Sermon preached by Rev. Margie Quinn on Sunday, September 13, 2026
I don't know what we have gotten ourselves into with these wings and eyeballs and creatures like eagles and ox.
For those of you who aren't aware, we are studying the book of Revelation this September, and Wesley did an amazing job prepping the intro of this book for us last Sunday. For those of you who weren't here, Revelation simply means revealing. And it's considered an apocalyptic text, which sounds a little bit scary. Many of you may have heard sermons on this book that have frightened or hurt you. But apocalypse, an unveiling, simply pulls back the curtain to see what is. This book was written by a guy named John of Patmos. This is a different John from the guy who wrote that gospel. And he's exiled on an island, the island called Patmos. So you can call me like Margie of Hawaii, okay? [laughter] He's exiled on this island and he has a vision from God. And so he picks up a pen and paper and he writes seven letters to seven different churches. And these churches are on a circular route, kind of like a postal route. So maybe you start with St. George Episcopal. And if you follow Harding, you get to Vine Street, Westminster Press and Otter Creek Church of Christ, Blakemore United Methodist, Christ Church Cathedral, Weston United Methodist. You're writing to seven different churches on this postal route. Many of us think these churches were the people who were being oppressed and marginalized and victimized by the rulers at the time. But a lot of these churches were actually victims of spiritual apathy, of complacency, people who had kind of an anemic faith, who actually were pretty well resourced. [laughter] You think about this strip all the way down Harding and West End, but they had come to believe that their social life was tied up in their religious one, that worshiping an emperor, an earthly ruler, someone who was claiming power and authority was a little more inviting than worshiping this son of God. So John is writing to these folks some pretty wild images, but they get it. He is writing in a language that they actually understand. He didn't write this book as a secret code for you and me to decipher this timetable of Jesus's return. It's a symbolic vision that brought hope and challenge to these seven first century Christian churches. And it reveals history's pattern and God's promise that every human kingdom eventually becomes Babylon and it must be resisted in the power of the slain lamb. Well, you will hear in this entire book, the image of Jesus that we get in the book of Revelation is of a lamb. That visual is so important to our faith and our theology.
But let me back up. So in the first three chapters of Revelation, John is writing these letters and sending them off. In the last four churches he writes to, let's say Vine Street, Westminster, Blakemore, Otter Creek. They don't even know they're being called out today. Nobody tell them. He says, "Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the spirit is saying to the churches." That's his sincerely. And then chapter 4 begins. Caitlyn did an amazing job reading about wings and eyes and all kinds of things. He said, "I looked and there was a door that stood open to heaven, and the first voice which I heard speaking to me, it sounded like a trumpet and it said, 'Come up here and I will show you what must take place after this.'" This verse, the first verse in chapter 4 of Revelation, is one of the ways that we have heard a rapture theology talked about, that when John hears this vision that says come up here, in the 1820s when people started this rapture theology, they thought it meant come up. But what Wesley preached last week is that this isn't an escape from our world. This is a revealing of the world that John was seeing and a vision of a heavenly throne room. In other words, a vision of heavenly worship. I looked, he said, and a door stood open into heaven. A voice like a trumpet said, "Come up here and see what our worship is about." What John finds on the other side of this door to heaven, worship that has four elements that I would argue are the same as our earthly worship. Centering, gathering, revealing, and singing. So, first there's centering. Worship is a time of centering for John and his communities, just like for us. And in this case, it's centered around this throne. [laughter] This looks a lot like a throne, doesn't it? It's centered on this throne, on the one who sits on this throne. And in this heavenly worship, there is one seated on the throne, the one we call God, who is shining like jasper and carnelian. Does anyone know what those are? I didn't either. These are precious stones and metals. I kind of imagine like Glinda the good witch. She's in her bubble and there's shining pink aura and there's little stones on her dress. This is what we're invited to do with this book of Revelation. Come up with our own images and metaphors and visuals for what we are reading that make sense to us in Nashville, Tennessee in September of 2026. So we can play with it. We can think about Glinda. We can think about other visuals in our mind that the exiled prophet was talking about. And around this throne, there's a rainbow. It shines like emerald. Is it the same rainbow that God hearkens back to in Noah when God promises after the flood that God will not destroy again? I don't know. And around this throne are 24 thrones.
Seated on the throne are 24 elders dressed in white robes with gold crowns on their heads. Coming from the throne are these flashes of lightning and these thunder rumblings. And in front of this throne are seven burning torches. Are you seeing it? Seven burning torches and seven spirits of God. And in front of this throne is something like a sea of glass, like crystal.
I want to pause there and go back. So in this heavenly worship, what is centered has everything to do with the earthly worship of John's time. In Rome, the emperor Domitian sits on a throne. He demands to be called Lord. He demands to be called God. He demands for people to say, "Hail Domitian," just like hail Caesar. He demands that people say, "Thou art worthy." But in heavenly worship, God sits on a throne. This divine entity and a rainbow shines around this throne. In Rome, there were 24 Roman attendants and rulers that sat and stood in the throne room around the emperor. And they set their crowns before this image of Nero swearing allegiance to an earthly ruler. And in the heavenly worship, y'all following? These 24 elders worship not a ruler hungry for power and authority, but a God. They set their crowns down before one who invites them to center on something of peace and justice and glory.
