Rev. Doug Floyd

Easter 3 2025
Rev. Doug Floyd
Revelation 5

John is weeping. He is not simply choked up. He is trembling. He is grieving. He is writhing with the grief of all creation because no one was found worthy to open the scroll.

Why weep over a sealed scroll?

Joseph Mangina writes, “If the scroll remains locked under its seven seals, there is finally no redemption, no relief for history’s victims, no salvation for the Jews, no hope for the Gentiles.”[1] Imagine a world with no justice. No hope of redemption. No righting of wrongs. Nothing but blind power and destruction.

If we look around our planet today, we see many places where it seems that justice took the last train out of town. A trail of broken lives in the shadow.

I was in college when Bono belted out,

“I can’t believe the news today
Oh, I can’t close my eyes and make it go away

How long, how long must we sing this song?
How long? How long?”[2]

He is crying out in the midst of the troubles, the bloodbath between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland: specific the bloodbath in 1972 when British Soldiers fired on unarmed civilians. As the song progresses, he joins his grief to the grief of the nations,

“And it’s true we are immune
When fact is fiction and TV reality
And today the millions cry (Sunday, Bloody Sunday)
We eat and drink while tomorrow they die (Sunday, Bloody Sunday)

The real battle just begun (Sunday, Bloody Sunday)
To claim the victory Jesus won (Sunday, Bloody Sunday)
On Sunday, Bloody Sunday, yeah
Sunday, Bloody Sunday”

Again and again the refrain echoes,

How long, how long must we sing this song?

This is the kind of grief we hearing in the Revelation 5.

The Revelation of Jesus Christ tells the story of a world gone wrong. We read about the Horseman of the Apocalypse: Pestilence, War, Famine, and Death. These dread judges have been riding over the world since Cain killed Abel. The earth cries out under the shed blood.

Bono has joined his voice with John, who weeps before the throne. Sin and death encircle our planet. The nations reel under the weight. If we pay attention, we hear these cries all through Israel’s history. The prophets speak of the horrific fall of the nations. Their grief is so great that they even lament for Israel’s enemies.

Jeremiah cries out, “Oh that my head were waters, and my eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!” ^[3]

Bob Dylan sings,

“I was born here, and I’ll die here against my will
I know it looks like I’m movin’, but I’m standin’ still
Every nerve in my body is so naked and numb
I can’t even remember what it was I came here to get away from

Don’t even hear the murmur of a prayer
It’s not dark yet, but it’s gettin’ there”[4]

Artists help me feel my way into the ache of Revelation 5. We must come face to face and heart to heart with this grief before we can continue reading. The Scripture tells the story of the absolute collapse of humanity under the weight of sin and death. Israel reveals to us, our brokenness and exile into the land of shadows.

I make a habit of reading the news of the world, so I can pray for the nations. It is painful. Where is justice? Where is love? Why do so many people suffer? And why do I live in this land of abundance?

Even as John encounters the Lord of glory, he has seen some of his closest friends and relatives killed for the Gospel. It keeps happening. Todd Johnson, Professor of Global Christianity and Missions at Gordon Conwell estimates that 70 million Christians have been martyred over the last two thousand years.

Now get this: over half of those martyred, over half, were killed in the 20^th century.

Is our world getting better? Unthinkable.  

We join our tears and our cries with John. Who can open the scroll?

One of the elders speaks to John and to us, “Weep no more; behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.” ^[5]

The conquering King has arrived. He will set the world to rights. As John hears this voice of the elders, now he sees: ⁶ And between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders I saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain, with seven horns and with seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth.^[6]

The Lion of Judah is the Lamb of God. Seven horns speaks of His complete authority. Seven eyes speaks of His complete vision of all creation. Hans Urs Von Balthasar gives us a picture of this Lion who is a Lamb at the same time.

He writes, “…the might of his supreme victory was to prove itself in his utter disgrace and defeat.” He continues, “For his weakness, would already be the victory of his love for the Father, reconciliation in the eyes of the Father, and a deed of supreme strength, this weakness would be so great that it would far surpass and sustain in itself the world’s pitiful feebleness.”

Jesus the very embodiment of divine love faces off against all hate and death and darkness and injustice. Von Balthasar continues, “No fighter is more divine than one who can achieve victory through defeat. In the instant when he receives the deadly wound, his opponent falls to the ground, himself struck a final blow. For he strikes love and is thus himself struck by love. And by letting itself be struck, love proves what had to be proven: that it is indeed love. Once struck, the hate-filled opponent recognizes his boundaries and understands: behave as he pleases, nevertheless he is bounded on every side by a love that is greater than he. Everything he may fling at love— insults, indifference, con-tempt, scornful derision, murderous silence, demonic slander-all of it can ever but prove love’s superiority; and the blacker the night, the more radiant does love emerge from it.[7]

The Lamb who was slain takes the scroll from the Father in heaven. All heaven falls before Him in worship,

“Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, ¹⁰ and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth.” ^[8]

Hallelujah!

The liturgy continues,

“Worthy is the Lamb who was slain,
to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might
and honor and glory and blessing!” ^[9]

This joy echoes beyond the halls of heaven to “every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them.”^[10] As Paul says, “every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord.”

All creation explodes in joyful exuberance,

“To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb
be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!” ^[11]

This is the answer to Bono’s grief, Jeremiah’s tears, the cry of the grieving mothers, the pain of nations broken by war and violence. The globe may reel with sin and death, but the power of sin and death has been broken and the cross assures all the grieving that the wrong will be made right in and through the One who has defeated death and is alive forevermore.

This Revelation of Jesus Christ and our response in worship is the center of our lives and our world. Everything we do and say begins with our worshipful response to this Revelation of Jesus Christ. Our prayers, our serving in the community, our political involvement, and even our work begins in worship.

This leads me right back to John in the midst of the heavenly liturgy. His revelation of Jesus Christ in chapter 1 and 4 and 5 begins in worships and culminates in worship.  This is the heart of our walk of faith.

In the early 1980s, the theologians Daniel Hardy and David Ford raised the question, “What is the biggest or most fundamental problem facing the Church today?”

Think about that question for a moment, “What is the biggest or most fundamental problem facing the Church today?”

They suggested,“The biggest problem facing the Church is …‘coping with the overwhelming abundance of God…’ We need a vision of the Lamb who was slain that is worthy to open the scroll.

After He steps forward, the heavenly chorus proclaims a seven-fold blessing of heaven to the Lamb: “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!” ^[12] Seven. Completion.

The Revelation opens our mind and heart to the beauty and glory of our risen Lord. As we read and worship through this text, I pray we might have eyes to behold Him who is worthy.

And even today, we lift our voices in praise to the Lord of glory.

[1] Joseph L. Mangina, Revelation, Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2010), 86.

[2] U2, “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” 1983.

^[3] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Je 9:1.

[4] Bob Dylan, “Not Dark Yet,” 1997.

^[5] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Re 5:5.

^[6] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Re 5:6.

[7] Hans Urs Von Balthasar, Heart of the World, Ignatius, 1979, 43-44.

^[8] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Re 5:9–10.

^[9] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Re 5:12.

^[10] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Re 5:13.

^[11] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Re 5:13.

^[12] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Re 5:12.