Do Not Be Discouraged (Guest Speaker: Eric Muhr)
Revelation 7:9-17
Eric Muhr is the publisher at Barclay Press, a Quaker publishing house located in Newberg, Oregon, the town where Eric was born. He is the executive director at Hillsboro Friends Church and preaches the first Sunday of each month at Silverton Friends Church. Eric and his partner, Pha, live with their seven-month-old son in Northeast Portland.
Revelation 7:9-17 (NRSVue):
9 After this 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, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands. 10 They cried out in a loud voice, saying,
“Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne and to the Lamb!”
11 And all the angels stood around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, 12 singing,
“Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom
and thanksgiving and honor
and power and might
be to our God forever and ever! Amen.”
13 Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, “Who are these, robed in white, and where have they come from?” 14 I said to him, “Sir, you are the one who knows.” Then he said to me, “These are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.
15 For this reason they are before the throne of God
and worship him day and night within his temple,
and the one who is seated on the throne will shelter them.
16 They will hunger no more and thirst no more;
the sun will not strike them,
nor any scorching heat,
17 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,
and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”
Queries:
What pain, anxiety, or fear do you carry within you that the “powers and principalities” could use to harm your neighbors? How can you avoid being used in this way? And what if you see people you care about being used in this way?
How do imperial economics shape your interactions with others? What is one way you have already or could begin to undo or resist that “shaping”?
What parts of your life or what events on your calendar are “liturgical”? How are they shaping you? As a result, are you becoming the person you want to be, that you were created to be?
American individualism is one way our society keeps us from being part of Scripture’s envisioned “multitude.” What are others? With these in mind, what is there that you can do? Or that we can do together?