No More Mr. Nice Revelation: the Last Word on Prayer (Revelation 8:1-6)

¹When the Lamb opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour. ²And I saw the seven angels who stand before God, and seven trumpets were given to them. ³ Another angel with a golden censer came and stood at the altar; he was given a great quantity of incense to offer with the prayers of all the saints on the golden altar that is before the throne. ⁴And the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, rose before God from the hand of the angel. ⁵Then the angel took the censer and filled it with fire from the altar and threw it on the earth; and there were peals of thunder, rumblings, flashes of lightning, and an earthquake. ⁶ Now the seven angels who had the seven trumpets made ready to blow them. ~ Revelation 8:1-6

 Wildfire seen from space

A New Song

So far we’ve been learning that apocalyptic literature aims to help us see, to unmask the reality of what often appears to be benign. We’ve been studying how the book of Revelation is not the Mad Hatter’s day planner but a poetic vision which sets the issue of worship at the heart and purpose of the universe – in this context, I argued, the mall and consumerism take on cosmic significance. But, today John’s vision does more than unmask the things that long for our worship, he exposes a good thing that strikes many of us as pointless, harmless, immaterial, even forgettable. He points out the one apocalyptic thing that really does have to do with time and our day planners, that is truly dangerous – prayer. And whatever baggage you might carry about prayer – the unanswered wounds, the painful silences, the haunted feelings of failed words for a loved one. John tells us that prayer is a game changer, a thunderous event, a shaking thing, the only thing that can silence heaven.

            1.      Prayer is the dignifying hush of heaven

I’m not sure that I can imagine a text that does more for the promotion of prayer than Revelation 8. I can’t think of a scripture that does more to insist that prayer does not take place in vain, that it matters. I would even be willing to hazard the potentially preposterous suggestion that in the book of Revelation there is no more dignifying gesture granted to human beings than this truth - the God of heaven and earth, the One on the throne, the One who is, who was, and who is to come, surrounded by worship, worthy of praise, this God silences heaven to listen to us. Revelation 8 is the equivalent of a divine “Shut-up!” but not to us to heaven. And God doesn’t need to hear us in order to be informed, to be affirmed, to be convinced, or even to win. So why does He do it? Why does he stop the beautiful music? Why does this God listen so intently? What motivates this God? Revelation reveals a vision of prayer that a silent God is not an absent God but an attentive one, a listening God, not simply all eyes but all ears for the likes of us. And it’s not work, wit, or songs, which silence all of heaven; it is their prayers. There is something almost playful in the text of silence for “about half an hour.”  I imagine God on all fours listening to us like a parent to a small child. It reminded me of Bill Cosby talking about his children fighting in his house (explain – 3 yr. old taking stuff that’s not theirs and shouting “mine”). He then quips once “Parents are not interested in justice — they want QUIET!” Many of us think of God like that – this disgruntled, tired parent who tells us to shut up, stop messing around, and quit jumping on the bed. Revelation, however, reveals to us that God demands quiet so that he can grant justice so that our prayers might join with his will, that we might participate in His amazing plan “on earth as it is in heaven.” To be honest, maybe the most frightening vision of Revelation is not the beast, the locusts, the blood and fire, but the image of a God who truly pays attention, that God believes that what we pray matters, that our words are mixed with the thunder, lightning, and earthquake.

Silence (10 seconds) – Prayer #921, Hymnal

Lord, call us into the church.

Call us in often,

            And teach us the old words and old songs

            with their new meanings.

Lord, give us new words for the words we wear out.

Give us new songs for those that have lost their spirit.

Give us new reasons for coming in and for going out,

            into our streets and to our homes.

As the house of the Lord once moved

            like a tent through the wilderness,

            so keep our church from becoming rigid.

Make our congregation alive and free.

Give us ideas we never had before,

            so that allelulia and gloria and amen

            are like the experiences we know in daily living.

Allelulia! O Lord, be praised!
In worship and in work, be praised! Amen.

 

            2.      In Revelation prayer is the vision. It’s curious that John doesn’t hear the prayers – he sees them like smoke rising, a sacrifice to God. The point is that prayer is a way of seeing the world, a practice that makes us a people who refuse to settle for appearances. Prayer reveals us to be those who believe that there’s more going on in the world than meets the eye. 

