Revelation 7:9-17 Last
Saturday morning our sister in Christ Donna departed this earthly life. David lost his wife and best friend. Their children lost their mother and their
kids their grandmother. Our congregation
lost a beloved member and our community lost a businesswoman and musician. The presence of her many nieces and nephews
and friends who have traveled a great distance to be here today testify to her
place in our hearts.
But what God wants us to know and believe is that-- in that moment
when her earthly life came to an end—as rich and blessed and wonderful as it
was—her true life began—a life where there is no sorrow or suffering or
separation from those we love.
What we know and experience as loss and pain in Donna’s passing, she
knows to be joy and gain and blessing beyond what any of us can imagine for she
is safe and sound in the arms of the Good Shepherd and God has wiped every tear
from her eye.
In his mercy, God speaks to us today in his Word so that we might
believe the same—that we too are part of the flock of the Good Shepherd and he
embraces us with his love and dries our tears with his promise that Donna is
safely home. The Bible says that:
After this I looked, and there before me
was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people
and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing
white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands.
The last image we have of our loved
ones who depart this life is often times distressing. Illness or injury or just the frailties of
old age have done their work and we are left with an image of our loved one is
very different than the one we carry in our heart. And that is burdensome.
Doctors and nurses and hospitals do all they can to minister to our
loved ones, to bring God’s healing into their lives, but the wires and hoses
and tubes only add to what is a painful scene of our loved ones last moments on
earth.
God in his mercy does not want to leave us with that image of what
living in a dark and dying world does to our loved ones who depart this life and
so in his Word today from Revelation, he pulls back the curtain that hides our
departed loved ones from our view and lets us see what is true of them right
now.
There is that great multitude that no one can number is Donna. What she hoped for and lived for as a child
of God (to dwell in the house of the Lord forever—to gaze upon the beauty of
the Lord in his temple) God in his great mercy has granted to her. What she believed in and laid hold of by
faith in Jesus—she now sees and experiences in the presence of Jesus.
The loved ones that she once mourned who departed in the faith are
there with her in that great multitude and there at the center of all that is
happening is the Lamb, Jesus Christ, the perfect sacrifice of Calvary whose
blood forgave her all her sins and whose resurrection has brought her home.
There she is in that multitude, clothed in the white robe of
Christ’s holiness and righteousness bestowed upon her in baptism, holding a
palm branch in her hand as a sign of Christ’s victory over sin and death.
We may experience her death as defeat, but for Donna, the moment of
her passing from this earth was the moment of her entrance of a victory
celebration that has no end.
She is not just gone from us, but she has gone home. We have to say our sad goodbyes to her but
what she heard in that moment of passing were the cries of “welcome home” and
an invitation to come and take her part in the great, unending song of victory
that is being sung at this very moment by the whole company of heaven. The Bible says that those in heaven:
…cried out in a loud voice: “Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on
the throne, and to the Lamb.” All the
angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four
living creatures. They fell down on their faces before the throne and worshiped
God, saying: “Amen! Praise and glory and wisdom and thanks
and honor and power and strength be to our God for ever and ever. Amen!”
I’ve tried to think of the best way
to describe Donna. We all have our
memories. The kids remember a devoted
mom, involved in their lives, who was also an avid birdwatcher. David remembers especially the early days of
their marriage, traipsing around the world as he traveled in the oil
business. Caroline and I had the best
time with her as we were looking at houses here in San Angelo as she rode
around in the back seat, holding on for dear life, doing her best to not be a
back seat driver.
But what I finally decided is that
the best way to describe her, what really captures who she was, is that she was
a musician, looking for every opportunity to perform, even if the only audience
was a herd of cows next to a lonely cemetery.
That was Donna.
Every musician begins the same way—learning to play their instrument
and read music. There is a lot of time
spent alone, doing the hard work of playing scales and various exercises
designed to increase proficiency. There
is a lot of time spent practicing your own part in some composition and all by
itself it doesn’t sound like much.
But then there comes that magical moment when the band or orchestra
gets together, and the conductor lifts his baton and the individual musicians
become part of one another—greater and more beautiful together than they were
before by themselves.
It is a transcendent moment of joy and Donna never lost that joy or
sense of transcendence that is found in God’s good gift of music.
Donna continued to perform every chance she got. She helped organize the San Angelo community
Band and the Icehouse Brass Band—groups that have been a blessing to this
community for years. She was Part of the
Angelo State Wind Ensemble and who can count the number of worship services in
churches in this area have been blessed by her music.
When she went to heaven, that gift was not lost. The Book of Revelation is arranged around
songs that are eternally sung by all the company of heaven. In other words, music is what gives voice to the
worship of heaven.
There are flashes of lightening and rumblings and peal of thunder—no
doubt the percussion section. There are
angels with trumpets and there are harps that are played.
And right there in the midst in that great musical multitude is
Donna, happier and more alive than she has ever been, joining her voice to the
song of heaven:
Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty,
who was and is and is to come! Worthy is
the Lamb who was slain, for by your blood you ransomed people for God. Praise and glory and wisdom and thanks and
honor and power and strength be to our God for ever and ever. Amen!”
In that great, unending song of heaven there is never a broken reed,
there is never an out of tune instrument, there is never a missed note—there is
simply the most beautiful piece of music ever composed or performed in
thanksgiving for the salvation we have in Jesus—and there is Donna, using her
gift to praise the One who gave her the gift of salvation. The Bible says that:
One of the elders asked me, “These in white
robes—who are they, and where did they come from?” I answered, “Sir, you know.” And he said,
“These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed
their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.
Over
the last one hundred years of our modern age it has become unfashionable to
talk about art—including music—as aspiring to what is beautiful and good and
true. But Donna still held to this
traditional view. She
said, “Music reveals the essence of life.
Through music we experience God’s love, his creation, and how to treat
each other.” She was absolutely right.
Artists
and musicians like Donna who still hold to this ancient aesthetic do so—not
because they don’t know that the world is full of tribulation—but because they
know a truth that is even deeper and higher and greater: that beyond the trials and tribulations of
this life is something that is beautiful and good and true and they desire in
their music to capture that.
Donna
knew that the something that is beautiful and good and true—that something that
all great music and art must ultimately bear witness to--was a “someone” named
Jesus.
Yes,
his death on the cross was a brutal and ugly thing. There was rejection and ridicule—there was
sorrow and suffering. But in the midst
of that—flowing from that-- was a love that rose above it all—the love of God
for a world full of sinners, including Donna.
Through
faith in Jesus, the blood he shed on Calvary—the death he died there in her place—the
life he claimed for her in his own resurrection--has transformed her
forever. He has clothed her for eternity
in his own righteousness and claimed her as his own precious lamb. The Bible says that the lambs of the flock of
the Good Shepherd:
…are before the throne of God and serve him
day and night in his temple; and he who sits on the throne will shelter them
with his presence. ‘Never again will
they hunger; never again will they thirst.
The sun will not beat down on them,’ nor any scorching heat. For the Lamb at the center of the throne will
be their shepherd; ‘he will lead them to springs of living water.’ ‘And God
will wipe away every tear from their eyes.’
This is a day of sorrow and loss for
us. We see in a new and painful way that
we walk through the valley of the shadow of death. There are tears that are shed. But none of that is true for Donna.
The trials and tribulations of life in
this broken world are over for her.
There is no pain or sorrow or loss.
She lives today- and will live forever- in the presence of the God who
has always known her and loved her and planned eternity for her. The Good Shepherd she followed in life has
wiped every time from her eyes and wrapped her in his arms. Amen.
