Revelation 7:9-12
The Rev. Dr. Robert S. Langworthy, preaching
October 4, 2026 – World Communion Sunday
These verses from the last book in the Bible describe the end of history as we know it. They give us a vision of the church of the future in its heavenly fulfillment – that is, the church in its ideal form.
That vision of the church of the future is meant to inspire the church of the present – the church that’s less than ideal, that’s still inconsistent and in-process. The vision is meant to motivate today’s church to manifest today more of what it shall be in its ultimate destiny.
In heaven, God’s faithful people will find themselves lost in wonder, gratitude, awe and adoration. They’ll be caught up in the worship of Jesus, the Lamb of God who conquered sin and evil and whose glories surpass all other glories. His majestic magnificence and sublime splendor – at last fully revealed – will make them exultant and exuberant in praising Him. And the number of such worshipers will be so large as to be incalculable, for they will have come from every ethnicity and nationality, and involve folks of every personality and history. In gathering before Jesus and paying Him homage, they themselves will shine with the vibrancy of every culture, glow with the beauty of every physical type and sing their love of the Lamb with every language there is.
Despite all that diversity, the community will display unity in its devotion. Each member of it, robed in white and waving palm branches to salute the victorious Lamb, will bow down before Jesus and in one accord honor Him as the One and Only to whom “salvation belongs”, the One who accomplished it for all, all on His own.
The festive worship of these earthly followers of Jesus will be so joyous and vigorous that heavenly actors – angels, elders and those four “living creatures” (each with six-wings and “eyes all around and inside”, but each with a unique face ranging from that of a lion to that of an eagle) – all will join forces with the earth-born faithful to laud the Lamb and exalt His holy name.
The church of the present may never reach the heights of that piety or the breadth of that inclusivity, but the church must never cease pursuing the fulfillment of that ideal. We may be as unable to reach it as we are unable to reach the stars; but, just as we can navigate our way forward by the stars, so we can navigate our way forward by the ideal.
How then do we approximate the ideal more and more?
Above all else, we put Jesus front and center and focus our energies on taking in His glory more deeply. While we value diversity and how it displays God’s sweet delight in variety, we don’t make the pursuit of diversity our highest priority. For diversity comes as a natural by-product of something else: of our knowing Jesus better and making Him better known to others. To fix our eyes on Him is to come to know Him better, and to know Him better is to come to love Him more; and to love Him more is to go forth and make Him known to more people.
We become a unity in our diversity by sharing the same priority. Pianos tuned to the same tuning fork are automatically tuned to each other. Likewise, we become one by being tuned, not primarily to each other, but to the perfect tone of Jesus’ life. If we lock our gaze on Jesus, we end up closer and more harmonious together than we ever would’ve, had we fixed our gaze horizontally – that is, directly toward human harmony.
After all, the closest of friends don’t so much look at each other as they look in the same direction, as they together zero in on serving the same purpose and, in this case, the same Person, the most enthralling Person of all!
Christian community isn’t formed by individuals who care little about each other and mainly think of meeting their own individual needs at church. It’s formed by everyone coming together for mutual encouragement and symbiotic support – by everyone being gripped by a common concern to love Jesus by praising Him and helping His other followers. That shared priority impels them to join together to glorify God, deepen each one’s friendship with Jesus, introduce Jesus to those who don’t yet know Him and improve some little part of this world.
When diversity is founded upon that unity of priority, hierarchy is banished. For the dominant concern is to blend different crucial contributions so as to better pursue the goal they all share. Jesus means for His church to be like an orchestra in which each person’s playing of their unique instrument is equally vital and each one cares about nothing but doing justice to Jesus and the music of His grace.
Let’s try one more metaphor to make clear the nature of the Lamb’s community. To be the church is to work together like the cells that sustain a heartbeat. According to Ron Bryce in his book, The Fingerprint of God, the cells of the heart by nature rhythmically contract in unison to keep the heart pulsing with long-lasting regularity. If any heart cell is separated from the rest in a test tube, it continues instinctively to contract, but not in coordination with others – and the lack of synchronized effort eventually leads to the stopping of the heart. Yet, if heart cells are brought back together again in close contact, they interact, communicate, coordinate and collaborate with synchronized contractions, which enable the heart to beat strong and long.
No individual heart cell can accomplish its unique, God-given function alone. Each is designed to be one of many cells in a single heart. Each needs the other cells to fulfill its individual role, and the heart needs them all to do the same. In a similar manner, every Christian needs, and is needed for, the functioning of every other Christian and the functioning of the church as a whole.
If we keep in close contact with each other and collaborate in serving Jesus, we become our best selves and the church fulfills its highest purpose.
Let’s us then come together week after week in the worship of Jesus that we might know and serve Him on earth as we will in heaven!
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