Yet, we are not easily reduced to prayer, it can be difficult to see the point. There just seem to be so many more important things to do, so many more powerful tasks. This can even be true of the most thoughtful and professional of religious teachers, pastors, and theologians. I randomly looked at two large introductory books on theology for seminary students– whose combined pages totaled 1,918 pages purporting to discuss all manner of theological intricacies like innerancy, patripassianism, socinianism, and apophatic language, to name a few examples. And how many pages on prayer do these two well respected texts allocate? Of the 1,918 pages I found two. Now less we find ourselves judgmental, if minutes where the pages of your life and each day was its own book (1,440 pages), how many pages on prayer would you have? Why don’t we pray? It’s not that our theology is bad, its that we lack the proper vision, it’s that we can’t see or that we believe we can without it. We need the corrective vision of John to remind us that God hears and sees our prayer. In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus repeatedly asserts that we can have confidence in God because He sees, he knows. So we pray and God sees, and we pray to see. 

Prayer is a practiced way of seeing what we were made for, and so our most natural posture – now, I have not experienced this to be true. Prayer still for me is a struggle of Herculean proportions. BUT I take comfort from two woman who were giants in the world of prayer. The first was Teresa of Avila (1515-1582) who admitted to often shaking the sand in her hourglass to make the time of prayer go faster. The second woman, however, lived in a time much more like the world of Revelation - Etty Hillesum, a Dutch Jewish, atheist, woman living in occupied Holland who during the Nazi regime and the horrors of the Holocaust came to believe and devout her life to God. She writes of her experience of prayer, “It is as if my body had been meant and made for the act of kneeling. Sometimes, in moments of deep gratitude, kneeling down becomes an overwhelming urge . . . a gesture embedded in my body, needing to be expressed . . . When I write these things down I still feel a little ashamed, as if I were writing about the most intimate of intimate matters. Much more bashful than if I had to write about my love life. But is there indeed anything as intimate as a [person’s] relationship to God?” On another occasion she refers to herself as a “kneeler in training” and the act of praying she states “cannot be put into words . . . except by a poet.” Prayer, according to John the poet, is a visual splendor of silent smoke and incense. It was prayer, Etty claimed, that allowed her to see that the real enemy were not Nazi soldiers but hate. Because she prayed, she discovered, she simply could not hate them.

Silence (10 seconds) – Prayer #923, Hymnal

Jesus, our Master,

            whose heart was moved with compassion

            toward the weak and the oppressed,

            and who was more willing to serve than be served;

we pray for all conditions of people:

            for those lacking food, shelter, or clothing;

            for the sick and all who are wasting away by disease;

            for the blind, deaf, and lame;

            for prisoners;

            for those oppressed by injustice;

            for those who have lost their way in society;

            for the corrupted and fallen;

            for the lonely and depressed;

            for the worried and anxious;

            for all living faithfully in obscurity

            for those fighting bravely in unpopular causes;

            for all who are serving diligently and dependably;

            for those who stand in the valley of indecision;

for those who are suffering the consequences of misdeeds repented of;

            for all family circles broken by abuse or death;

            for those faced by tasks too great for their powers.

Let the power of Jesus’ spirit be strong within us,

            and those for whom we pray. Amen

 

            3.      Finally, Revelation offers us a vision that prayer is not mere escapism but bold engagement with God for the whole world. 

John’s vision tells us that prayer is not for our own sake but for the sake of the whole earth. That nothing within the cosmos is out of the reach of prayer. So the angel takes prayers and mixes them with the fire of God’s altar and hurls them to earth where prayer becomes thunder, lightning, and earthquake. That’s not how I think of prayer. I realized that my vision of prayer is more like hmmm, hmmmm (clearing the throat sound). It’s not thunder but more caveat. It’s not lightning but more being nice. It’s not earthquake but more being polite. It’s a sort of . . “If it’s not too much trouble, if you don’t mind, sorry to bother you but . . .” John’s vision invokes in me a deep awareness that my prayers are often too safe, too small, too careful, and too tame.

It reminds us that some of the best prayers and best pray-ers are the impertinent, fiery ones.  In Luke 18 Jesus describes the best pray-er as an ornery widow, sick of injustice, who refuses to stop coming before a judge. Such a vision reveals that prayer can be the “courage of despair” – to face suffering unflinchingly and by doing so rob it of its power to control your end. In the book of Revelation, the last prayer before chapter 8 comes from the martyrs who demand, “How long, O LORD”

Revelation helps us see that more of us should pray like the Abolitionist leader Sojourner Truth, who had no problem praying what was on her mind. When her son fell ill she prayed, “Oh, God, you know how much I am distressed, for I have told you again and again. Now, God, help me get my son. If you were in trouble, as I am, and I could help you, as you can me, think I wouldn’t do it? Yes, God, you know I would do it.”

