Homily from April 29, 2007 4th Sunday of Easter

During these weeks after Easter, our second reading has been from the book of Revelation, and I have to confess, I've never really liked that book. It's hard to understand, isn't it? And it has a lot of scary images. So last week I was giving a lot of thought to it and reflection on it.
One little comment I read about the images that made sense to me is that the images are strange to us, but they weren't strange to the people of their day. They were very common. When you and I see political cartoons with donkeys and elephants fighting with each other, it makes perfect sense to us, doesn't it? A hundred years from now it might not make any sense at all. So it is with those images there.
The word "revelation" and the Greek word for the book of Revelation, really means "lifting a veil" as if what is really happening is hidden from our eyes, and a veil is suddenly lifted and we see it. And I want to comment specifically about an image in today's reading, the great multitude standing before God's throne, of every race and nation and language and people and tongue. Now, close your eyes for a minute, and what is your image of that great multitude?
What did it look like? Anybody want to describe what it looked like to them?
[Inaudible]
“Endless, it went on and on and on.” Okay.
[Inaudible]
“A background filled with dots that were all different shapes and colors.”
[Inaudible]
Eileen said it included familiar faces, people you know.
How many of us are like that? I think most of us would include people we know, right? When I first did it, mine looked remarkably comfortable, like me. So then I began asking myself, "Who wasn't in my picture?" Do you know what I mean? How many of us genuinely had people of different races in that picture? Okay.
How many had people of different cultures? Different tongues?
Great. I think it's a good check. One of the things as I was reading and reflecting on it, too, this image of judgment that runs throughout the book of Revelation. I want to share with you a fact.
The church has declared many people to be saints and to be in heaven. Has it ever declared anybody to be damned? Seriously, what do you think? Has it? Not Martin Luther. I asked a question. The truth is, in our long history the church has never declared anybody to be damned. One of the classics that would come to mind would be Judas, and it's always taught you can't say that he's in hell. Why not?
[Inaudible]
We don't know whether he asked for God's forgiveness. We don't know how God's grace may have entered his life. And so, anyway, as I reflected on it ‑‑ in fact, it would be the greatest of presumption to ever say anybody wasn't in heaven. I'll leave that to the fundamentalists to say they know with certainty that somebody is not in heaven, but the Church has never said that, because it has always held out the possibility of grace.
And anyway, my reading in my reflection on the book of Revelation led me to a short story by a Southern writer, Flannery O'Connor. She wrote a lot of short stories. She was a Catholic writer from the South. She has a wonderful story called Revelation. And the central figure in the story is Mrs. Turpin. Mrs. Turpin is a very pleasant, somewhat heavyset Southern woman who goes to bed every night thanking God that He made her the way he did, thanking God that he didn't make her white trash, thanking God that he didn't make her black, thanking God that he didn't make her...
Well, anyway, as I said that ‑ how many of you have ever thanked God that you were born American? If we were honest, haven't we, if we look at all of the world? “Thank God you made me an American and not somebody that lived in one of those other countries.”
We're all white here. How many of you have you have ever thanked God that you were white? How many of you ‑ I might get on dangerous territory here ‑ how many of you men have ever thanked God that He made you a man?
How many women have ever thanked God that He made you a woman? Good.
Well, I ask those questions to say how much we have in common with Mrs. Turpin, who every night went to bed thanking God that he made her the way she was. Well, anyway, in this short story Mrs. Turpin is in a doctor's office, and she goes on and on with her litany, "Thank God I'm not like white trash" and "Thank God I'm not like blacks," and of course she's using the Southern language of the 50's that I won't use. And "Thank God I'm not like everybody else." And it explodes with a young girl from Wellesley College throwing a psychology book and hitting her in the eye, and throttling her and saying, "Go back to hell where you belong to, you old warthog."
Well, Mrs. Turpin can't let go of this. She sees it as a message from God. Has that ever happened to anybody here? That somebody threw something like that at you and it stung deeply and you couldn't let it go, and you couldn't help but wonder if it was a message from God? I know it's happened to me.
Mrs. Turpin afterwards is angry at God and she yells at God and she says, "Why me? How am I like a warthog? How can I be like a warthog and like me, too?" And she yells at God, and of course, God is silent. And then what she sees is a vision of a great throng of people going up to heaven. And there are freaks and lunatics and white trash, clean for the first time, and blacks, and all of the people that she didn't like. And bringing up the rear are people like herself, the only ones singing on key, and of course walking with great dignity and upholding the order as they always have, but she can see by the shocked look on their faces that even their virtues are being burned away.
Well, anyway, as I thought of that great multitude - and then I thought, what would I see today? I might see the Arab images I see on TV of angry people shouting and yelling "death to America." I might see them leading the procession, and all sorts of freaks and lunatics and people that I don't want, and all sorts of people that I would never imagine, and people like myself bringing up the rear, shocked, and maybe even my sense of righteousness and goodness is being burnt away.
Well, I think as I reflected on the book of Revelation, its story is beneath everything that we see around us, beneath the smallness and the sameness of our little group of people gathered today. What is really happening in the world, if we could pull back the veil and see? God is gathering a people of every race, language, nation, and creed into a great multitude to sing His praises, and there isn't anything on this earth that I can exclude from that new heaven and new earth that God has created. The certainty of judgment is there. I can't presume that our way of life is going to survive; I can't presume that America will survive; I can't presume that our economy will survive. That new heaven and new earth might be quite strange to me, but as surely as I am here today, God is creating that, and nothing can be excluded from God's grace, and nothing can be excluded from God's judgment, and somehow we hold those together.
By the way, I was reading - when I was reading on this - I came across a wonderful quote from Martin Luther, and he said, "The real question isn't whether we are sheep or goats, but whether God is herbivorous or carnivorous. And if God is carnivorous we'll all be devoured." And anyway, I'll just leave you with that interesting quote.