Trumpets grab your attention, don’t they. When we can talk Elaine into warming up her lips and accompanying the choir on her trumpet, you can practically feel the temperature rise here in the sanctuary. And the suspense has been mounting steadily since the first seal was opened. The watchers - angels and saints and John and the readers of his book - are already on the edge of their seats. The intermission between the sixth and seventh trumpets has come to an end, the scene has shifted back to the heavenly stage, and the seventh angel lets loose with the final fanfare.
This isn’t the first time the text has come at an interesting time. Remember that we opened the first seal the week the Iraqi war started? We watched on Palm Sunday as the 12 tribes of Israel were ushered into the Presence. And here we are for the crowning of the King on Ascension Sunday. Coincidence? Well, maybe, but what I think it means is that if you look at events in the right way, you can always see God’s hand in them. Jesus ascended into heaven some 2,000 years ago, and as we noted last week we down here are still in the intermission, the age of witness. All we have to do is look around us to know for certain that Jesus does not yet reign over all the earth.
What this passage tells us, among other things, is that even though we do not yet see the results of Jesus’ final victory, it has in fact already happened. “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah.” [v. 15b]
But what else does it tell us?
“God's temple in heaven was opened, and the ark of his covenant was seen... [v. 19] This is the first time anyone has seen the ark of the covenant since Babylon destroyed Jerusalem in 586 BC. What’s the significance? I think there are two points to keep in mind.
The first point is that the covenant that God made with his people at Mt. Sinai is still in effect. Back in those days, when two warring nations finally signed a peace treaty, the ensuing document was then deposited before the local deity in the temple, inviting the avenging curses mentioned in the covenant if it were broken. And so one of the things this underlines is the fact that the people were warned of the consequences of disobeying the covenant right from the start, and have no one to blame but themselves if they now find themselves on the wrong side of history.
At the end of the 40 years the Israelites spent wandering in the wilderness, Moses gathers the people together to renew the covenant. “I call heaven and earth to witness against you today”, he says, “that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live. [De 30:19] But he knows what they are like. Moses already knows that they are going to disobey. He tells them: “You have seen all that the LORD did before your eyes... But to this day the LORD has not given you a mind to understand, or eyes to see, or ears to hear.” [De 29:2,4] Moses goes on, “It may be that there is among you a man or woman ... whose heart is already turning away from the LORD our God ... All who hear the words of this oath and bless themselves, thinking in their hearts, "We are safe even though we go our own stubborn ways"... the LORD will be unwilling to pardon them... All the curses written in this
book will descend on them. [De 29:18-20]
This covenant has not been repealed. It applies to the new Israel - the church - as well as to the old. The same blessings will come to those who are faithful, the same judgments to the ones who are not. Do you think that there might be people in the church who, like Moses’ hearers, were outwardly agreeing to the terms of the treaty, but inwardly aren’t with the program at all? I think there might be. I think people haven’t changed a whole lot from that day to this. The other thing to remember is that God has not changed, either.
A lot of people - from the first century to the present - see a real change in God’s character between the Old Testament and the New, pointing to the bloody conquest of Canaan by the Israelites and the stern warnings of judgment from the prophets, and contrasting that with the love of God displayed in Jesus Christ. We have become so accustomed to that God of love that many of us forget that Jesus himself also spoke of a time of judgment, when those who turn their backs on God’s offer of life will be shut out from his grace forever. Of course there are the traditional hell-fire and brimstone sermons made famous in the tent revival circuit, but most Presbyterians - including me - are not comfortable with that
genre and I don’t expect that you are, either. I don’t particularly enjoy preaching on the judgment. But judgment is the flip side of mercy. We have already heard the saints who are hanging around the throne room begging for God to hurry up and bring justice to the world. They’re tired of waiting. They’re tired of watching evil appear to triumph, tired of lies winning out over truth, tired of seeing oppression and violence and hatred rewarded.
