Sermon manuscript (revised) for Green Lake Church of Seventh-day Adventists for Sabbath, June 10, 2017. Texts: Genesis 12:1-9. Revelation 7:1-9
A week ago Friday, I was hiking the Observation Point trail in Zion National Park with several other people. We stopped at about the half way point to admire the scenery and try to wrap our minds around the history on display. The cliffs surrounding us were two thousand feet from valley floor to the top of the walls. Two thousand feet of rock. Petrified dunes. The largest accumulation of sand anywhere in the world, any time in history. Piled in this place by wind.
I traced the sweep of the cross beds, noted the patterns of vertical fracturing caused by tectonic movement. And over and over came back to simple awe in the presence of such scale and beauty. It was a good day.
In the Book of Revelation, there are similar moments. Times when the entire body of God's people are enraptured at the glory of the edifice God has built.
This moment will not arrive without complications and difficulties. This is highlighted in this same passage in Revelation. The first three chapters of Revelation speak of the church. Chapters four and five are visions of heaven. Then chapter six again focuses our attention on earth. And it is a dark vision. Goodness and good people vanish. At the end of chapter six, the all humanity appears to have been seduced into the worship of power. Might and dominance have become the supreme virtues.
Against this dismal background, the prophet is given a vision of the heavenly perspective. An angel announces that far from being obliterated, the people of God have thrived. God sees 144,000 faithful ones. Which to us sees like a small number, but to John would have been a large number. But the news gets even better. This 144,000 is very specific. It is comprised of 12,000 from each of the twelve tribes of Israel.
Hundreds of years earlier, the Jewish nation split in two in a civil war. After awhile the northern kingdom, Samaria, was captured by the Assyrians and disappeared from history. Samaria was comprised of ten of the tribes. For hundreds of years they had been extinct. But here, the angel announces they have been resurrected. They are fully present, part of the final, glorious edifice of God.
The prophet hardly has time to absorb this good news when the angel invites him to turn and see this crowd of 144,000, this gathering of 12,000 from each of Israel's tribes. When John looks he sees that the 144,000 is actually an immense crowd, so vast his eyes cannot find the outer edges. There are simply too many to count. There are millions, bizillions, gadzillions.
Wow. Hallelujah. Look what God has done! This is the destination of the Bible story. This is where God is taking his children.
When I was sitting there on the trail, next to the two thousand-foot tall cliffs, one of the realities I tried to wrap my mind around was the fact that they were comprised of sand, very fine sand. Each grain had been transported by the wind from somewhere else. Much of this sand originated in the Appalachian Mountains. It was carried by rivers across the continent and dumped in a river delta in Wyoming. From there wind moved it south. Grain by grain. Then gathered it here in Zion where today it is carved into breathtaking cliffs.
How can I hold together in my head the twin truths that these are tiny specks of sand and grand, magnificent cliffs.
We face the same challenge in human history. The grand edifice of the kingdom of God pictured in Revelation is built of individuals. Human beings like you and me. In Revelation we see them in aggregate. There are no human heroes in the visions of Revelation. There are crowds, vast companies that no one can number. But every person in the crowd has a story. Every person arrived before the throne after a unique journey.
This truth is highlighted in our Old Testament reading.
When we say the Bible is the word of God, we are affirming that all this attention to the mundane details of a person's life expresses God's intense personal interest in individuals.
In the Bible story, Abraham is the hero. If we made a movie of the story, there would be only one star, Abraham. But to make the movie we would require hundreds of supporting actors and extras. These others, Sarah and Lot and Bethuel and Hagar and Ishmael and Isaac and Eliezer and Ephron and the nameless “souls they acquired in Haran” and Abraham's 318 commandos would be absolutely essential to the story, to the literary and human edifice.
We rightly celebrate Abraham and allow his virtues to inspire us and his failings to serve as cautionary tales. But we if we shift our focus slightly to the left or right other people in the story would take center stage and Abraham himself would become a supporting actor.
One of my favorite pictures from my vacation features Oliver and Violet Morrow. In the photo you can't see their faces. They are squatting on a sandy stream bed. Violet is watching sand pour through the fingers of her left hand. Oliver is probing the sand with his right forefinger. Surrounding them, seen in the photo only as ankles and legs sprouting up out of sandals and tennis shoes, are adults listening to a lecture about how wind moves sand and creates something called lag deposits.
