise God, forever. And in their praises they discover that in God, there is no hunger or pain or thirst because God provides the water of life and God will wipe every tear from their eyes.” And they will be whole and they will be healed.
I often think it is difficult to read the Scriptures from the perspective of those who wrote them. The bible was written, primarily, by a people who were on the bottom looking up. The prophets spoke truth to the rulers of their day. Jesus challenged every system that governed folks lives until those in power could think of no other remedy but to kill him. The disciples (and really all the writers of the Greek Scriptures) were persecuted and killed for the sake of the gospel and for all of them death was constantly present. And up until March of this year, I would have said that we, in this space, couldn’t begin to wrap our minds around that sort of a mentality. And then, all of a sudden we could. Then, we heard about a strange virus that was moving from Asia and into the rest of the world. Then, we heard about the strains on medical resources throughout the country. Then, we heard about shutdowns and quarantines and masks and PPE and on most news networks there was, in one corner of the screen, a running tally of cases and casualties. And just like that we all found ourselves caught in this scream vortex of life and death that has sought to dominate our lives for almost a year now. And this far in, most of know someone who has passed away from this horrible virus and all of us know someone who knows someone who has. We have lost actors and actresses and older star of sports. We have lost more musicians than we thought possible, including my favorite the great John Prine, who I sincerely hope is up in heaven and as the last song he ever recorded declares, I trust he is smoking a cigarette that’s nine miles long. But just like that, we, too know what it feels like to seem to be surrounded by the specter of death all the time. And that makes this service of remembrance for all the saints who from their labors rest all the more special, and meaningful, and poignant. For, though we only remember our dear, sweet sister Daisy Ford as being the only member of this church who has passed from life into new life, we also know off far more in our larger worlds that we can bring too mind that are just as special, just as beloved, just as gone. Moreover, we all carry the pain of our nation and our world knowing that on this day, far too many feel the bleak sting of death and are searching desperately for anything that resembles hope that they might have the strength to carry on. And just like that these words from screaming from the realm of eternity and from two millennia ago and they give us the spark that we need to carry a message of light and love back out into a hurting world. They reassure us just as they did for the exiled man of Patmos, that in the end God is in control, that God will satiate those who hunger and thirst for righteousness with the bread of life, with the cup of the covenant, with the springs of the water of life, even as the tender care of God wipes every tear from all our eyes and takes the sting of death from all our souls. These words are a message for the world today just as much as they were a message for those persecuted in the first century Roman Empire. And they are a message for all those who hurt out there, as well. It is our sacred duty to bring the word of God to the people of God today and everyday.
A couple of years after we got back I got a call from the third person who had gone with dad and I to Malawi. She had received an email from a mutual friend in Malawi saying that Godfrey, our driver, had died. Much like his parents before him, much like his brother he had come down with some, likely curable, illness and passed on way too early in life. He was my friend and I couldn’t help thinking of the queerness of that moment, he was dead, I was alive. And it struck me, as I processed the feelings of grief I felt having heard the news, just how lucky I was to be alive, how each moment was a blessing, a gift, how each moment was an opportunity, how each moment was a chance to reach out beyond myself, beyond ourselves, to move with the Spirit, to breathe the very breath of the Spirit and change the world, even if it was only one small act at a time. Change the world, even if it was only for one person in one moment. To sow the seeds of hope and compassion into one situation never fully knowing how they will eventually bloom, never seeing that bloom arise and sew new seeds of compassion in other parts of the world, never seeing the great connection that we all share with one another. Connected by love, connected by hope, connected by the Spirit, connected by God. That is the experience that we all have this day that we remember those who have gone before us. The experience that life, at its very essence, is a gift. A gift from God. A gift filled to the brim with Spirit. A gift in which we can leave this place and be conduits for the love and light of God that first birthed the cosmos 14.5 billion years ago and continues to flow through it, carrying us on the breath of a new day, enveloping the spirits of those who pass as they go from life into new life, and reminding us all that when all else in the whole of the universe and our individual existences feels completely subsumed in darkness, it is only then that we see that the light that shines in the darkness that the darkness can never, ever overcome. Sisters and brothers, join me as we give thanks for the giants who upon whose shoulder we stand, the luminaries who have lit and continue to light the way and for all the saints, who from their labors rest, who thee by faith before the world confessed, thy name, O Jesus, be forever blest. Alleluia! Alleluia! Amen!
Image taken from: https://www.associationcovenantpeople.org/2019/01/light-in-the-darkness/