Who hasn’t wavered in faith over a lifetime? Who hasn’t wondered in times of stress, whether they could continue to believe? The death of a loved one who has gone through a period of suffering raises questions for some, “Why did God let her suffer so long?” “Why didn’t God take him sooner?” “What possible good could all that suffering have done?” Sometimes, after such periods of stress, people feel let down by God. While they might not stop believing or practicing their faith, they go in a kind of automatic pilot, as prayer and worship feel routine and merely done out of habit.
The early Christians, to whom the Book of Revelation and John’s Gospel were addressed, had much that stressed their faith. They were shaken by persecution and apostasy. As a result, in the hard times people gave up their practice of faith. Where was Jesus and why hadn’t he returned as he promised? Add to all these outside pressures, the temptation to doubt God brought on by similar issues mentioned above. They, like us, would have wondered where God was when personal tragedies to their families and loved ones occurred.
Believers under stress can feel very insecure, as if they are losing their grip on God. You can hear the background of suffering in the lives of the earliest Christians in our readings from the Book of Revelation and the gospel of John. But what our sacred writers tell us today is that, even when we feel in free-fall God hasn’t lost hold of us.
Sure hands are essential and necessary assets for most athletes. But even the best baseball player can drop a routine pop-up, causing the winning run to score and the home team to lose. But Jesus, the Shepherd, won’t drop us. “No one can take them out of my hand.” We believers need those sure hands when life struggles try to pull us to the ground.
The earliest apostles Paul and Barnabas must have been tempted to think that God had left them on their own. In Acts we hear about their preaching methods. When they arrived in a new town, they would first go to the synagogue on the Sabbath to preach. But their message in Antioch met hostility from some, “and with the violent abuse contradicted what Paul had said.”
Rather than give up they made a critical move. They realized the message of salvation wasn’t just meant for the Jewish community, but for the whole world. Christ had not abandoned them. Out of initial failure and frustration the sure hands of the Shepherd opened the way for the world to hear the Good News.
The Book of Revelation describes a series of visions addressed to believers undergoing trial. Some people read the visions in Revelation as a roadmap to discover when, at some future time, our world will end and the end-time begin. It’s not a book that predicts the future, but a lens to help us interpret the present and give us hope in the Shepherd who speaks to us today in John’s Gospel.
In today’s passage from Revelation, “the great multitude” is wearing white robes, “holding palm branches in their hands” — signs of victory. Finally! Victory — after having “survived the time of great distress…!” The struggling and long-suffering ones have been shepherded by the Lamb. What a combination of images! The one who is the Shepherd is also the Lamb, who was one of us through suffering and death. He who has made that arduous journey first, will not let go of us, but will walk ahead of us, leading us to eternal life.
Hear the promise in the midst of this moment of our lives: no matter the difficulties and tests that would pull us off the path, we have the Shepherd’s assurance, “… they shall never perish. No one can take them out of my hand.”
We moderns have the Internet, microwaves and jet travel, but we live as the early Christians did, in a world with temptations and suffering. In addition, our church is divided into factions over liturgy, authority, forms of ministry, doctrinal disputes, etc. — as was theirs. Among Christian denominations there are deep rifts. So, we pull up a chair and sit besides our forbearers in faith who heard Revelation for the first time.
With them we hear the promise of a final gathering of all peoples before God. Until that happens we hold to the assurance that, “The one who sits on the throne will shelter them.” God’s love and power will embrace us all, whatever our backgrounds, national origins, races, first languages, etc. We will be a new creation gathered around a bountiful table. “They will not hunger or thirst anymore, nor will the sun or heat strike them.”
The author of Revelation should have started the next sentence, “In the meanwhile….” Because the reading isn’t just a look into the future. It’s about how we are to live here and now. We trust in the guiding hand and voice of the Shepherd who assures us of our secure place, “No one can take them out of the Father’s hand.” Revelation gives us a vision: a prospective we don’t have on our own. In a competing and divided world we receive a vision of our mutuality. We are interdependent; our present and our future are entwined. We cannot live lives of indifference and isolation; not if we plan to go before, “the one who sits on the throne” and be fed together at the same table.
The vision Revelation gives us has already begun to happen: at this eucharistic feast we have a kind of down payment on the future that we expect to share with one another. For the present, we can see — what will be one day, is already happening. God is drawing us together and so we might as well live now cooperating with that vision and promise of unity.