The Optimism of Grace

Rev. 5:6 Then I saw…a Lamb standing as if it had been slaughtered

May I invite you to contemplate John's paradox of the slaughtered standing Lamb? 'I saw', he says, but in fact, of course, he can have seen no such thing. And that is not to cast doubt on the possibility of visionary experience. It is because slaughtered lambs do not stand; they collapse. If they are standing, they have not really been killed; if they have really been killed, the standing is a fake. But what it is impossible to visualise is not beyond the eyes of the mind and heart. For this is John's deeply pondered statement of the Easter faith - Christ truly dead, and truly risen, standing to eternity..

And I invite you to contemplate the paradox, of the slaughtered, standing Lamb, if I may, under the title of 'the optimism of grace'. The title is partly a tribute to the coiner of the phrase, the late Gordon Rupp, a past Dixie Professor of Ecclesiastical History in this University, and, to my great benefit, one of my teachers at Wesley House. The title is also a recognition of the person about whom Gordon Rupp was primarily talking when he used the phrase 'the optimism of grace'. John Wesley, of course, belongs to another place, but the person who did not scruple to look upon the world as his parish would be glad to be acknowledged in Cambridge as well as Oxford, and I am sure he is being so acknowledged in this the Tercentenary year of his birth. And the Wesleyan tradition knows about the optimism of grace; for it knows that you cannot set limits on what the grace of God can do. You cannot say that anyone is beyond the grace of God - all can be saved. You cannot say that anything is beyond the grace of God - on the one hand any sin can be forgiven, and on the other any growth in grace is possible. So Methodists are a singing people; at their best they are cheerful souls; the optimism of grace is a reality for them.

But to focus on 'the optimism of grace' is not to beat a Methodist drum. It is an attempt to proclaim Easter faith in a form that our experience of the world tells us we need. Optimism is not easy in our world, and it is not easy because we see too much evil, much more than previous generations. We may say, of course, and probably quite truly say, that what we are shown is unrepresentative and inaccurate. We have watched the war in Iraq, and we may well question whether we were shown the truth about it; we may indeed debate whether there is such a thing as the truth about the war in Iraq. But which of us will deny that we have seen things we did not doubt were evil and we wish we had not seen; and which of us will deny that we fear the consequences? We have seen these things as no previous generation has seen them. And the arts open to us, at their best probably much more truthfully, worlds that previous generations have not seen, and n some of those worlds there are realities which it is hard to bear. On Holy Saturday I went to see the film 'The Pianist' a portrayal of the Jewish experience in Warsaw in the second world war. I shall not easily forget it. I watched the relentless dehumanising cruelty that demeaned the oppressed and the oppressor, and I wanted, no, I think needed, to believe in the harrowing of hell. I needed the slaughtered, standing Lamb. Of course the world is not all like that. But still the world needs the slaughtered, standing Lamb, and the Christian community has its vision of the Lamb to offer. It is not in the realm of proof. But, if it is a vision that by the grace of God can be accepted, it does, I believe, offer grounds for optimism.

The first reason for saying that is that the vision speaks of God taking to himself what needs to be put right, - and no-one else can do it. The book of Revelation is one vision after another, but what must, I think, be counted the two foundational ones are in chapters 4 and 5 - chapter 4 the vision of the creator God and chapter 5, which we read, the vision of the Lamb. And there the Lamb takes his place in God's presence, and from that point on he is, as it were at the heart of God; God is now seen to be the God of the Lamb, the God who in Christ, and Christ dying, has offered himself for - what do we call it? -our 'salvation', our 'redemption' is too churchy, and 'putting right' is banal - for the disempowering of all that disfigures our human existence, for the realising of what we long for in terms of justice and harmony and the flowering of what we most deeply have it in us to be. The opening of the scroll of which we read has to do with this. The image comes out of a tradition which is unfamiliar to us, but it has something to do with the unveiling of the purposes God has for the world - for justice and harmony and human flowering which are the purposes of God's heart, and not only what we long for. And that unveiling is not academic discovery - it is the enacting of God's good purpose, not just seeing what they are. John weeps much when he thinks no-one can be found to open the scroll not because his curiosity is denied, but because he fears that the wrongs in his world, its oppression and untruthfulness, will never be put right - there is no-one strong enough to do it. And we weep much, because we cannot see who or what will put things right with our world.. But John is shown the Lamb who is Lion of Judah - who is strong enough, because he has the strength of God. And this is ground for optimism. Of course you may be optimistic without grounds. Perhaps it is a matter of brain chemistry, or at another level a sensible decision that whistling in the dark is preferable to weeping - you die if you worry, you die if you don't. But if you want a ground for optimism, then you are offered one in the grace of God seen in a Lamb who has taken on the slaughter and still stands.

