YAHVEH Cares! Do We?

“Then I looked again and I heard the voices of thousands and millions of angels around the throne and of the living beings and the elders. And they sang in a mighty chorus: ‘Worthy is the Lamb who was slaughtered; to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honour and glory and blessing.’ And then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea. They sang: ‘Blessing and honour and glory and power belong to the one sitting on the throne and to the Lamb forever and ever.’ And the four living beings said, ‘Amen!’ And the twenty-four elders fell down and worshiped the Lamb.” (Revelation 5:11-14) (Also read Acts 9:1-20; Psalm 30; John 21:1-19) I’ll never forget the fury on the face of that good man as he left my church after the close of worship some years ago. I have forgotten the major issues of the day claiming the headlines of the newspapers and the television news. Perhaps a crucial stand in a presidential election, the questionable veracity of a particular administration and its policies in the Middle East or the impact of tax policy on housing and other matters of social welfare. In any case, this devout and committed churchman hunted me down after the service. Trembling, in a rage almost uncontrollable, he shouted that he did not come to church to hear the daily news; that indeed, he never read a newspaper, never turned on network TV or cable news and by YAHVEH, he was not going to come to my church, the last place the news should be on the mind of anyone, especially the preacher. And with that he and his wife left our church.

I.) The news: a measure of YAHVEH’s concern for human life? Are you kidding? No! The reason I, as a person of faith and hope, say these words lies in the marvellous passage from Revelation in this teaching. You see, that passage reflects the kind of world we read or hear about in our daily headlines. The passage describes the authentic response of faith as we encounter those headlines. The passage understands the way that violent and irrational events can put our faith and hope up for grabs and compel us to question both the sovereignty and the love of YAHVEH. The author of this wonderful letter we call Revelation; our author John, condemned to that prison island in the Aegean, Patmos; our author John of Patmos, suffers terribly because of his commitment to the gospel of Yeshua HaMashiach and he knows that his churches back on the Asian mainland suffer too. For years those churches make every attempt to offer the gospel and its promises to a world grappling with the worst afflictions we human beings suffer at the whim of nature and our own hands. Those churches want to change things. They want what YAHVEH wants for human life to spread across the world they live in. And it does not happen! John’s churches experience instead a world exploding with violence, weeping from injustice and weakened from lethal outbreaks of disease and they wonder just who is in charge of creation. They find their commitment to Yeshua and the kind of world He represents filled with deception, cruelty and harsh persecution. They witness their man John banished and others of their church members executed because of adherence to their faith. The world of this Elohim of Yeshua HaMashiach seems under the management of brutality and assault. They wonder, “Is anyone alert to our desperate circumstances? Does YAHVEH care?”

II.) Well Chaverim (friends), if there is any one thing that incarcerated seer trapped out there on Patmos wants to tell us, it’s this: the Elohim of Yeshua HaMashiach, in the face of much of our world denying it; the Elohim of Yeshua HaMashiach is in charge of what we perceive to be a wild and bloody history. Our Elohim, the Father of Yeshua HaMashiach and us, undergirds and surrounds us even as we pass through events threatening to erode; if not crush; our trust in One Who through even the most terrible of circumstances never lets us go. We can rest our hope in One Who creates new possibilities for us even when doors slam, stone walls loom or we find ourselves locked in a room with no exit. John celebrates hope against hope. He seeks to answer the perplexing question: How could such terrible things be happening if our Elohim of love really lies behind all things; and cares a whit about our life together? I know it’s hard to see that question and John’s answer in the rich symbolism of John’s letter. What’s he talking about? Why such arcane language? Well, we need to remember that John uses symbolic language by necessity. Caesar’s Gestapo seeks to demolish John and his churches. The empire considers him subversive, a traitor. John’s letter comes from prison and he wants to delude the prying eyes of the regime’s secret police. He writes in symbols treasured and understood by his churches alone; symbols all taken from the Hebrew Scriptures and laced into a brilliant tapestry of ultimate liberation. “What’s going on in this world?” we ask. “Who can tell us?” And John answers. He answers with brilliant apocalyptic symbols taken from his forebears of the faith, Isaiah, Ezekiel and Daniel.

