The Song of Robins and Rabbits

The Song of Robins and Rabbits--May 24, 2019

"Then I looked, and I heard the voice of many angels surrounding the throne and the living creatures and the elders; they numbered myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands , singing with full voice, 

   'Worthy is the Lamb that was slaughtered

    to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might

    and honor and glory and blessing!'

 Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, singing, 

    'To the one seated on the throne and to the Lamb

     be blessing and honor and glory and might

     forever and ever!'" [Revelation 5:11-13]

Imagine the worms singing.  Imagine the jellyfish.  

Imagine, not just chatty songbirds and roaring lions, but the usually demure giraffes and shy gerbils, the microscopic paramecium and the giant squid, all finding their voices, along with every human being that has ever lived, all to sing about God's triumphant, suffering, self-giving love.  Robins and rabbits, all in praise of the love that laid down its life and won by losing.

I would think it would take something pretty amazing to make sloths sing and old miserly curmudgeons start tapping their feet to the beat.  But that is exactly what John the Seer in Revelation gives us: a victory worthy of such a song, from the Lamb (Jesus) who was slaughtered but now lives.  It's not worth teaching the choreography to centipedes and sea cucumbers so that "every creature" can be a part of this musical number, unless Jesus really is risen from the dead, having defeated death by being swallowed by it and destroying it from the inside out.  Only a victory so complete, and only a victor so thoroughly committed, is worth making that much of a song and dance over.

You don't break out a chorus of angels and humans and animals just to announce "30% Off Mattresses This Weekend Only!" at the local strip mall store.  You don't awaken the great sea monsters of the Marianas Trench to sing with the invisible hosts of the cosmos just to announce that your baseball team made it to the play-offs... or that the Dow Jones closed at a new record high... or that your political party won the election.  None of those milestones are a big enough deal, a great enough triumph, to warrant all creation singing in praise.  Nothing short of Jesus' resurrection and the defeat of death is worth us dropping what we were doing to learn the melody of this new song and make its cadences our own.

One of the great ironies, of course, is how easily we let ourselves get hyped up into singing songs and shouting praises for those lesser occasions--the team in the playoffs, the closing number of the stock market, or the one-time win of your political party--while we shrug off the great cosmic song of Christ's victory over death.  We live day to day like it's no big deal--as though, at best, it become relevant when we are dead and hoping for an afterlife, but not like it makes a difference in how we live this moment, this day, right here and now.

I suspect the angelic singers in this scene from Revelation would be surprised what things we get excited about (and riled up about, too).  We make a big angry racket if we don't like the ending of a TV show (ahem), and we let the talking heads on cable news provoke us into getting outraged over news stories they only give us half the facts for.  We cheer when the third-quarter profits are up, when the polls show an uptick for my party, and we hoot and holler when our team gets a home run... but day by day we treat the victory of the living Jesus like it is old news, irrelevant, or wishful thinking.  

No wonder we have no peace or sense of centeredness in our lives--we have treated the stupid little stuff like it's the most important, and we've acted like the turning point of the universe's history is a forgettable blip on the radar!  And make no mistake: this is why John goes to such lengths to capture for us the best, most thorough description he can of this song in the heavenly throne room: he wants us to hear what is important, to know who is worthy of building our lives around, and where our hope truly resides. John knows it: if Jesus is still in the grave, then the empires of the day really have won, and the greatest power really is death, propped up by the power of fear and coercion to make us cower at the mention of death.  

If Jesus is dead, then suffering love really is just a strategy for losers, and death really is the only true god to be fear.  If Jesus is dead, all we have to hope for is the little piddling triumphs of your team in the playoffs or your candidate getting elected.  If Jesus is dead, the only thing that can keep us going, putting our feet on the floor each today to face the world and all its rottenness, is the fear that it could get worse.  But if--no, since--Jesus is alive and risen, like a Lamb slaughtered yet standing up, everything else in all the universe is seen in a new light.

Today, the question to ask is this: what truly is worth singing about? What is worth dropping everything else for, standing up in the middle of the workday, and singing about? And what things have suddenly lost their capacity to rile us up any longer?

Praise to the crucified lamb, the true ruler and lover of the universe.

Worthy are you, Lord Jesus, Lamb who offered your life for ours and for all creation.  Worthy are you.