And so we long for the Prince of Peace to take over, but when he does, all those people and forces and institutions which destroy peace must first themselves be destroyed.
We see that in so many places in the world right now. In Iraq our troops are finding that winning the war hasn’t meant that people have stopped shooting at them. In the Middle East the road map to peace is filled with ruts and potholes made by hatred and violence. What gesture of goodwill will induce the terrorists to lay down their arms? Can it happen, or must they simply be wiped out? In the Congo the departure of foreign troops - which many people thought would be the first step to peace in that terribly war-torn country - left a vacuum into which home-
grown thugs swarmed with Kalashnikov’s, AK-47's and RPG’s. Congo may be the most brutal and bloody place on earth today; if the war is not brought under control the number of its dead will rival Rwanda’s.
Peace is not the natural condition of humanity. Violence springs up on every side like dandelions in the spring. How many of you get tired of that eternal battle? Wouldn’t you like it if you could just spray something on your lawn and wake up the next morning to a perfect emerald expanse? Well, sin is even more stubborn than crabgrass.
Peace, you may remember, is not just the absence of war. Biblical “shalom” is one of the most theologically significant terms in the entire Bible. A central part of its meaning is the idea of completeness, of wholeness, of health and harmony. At the heart of the whole concept is peace between God and his creatures, between the creatures themselves, and between creatures and the rest of creation. It is interesting that in this text the only people who are singled out for condemnation are “those who destroy the earth.” [v. 18] Do we have an environmentalist text here? Could it be that there is a hint that part of man’s inhumanity to man has
expressed itself in destruction of the environment?
The earth was cursed along with Adam back in Genesis 3: “Cursed is the ground because of you,” says God, “in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you...” [Gen 3:17-18] And so certainly the land also cries out for redemption under the harsh whips of its taskmasters, and Paul assures us that it, too, will be healed in the end. “For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God... in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of
the glory of the children of God.” [Rom 8:19-21]
But usually in Scripture “earth” simply means everything that isn’t in heaven, including people. So this verse is most likely a blanket condemnation of everyone who unjustly uses power to destroy or to oppress or to deprive. God will judge all those whose actions destroy life rather than give it, which exploit life rather than delight in it.
The love of God is the power which created order out of chaos, which raised Jesus from the tomb, which brings joy out of sorrow and life out of death. "Choose life,” he said, “that you may live.” You might also say, “Choose love, that you may live,” but our society has forgotten that love is not indulgence, that love often asks us to make hard choices. Love of God requires us to say no to all kinds of things which seem pleasant at the time, but which do not lead to life. As Jesus said, “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” [Mt 16:25]
I’ll bet you’ve been wondering all this time when I’m going to get to the second point of the vision of the ark of the covenant. Right?
Well, the second point is that until Jesus died for us, we had no access into the holy place where the ark was kept. Only the high priest could go in there, and it was dangerous even for him. If anybody touched the ark even accidentally they were toast. Remember Raiders of the Lost Ark? Well, they weren’t too far off in emphasizing how dangerous it was. But the veil that kept the ark and the people separate was torn apart when Jesus was on the cross. In Christ, we can approach God without fear. But without Christ, the ark - the symbol of God’s unapproachable holiness and power - remains as dangerous as ever. In Christ alone will we be safe when the day of reckoning arrives. The ark of the covenant reminds us that we have to make a choice, and that we have to make it with all our
hearts, not with our fingers crossed behind our backs.
The “coincidence” that I am preaching this passage on Ascension Sunday reminds us that although Jesus came to earth not to condemn the world but to save it, that part of his job was completed on the cross. The church’s job is to make sure everybody gets an invitation. But when that assignment has been completed, and Jesus takes the throne, his own task changes: “His authority shall grow continually... He will establish [endless peace] and uphold [the throne] with justice and with righteousness from this time onward and forevermore... [Is 9:7]
“Choose life,” said Moses to the Israelites, “that you may live.” The same choice is given to us today, phrased just a little differently: “Choose Jesus, that you may live.”