Watching the sand drift down from Violet's hand, I realized how small the grains of sand were. The sand was so fine that even in a very slight breeze, the Navajo Sand, the sand that comprises the glorious, magnificent walls of Zion—was being blown sideways and the cone of sand that built beneath Violet's hands showed a striking concentration of darker, heavier grains. The Navajo Sand is so fine, it is scarcely larger than dust. Thinking of the grand cliffs of Zion, I was offered two perspectives on those grains of sand. I could dismiss each one because it is nearly nothing compared to the glory and grandeur of the cliffs. Or I could see in each tiny grain, the grand edifice it helped to build.
So with people.
In the grand edifice God is building through history, we might consider our part to be insignificant. We might imagine that it is the work of the great heroes that really matters. In fact, God cannot build his temple without us. And no matter how great or notable any particular individual is, the work of God is so large that every individual, seen from the requisite distance becomes a tiny fragment, a fragment whose greatest glory is its participation in the unspeakably grand edifice of God.
So let us be faithful.
Let us be humble.
Let us be bold, in our participation in the mission of God.
I traced the sweep of the cross beds, noted the patterns of vertical fracturing caused by tectonic movement. And over and over came back to simple awe in the presence of such scale and beauty. It was a good day.
In the Book of Revelation, there are similar moments. Times when the entire body of God's people are enraptured at the glory of the edifice God has built.
I saw a vast multitude beyond counting, people from every nation, kindred, tongue, and people. They stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes with palms in their hands. They shouted in exuberant ecstasy, “God saves. Jesus saves. God reigns. Hallelujah! The angels and the four curious creatures joined in, falling prostrate they were so overcome with admiration and awe. “Amen,” they exclaimed. “Blessing, glory, wisdom, thanksgiving, honor, power, might. All comes from God. All flows to God. Hallelujah! Paraphrase from Revelation 7When God has finished building his dream, when the world is arranged according to the desire of God a mere glance at the glory of the edifice will evoke ecstatic wonder.
This moment will not arrive without complications and difficulties. This is highlighted in this same passage in Revelation. The first three chapters of Revelation speak of the church. Chapters four and five are visions of heaven. Then chapter six again focuses our attention on earth. And it is a dark vision. Goodness and good people vanish. At the end of chapter six, the all humanity appears to have been seduced into the worship of power. Might and dominance have become the supreme virtues.
Against this dismal background, the prophet is given a vision of the heavenly perspective. An angel announces that far from being obliterated, the people of God have thrived. God sees 144,000 faithful ones. Which to us sees like a small number, but to John would have been a large number. But the news gets even better. This 144,000 is very specific. It is comprised of 12,000 from each of the twelve tribes of Israel.
Hundreds of years earlier, the Jewish nation split in two in a civil war. After awhile the northern kingdom, Samaria, was captured by the Assyrians and disappeared from history. Samaria was comprised of ten of the tribes. For hundreds of years they had been extinct. But here, the angel announces they have been resurrected. They are fully present, part of the final, glorious edifice of God.
The prophet hardly has time to absorb this good news when the angel invites him to turn and see this crowd of 144,000, this gathering of 12,000 from each of Israel's tribes. When John looks he sees that the 144,000 is actually an immense crowd, so vast his eyes cannot find the outer edges. There are simply too many to count. There are millions, bizillions, gadzillions.
Wow. Hallelujah. Look what God has done! This is the destination of the Bible story. This is where God is taking his children.
When I was sitting there on the trail, next to the two thousand-foot tall cliffs, one of the realities I tried to wrap my mind around was the fact that they were comprised of sand, very fine sand. Each grain had been transported by the wind from somewhere else. Much of this sand originated in the Appalachian Mountains. It was carried by rivers across the continent and dumped in a river delta in Wyoming. From there wind moved it south. Grain by grain. Then gathered it here in Zion where today it is carved into breathtaking cliffs.
How can I hold together in my head the twin truths that these are tiny specks of sand and grand, magnificent cliffs.
