Sermon on the Opening of the Sixth Seal
Preached at St Andrew's, Redbourne
31st July 2022
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Photo by J.Guffogg & J.Hannan (flickr.com) |
29 “Immediately after the distress of those days
“‘the sun will be darkened,
and the moon will not give its light;
the stars will fall from the sky,
and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.’ [Isaiah 13:10; 34:4]
30 “Then will appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven. And then all the peoples of the earth will mourn when they see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory. 31 And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other.
32 “Now learn this lesson from the fig tree: As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near. 33 Even so, when you see all these things, you know that it is near, right at the door. 34 Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. 35 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.
36 “But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. 37 As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. 38 For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; 39 and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.”
12 I watched as he opened the sixth seal. There was a great earthquake. The sun turned black like sackcloth made of goat hair, the whole moon turned blood red, 13 and the stars in the sky fell to earth, as figs drop from a fig tree when shaken by a strong wind. 14 The heavens receded like a scroll being rolled up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place.
15 Then the kings of the earth, the princes, the generals, the rich, the mighty, and everyone else, both slave and free, hid in caves and among the rocks of the mountains. 16 They called to the mountains and the rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb!17 For the great day of their wrath has come, and who can withstand it?”
Sermon
Are you sitting comfortably? Well you might not be at the end of this sermon! But before we get into the subjects of hell-fire and damnation depicted in our window and the passage it's based, I want to highlight the Gospel reading we had from Matthew 24. This is Jesus teaching about his second coming. And the reason I wanted to have this as our first reading is because when the subjects of judgement and hell come up, an objection is often raised that these subjects aren't very Jesus-like: the argument goes that Jesus' major teaching is about love and that a God of love cannot be a God of judgement.
Our passage from Matthew 24 reminds us that Jesus was just as happy teaching about judgement as he was about love, and reading through the rest of the gospels it is arguable that he taught more often about judgement than he did about love. And it is precisely because he is a God of love that he is also a God of judgement: it is because he loves his creation so much that he cannot bear anything that mars and disfigures it, and that he must punish whatever does. And top of that list for judgement is humanity, through whom sin has come into the world and spoiled God's perfect creation. But I'm getting ahead of myself; the important thing to remember for now is that the teaching in Revelation 6 is perfectly consistent with Jesus' own teaching, which in turn is consistent with the teaching in the Old Testament.
So let's now turn to think about our window.
The title is “The Opening of the Sixth Seal” which we can also deduce from the image at the bottom of the window of a lamb with a flag [Fig. 1]. There are seven ribbons hanging down beneath the lamb, the first five have nothing at the end, the seventh has a seal with a cross on it, and the sixth has a broken seal. But before we can understand what's happening in the window, we need to think about what's happening in the book of Revelation up to this point.
John, the writer of the book, is having a vision from Jesus in which he is being shown “what is now and what will take place later” (
Revelation 1:19). As part of this he sees the throne room of heaven, which is recorded in
Revelation 5. On the throne he sees God who is holding a scroll with seven seals on it. This scroll contains God's instructions and judgments and opening it would signal that these instructions are to be carried out. The seven seals are for each of the seven instructions, with the number seven (like elsewhere in Revelation) symbolising perfection and completeness. So we need to imagine a scroll with something like wax seals keeping it closed.
And here is where we need to be a bit careful about our language, because this reminds me of my favourite story of theological illiteracy. You may remember the David Koresh cult in the early 1990s; one of my professors had an academic interest in end-of-the-world cults and spoke to former members for research. He told the story that in 1993 the FBI laid siege to the Branch Davidians' headquarters at the Mount Carmel Centre in Waco, Texas. As part of the negotiations during this siege, Koresh told the FBI that they had to stay there until the seven seals were opened, referring of course to Revelation. However, on hearing this the FBI called in the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, because they thought that some seals were going to be slaughtered!
So just to be clear, today we are talking about wax seals not sea creatures!
But back to Revelation. God is holding out the scroll with seven wax seals on it and John weeps because there is no-one worthy to open the seals, meaning there is no-one worthy to pass judgment. Then one of the elders says “Do not weep! See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed. He is able to open the scroll and its seven seals” (
Revelation 5:5). So John looks up and sees a Lamb, who had been slain and he takes the scroll, resulting in the song of praise which we said in our opening canticle.
Revelation 6 describes the opening of each of the seals, ending the chapter with our second reading, and our theme: the opening of the sixth seal. It starts with a dramatic description of the literally earth-shattering events so vividly depicted in the window: the blood-red moon and shattered rocks [Fig. 2];
the darkness with the skies receding, revealing the light of God's presence [Fig. 3].
And most dramatically, the reactions of the people, mostly knocked down or cowering. We see a king fallen, with his crown and sceptre rolling away, and a general, upside down with his sword out of reach, and treasures spilled on the floor [Fig. 4].
