“Alleluia, for the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth.”

(Revelation 19:5)

The power of God in natural forces operates without let or hindrance. The law of gravity never lapses. It is always holding in a vise-like grip all things on this spinning planet of ours, even the atmosphere, so that not even one speck of dust has ever eluded this relentless force.

The same is true of the explosive power of steam. Water always turns into steam when heat is applied up to 212 degrees of Fahrenheit at sea level, and always, in the escape of steam power, is released. The natural power packed in gunpowder, in gasoline, in uranium can be released and always is released when the proper scientific procedure is followed.

Only in the moral and spiritual order has God permitted a recalcitrant force. This is a great problem for theological and metaphysical thinkers. Why would an all-powerful God, who is also all-good and all-wise, permit in the universe He has created the possibility of rebellion on the part of His created human beings? Why does God make room for men and women to break the moral law and bring evil, hurt, crime and tragedy into human affairs? Why doesn’t God use His power for good to blast evil out of existence?

This “why” has never been satisfactorily fathomed by human beings. But it has been demonstrated in our world that the moral and spiritual power of God for good can be released in human life and human history. Teilhard De Chardin, the celebrated Roman Catholic paleontologist said: “There is no concept more familiar to us than spiritual energy, yet there is none that is more opaque scientifically.”

But this power of God does operate in the human and moral and spiritual realm. It is capable not only of discovery, but also of description and release.

It is at this point that we find so helpful the highly symbolic passage of scripture from the Book of Revelation, which we read a few minutes ago. In broad outline, there are three categories of reality described here. Each has to do with power. One is the throne set up in heaven; a second is the company of 24 elders, also on thrones about the great heavenly throne; and third, the four living creatures described as covered all over with eyes, one having the form of a lion, another that of an ox, another of an eagle, and the last, the form of a man.

What does all this strange, unscientific, symbolic imagery mean? A throne is a symbol of power. We are all familiar with the lavishly bejeweled Peacock throne of Iran, symbolizing for the Iranian people the cruel, brutalizing power of their long-hated and now deposed Shah. The author of the Book of Revelation in his description of a throne set up in heaven is saying that God sits on the throne of this universe. He is in control. It is interesting to note that in every chapter of Revelation, save just four, a throne is described as set up and on it sits God, ruling His universe.

Gathered about that throne are 24 elders, figures representing the Old Testament and the New Testament Church — the twelve tribes of Israel and the 12 Apostles of the New Testament Church. The elders are also described as sitting on thrones, symbolizing the power of God conveyed through His church. These are the ones who on earth have served this faith in the power of God and proclaim as in a mighty chorus: “The Lord God Omnipotent reigneth. Alleluia, Alleluia!”

This is their song in epochs of human misery and woe, when evil is temporarily in the ascendancy — such as John’s day when he wrote to a persecuted church when “martyrs were dying in the Roman Coliseum rather than deny their Christian faith. When the people of Coventry, England rebuilt their bomb blasted cathedral after World War II, quite fittingly the theme chosen for the great altar tapestry was that of “Christ in Majesty” as described in Revelation 4. It depicts on a mammoth expanse of 74 by 40 feet, the largest tapestry ever woven in one piece, Christ seated in majesty surrounded by the four living creatures. They are the symbols of the evangelists. We know this from the creatures selected: the lion for Mark, the ox for Luke, the man for Matthew, the eagle for John.

The author of Revelation is proclaiming his conviction that the Lord God, all powerful, reigns upon the throne of His universe, in the natural order and in the moral and spiritual order; that God’s church is the custodian of God’s moral and spiritual power, which is released in human lives and human affairs through the gospel committed to the Church. This same understanding of how the power of God operates in human affairs is voiced by St. Paul in his epistle to the Roman Christians: “I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth, to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.”

How can we translate this New Testament understanding of St. John and St. Paul about the power of God in terms of our situation in the world today?

The struggle for power supremacy in the world now centers strangely more and more in Africa and the Middle East: Egypt, Israel, Jordan, and the emerging Palestinian state. We watch with amazement and trepidation the troubled Balkans where our heroic American armed forces there are seeking to bring genuine peace to the Bosnian, Serbian, and Croation people after four years of cruel warfare.

While our attention is riveted on Africa and the Middle East and the Balkans and the superficial power plays we see developing there, it behooves us to probe deeper in the same locals for other centers of power — specifically to Nazareth and its crucified Carpenter, and to a hospital in Equatorial Africa where Albert Schweitzer, an Alsatian physician, lived out his long life spent in healing sick natives, rather than choosing to enrich himself and his family by digging for oil or mining for diamonds.

When the 90 year old Alsatian Christian doctor died, the whole world took note of his passing. What was so remarkable about this man that the whole world stopped to do him homage? Norman Cousins said that “more important than what Schweitzer did for others, was what others have done because of him and the power of his example.” At least half a dozen hospitals in impoverished, remote areas have been established because of him. Wherever the Schweitzer story has been known, lives have been changed. At 37 years of age, Larimer Mellon was making a career out of being a rich man’s son. Then he read about Schweitzer. It blasted him out of one kind of life and into another. He returned to college. He went to medical school. Then he trekked off to Haiti in one of the neediest spots in the Western Hemisphere to found his Albert Schweitzer Hospital of Haiti.

