All Saints Day. Communion. The Book of the Revelation. I knew I would preach on last things this morning, but the last thing I thought I would preach about was the Judicial Council of the United Methodist Church.

But this week the actions of the Judicial Council and the resulting tumult give me no choice. Hear these excerpts from this Thursday’s New York Times:

A recent decision by the highest court of the United Methodist Church to reinstate a pastor suspended for barring a gay man from (joining) his congregation has touched off widespread alarm within the denomination and prompted the Council of Bishops, the church's elected leadership, to issue a unanimous rebuttal. (Those who signed it included bishops who represented socially conservative swaths of the country and African bishops.)

… Many Methodists had expected an outcry over the decision from liberal congregations clustered mainly in the Northeast and the West Coast. But Methodists all over the country, including those from historically conservative regions, have voiced alarm at the decision, lay and clergy.

"Even people who are conservative on issues of sexuality wouldn't want to exclude homosexuals from membership in our church," said Bishop Scott J. Jones, head of two conferences, or regions, in Kansas. ...” That’s right … Kansas.

With the deep pain of this most recent expression of deep-seated comes a fleeting hopeful thought. Maybe, finally, folks who believed they could claim they were still somehow extending Christ’s love to persons whose lives they declared “incompatible with Christian teaching” will be faced with the harsh truth that condemnation is condemnation, rejection is rejection. In 2000 when the United Methodist General Conference made it a chargeable offense for a pastor to perform Holy Unions, it also adopted a statement that said for the first time, “We implore families and churches not to reject or condemn lesbian and gay members and friends. We commit ourselves to be in ministry for and with all persons.” (¶161.g)

The Judicial Council has violated that promise. Its decision expressed only rejection and condemnation … exclusion. The Council of Bishops unanimously disagreed … and the outpouring of action and response has only just begun … a letter from our own Bishop Beverly Shamana, and an affirmation of faith written by our pastoral intern, Anna Blaedel, are printed on your bulletin insert. I commend them to you, and invite you at 12:30 to join Reconciliation and Justice in further conversation as to how we respond.

I find myself confronting this moment in light of our text for this morning … words from the Book of the Revelation to John.

Revelation Chapter 4 begins, “Then I looked and oh! – a door open into heaven.”

Now, that’s an open door.

John was a Christian living under the Roman Empire, expecting persecution. John lived in exile on the small Greek Isle of Patmos … an Island Jim and I visited with Tari and Bill French, Beverly Dance, Heather Walsh, and others in the Summer of 2000. On Patmos, in a small cave, John wrote down what he saw through that open door into heaven. He wrote in order to encourage and strengthen the faithful and to wake up the complacent.

As Peter Gomes said, John takes us “on a guided tour of the spiritual imagination… where wondrous and strange things point to the wonder of all things.”

And the wonder of all things that John saw was this: The conquering Lion is suddenly the slaughtered Lamb. The Lamb breaks the seals of great suffering. The Lamb at the center of the throne is the shepherd!
What can this mean?
It means reversal. It means surprise. It means expectations overturned. It means powerlessness holding power. Love victorious over death. The lamb at the center reminds us never to get so caught up in how things appear that we fail to understand how they truly are.

Annie Dillard, in Teaching A Stone To Talk writes, "On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea of what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping God may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.”

When we open the windows of our hearts, minds, and souls to heaven … when we look to the lamb at the center, it rocks our world, changes our lives. God’s promise always rests on the side of the vulnerable.

In the context of those who suffer greatly right here and now, who struggle daily to survive, who feel most keenly stinging rejection, the vision of Revelation offers assurance: They will hunger no more, and thirst no more; the sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat; 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. (vv16-17)

The Revelation of John draws a picture of God so big, so wondrous that even a glimpse of this vision draws us deeper and higher, beyond, beneath and behind the events of his day to a larger vision of history – God’s history. Beyond, beneath and behind the events of our day to a larger reality – God’s reality.

The lamb … symbol of sacrifice … is Jesus, who, at this table, reminds us where transforming, saving, redeeming power really resides.

All Saints Sunday remembrance and communion comes at a perfect time to remind ourselves and reassure each other that no matter what the powers and principalities of the world … or of the church … may say … the expansive, inclusive love of God is unfailing, and omnipotent … it is offered and available to all, absolutely all of God’s children. We already are loved … the decision is not ours to be loved into new life. The lamb is at the center … and we will never be without the shepherd’s care again.