Worship & Praise, Dominion & Splendor

We have ourselves a very good preacher though I'm not entirely sure she knows it. The more "off the cuff" she goes, the more she speaks from the heart and the Spirit and trusts herself to do so, the more I can't get enough.

The Epistle this week was from Revelations 7:9-17. Now lets get one thing straight. I have some reservations about Revelation. No, I don't believe its literal. No, I don't believe it's a code for the "end times." And when an early service member dropped the spoiler that the sermon was on the Revelation reading I was thoroughly ready to hate the sermon as well. I'd thought I'd heard it all. From those who claim Revelation as an "end time prophecy" to those who say its just a coded letter to persecuted churches telling them to, in essence, "buck up." Neither of those options, or the ones between, make me think this thing belongs in the Bible or is anything more than useless for us today.

I was wrong, pleasantly wrong. We heard today another view of Revelation. Worship. Listen:

Revelation 7: 9-12

After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands. They cried out in a loud voice, saying,

"Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!"

And all the angels stood around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, singing,

"Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom

and thanksgiving and honor

and power and might

be to our God forever and ever! Amen."

Revelation as the highest form of worship. Not worship that starts at 10:30 on Sunday and is done by 11:30 (well, maybe 11:40 if we go a bit overboard at the Peace). But worship that has been going on since time itself began. Worship that never ends. Our voices merely join for the briefest period of time. Then bits of the sermon began to connect with other bits...

We have been studying a book in Christian Ed. that calls God a Lover. And we, his Beloved. It is our voices, small, insignificant, off key and unsure, that God listens for. It is our voices, in worship for a heartbeat of the span of the universe, that God delights in.

Perhaps, I thought, Revelation isn't all bad. We first spoke, and then sang the words of Canticle 18 "A Song to the Lamb" (Book of Common Prayer page 93):

Splendor and honor and kingly power *
are yours by right, O Lord our God,

For you created everything that is, *
and by your will they were created and have their being;

And yours by right, O Lamb that was slain, *
for with your blood you have redeemed for God,

From every family, language, people, and nation, *
a kingdom of priests to serve our God.

And so, to him who sits upon the throne, *
and to Christ the Lamb,

Be worship and praise, dominion and splendor, *
for ever and for ever more.

Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit
as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be for ever. Amen.

Now I was smiling. This was something I had grown up with, a canticle I could have perhaps once recited from heart. And I could, indeed, see the parallel with the Revelation text. When the sermon was over we said the words that have followed a sermon all my life; the Nicene Creed. A simple litany of faith repeated so often it has become rote. So often I often do not even hear it as I speak it. And a litany that has often seemed a way of hammering "the Church's teachings" into my head. Today was different. Today as I said the words "We believe in one God ..." the last little piece clicked quietly into place. We, the Beloved, turn to God and for the briefest of moments we profess our Love. Even as we don't understand it; as we perhaps fear it. Worship, human worship, is a free response of the Loved to the Lover.

My heart did pound and my throat closed. I don't cry, not at weddings, not at funerals, not at partings or meetings. Not for joy, not for sorrow. I have almost never shed a tear in public. But I cried. Even as my heart burst with joy. Worship.

Next week I will say those same words again and I doubt my heart will pound so hard, or that tears will come. But the knowledge will remain. We do more than repeat by rote. We do more than gather for comfort or friendship or out of habit. We worship. We turn to the God who loves us and constantly pursues us, and we say "Yes."