Christ Lutheran Church
Cleveland, Ohio
May 4, 2025
by: Rev. Dean Kavouras
Easter 3
It Is The Lord
And when he took the book the four living creatures, and the twenty four priests fell on their faces before the Lamb, each having a harp and golden bowls full of incense which are the prayers of the saints; and they sang a New Song saying, “Worthy are you to hold the book, and to open its seals. For you were slain and by your blood ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and peoples and nation. And you ordained them a kingdom of priests to our God,
and they shall reign on the earth. (Revelation 5:8-10 DKV)
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Today the church learns something about the “Book of Revelation;” about the resurrected Christ; and about the exalted Christ.
Today we dive into the deep end of the pool, the Crystal River of Life, the Living Water which is our Lord Jesus Christ Himself!
As regards the “Book of Revelation” it is indeed Revelation, but it is not exactly a book. To call it a book is to relegate it to the status of literature which it definitely is not. Why not literature? Because all literature has its source in the mind and the heart and the mouth of man. But the source of THIS Revelation is the mind and heart and mouth of The Living One Who was and Who is and Who is to come.
What does “revelation” mean? It means to make something known that is presently unknown – like the mind of a teen-ager for example. Only God and the teen-ager herself can ever know what is going on inside her mind – and until she decides to reveal it you might just as well go and do something less stressful.
In the four gospels our God reveals the incarnate Christ to us.
The Second Person of the Holy Trinity. The Creator of all that is who, out of the perfect love for His fallen creation, “came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. Who healed the sick, raised the dead and Who paid the ransom that only God could pay. Satisfying both the Justice of God and the Love of God. Both are vital because God is both Justice and Love.
He is the Son of God from Heaven who “lowered” Himself to extract us from the constricting hug of the Ancient Serpent – an embrace you never want to feel. His hatred of humanity and of all God’s order are legendary. He is the spirit who drives fentanyl dealers and fentanyl addicts to sell their souls to the devil. He is the spirit that reigns in North Korea where people live under the crushing regime of Kim Jong Un from birth to death. Never knowing any better.
Only the mercy of our God can keep you safe from this Ancient Serpent. Mercy which is dispensed without money and without cost, in Christian liturgy. But nowhere else.
Yes, in the four gospels we learn all that we need to know, and believe about the Incarnate Word so that we might live and die and rise again with Jesus who saves us from every enemy.
But in St. John’s Revelation we learn about the exalted Christ. We learn what His life, death and resurrection accomplished for us. How by Perfect Sacrifice He conquered the Evil One so that the church can now sing:
“Though devils all the world should fill,
all eager to devour us.
We tremble not we fear no ill,
they shall not overpower us.
This world’s prince may still
scowl fierce as he will,
he can harm us none,
he’s judged the deed is done.
One little word can fell him!”
And so the “book” of Revelation, contrary to the opinion of broadcast preachers is NOT a roadmap of the end times. It has nothing to say about Ukraine, Russia, Houthis or the State of Israel. But everything to say about the Lord’s victory over all the forces of Evil, and the Redemption of humanity.
But there is yet one more picture of our Lord that we learn from today’s Gospel reading – that of the resurrected but not-yet-ascended Christ. The Jesus we see here presents very differently than earlier in the gospel, or later in his exalted state as Revelation discloses Him.
This Jesus is more mysterious. He passes through locked doors, and appears and disappears at will. But in today’s Gospel he lights a charcoal fire and prepares a meal of fish and bread for his disciples. And it is precisely here that we need to penetrate Scripture if we are to understand what this means.
The charcoal fire reminds us of the altar in the temple where whole-burnt offerings sheep and goats were offered to God to atone for sin. He gave men a way to be rid of the criminal charges that weighed them down and darkened their futures, so that they might be light of heart all the days of their life, and reign with Christ in endless day.
But there was also another altar in the temple called: the “incense altar” to which our second reading also points. It is on this altar that incense was burned as an offering to God and that carried the prayers of the saints to our dear Father – a sweet-smelling aroma in the nostrils of God.
But what is most immediate for us today is the altar before our eyes which is the theological and architectural center of God’s House. It stands in continuity with all the Old Testament altars ever erected whether by Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Joshua, Solomon, Elijah and … at the same time it looks forward to the heavenly altar whose glory is given in the Revelation of St. John.
As often as we stand before this altar to liturgize our God we are given eyes to see what “the disciple whom Jesus loved” saw. He whose eagle eye beheld a Man on the seashore from hundred yards away and exclaimed aloud, “It is the Lord!” (John 21:7)
May we, too, recognize in the consecrated Bread and Wine that, “It is the Lord.” It is our God and Savior Jesus Christ who comes to commune with His Bride the Church, and give her a foretaste of the Feast to come. And so: Come! Says the Spirit and the Bride. Take eat and take drink! Amen