the priest just kind of laughed, the deacon caught a draft

she crashed into the easter mass with her hair done up in broken glass

Second Sermon from the Revelation Sermon-Series, Chapters 6 & 7

One of my favorite bands is The Hold Steady. They’re from the New York, rock-revival scene of the early aughts. 

Really, it’s not the best scene to be identified with. But, these guys originally hail from the midwest, and they’re Catholic to boot.

So they’re a cool amalgamation, midwestern Christians, trying to make a go of it in New York, with rock 'n roll of all things! 

And the only way they could pull that off was by knowing a thing or two about what Paul called the scandal of the cross. The one-way street of grace. Their songs are chock-full of characters who aren’t looking for grace, only to end up tripping over it; because God planted it square in the middle of their lives. 

One of The Hold Steady’s best albums, is the concept album that broke them through to a larger audience, “Separation Sunday.” It’s a epic, sprawling, dirtbag chronicle of “Holly.” 

The album begins with her giving a warning. She can’t be trusted, she’s going to go with whoever can get her the highest… And as she chases those highs, she falls in with the wrong crowd. A motley crew, on a terrifying binge across the United States. 

Every song on this album is full of hardboiled grace in the worst of life. 

And that’s the way this last book in the Bible, Revelation, works too. 

But I want you to think of Revelation more like a movie than an album, though.

Although there is a lot of singing in Revelation…

What Revelation does is, though, take those songs we know so well, and sets them to the tune of broken radiators and chipped paint. 

Shows them being sung, not  in a spotless sanctuaries, but in the middle of a day you’d rather forget. By a choir that isn’t professional, but made up of the folks who may only come through these doors to attend to their weekly meeting, to thank God for one more week of sobriety. 

Folks who know what it’s like to sing, “But when I think / that God his son not sparing, / sent him to die, / I scarce can take it in! / That on the cross / my burden gladly bearing(?) / he bled and died to take away my sin?!?”

And that’s exactly what’s happening today as the first four seals on the scroll the lamb took from the hand of God are broken…

But here’s the deal, John didn’t need any those seals broken to see the chaos they let loose. 

Rome perennial enemy, the Parthians, were excellent horsemen and archers. Just like that first rider, conquering left and right. And John had lived through the internal turmoil that followed the assignation of Emperor Caligula. Like the second rider, setting people at each other’s throats. And John didn’t need to see the third rider setting the price of staples outrageously high but subsidizing the price of luxuries, either. He just had to visit the poorer members of his parish to see that.

And the fourth seal is an accumulation of the first three, Death with hell at his heels. And again, John needs no seal to be broken to see that. He just has to look around. Unjustly sentenced to exile. Members of his parish killed for confessing their faith. 

It’s how the great second song on Separation Sunday, “Cattle and the Creeping Things” puts it: 

“They got to the part with the cattle and the creeping things. Said, I’m pretty sure we’ve heard that one before. And don’t it all end up in some revelation? With four guys and horses, and violent red visions? Famine and Death and Pestilence and War? Pretty sure I’ve heard this one before.”

Because the thing about those first four seals is, they don’t reveal anything new. John had already seen all that before. And so have we.

But what John’s vision does reveal, is these calamities placed in their context. John’s vision sets these terrors next to the cross of Jesus Christ, within the scroll of Jesus’ death and resurrection…

Now our passage today didn’t include what happens next, but you need to know. The fifth seal is the people of God who lost their lives for their faith crying out for justice.

The sixth seal is all hell breaking loose. An earthquake, the sun is blotted out, the moon becoming blood red, stars falling to the earth like  acorns from an oak during a storm, the sky rolled up like a scroll, and mountains and islands just disappearing. 

As all that happens, the cry goes out. A cry we’ve wondered too, “who can stand in the midst of all this?”

And at very the moment the story seems to veer out of control, everything halts! 

The final seal isn’t broken. Instead, there’s a pause, an interlude. Four angels come and hold back the winds of destruction. In that reprieve, another angel comes to mark God’s people…

And that’s where our passage picks back up; John looking to see the likes of those who have been marked. And what he sees is a crowd! A crowd too large to count!

And not only that, either! Because, they’re standing! 

When the sixth seal was broken. As the four horsemen of the apocalypse seemed to have their day. While the martyrs cried out for justice, only to be told to wait. As the sun and moon failed; the question we’ve all wondered was cried out to heaven, “Who can stand amidst this?”

But John was given no answer. Instead, he was shown one. A people made capable of standing amidst it all. A people who can keep on their feet in the face of anything and everything!

An elder tells John just who these people are, “They’re the one’s who have come through the great tribulation. Just by the skin of their teeth. But here they are standing!” 

And now, as they stand on the other side, they can’t help but to praise the one who got them through. The one who marked them beforehand. The one who promised not to lose a single one of his sheep. Jesus the Lamb, Jesus the good shepherd!

See, the truth is, what’s most frightening about the four horsemen and their reign of terror, is the fact that they’re let loose by the scroll! Because we’ve all already seen their destruction for ourselves. What we haven’t been able to see is that chaos as the background in those cute portraits of Jesus carrying the little lamb…

Because we never think that grace could show up in the middle of famine or death or pestilence or war. Our imagination of the ways of grace are altogether too small. 

We only imagine grace showing up on Sunday morning, when we wake up ready to go, when we come to church looking just so, a little early even, with the children behaving perfectly to boot!

But life rarely plays out like that, doesn’t it?

What John’s vision does is rattle us awake to the promise that God’s grace is a hardboiled grace. A grace that can show up in the worst of life. A grace that can show up in the thick of it, as we say. 

The album “Separation Sunday,” ends with the perfect track, “How a Resurrection Really Feels.”

As the album follows Holly’s terrifying binge across the US, the high she chased, stop being all that high. In the penultimate track, “Crucifixion Cruise,” she wakes up in a new booth, a confession booth. She asks God, “what a soft girl whose fallen on hard times should do.”

When she gets the courage to walk out of the booth, it turns out to be Easter Sunday. Holly goes to the priest and asks, “Father, can I tell your congregation how a resurrection really feels?”

And she finally the truth about herself. Who she was. What’s she’s been through. 

But that’s not all, either. Because it turns out, Holly is one of the great crowd that's been marked. God had her all along. In fact, it turns out Holly isn’t her real name, “It’s Hallelujah.” 

And Hallelujah knows about a thing or two about the one way street of grace. She knows what it’s like to be carried through the great tribulation. To wake up one morning in the undercarriage of God’s grace, when it was the last thing you were looking for. 

And so do you.
And if you don’t yet, you will. 

Because that’s the way grace is. It doesn’t show up where you think it should. It shows up when you need it. Where all your pretensions, and everything else you’ve relied on fail. 

Those places where you see, for yourself, that what seems godforsaken, is not left out of the scroll of the Lamb. The book of Jesus’ triumph of salvation. The story of hardboiled grace.

There is no part of the world, your story, your life your savior is afraid of. 

And when you find that’s true. That Paul was right, nothing can separate us from the love of God. When the mark you were given in your baptism makes you to stand when life had knocked you down, you’ll know why the unruly choir of the redeemed never stops singing. 

You’ll know what it’s like to sing, “How Great thou Art.” Not because it’s in the hymnal, but because of the love of God has lifted you up.

The love of God is a hardboiled love. It knows a thing or two about the jagged edges of life. The stops and starts. The places where we can’t stand on our own. The places when we look around and cry out, “who can stand.”