Easter 2025
May 15, 2025Text: Revelation 7:9-17, John 10:22-30
Grace, Peace, and Mercy from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
It couldn’t be more appropriate to hear today’s reading from Revelation: “I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb”. John, envisioning the redeemed before God’s throne, sees people together, from all nations, speaking different languages, in one spirit before the Lord. It is the promised and desired future of God’s Kingdom, where people from all walks of life are brought together as God’s Beloved community. It is an image of over abounding reconciliation in God, as people from all corners of the world are brought together in praise of God.
As you know, I had the blessing to be in Guatemala this past week, alongside more than 20 young leaders from all over the Lutheran world. Lutheran churches from Brazil, Nicaragua, Malaysia, Sweden, Colombia, Guatemala, El Salvador, Madagascar, South Africa, Germany, Argentina, Czech Republic, Canada, Ethiopia, Puerto Rico, Estonia, and the United States were represented.
We were learning in community how to be Peace Messengers. The main question was, why is this essential to our Christian calling, to be Peace Messengers? To learn how to
wade through conflict and strife and sow the seeds of peace in our own context? Of course, it is essential for us to be peace messengers because we serve the Lamb that is at the center of the Throne, the Christ that has brought salvation to our lives. He is our shepherd who will guide us to the springs of the water of life, and the One who will wipe away all our tears. So recognizing who we are in Christ, we strive to be at peace with each other as Christ’s church. Christ calls us to love and pray for each other, because though we are many, in Christ we are one, we live in and through His peace. We then become signposts of the peace of God’s Kingdom, ready to go out and share the good news.
So even among theological and cultural differences, this group that God called together learned how to love each other across differences and conflicts. The Spirit was moving in surprising ways. We learned to listen attentively to one another, bearing the marks of patience and compassion as we traversed through difference.
Through them, I have learned of the many challenges and conflicts that affect many of my siblings in Christ, the histories that marked and shaped their lives. We shared with each other, to borrow a phrase from the Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano, “the open wounds” of our communities.
There are conflicts that we share in common, between young and old, the powerful vs the weak, the collective vs the individual, those who exclude vs those who include, governments against the marginalized and the weak. We also bared witness as to how sometimes our countries have wounded each other, learning how the United States wounded the people of Guatemala, which led to different factions within Guatemala wounding each other. The histories teach us how in our sin and brokenness, in our self-aggrandizement through power, greed, hatred, violence, apathy, we condemn our neighbors, and ultimately ourselves, to death and suffering.
So what incredibly good news is the Gospel of Jesus Christ! What hope we have been given through the resurrecting power of God’s Kingdom that turns enemies into friends, and weapons are turned to ploughshares for the building of peace. In Christ, God gives us His peace. Through Christ, He shows us the way of peace.
And as we listen and walk with the Risen Jesus, people will wonder: “”Who are these, robed in white, and where have they come from?” Meaning, who are these who in the name of Jesus practice reconciliation, mercy, love with no pretension or self-gain? Who are these who seek the wellbeing of neighbor, and although sinners, forgive each other their sins, and seek new avenues of peace among each other and beyond?
People will wonder and see through our discipleship, that a new existence is possible. That in Christ, God brings the corners of the world together in an embrace of love.
And that, beloved, is a miracle that the Holy Spirit constantly works in us. Our striving faith stakes everything on this peace and vision of God, that we can be made new into beings radiant with God’s love and mercy, that we can foster life and joy in our environment. Our striving faith by God’s grace, makes us close to the voice and life of Jesus which knows us intimately, and from whose hand we can never be snatched away.
You, beloved, are secured in God’s hands. There is nothing to fear, we can act boldly for the neighbor, because this Jesus has brought us a peace that surpasses all understanding, no earthly power can subdue it, the ordeals are overcome. It is a peace that envelops us and inspires in us unceasing praise to the God who Has brough salvation and eternal life.
I had the joy of witnessing a glimpse of this vision from Revelation on the last worship service of my time in Guatemala. Before we received Communion, another form of communion took place among us, in the sharing of the peace.
Often we do not stress the gift of this moment in our liturgy. It is not simply a greeting, it is not a social convention, it is building peace with the person next you, proclaiming to them the peace of God in Christ. Because of Christ, we bury the hatchet and trust in that a way of coexistence and love is possible between ourselves.
It is a moment where we embody the reality of God’s Kingdom and our oneness in Christ. Which is not to say that conflict will not arise again, but that we will be called again and again to this moment, where peace will ultimately prevail over our lives and relationships as One Body of Christ.
And so, on that Thursday evening, young faith leaders from across the world, embraced each other and proclaimed the peace of Christ in their own language. I was able to say, la paz de Cristo, and I received it back in the language of the indigenous people in Guatemala from Petén, in Portuguese, English, Zulu, Malagasy, Cantonese, French, Swedish, German, Estonian, and Czech. And there were tears in our eyes, and big smiles.
The text says that God will wipe away all tears of sorrow, but these were tears of joy. Tears that manifest what God in Jesus Christ has accomplished for us. Tears that desire for this moment to reign beyond that Thursday evening. Tears that fall because in this suffering world that God loves, it seems like the voices of cruelty and callousness roam freely, that peace seems impossible in a world so preoccupied with denying compassion to their neighbor. But such a world will not prevail.
God is the one who raised Jesus from the dead. He is the One that makes the impossible possible. He makes a way where there is no way. He restores the torn
down bridges, and He tears down the walls. God showed up that evening, gave us His peace, and a new world was glimpsed.
“For the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and He will guide them to springs of the water of life”. God delivers on His promise, none of us are snatched away, we are all fully embraced. The church’s task is to testify to the fruit of this promise.
Beloved, it is a gift to share this with you today. It is my great joy to remind you that the peace that brings all corners of the world together in love, embraces you today. That peace is also yours to proclaim. You are called to that great multitude that will praise God.
God holds your hand in peace. I pray that we might all extend it to those we find on the way to God’s Kingdom. Let us pray.