So let it fly, let it rise, let it go. He can take it. He will take it. He will listen, He will see, there will be silence and fire.

And then the earth will tremble because . . .  Silence (10 seconds) – the Lord’s Prayer

Spirit-led Complainers (Acts 6:1-7)

“Now during those days, when the disciples were increasing in number, the Hellenists complained against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution of food. And the twelve called together the whole community of the disciples and said, ‘It is not right that we should neglect the word of God in order to wait on tables. Therefore, friends, select from among yourselves seven men of good standing, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we may appoint to this task, while we, for our part, will devote ourselves to prayer and to serving the word.’ What they said pleased the whole community, and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit, together with Philip, Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolaus, a proselyte of Antioch. They had these men stand before the apostles, who prayed and laid their hands on them. The word of God continued to spread; the number of the disciples increased greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests became obedient to the faith.” ~ Acts 6:1-7

          1.      Spirit-led ministry begins with a serious complaint.

The complaint was serious – it was not about the coffee, or drums in worship, it wasn’t merely a mistake, a silly oversight, an incidental problem but the result of “neglect”. The neglect was intentional, and the text hints at racial tensions simmering under the service of the new community. Discerning spirit-led complaints from the more humdrum or petty ones though aren’t always so easy to discern. They require a level of discernment that demands an attentiveness to what God is doing. It’s important to note, however, that the complaint wasn’t simply made by people but it was for people and about people - people in need. That’s a good litmus test as we move forward. Currently, who are the people being neglected?  

Complaints happen because the community was growing – More people meant more problems and more needs to be met. It reminds us to ask ourselves a fundamental question, “Do we want to grow? Are we willing to take the responsibility of what more growth might mean?” It also means that we have to think carefully about wise administration. In our passage, administration is a spiritual task of ferreting out neglect and addressing it with fruitful organizational structures. 

Complaints happen because parishioners were willing to share them. Can we be a place where people ask hard questions, raise challenges to leadership, point out things that aren’t working? Our text invites an openness that is unnerving – there’s no posturing, justifying, recounting of why the neglect happened, or attempts at explaining it away. I would argue that the use of spiritual gifts and recruiting people for ministry requires the sharing of complaints. We are to be a fellowship of complaining; that is, a way of belonging whereby people feel capable of expressing their honest and heart-felt needs or neglect. How can we address critical needs that aren’t brought to our attention? How can we model such openness? Complaints are critical for spiritual health. If there is no expression of need, there will be no need to use our gifts, talents and skills. Without a display of vulnerability, there will be no need for recruiting and equipping Spirit-led people.

Finally, I’m struck by the fact that there is a serious complaint but NO blame. No one loses his/her job. No one points fingers. No one is made to feel guilty. It reminds me of a phrase that Don uses when we as staff evaluate a program or event, “autopsy without blame.”

          2.      Gifts are Spirit-filled complainers who act decisively and serve faithfully

The Twelve’s solution to this new dilemma was an interesting one. Rather than try and solve the problem themselves they asked the congregation to “select from among yourselves” wise, Spirit-led people. When we look at their list of candidates, something interesting emerges – the people who are called to address the issue have Greek speaking names (Hellenists). The group who makes the complaint, in other words, becomes the group that chooses to serve. It makes sense that the people who see the need are some of the best to meet it. Complaining by its self is just complaining but complaining coupled with service is called ministry.

The point is that complainers are more than people with needs, whether legitimate or not, they are also people who need to be needed. As we talk about gifts, programs, vision – let’s never forget that we are talking about people –people with gifts to give, talents to share, skills to offer. People aren’t simply problems that need to be solved but are also those used by God to be  answers. People are gifts that need to be utilized, empowered and released. They need to be recognized and prayed for. “Full of the Spirit” means that God uses them, God anoints them, God calls them. If God does that, shouldn’t we? If God always uses people, where is your place?

          3.      Spirit-led complaints convert clergy

Our text ends with the provocative statement, “and a great many of the priests became obedient to the faith.” It was this recruited group of complainers whose significant work led to the conversion of religious leaders. Not surprisingly, clergy can be some of the quickest to forget that ministry is what all of us are to be doing. Please be assured, however, that Don and I are not reluctant converts. We desire nothing more than that every member of the church find his or her rightful place of contributing. This isn’t, however, a call to drudgery but an invitation to joy and fellowship in the Holy Spirit.