"When [the Lamb] had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell before the Lamb, each holding a harp and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. They sing a new song:
'You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals,
for you were slaughtered and by your blood you ransomed for God
saints from every tribe and language and people and nation;
you have made them to be a kingdom and priests serving our God,
and they will reign on earth.'" [Revelation 5:8-10]
The lines are imaginary. Sometimes we forget that.
I remember a couple years ago finding an old globe somewhere in our accumulated treasures (which eventually became a very cool indoor star projector, once we painted it black, poked some holes in it in the rough configuration of some constellations, and put a battery powered light inside it), and noticing with a blush how dated it was. The continents hadn't changed, of course, but a good number of the countries had. This particular globe labeled a large pastel yellow shape sprawling from Europe to Asia as "the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics," and it had two Germanies, East and West, as well as a solid light-green shape labeled "Yugoslavia." There were, of course, other countries with different names and boundaries, as well--Zaire, rather than Democratic Republic of Congo, and the Sudan was still just one, instead of a North and an independent South (ever since 2011). I never even thought to check how that globe handled Hong Kong or Jerusalem.
Of course, when that globe was first purchased, it was accurate. It is only the passage of time that has made its lines and labels increasingly incorrect. And it would be an interesting article of history, showing not how the world is, but how the world was just a few short decades ago, when we were steeped in a Cold War (and Pluto was still regarded as a planet).
But looking at that globe, and thinking of the change in where those pastel colors would fall now, it occurred to me--the lines are all imaginary. They are our inventions, not fixed and rigid things in the world. The boundary, for example, that separates lavender Canada from the pink United States of America is our human creation, and, aside from the natural lines of the Great Lakes, that line is basically determined by our human fascination with straight lines. And that's just it--some of the lines between countries on an outdated globe follow natural phenomena like rivers or coasts, but we are the ones who arbitrarily assign the pastel yellow here, and the light orange there.
We have done the same, we line-drawing human beings, not just on maps and globes and pieces of real estate, but also between groups of people. In the years since my old globe was printed, the Hutus massacred Tutsis in Rwanda after decades of building tensions, the Rohingya have been victims of violence in southeast Asia, and that neat and tidy little shape called Yugoslavia tore itself apart into factions of Bosnians, Serbs, Croats, and the more. Human history is, sadly, all too often the story of humans drawing lines and then forgetting that we were the ones who drew them in the first place, and instead assuming that they have always been eternally carved in stone. That's the same old story, the same old song.
So we need a new song.
We need a new song like the one John the Seer overheard and scribbled down the lyrics for in what we call the book of Revelation. It is a song that reminds us what we should have known and remembered all along--the lines between us are imaginary and invented. They did not come from God, and they will not last forever, either.
And at its heart, this new tune is a love song. It is our love and worship of the Lamb who lays down his life for the world, sure; but it is first and foremost the love of the slain-yet-living Lamb for "every tribe and language and people and nation." And in that vision, the heavenly singers make it clear--the lines between us are our temporary inventions, and they are not ultimate. The vision John sees here is of a future in which the living God erases the boundaries we have drawn, like a sweep of your foot can wipe away the line drawn in the sand. At the last, John says, every single classroom globe will be out of date, as the Lamb gathers together every tribe and language and people and nation and pronounces, "You are my beloved" over all of it.
Now, that kind of a vision--as sweeping and expansive as it is--gives the people of Jesus a particular kind of hope for the future... but it also does something powerful to the way we see the world right now. Listening to the Lamb's Love Song in Revelation 5 reminds us that the lines the world takes as permanent right now are not ultimate. The world likes to say, "This is how it is, and this is how it always has been and always will be... these lines will never change." But we blink, and the globes are out of date again. Much like Orwell's fictional Oceania, Eastasia, and Eurasia in 1984, which keep switching alliances and hostilities and then telling their citizens, "No, nothing has changed--we have always been at war with these people over here and always been at peace with those people over there," all of human history has been the drawing and re-drawing of lines on globes, and then our arrogant insistence that the lines are fixed and definitive. But that is a lie. The lines are imaginary. The love of the God who binds us all together is real.
Considering the lyrics of the new song in Revelation is a lot like staring at a Cold War-era globe in the 21st century: it brings home the humbling, joyful realization that the lines we have drawn and keep drawing will not last. Part of the hope nurtured in the Christian tradition is the admission that for all of our attempts to divide ourselves from one another, whether by language or skin color, culture or background, national origin or splintering tribes, or just plain old straight lines drawn on a map, at the last, the lines will be erased, because Love has ransomed the whole lot of us. We won't stop being ourselves in all of our uniqueness. We just will finally have realized that the lines we kept drawing in between were imaginary all along.
O Lamb of God, grant us the honesty of vision to see how you have gathered all nations, peoples, and languages together in your love.
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