Tragedy Week

Revelation 7:9-17

The Book of Revelation is one of the hardest books of the Bible to read and digest.  It’s not quite as dry as the endless census in the aptly named book of Numbers, but the Revelation to John is long on obscure, hallucinatory code-language, and short on clarity and logic.

It’s full of end of the world disaster – the famous images of the apocalyptic horsemen: conquest, war, famine, and death – and cosmic battles – but those are regularly interrupted by visions of healing and grace, glimpses of eternal life breaking in to the miserable end of time – like the bit we heard today.

Singing and praise and celebration and transformation for “those who have come out of the great ordeal.” These words – all of Revelation – were written for a community overwhelmed with persecution and suffering – a community that knew murder and death and pain first-hand, and frequently.

Today’s vision reminds us that those who have experienced this ordeal live the truth that they cannot ever be separated from the face to face presence of God, where “they will hunger no more, and thirst no more; the sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat; … the Lamb … will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes."

These are words we turn to in the church in times of suffering – at the time of death, and in the face of tragedy.  And I’m so glad that we hear them this week.

You see, this is Tragedy Week.

I realized that on Tuesday when my cousin Betsy proposed on Facebook that it might be time to skip the third week of April altogether.

She had reason. 

18 years ago this week, Betsy’s mother, my Aunt Kathy, died far too young.

Just two days later that year, the Murrah Federal Building was bombed in Oklahoma City – on April 19, timed for the anniversary of the destruction of the Branch Davidian compound in Texas in 1993.

A few years later, on April 20, 1999, two students opened fire at Columbine High School in Colorado.

Six years ago, 32 students died and 17 were injured in a massacre at Virginia Tech on April 16.

And now, well, there’s the bombs at the Boston Marathon, and all the sequels.

And an even more deadly fertilizer plant explosion in West, Texas, that won’t get nearly the same traction in our national memory as those intentional acts of violence.

An earthquake in China.

And many of us here heard the last of that news while dealing with flooded basements – more stress than tragedy, but still…

It’s too much. 

I’m more than ready to dump this week from the calendar,

and even more ready to live in a world where the news doesn’t make me cry.

Tragedy is exhausting.

Personal tragedy, like a death or diagnosis in the family, the loss of important relationships or work.

Public tragedy, like Boston, Oklahoma City, 9/11, Newtown, Virginia, Columbine, Tucson, Aurora….

Or under the radar tragedy, like Alzheimers and depression, the extinction of another species, and the hundreds of murders that never make the evening news.

We live with tragedy, seen and unseen.

But the thing is, we also live with God.

God, seen and unseen, just as real, even more present.

That’s why we still read Revelation, wading through the code,

because suffering and tragedy inhabit our world, yours and mine, today and every day.

And if we live with tragedy, we need to – we have to – live with hope.

Hope not just for a cure, or for a change, but hope that is a bedrock trust in the truth that God is present with us now, to guide and guard and rejoice in us.

Today, we hear the vision of “those who have come out of the great ordeal;” those who have witnessed and experienced murder and oppression, tragic loss and great danger and fear.  These are those for whom Tragedy Week doesn’t pass, on the calendar.

And they are singing.

They are shouting salvation and praise; singing with heart and soul and body.

It’s not denial, it’s not relief at survival, it’s not even really about comfort, but about the fundamental hope, the trust that we do live in the healing presence of God, always, just as much, or even more, than we live amid suffering and death and ordinary stress.

So they’re singing.

Because one way or another, our bodies have to express and respond to healing and hope,  just like they respond to tragedy with tears and exhaustion, and music is one of the best ways our bodies do praise and joy.

That’s the other bonus to reading Revelation this week.  I think people sing more in Revelation than any other book of the Bible.

And I’ve been thinking about music all week because today we’re celebrating the gift of music that we share at Calvary, declaring “Jeri Kellan Appreciation Day” as we give thanks for twenty-five years of gifted, caring musical leadership here among us.

It’s a day to celebrate, because there’s great truth to the holiness and healing power of music.

Music can carry our celebrations: as we sing for birthdays or national holidays or Alleluias and everything in between. And music can heal: restoring joy or bringing comfort, nurturing memory and hope, as we sing lullabies, laments, and old favorites. And music makes community, because it needs hearers as well as performers.

So I want us, like the saints in the Revelation, to sing.

Will you sing healing, this week?

You don’t have to know one note from another or carry a tune to sing healing.

You might want to offer well-rehearsed, beautiful, elaborate melody and harmony.  And if you can, please do!

But you can also just crank up the volume, tap your feet, drum your fingers, dance, or shout along to your favorite tune.

Sing Beethoven, or Beach Boys, or Lady Gaga.

However you do it, tune your body and your voice to joy, and to hope,

because that’s what we do in faith, even – or most importantly – when we grieve.

It’s been Tragedy Week, again, in our public lives.

And tragedy happens without consulting the calendar in our private lives.

But our story, here at Calvary, our Revelation, to share with the world, in the aftermath of Boston and all those other griefs, and in the centuries of faith;

our story is the song of hope, and healing, and eternal life.

One we live not in spite of tragedy and ordeals, but in the midst of them,

singing, because nothing – nothing! – can separate us from the wholeness we find in the presence of God, where “the Lamb … will be [our] shepherd, and he will guide [us] to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from [our] eyes."