III.) Now bear with me as we shift to John’s stunning symbols. Remember our lesson in this teaching? Into the hands if you will, of an all-seeing slain Lamb there goes a scroll. That scroll contains the clues to understanding the mysteries, the terrors, the violence and destructive threads of history. And only the slain Lamb; the crucified HaMashiach; carries the key to unlocking the riddle of a tragic world. A tragic world ruled by our Elohim of mercy and justice. Only the Lamb is worthy. Only the crucified HaMashiach, no one else: not the scholars, the poets, the novelists, no one; surely not the Caesars of this world or those who are victors and write the world’s history. Only the crucified HaMashiach is worthy to reveal the deep meaning of the human story. John sees the wounded, the bruised, the bloodied, the powerless, the stricken, the accused, the imprisoned; only they, identifying with the one who was condemned by the Roman Empire to hang on a tree; only they and their faith and hope can be trusted as authentic interpreters of the human condition. The rich, the well cared for, the complacent and the smugly satisfied: what do they know of hope against hope, of love when life seems headed for the trash heap? When those who identify with HaMashiach assert the sovereignty of our Elohim of love, then we must listen. Only the slain one; the Lamb, with eyes seeing everything, “omniscient,” with horns expressing power to take on the worst life can dish out, “omnipotent”; only the slain one with realism and authenticity can illuminate the meaning of our existence and proclaim with unique authority amid what so often appears to be human chaos and wreckage. Only the Lamb, the crucified HaMashiach, can illuminate the majestic and eternal oversight and reign of the loving recreating YAHVEH.

IV.) In the chapter following the one read in this teaching, seven seals are broken and we discover that the tragedies of this world and our history are created and sustained by our failure to follow the vision of YAHVEH for human history. The violent imagery illustrates what happens when we stray from the way of grace and peace: war, hunger, power abuse, lies, deception, a damaged and wounded creation and human family. John makes it clear that the Divine Way has been laid out for us and we fail to follow it. But it’s the fifth seal in Revelation 6 we refer to in this teaching. The seal when broken by the crucified reveals the saints whose blood has been shed for HaMashiach’s sake, whose lives have been spent for the cause of creating a world more like that envisioned by HaMashiach: lives confident; against all evidence to the contrary; that the world rests securely on the pillars of Divine love; and yes, witnesses confident that the rejection of Divine love and its catastrophic consequences serve as the instrument YAHVEH uses to drive us toward healing our brokenness. Can we hear those enduring witnesses pleading, “Sovereign Adonai, Holy and True, how long before we are avenged? How long before Your vision for a new creation takes over? When will Your intentions for this recalcitrant humanity, Your yearning for us to change our ways; when will You show who really controls this cosmos? Do You really care?”

V.) And here we arrive at the core of this astounding reflection on the love of YAHVEH and how it embraces your story and mine, the story of our generation, the story of human history. See that slain Lamb; the crucified HaMashiach; only the kind of life we see evident on the cross that provides the kind of service, selflessness and willingness to risk so that even those who hate may know they are loved; that life, HaMashiach’s life; killed by the forces let loose when love is shoved aside; that life, HaMashiach’s life; by the power of YAHVEH overcomes, yes conquers the forces nailing Yeshua up and burying Him in a tomb. YAHVEH assures us that through all the misery and inhumanity we perpetrate against one another saying, “Thanks but no thanks” to love’s design for us; YAHVEH assures us that finally the slaughtered Lamb stands, the crucified, buried HaMashiach lives, that a world apparently ruled by the Caesar types and their powerful friends is finally under the ruler-ship of one Whose love and whose way can be seen and embraced in Yeshua HaMashiach crucified. And John insists that HaMashiach’s way in this world is our way. The willingness to put our lives; perhaps our deaths; on the line for the love of YAHVEH and Yeshua HaMashiach is the way of service to the world by which we show our faith, our trust, our hope in the one we believe is finally in charge. We risk our lives for a better world on the bet that YAHVEH cares; love cares that armaments become irrelevant, that war be stilled, that justice be done, that pestilence breeding death be eradicated; yes, YAHVEH cares. Our witness now demonstrates against everything saying that chaos and death rule; our witness demonstrates that we trust that love and service are ultimately in charge... Love cares, by YAHVEH and so do we. Amen