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Figure 4:
Photo by J.Guffogg & J.Hannan (flickr.com) |
So what's going on? We know from Jesus' words, from the Old Testament passages he's alluding to and from what's happening in the vision that this is a description of judgment, and that the day of judgment will be a day of mourning. This is because on the Day of Judgement, as God says in Ezekiel “I will judge you according to your conduct and repay you for all your detestable practices” (
Ezekiel 7:3). That is why the people in Revelation 6 cry out for the rocks and mountains to fall on them and hide them from God and his judgment, because as it says in
Psalm 130:3 “If you, Lord, kept a record of sins, Lord, who could stand?” When we are faced with the holiness of God, we realise our own sinfulness and our inability to live a good life compared with God's standard of goodness. We realise that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (
Romans 3:23) and that it doesn't matter if we're rich or poor, powerful or weak, kings or generals, none of our talents or achievements can make up for our sins.
When we realise our sins we also realise the consequences of our sins. As Jesus said in the parable of the net: “Once again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was let down into the lake and caught all kinds of fish. When it was full, the fishermen pulled it up on the shore. Then they sat down and collected the good fish in baskets, but threw the bad away. This is how it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come and separate the wicked from the righteous and throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." (
Matthew 13:47-50). And we see this at the bottom right of the window, [Fig. 5] where those who have been judged are falling into the blazing furnace and barely recognisable as human.
So the question that faces us as we look upon this graphic description and portrayal of the Day of Judgement is the one the people in Revelation 6 and the Psalmist ask: in the face of God's all-knowing judgement, who can stand?
If we turn back to the window there is one figure standing [Fig. 6] almost in the centre of the picture: and he has broken chains hanging from his wrists.
He probably represents those whose chains of judgment have been broken, i.e. those who have been judged and have been forgiven. This possibility of redemption could also be suggested by the zig-zag of light in the top right [Fig. 7] which might be lightning splitting the rocks or it could be a path back to the light of the presence of God.
So how can the chains of judgement be broken; how can we be forgiven; how can we stand in the face of God's judgment?
For the answer to that question we need to turn to
Revelation 7, which is still part of the opening of the sixth seal. In this chapter we hear about more seals (and again not of the sea variety!), and this time they are not sealing up scrolls, but are more like a stamp of ownership and they are on the heads of the servants of God (Revelation 7:3). John is told that there are 144,000 of them which is symbolic of 12 times 12,000 representing the combining of the Old Covenant (the twelve tribes of Israel) and New Covenant (the Church represented by the twelve apostles). The whole people of God. But just as John was told about the Lion of Judah being able to open the scroll and when he looked he saw a Lamb, so he is told about 144,000 people and when he looks he sees “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” (Revelation 7:9). We are told that “they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb” (Revelation 7:14).
So the whiteness of their robes is not because they lived lives of total holiness and purity, because as we've just heard, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. But instead their robes have been washed in the blood of the Lamb. What does this mean? Well, the background is the story of the Passover in
Exodus 12. God warned that he was going to send a final plague on Egypt, the death of the first-born, but that if the Israelites put the blood of a spotless lamb on their door-posts, the angel of judgment would pass over those houses. Fast-forward to the New Testament, where Jesus is called the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world (
John 1:29) and whose death is seen as the sacrifice necessary for the punishment of sin. And in
Revelation 1:5 Jesus is described as the one who “loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood” Therefore, those who connect themselves with Jesus' death are 'passed over' on the day of judgment.
How does this happen? On the day of Pentecost Peter quoted the prophet Joel talking about the day of judgement in language reflected in Revelation 6, and said that “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved” (
Acts 2:21;
Joel 2:32). And calling on the name of the Lord meant repenting of sins and asking him for the forgiveness that is possible because he has died in our place.
The people facing the opening of the scroll of judgement ask: who can stand? The answer is those whose sins have been forgiven by their repentance and trust in Jesus' atoning death.
We don't often talk about judgement. Partly for the correct reason that we should not be pointing out other people's sins. Jesus tells us “Do not judge, or you too will be judged...Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?” (
Matthew 7:1,3). But mainly because we don't like the idea that one day we will be judged, and we will be found guilty and deserving of eternal punishment. We can and should warn people of the actions that God himself has told us are sinful, but we should do that in the knowledge that we too are sinful, and just as guilty as they are.
So what do we do when we look on an image such as this window, which depicts very clearly the consequences of the coming judgement? Do we admire its artistry but dismiss its subject as being a relic of mediæval theology, designed to scare people into submission to church authorities? Do we celebrate our more enlightened thinking and carry on living for the present with no thought for the future? Do we hide behind our wealth, our intelligence, our achievements, our popularity, our good works and hope that God won't notice our sins?
Or do we listen to Jesus, who when describing his coming to judge the living and the dead said “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away” (Matthew 24:35)? He is the firm and steady Rock on whom we can build our lives; he is the Rock in which we can hide so that judgment will pass over us.
Jesus will come again and will judge the living and the dead, and as no-one knows the day or time it may even be today! If the thought of facing the judgement throne of God today makes you uncomfortable in your seat, then good! Come to Jesus, the Lamb who was slain, the Rock who was broken; repent and ask him to break the chains of judgment caused by your sin and wash you clean.
