One of the cultural casualties of this pandemic is the inability to attend live performances. Whether it’s a symphony concert or a play or a musical, it’s been a number of months since any of us could sit in a darkened theatre and watch the curtain go up on a living work of art.
Do you enjoy the drama of the curtain rising? I certainly do. I recall sitting on a high school stage in a concert band, waiting for that thrilling moment when the curtain would rise, the audience would clap, and the music would begin.
If there’s not a curtain on stage, I miss it, quite frankly. I don’t like seeing all the performers assemble before hearing what they have to offer. I like the surprise of the artists being revealed at once, as a collective group, ready to entertain and interpret a musical work or a literary drama.
We might not be able to safely visit a theatre these days, but today, in this holy place, the curtain is about to go up on a fantastic scene. This scene is not a work of fiction. It’s not a show that lasts only for the hour plus that we are here today. It’s a dramatic scene, and yet it’s a reality that is completely true.
The author of the Revelation to John has set the stage for this scene. And he offers us a window into a vision that confounds our minds and which I imagine is quite difficult for us to comprehend.
The incomprehensibility of much of this revelation to John, might suggest that we need to solve a puzzle. We want to know exactly who the people in the heavenly vision are. We hope to decipher who God’s elect are. And, we wonder, are we part of this company? Who’s in, who’s out? What’s the great ordeal? And on and on. . .
But John is not presenting us with a puzzle to solve. A great work of art is not some mystery to be decoded, and the Revelation to John is not a text for us to predict the future, or to judge who’s in and who’s out of God’s favor, or to prophesy the end of the world. John’s vision is simple that: it’s a vision, a showing forth of God’s saving acts that break into our present time.
John’s vision is where the curtain goes up on a drama that we are participating in today. It’s a startling glimpse, if for a time, into a dramatic reality that is true, just as it was for John and just as it is for us.
Imagine with me, for a moment, this astounding vision. The curtain rises on a great heavenly throne room, where in the center, is a great Lamb, the great Shepherd of the flock, the Good Shepherd. And around him are people, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands, speaking in a great variety of tongues, shouting, and singing, not in conflict or accusation but in unbounded joy. They form a circle, and the Lamb in their midst is the sole focus of their attention.
They are seemingly unconcerned with themselves. True, they have known pain and suffering. Their journey has not always been easy. But in the throne room, they are somehow at peace with this past memory. Their tears have been wiped away by the Good Shepherd himself. They don’t judge one another or hurl accusations against their companions. They are simply dancing, an eternal dance to the most exquisite music you have ever heard. And the focus of all they say and do and see and hear is the Lamb at the center.
This is nothing any of us has ever encountered. Our earthly experiences are wholly different. In the theatre of life, we often feel helpless in our seats, watching the curtain rise on a drama that is horrific and that we are helpless to change. Frequently, we are surprised by these visions. We settle into our seats for a comforting play, and we witness the horrors of human rage and deceit played out before us, and we can’t understand how the drama went wrong. And we are stuck in the middle of the row of seats, unable to escape the mayhem.
In our earthly visions, people from various tribes and people and nations rarely circle up to focus on something greater than themselves. More typically, they face off in opposing lines, hurling insults or destructive objects against one another. There is no Lamb obviously in the midst of these scenes.
But today, we have been presented with another vision. So settle in. This is a drama unlike any you have ever experienced. I hope the suspense is getting to you. Today the curtain will go up here in this nave, towards the back, in a small room off to the side.
In the center of this room, the curtain will go up on a portal into heaven itself. Here heaven comes down, but as we participate in this very real vision, we are also taken up into heaven, too. At the center of this room, is a spring of living water, present in the baptismal font. This is the water of creation, over which God’s Spirit moved in the beginning. This is the water of the Red Sea, through which the Israelites were led to freedom by God’s gracious hand. This is the water of the Jordan in which Jesus himself was baptized.
Jesus, of course, needed no purification himself, but as St. Gregory of Nazianzus has told us, the purpose of his baptism by John was “to hallow water,”[1] so that we will no longer be thirsty. We are offered sacred water so that we can be cleansed and have our robes made white in his very blood. Out of that font in the back of this church is a spring of the water of life, and it never runs dry.
To that spring of living water, we will carry Iris Carter Austen. Iris will be a participant in this great drama we experience today, although she is not the protagonist or primary actor; that is God himself.
When the curtain goes up on this drama, for a time, we will be in heaven itself. The veil between this world and the next will be pierced, and we will see a great company around God’s heavenly throne. There are the saints who have gone before us, known and unknown. There is St. Mary, and St. John, and St. Francis, and also those beloved of us who have entered into the nearer presence of God. There are the angels, whom we’ll later hear singing with us, “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts” before Christ comes to meet us in bread and wine.
Those we once knew in this life, will seem familiar, and yet different. Their idiosyncrasies and rough edges will be somewhat smoothed away. Their tendencies to be critical or judgmental or aggressive will not be there, because they will be holding hands with everyone in that great circle. Their eyes will be fixed on one thing only, the center of the circle where the Lamb, the Good Shepherd reigns.
The tears they once shed over this broken world and one another’s pain have been wiped away, or are being wiped away, by that gentle and powerful Lamb at the center.
And to this central throne, the source of the spring of living water, we will bring little Iris. Christ himself will hallow the water at the font for us, and into this living water, Iris will die to sin, through Christ’s own death, and rise to new life cleansed from sin through Christ’s own resurrection.
In heaven the glorious company of the saints will sing and sing and sing. With them, we will lift our voices, and Iris will become a part of this great company of people from all tribes and peoples and nations, the Body of Christ.
And Iris, like those around the throne, will be sealed on her forehead and marked as Christ’s own forever. This indelible seal will be with her forever, a mark of whose she is, a mark of her destiny to be with God.
And then, at some point, reluctantly, the curtain will go down on this drama. Life will again seem normal to us, and we will perhaps wonder if it was just a dream. Was it simply a figment of our imaginations? Was it wishful thinking? We will then sit helpless as the curtain goes up on a raging drama around us, where no one circles up because they have forgotten how, and God is far from the center, and where the springs of water are all dried up. Here people are hungry and crying ceaselessly, and the singing has devolved into rancor.
But the challenge for us today is this: will we forget the vision we are about to glimpse in just a few minutes? Will the present dramas of violence and hate and division conquer our memory? Will they tempt us to escape this world instead of remembering the seal on our own foreheads, which compels us to transform darkness and evil into truth and light, with God’s help? Will we constantly come back time and again to this glorious vision that we are so privileged to witness today?
The presentation of Iris at the font is a gift to us all. It is a gift and a charge to remember our own baptisms. For some, it may be an inspiration to be baptized. It is a charge to constantly recall, even if it requires our full mental stamina, the vision we will soon behold. It is a charge to hold this vision with us in thick and thin.
See this vision with me again as the curtain rises. At its center is a wellspring of living water. It is the water of deliverance. It is the living water that alone quenches our thirst. Reigning over it is the Good Shepherd, who alone is our Truth, who alone is our Peace. And we hear his gentle words to us, “Come to me.” I, alone, will suffice. I, alone, will shelter you forever.
Now, prepare yourselves. The actors are assembling and the orchestra is tuning up. The drama is about to begin. The curtain is about to rise. And when it does, we, for a time, will be in heaven itself. Our voices will be united as never before. We will hear a singing unlike any you’ve ever experienced. And if you can, stay with this vision, hold it in your heart, and take it out into the world with you and never let it go.
A Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
All Saints’ Day 2020
[1] St. Gregory of Nazianzus, On God and Christ (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2002), 87.