Hymns: Is He Worthy (2)

Introduction- The Avengers

As I was thinking about both this hymn, and the text for today, there’s one movie clip that just kept coming to this nerd’s mind over and over again.

For those who are uninitiated, Thor in the comic books carries a hammer named Moijnir, and only someone who is worthy of the power of Thor is able to lift it.

Which, when you have that kind of opportunity in front of you, obviously leads to this:

<play clip>

No one can lift it!

No one is worthy!

Captain America gets it to wiggle a little bit, but not even he can lift it.

(Stay with me nerds, I know what happens later…but still!)

No one is worthy!

Are we?

Revelation

The angel asks a question they already know the answer to.

This has been interesting to me all week!

As we were practicing and preparing to sing the hymn for this morning, I kept thinking “If you’ve been in church for any length of time, surely this hymn is just asking questions you already know the answer to, right?”

Do you know the world is broken? We do!

Do you know that all the dark won’t stop the light from getting through? We do!

Does the Father truly love us? He does!

Does the Spirit move among us? He does!

These are all questions we should know the answer to, and yet there’s a beauty in singing this hymn by way of reminder isn’t there?

In fact the there’s even a line in the hymn: Is it good that we remind ourselves of this? It is!

Why I think that’s interesting is what happens in verse two of revelation:

Revelation 5:2 “and I saw a mighty angel proclaiming with a loud voice, “Who is worthy to open the scroll and break its seals?””

I don’t know much about the mechanics of how heaven works or what angels are privy too, but surely at this point in the story, at the end of all that is, the angel knows the question to this one, right?

In this case it is indeed the classic Sunday School answer.

Jesus!

Jesus alone is worthy to open the scroll!

Jesus alone is worthy to usher in the end.

Jesus alone can bring heaven’s ultimate completion to pass not just for himself, but for the whole creation.

For you and me.

Jesus alone is worthy.

Surely the angel knows that already, right?

A heavenly competition?

Verse three kind of sounds like our clip a little bit, doesn’t it?

Revelation 5:3 “And no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll or to look into it.”

I imagine everyone steps up to the scroll.

Mother Teresa

Mr. Rogers

Ozzy Osborn

No matter who steps up to the scroll, no one can open it.

No matter how much good you do, or how much praying you offer up, or how earnest your worship is, none of us will be worthy.

We can’t open the scroll.

We can’t usher in the end.

We can’t bring heaven to completion.

We can’t earn our way.

Here comes the Lamb

The lamb that’s big and buff?

The Lamb that’s a mighty warrior?

The Lamb that looks a lot like Captain America?

No.

This is the Lamb that was slain.

This was the Lamb who was defeated.

This was the Lamb who bears the scars of the cross.

That’s the one.

That’s the Lamb who’s worthy to open the scroll.

All of that opens up to us a question:

Who is “worthy” in our world?

The worthy of the world.

The mighty

The folks who hit the gym with regularity so that they have great biceps, are they worthy?

The folks that everyone winds up being afraid of, because that’s the way they it, keeping everyone in fear? Are they worthy?

The powerful

The ones who have been elected to the right office?

The ones who have the most followers? Are they worthy?

The beautiful

Think about social media.

Think about how fake everything is shaking up to be, because we think that if you’re beautiful that you’re worthy.

So we spend countless hours putting on a show, so that folks think we’re beautiful, even when we’re very much not beautiful?

All the make up tips and video filters in the world can’t help if you’re not beautiful in the soul.

And even if you’re both, just being beautiful on it’s own, does that make you worthy?

The successful

The folks who have the most wins in their column, are they worthy?

The folks with the biggest bank accounts, are they worthy?

The ones with the corner office, are they worthy?

This is what the world says makes you worthy.

But what if we were more worthy like the Lamb?

Worthy like Jesus

The outcast

Turns out that the ones on the edges, the ones that everyone would rather be without?

The ones that no one wants to look at?

They’re closer to worthy in the Kingdom.

The lost

Those who can’t find their way through this life, who are always asking questions, who are always seeking?

Those who may never have set foot in a church, but are earnestly seeking the truth in this world?

They’re closer to worthy in the Kingdom.

The left out

The lonely

The burned out

The exhausted

These are all closer to worthy in the Kingdom of God.

But even with that in mind, no one else is worthy!

In all heaven and earth, there’s no one who’s worthy to open that scroll.

The Lamb is worthy so we don’t have to be.

This is grace

Yesterday I was at a wedding, and the officiant gave an INCREDIBLE sermon on love.

She said even though you can’t accurately describe love, we keep on trying!

We’ve written so many love songs to do our best!

I feel the same way about grace.

We can’t describe it, but we keep on trying!

Richard Rohr says it this way

Grace is not what we deserve by doing the right things, but rather a gift freely given by the Creator in the very act of creation, even if we do not yet believe in its source. Knowing the source somehow just makes it easier to keep saying thank you.

John Ortberg says it this way:

Your guilt and your inadequacies are no longer the ultimate truth about you. You are what you are, but that’s not all that you are. You are what you are, but you are not yet what you will be.

C.S. Lewis said

The central Christian belief is that Christ’s death has somehow put us right with God and given us a fresh start.

Brennen Manning brings it home:

Getting honest with ourselves does not make us unacceptable to God. It does not distance us from God, but draws us to him—as nothing else cant—and opens us anew to the flow of grace.

You can’t earn it

I feel like so many of us in the Christian life are trying our level best to be worthy.

I feel like we’re walking up to the hammer and doing everything we can to lift it.

We’re straining. We’re sweating. Some of us are turning in to giant green rage monsters.

