Revelation 7: 9-end, Matthew 5: 1-12

In the film ‘Educating Rita’, Rita (played by Julie Walters) is a hairdresser by day and an Open University pupil by night, seeking to create a better future for herself. Talking to the English tutor, Dr Frank Bryant (played by Michael Caine), she explains why she wants to study, describing a family night out at the pub: “I did join in the singing but when I turned around, me mother had stopped singing and she was crying. I said, ‘Why are you crying mother?’ and she said: ‘There must be better songs to sing than these.’ And I thought, ‘Yeah, that’s what I’m trying to do – sing a better song.’” 

In an earlier chapter of Revelation, John records his vision of heaven like this: 

And they sang a new song… in a loud voice they sang: “Worthy is the Lamb…!” Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, singing: “To him who sits upon the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honour and glory and power, for ever and ever!” (Rev 5:9; 12 – 13) 

And in our reading today, we hear the whole company of heaven crying out: “Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.”  

The commentator Simon Ponsonby, who wrote the book ‘And the Lamb wins’ said this: ‘The optimistic slogans at the end of the ‘50s and the early ‘60s, expressed by Harold MacMillan, ‘You’ve never had it so good’ were soon deflated by the Cold War. Hope was then rekindled in continental Europe in the late 1980s when the Iron Curtain came down, and decades of communist oppression were lifted off the peoples of Europe.’  But now hope has again been replaced by fear as we all face the ominous shadow of Russian aggression.  

And what of medicine? The scientific optimism that all disease was going to be done away with has been stopped in its tracks with the very real possibility that we won’t have any antibiotics soon to treat even a small infection. And we haven’t even got to questions of global warming and the rapid extinctions in the natural world which are entirely man-made… Is it any wonder then that faced with all these threats, the response from younger generations can be either ‘whatever!’ expressing an apathy captured by Vicky Pollard in the ‘Little Britain’ TV series or the opposite which is a really passionate activism as expressed by Greta Tunberg.  And what about the mental health of our nation or even worldwide? Someone has calculated that a person across the globe takes their life every 40 seconds, that is over 1m in a year. This figure has grown by 60% since the 1940s. Failed attempts multiply that figure by 20. A new word has been coined in the Oxford English Dictionary – ‘polycrises’ i.e. a multitude of threats facing us. 

Hope is in very short supply. The Prime Minister has recognised this. We need hope and especially among the young. Rita had hope that by applying herself to her studies she would see a different future. Not many people buy into that view today.  

If material answers haven’t addressed the issues that face humankind, the tragedy is that by and large, people have dismissed the Christian faith as offering anything either. Worse, the church as with every human institution has been plagued by revelations of sexual impropriety.  

Everything it seems is being shaken up. However, there is a very great deal of difference between religion and a living faith. And this is the point.  

Christianity must offer a living hope. We cannot see into our future, but our future is assured through faith in Jesus Christ. And this is where our readings come in. 

In Revelation we have a glimpse into the future following the end times and return of Jesus Christ. In the chapter before, John hears the listing out of the names of tribes of Israel and the numbers coming from them which add up to 144,000, but then he looks up and sees the rest – numbers too large to count.  

That’s where we will be. When you or I come to faith in Jesus Christ, scripture says that our names are entered into the book of life. That’s the hope for the future which we have to hang on to, when life gets tough here on earth. In Hebrews 11: 1 we read: Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. 

We need that faith, that confidence, that hope and that assurance I believe more than ever. The message of Revelation is that indeed that ‘the Lamb wins’, no matter what is thrown against us. Every blessing. Peter.