In this heavenly worship, there is a lamb. But I'm getting ahead of myself. This lightning and thunder we hear. You might have thought about other parts in the Hebrew Bible where we see it. This is a theophany. Say theophany. Y'all sound smart. [laughter] A theophany from God. Kind of like Moses when he went up to Mount Sinai in Genesis or Isaiah in First Kings when he stood on Mount Horeb. We hear lightning and thunder. Sometimes God is noisy. Lightning and thunder drawing people's attention to the one who is centered and the seven torches. I don't know. Could John be talking to these seven churches and saying, "You can be the light. You can be set afire with the gospel. You can be filled with these spirits of God, these seven spirits that John has the vision of." And then this sea of glass. Some people who read this book, theologians and authors, say that John might have just been looking out at the Aegean Sea writing this water, this clear, beautiful water like crystal that he sees. We don't center corruptors of power in this heavenly worship, this throne room. We center the one true God. And then we have the gathering. This is where it gets a little weird. We have four living creatures on each side of the throne full of eyes in front of them and behind them. This is how angels were often described in scripture. So the first one is like a lion, the second one like an ox, the third one has a human face, and the fourth one like an eagle. Kind of like school mascots, but then you glue googly eyes all over them. What's cool is in Ezekiel 1, the priest Ezekiel, he has a similar vision of living creatures with faces like an ox and a lion and a human face and an eagle. This book, which hearkens backward, shows us the way forward. The noblest animal, the king of beasts, the lion. The strongest animal in the field, the ox. The wisest animal, or some think the human. The swiftest animal, the eagle. That's what is around the throne. Just like in Ezekiel, this priest has a vision of God with these creatures, and they dart to and fro with lightning behind them and a throne above them. William Pender writes that the impact of John's vision is this. Around the centering throne are not 24 Roman attendants, but 24 elders. And a lot of people think these 12 elders represent the 12 tribes of Israel. And these 12 represent any guesses? The disciples. Oh, y'all are on it today. In other words, we have all creatures of our God and King represented. Both the history and the future and animals that fly in the air and animals that are livestock on the ground. We have it all. A diversity and a myriad of who centers around this kind of ruler, which is not a ruler at all, but a lamb of God. So, we've centered and we've gathered some pretty interesting characters and then there is a revealing. So, I took you through chapter 4 just then. Do you feel smarter? I feel smarter. And now we're getting into chapter 5. This revealing. So, John sees God sitting in the throne and in God's right hand is a scroll with writing on the front and back of it. John can tell and there's seven seals on this scroll, but no one can open it. No one is worthy to open the scroll. An angel asks, "Who's worthy?" And John begins weeping bitterly. No one on heaven or earth is able to open it. He says, "No one's worthy." One of the elders turns to him. He says, "Don't cry. The lion of Judah, the root of David, he has conquered and he can open it and its seven seals. Did you notice that? He has conquered." Y'all remember Mary's song? Even before Jesus is born, she says, "He has cast down the mighty. He has brought the poor good things. He has conquered already. Only the lion of Judah can open the scroll," the elder thinks. And then John finds out that not a lion, not something intimidating and threatening and the king of beasts opens the scroll, but a lamb, a lamb that is slaughtered, a vulnerable little lamb that is the one who can open this scroll … and the unrolling of this scroll. Again, there's so much intertextuality happening in the book of Revelation. The unrolling of this scroll. It kind of reminds me of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke. Y'all know where I'm going. When he reads from this scroll of Isaiah and he says, "The spirit of the Lord is upon me. He has anointed me to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives, and to tell you all today that the oppressed will go free." That's the kind of scroll that Jesus Christ reads from. Those the same words in John's vision that the oppressed really can go free under Roman rule. That there will be recovery of sight to those who are blind to the woes of many.
Only the lamb is worthy to unseal this scroll. And only through the lamb do we see what God is revealing to God's people. So worship in this text, it's the center point of what God is trying to show us. All of the people who gather are all kinds of kinds. And what is revealed is revealed by a lamb, a slain lamb. Are y'all picking up what I'm putting down? And finally in these four elements of a heavenly worship that John wishes and hopes for for these seven churches is does anyone remembering? I think I heard it. You should singing singing in Revelation 4 and 5. We get five hymns in this heavenly throne room, which we definitely sing five hymns on purpose based on this book. If you include the Gloria, we also sing five hymns here. It made me think about what we sing when we sing the Gloria a little differently. Glory be not to any earthly ruler but to God who was in the beginning, who is now, who will be forever and ever.
These choruses of praise in this heavenly throne room. They proclaim who is really holy in a world where the emperor deemed that he was when he said, "You tell me I'm Lord. You tell me I'm God. You tell me I'm worthy." And our hymns say, "Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty," which isn't just some hymn we proclaim in a vacuum but an act of defiance in itself that we who are sitting here centered and gathered and revealed and singing are worshiping a different kind of God and a different kind of ruler. Right?
The last two verses in Revelation 5, the four living creatures said amen. They said amen. They said amen to a lamb who was slaughtered, not an emperor who had conquered.
This book which has been so misused, so poorly taken care of, so misinterpreted, so misunderstood. And I have such deep sorrow for those of you for whom this book was thrown at. It reveals so much about what the churches at the time needed to hear to shake their spiritual complacency, to stop believing in the powers of an emperor and begin to understand a heavenly worship from a lamb of God.
And all four living creatures said, "Amen." And the elders fell down and worshiped.
And the church says, "Amen."