Then there was the young American named Fergus Pope who was traveling through Africa on a motorcycle safari. Out of curiosity he stopped at the Schweitzer Hospital. That visit changed the entire course of his life. He returned to college, which he had not intended to do, became a physician, and went to join the staff at Schweitzer’s Lambarene Hospital. So has the incredible Schweitzer influence transformed scores of people.

But what is the secret of the release of this power in the world, a power which Norman Cousins described as “a greater force than armed men on the march”? What is it?

In a letter to a friend in 1931, Albert Schweitzer said: “I went to Africa in obedience to Jesus.” For him it was just that simple and direct: “I went to Africa in obedience to Jesus.”

Once when an injured man arrived by boat at the hospital in Lambarene, one of the African attendants recognizing the patient, said to Schweitzer: “Refuse him, doctor. He was here before and stole the very drugs he was healed with and sold them in the village. A thief he is and has no claim on us again.” But Schweitzer asked: “What would the Lord Jesus have answered when someone came to him in pain? Quick, let us waste no time. Get him to the operating room.”

What does the Schweitzer approach to human pain and misery say to us about our duty in the world’s dilemma over the peace initiative in the Balkans if we recall the words of Jesus: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.”

The secret of the release of the healing, transforming, redeeming power of God in the world through His servant, Albert Schweitzer, was, as he so clearly and simply put it — “obedience to Jesus.” Schweitzer was willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for the moral principle.

But the Gospel of obedience to Jesus Christ, which is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth, releases the power of God in human life only when it is taught and learned and obeyed. Schweitzer could never have gone to Africa in obedience to Jesus if he had never known what Jesus commanded in stern moral injunction to his disciples: “He who would save his life shall lose it, but he who will lose his life (lay it down) for my sake and the gospel’s, shall save it unto life eternal.” If he had never heard, nor believed, nor learned this, how could he have lived and died by it?

Someone overwhelmed by the powerlessness he finds in our contemporary American church wrote these sad words: “Whether it is in the city or in the suburb or in the country, the church is a quagmire of inertia, a social club of those who have arrived … In recent years the American church has confronted the hardest task of all, converting the Christian, and it has failed. Its nominal members are choking it to death, and its tiny cadre of Christians are choking with it.”

How can God revive His church and set up again His thrones of power for releasing His redeeming, transforming, healing power through the church? A Christian woman wrote a letter to one of our church papers telling about the power of God she had experienced in her life and what she was going to do with it. She wrote: “Two weeks ago I was critically ill, but God reached down His hand and brought me back from the valley of the shadow of death. I do not know why He did this for me. I do know, however, that after your life has been spared, your evaluation of yourself and of others takes on a new aspect … You find yourself less critical of others, and more eager to be certain that your own life measures up to God’s expectations … I am anxious to be back in the House of the Lord, to be laboring among His people; to keep my eyes on Jesus and the cross, and to strive for Christlikeness.”

Yes, for all of us, the key to the release of the divine power in human life is simply this obedience to Jesus. The powerlessness of the church is the inevitable result of disobedient Christians.

Let us all remember the words of Bishop Gore, which he always used to address candidates for ordination in the ministries of the church. On the night before they took their vows, he said to them: “Tomorrow, as you kneel to take your ordination vows, I shall be asking you, “Wilt thou? Wilt thou?”, but I say to you that another day will come for you, when you shall stand before another on a great white throne, who shall say to you, ‘Hast thou, Hast thou?’”

 

PASTORAL PRAYER

Here we are, Our Father, here again in Thy house, Thy well-fed, comfortably clothed and housed children — we, who have work to do and money to spend and homes to live in and friends to enjoy. Added to all these blessings we have also received from Thee a measure of faith, else we would not be here now, bowed in Thy presence, waiting for a glimpse of Thy glory and a touch of Thy strong spirit to transform our lives.

But Father, we are often anxious and troubled and sometimes afraid. Our anxiety and bewilderment and fear are not hid from Thee. Thou knowest the secret desires of our hearts and all our thoughts. Thou knowest about us even that which we hide from our own discernment: the secret selfishness which holds us back from complete commitment of our lives to Thy service, the lurking pride which goes after glory for self rather than God, even in god-like acts; the simmering self-righteousness which persuades our gullible souls that we are the people.

Yea, Lord, Thou knowest we are anxious and puzzled and afraid, and Thou knowest why: because we have not served Thy righteous kingdom to the extent of satisfying sacrifice; because we have not loved Thee with sufficient abandon; because our faith has been so small that taking hold of Thee will have held also the world, oh, so tight. So we are strained and stretched and scared.

Grant us, O Lord our God, the courage and the faith to cut ourselves free from the moorings which hold our harbor-locked hearts and sail forth on life’s voyage with Him alone who is all and has all to bestow bounteously upon His own, even Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.