We face the same challenge in human history. The grand edifice of the kingdom of God pictured in Revelation is built of individuals. Human beings like you and me. In Revelation we see them in aggregate. There are no human heroes in the visions of Revelation. There are crowds, vast companies that no one can number. But every person in the crowd has a story. Every person arrived before the throne after a unique journey.
This truth is highlighted in our Old Testament reading.
The LORD said to Abram, “Leave your country and relatives and your father's house. Head out for a land I will show your. I will make of you a great nation. I will bless you and make your name great. You will be a blessing. I will bless people who bless you and curse anyone who curses you. In you all families of the earth will be blessed.”Notice the details in this story. The details that have nothing to do with “theology.” His campsites. His neighbors. His nephew. This story is told the way a mother recounts stories of her children. Details are remembered just for the pleasure of remembering the full story. Or like the telling of stories that happen around the campfire when our tour group gathers again. We will remember Tom's sharing of Knock, knock jokes with Oliver and Violet. We will remember the quinoa-stuffed avocado Robert served along with gaspacho soup and quesadillas. These things have nothing to do with geology, but they were part of the trip.
So Abram left, in obedience to the divine word. His nephew, Lot, went him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed out of Haran.
Abram took his wife Sarah, and Lot, his brother's son, and all the wealth they had accumulated and all the people who had joined their household while they were in Haran. The company set off for land of Canaan and eventually arrived there.
Abram passed through the land to the place called Sichem on the plain of Moreh. Canaanites lived in the land, then. The LORD appeared to Abram, and said, “Unto your descendants I will give this land.” And Abram built an altar to the God who had appeared to him. From there Abram headed to a mountain east of the town of Bethel and pitched his tent there. (This place was between Bethel on the west and Hai on the east.) Here again, Abram built an altar to the LORD, and called upon the name of the LORD. From this place Abram moved on, always heading south. Genesis 12:1-9
When we say the Bible is the word of God, we are affirming that all this attention to the mundane details of a person's life expresses God's intense personal interest in individuals.
In the Bible story, Abraham is the hero. If we made a movie of the story, there would be only one star, Abraham. But to make the movie we would require hundreds of supporting actors and extras. These others, Sarah and Lot and Bethuel and Hagar and Ishmael and Isaac and Eliezer and Ephron and the nameless “souls they acquired in Haran” and Abraham's 318 commandos would be absolutely essential to the story, to the literary and human edifice.
We rightly celebrate Abraham and allow his virtues to inspire us and his failings to serve as cautionary tales. But we if we shift our focus slightly to the left or right other people in the story would take center stage and Abraham himself would become a supporting actor.
One of my favorite pictures from my vacation features Oliver and Violet Morrow. In the photo you can't see their faces. They are squatting on a sandy stream bed. Violet is watching sand pour through the fingers of her left hand. Oliver is probing the sand with his right forefinger. Surrounding them, seen in the photo only as ankles and legs sprouting up out of sandals and tennis shoes, are adults listening to a lecture about how wind moves sand and creates something called lag deposits.
Watching the sand drift down from Violet's hand, I realized how small the grains of sand were. The sand was so fine that even in a very slight breeze, the Navajo Sand, the sand that comprises the glorious, magnificent walls of Zion—was being blown sideways and the cone of sand that built beneath Violet's hands showed a striking concentration of darker, heavier grains. The Navajo Sand is so fine, it is scarcely larger than dust. Thinking of the grand cliffs of Zion, I was offered two perspectives on those grains of sand. I could dismiss each one because it is nearly nothing compared to the glory and grandeur of the cliffs. Or I could see in each tiny grain, the grand edifice it helped to build.
So with people.
In the grand edifice God is building through history, we might consider our part to be insignificant. We might imagine that it is the work of the great heroes that really matters. In fact, God cannot build his temple without us. And no matter how great or notable any particular individual is, the work of God is so large that every individual, seen from the requisite distance becomes a tiny fragment, a fragment whose greatest glory is its participation in the unspeakably grand edifice of God.
So let us be faithful.
Let us be humble.
Let us be bold, in our participation in the mission of God.
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1 comment:
I love the way you think. What spoke to me in light of the current church controversy was God's command to leave home. If the grains of sand had not left home, they would have missed the opportunity to become part of God's grand endevor.
I am also reminded of Lot's wife. Is God trying to tell us something about clinging to the past?
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