Some of us celebrate when the thing moves just a wee little bit, even if we haven’t lifted it.

We are just wearing ourselves out some of us trying to be worthy!

We show up in church, some of us, not because we want to worship God but because we want others to see us in church!

And we do the inverse of this too, we judge people when we don’t see them in church for a while!

We make sure that we’re in Bible studies and small groups so that we can learn as much as we can.

We stress ourselves out wondering if we’ve done enough good in the world, if we’ve earned our keep by way of our mission and ministry.

We beat ourselves up trying to be worthy.

And I want to be as clear on this point as I possibly can.

We are not worthy!

We are not worthy!

We are not worthy!

We cannot open the scroll.

We cannot save ourselves.

We cannot do what needs to be done to get to heaven.

Only he can…and he already has!

Worthy is the lamb that was slain.

Worthy is the lamb that went to the cross, and had you and me in mind when he did.

Worthy is Jesus Christ, who showed us how to live the Kingdom life on this earth.

Worthy is Jesus Christ, who no matter how many times we turn our backs on him, he’ll never turn his back on us.

Is he Worthy? He is. He is. He is.

Live a Life Worthy

There was a little bit of a plot twist when I was getting this sermon together.

I did my usual Bible software word search for the word worthy, and believe it or not, for as much time as I’ve spent saying that only Jesus is worthy, most of the references to scripture that use the word aren’t talking about Jesus!

Instead, they’re passages like this one:

Ephesians 4:1–3 NRSVue

I, therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace:

I beg you, to walk in a manner worthy of the calling.

This is not, Paul would make very clear, about living a life of trying to be worthy in and of ourselves.

Paul would be super clear, we cannot.

But it is to say what Richard Rohr said earlier:

When we know the source of our grace and redemption, it’s easier to say thank you.

We say thank you by living a life worthy of the gift we’ve recieved.

Luckily enough for us, Paul lays out what that looks like.

Humility

A life worthy of saying thank you is one that is humble.

Good thing we’re starting off with an easy one, huh?

Lewis said that humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less.

Humility says that if the Lamb is worthy, I ought to do what the lamb did.

Humility says that I ought to lift up my neighbor before I try to get ahead.

Humility says that I ought to make sure that everyone else has enough before I take more.

Humility says Nah, I don’t need to lift the hammer. That’s not a question I need answered.

Humility, it turns out, allows us to point to the Lamb, because we’re not so totally consumed by pointing to ourselves.

Is he worthy? He is. So let’s live a life of humility.

Gentleness

Last night I was standing around with the groomsmen of this wedding, and in the hall we were waiting in a little bird got in.

Just a little chick-a-dee.

Obviously the poor thing was scared out of its mind, trying to figure out how it had gotten in, and what it was supposed to do to get out.

And Lord bless them, there was no small amount of joy for me watching these grown men in the bridal party absolutely freak out every time the chick-a-dee flew by.

You would have thought it was venomous or something…

But then, after we were done ducking and covering, a member of the staff at the facility came by.

She propped open both sets of doors, and then just very gently, very calmly, very dilberately held her hands up, and moved the bird through the open doors.

She didn’t swat at it.

She didn’t swing at it.

She was just…gentle.

I wonder what the world would look like if we were more like that with each other?

If we weren’t quite so afraid of each other, no matter how much politicians tell us we should be.

If we weren’t so violent with each other to get what we wanted.

If we were a bit more understanding of people who are lost, afraid, and in places they’d rather not be in either.

If we were just…gentle.

Not for nothing, but it is striking to me that Jesus is metaphorically depicted here in Revelation as a lamb.

It doesn’t get much more gentle than that.

And yet that’s exactly how Jesus would like us to see him.

Not big and imposing or ferocious and menacing.

Gentle Jesus, meek and mild.

Is he worthy? He is. So let’s live a life of gentleness. Just like he taught us.

Patience

I don’t know how many more traffic jokes I am legally allowed to make in sermons…

But they say that if you pray for patience, God will never actually give you patience.

God will give you opportunities to be patient.

This means that yes, God will place orange cones on every square inch of asphalt in this city.

This means that yes, God will put that person who cannot operate a machine directly in front of you in the self-check out line.

This means that yes, God will give you plenty of opportunities to be with that person who sees the world differently than you.

In this world, we have more than enough opportunities to be patient.

What we need most is to practice.

It’s to take that deep breath, and as often as we’re able, see the world the way Jesus see it.

See the world with the grace of Christ who forgives again and again and again.

See the world with the love of Christ who thinks everything and everyone is beautiful (that’s the real punk rock!)

See the world with the patience of Christ, who in spite of everything, never once turns his back on us.

Is he worthy? He is. So let’s live a life of patience.

Unity

When I was a kid, I thought that being a counter-cultural Christian meant listening to Christian music and wearing Christian t-shirts and stuff like that.

Now that I’m an adult, there’s nothing in this world I can think of that would be more counter-cultural than being about unity.

Our culture says choose a side. Our faith says love everybody.

Our culture says it’s ok to demonize each other. Our faith says everybody belongs.

Our culture wants to slam and insult and put down. Our faith wants to make sure that everyone is lifted up.

I think, I hope, that our culture is starting to lose our appitite for all this division and hostility.

I know at least I am.

But we can’t sit around and wait for them to get there.

We have to be agents of unity in our world.

Is he worthy?

Did he become the Lamb that was slain to bring us all together?

Does our God intend to dwell again with us? With all of us?

Is this free gift of grace available to everyone?

Is the Spirit actively working to build peace and simply inviting us to maintain it?

He is.

So let us live a life worthy of that calling.