It is important, though, not only that the Lamb is a Lion. It matters that the Lion is the Lamb, that the standing Lamb is genuinely slaughtered. Here is the second reason for offering the vision - that it takes seriously the world's real evil. Christian optimism can look, and indeed can sometimes be, extremely facile. Christians persist in believing, in what is perhaps the core belief of Revelation, that the goodness of God is victorious. But that's not obvious, is it? It is not just the cynic who looks at the world and says, 'if that is victory, what is defeat?' Christians may sweep away their purple at the end of Lent, and deck their bare churches with masses of spring flowers, they may sing that sin and death and hell are conquered - but the rest of the world doesn't seem to have noticed.

Now of course Christians cannot abandon their belief in the resurrection as a sign of final triumph, the triumph of good over evil, of life over death. Resurrection is hope for the future - but it is also conviction for the present, and it is conviction for the present which our vision expresses and offers. When Jesus first appears to his disciples together in John's account of the resurrection, both the first day in Thomas's absence and then a week later when Thomas was there, Jesus shows them his hands and his side. They needed to see those marks of the cross not only as a sign that this really was the Jesus they had seen die. They also needed, didn't they, as they always would need, and as we also need, to know that the Lord who is alive is a cross-bearer. Because there are still crosses to be borne. There are sins to be forgiven, and sorrows to be endured. There is still death to be gone through, still evil to be absorbed so that there may be reconciliation rather than revenge. While all this remains, the world needs this slaughtered Lamb still to be standing, releasing, if you like, cross-bearing energy into the world. The optimism of grace has nothing to do with shutting your eyes to the world's evil. Rather, if I may press Elton John into service, it is the Lamb saying, not just at the end of all things, but in every confrontation with evil before that end, 'I'm still standing'.

So, optimism grounded in the belief that God is engaged with the world, and, second, engaged with the world as it truly is. The third reason for offering the vision is rather different. We have spoken so far as if we were observers of the world's ills - concerned observers, perhaps even frightened ones, because we may turn out to be affected, but still basically in observer mode. But of course, we are not really in observer mode. We know ourselves to be complicit in the world's evil, and we feel ourselves, very often, to be very largely helpless in the face of it. We are oppressed. Grace becomes a reality, and optimism a reality, when we see our own oppression addressed by this slaughtered, standing Lamb.

In Revelation the Lamb seldom appears alone. He is not alone because, as we have already said, he is essentially at God's side. But he is not alone, also, because he has followers. The Lamb's followers are those who have seen in him a standing invitation to a different way of living, and have found in it a way out - not an escape from or avoidance of evil, but a way out of oppression by it.

Here we have come to the Lamb slaughtered in sacrifice - sacrifice which is essentially the offering of a life, because, as Leviticus puts it, the life is in the blood, and the blood is being poured out. Sacrifice is essentially also an offering with which others can identify, a way into the offering of themselves and their own lives for people who believe that this is what God requires of them, invites them into. And - here is the grace and here the optimism - it matters not whether you are fit to make such an offering, whether you are able to. Grace does not ask those questions, for it keeps no score of wrongs and it counts no-one unteachable. And its welcome to the learner, to the disciple, is never withdrawn, and constantly renewed. So followers of the Lamb, who have experienced the patience of grace, the long-suffering of this slaughtered Lamb who invitation to themselves stands in spite of everything, they know that they need not give up on themselves, and they see no reason to give up on the world either. This is the optimism of experienced grace. There is no limit to what God can do - or what he will. This is the assurance of the Lamb, slaughtered and standing.

To which the worship of heaven can be the only response, dimly as we now are able to join in it:

Worthy is the Lamb that was slaughtered to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honour and glory and blessing…To the one seated on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honour and glory and might for ever and ever. Amen.