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In the fifth chapter of Revelation, there is described a scene of great poignancy in the midst of Heaven. The scroll of Revelation stands ready, its words the key to unlock the mystery of man's redemption. But none can take the scroll and open it. The writer weeps and asks is there no one who can do this. His question is answered with words of comfort and assurance. Yes, there is one. The Lion of Judah, the majestic, strong, conquering representative of God, the mighty victor in every battle, the sign of divine triumph. The eyes of all Heaven then turn expectantly to the throne. And there, before the assembled multitude of angels and archangels, the circle of elders and the four living creatures appears - a Lamb. A Lamb with its throat cut. No less a conquering hero and yet also a suffering victim.
In his torn body and spilling blood he bears the sins of humanity and brings deliverance. It is he who approaches the throne, takes the scroll, and opens it, and at that moment all Heaven erupts into song, the air is filed with swirling clouds of incense and music is heard that has never been heard before. "Worthy is the Lamb, the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honour and glory and praise."
All the songs of praise that have risen from Christendom, from the ancient chants of the Orthodox East to the Hallelujah Chorus, to a Sunday School class singing 'Jesus loves me this I know' - all of them have their roots in the appearance of the Lamb of God on the centre stage of Heaven and history. For the Lamb is none other than the Christ who became incarnate in our flesh and through whom alone God achieved what God alone could do.
We have begun with the poetry of Revelation and the echoes of it must never be far from our ears. For all our preachers' sermons, all our theologians' speculations are, at the end of the day, human attempts to explain what is inexplicable, to fathom what is unfathomable, to articulate what is beyond words. Oh, we need our efforts but all our doctrines are merely incomplete efforts to write music, the music of Heaven.
We may have an idea or doctrine we find especially helpful or meaningful even if it is not the total symphony. That is, no matter what we say and write about the events of today there will always be more to say, above and below in harmony. Indeed, perhaps the one great truth about the Atonement is that it is a song that cannot be sung in unison. It's a song that tells us how God, in Jesus, saved us. But what is it from which God, in Jesus, has saved us? For an answer, we must turn our faces from the joyous rapture of Heaven and look to our world.
From the poetry of John the Divine, we now turn to the poetry of John Milton whose epic “Paradise Lost” begins with words at once majestic and foreboding. "Of Man's first disobedience and the fruit of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste brought Death into the world and all our woe, with loss of Eden till one greater man restore us and regain the heavenly seat.”
The mortal taste of death, all our woes, loss of Eden. These, in Milton's poetic theology stand for those things in life which cause us pain, tears, bewilderment, and fear. These are the soprano, alto, tenor and bass lines of human misery which Martin Luther called the Four Tyrants - Death, Alienation, Guilt, and Suffering. The Lamb must silence their dissonance if we are to sing a new song in a strange and terrible land.
Death is the one universal human experience. Medical science has progressed astronomically since the Stone Age, but the death ratio has been constant since the dawn of time. 1:1. It is the final rendezvous at which none of us can fail to show up. It is the irrefutable symptom of a world whose sickness is terminal.
We may think of it often, or not at all, scoff it, fear it, deny it, but it is the chess player who knows all the moves, the debater with whom we cannot argue. We may be angry and, as Dylan Thomas wrote, "Rage, rage against the dying of the light", but all our anger is merely a child's kick against a locked door. And trying, as so many do, to make human life more comfortable, human beings happier, healthier, and more affluent without God, leaves Death not only as the last enemy, but also the final victor. It is the Lamb alone who can be the death of Death and Hell's destruction.
The tyrant of Alienation is that deep sense we share of feeling at odds with the world. We see it in Charlie Brown's encounters with Lucy as her verbal shredding leave his self-confidence in tatters. In ourselves, it is in our relationships at those moments when we feel like square pegs.
Nowhere is it more vividly portrayed than in the opening chapters of Genesis as Adam and Eve become alienated first from their bodies and resort to the ridiculous defence of a fig-leaf. Then they are alienated from God, and the earth, and each other. And lastly, they find to their horror that their alienation is hereditary as son kills brother. It is the Lamb alone who can reconcile all that has been alienated and rend the veil of the Temple, the symbolic divider between God and Man, in twain.
Guilt is the burden of unforgiven sin. It is difficult to deal with because it often comes to us in disguise, the alter ego, the me that is not me, the accuser at my side, filling me with a sense of failure and futility. Guilt stands at our side in time of bereavement making death more cruel by reminding us of all the good things we could or should have said and done and the things we said and did which were devoid of love, care, and compassion. It stalks our memories.
And guilt haunts our attempts to have a relationship with God. Guilt warps our vision and turns a loving God who stretches out an open hand of welcome into an angry God ready to pound us with a fist. Guilt mocks us by reminding us that the lips which form our prayers are stained with lies; that the hands which reach out for the sacramental bread and cup have reached out for less savoury things. And we despair, as Hamlet's King Claudius and cry, "My words fly up, my thoughts remain below. Words without thoughts never to Heaven go." It is the Lamb alone who brings us the assurance of forgiveness which we ourselves cannot provide.
And, finally, Suffering - the greatest testimony to the reality of injustice in the blind and insensible operations of nature. If man bears responsibility for what he has done to his fellow human beings and to the world, the world is also answerable to man. This is the burden of the book of Job. His friends trot out all the old arguments, including the one that misfortune is a punishment for sin.
But Job objects that suffering cannot be a punishment because there is no comparison between the life lived and the pain endured. Suffering fails the basic test of justice - proportionality. It is arbitrary and while it comes to us because while we live, as every other creature, subject to the laws of nature, we alone of all creation ask the question "Why?" It is the Lamb alone who can dispel our fears and questions.
Four tyrants, then - Death, Alienation, Guilt and Suffering. These are the dark chords which compose the music of this world and which we are doomed to hear and sing by our own efforts. It can only be drowned out by the music which comes from above, the music of the Lamb, the Lion, God's Messiah, the Christ who wrests our salvation from the maelstrom.
It is his song we must learn to sing and it is to him we turn.