Revelation 7:9-17
9 After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. 10 And they cried out in a loud voice:
“Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.”
11 All the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures. They fell down on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, 12 saying:
“Amen! Praise and glory and wisdom and thanks and honor and power and strength be to our God for ever and ever. Amen!”
13 Then one of the elders asked me, “These in white robes—who are they, and where did they come from?”
14 I answered, “Sir, you know.”
And he said, “These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. 15 Therefore,
“they are before the throne of God and serve him day and night in his temple; and he who sits on the throne will shelter them with his presence. 16 ‘Never again will they hunger; never again will they thirst. The sun will not beat down on them,’ nor any scorching heat. 17 For the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd; ‘he will lead them to springs of living water.’ ‘And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.’”
I am the child of an entrepreneurial mother, a risk-taker, and someone who has started several businesses in her life. So I grew up with a vocabulary slightly different from others my age and in my community. I learned words like partnerships, equity, shares, shareholder, business plan, and one that brings me to the message today, silent partner. A silent partner contributes to the company's success by providing money but is usually not involved in the company's day-to-day operations. Silent partners believe in the vision, support the vision, and provide what the company needs to thrive...money. Unless the owner or inventor of the company is independently wealthy, they will need a lot of money to get the business, project, or invention off the ground.
It's one thing to have a good idea, and it's another thing to perfect a prototype through months of trial and error in the lab. But successful inventors eventually need to jump from research and development to manufacturing.
They need to be able to sell the vision to at least one investor, if not more, to write the checks.
Samuel Colt — inventor of the famous revolver that bears his name — started with money from his father, who owned a textile plant. After he burned through that dough, he formed a traveling medicine show demonstrating the supposed health benefits of nitrous oxide, or "laughing gas." Eventually, he gave up on that scheme and found a group of investors to fund his gun-manufacturing operation.
Samuel Morse, who invented the telegraph, was a teacher. A student's wealthy father, who owned an ironworks, was the first to bankroll Morse's electronic research. Later, Morse got substantial grants from the United States and the United Kingdom governments to run the first transatlantic telegraph cable.
Alexander Graham Bell was likewise a teacher. Like Morse, he was not above schmoozing two of his pupils' well-heeled dads, a lawyer and a leather merchant. They were happy to fund his scheme for a new and improved telegraph. But that wasn't Bell's real passion. He quietly diverted some of the telegraph research funds into a more speculative project: the telephone.
Wilbur and Orville Wright funded their early research using profits from their Dayton, Ohio, bicycle shop. It took them a long time to develop the first airplane because they had to keep traveling back and forth to Dayton to run the business. Once their first plane took off from Kitty Hawk, N.C., the U.S. Army stepped up. The Army offered to buy a Wright airplane for $30,000, but only if it met specific engineering and performance criteria. Working furiously to qualify for the grant, the Wrights experienced disaster: their prototype plane crashed, seriously injuring Orville and killing an Army observer, Lt. Thomas E. Selfridge (the first person ever to die in a plane crash). Undeterred, the Wrights perfected the design and used that money to start their own airplane-manufacturing company.
I could go on about many famous entrepreneurs and inventors, but I digress; the point is that successful people had supporters behind them, some loud and some silent.
The Bible includes some silent partners — spiritually speaking. Their support is not of the financial variety; it's something else altogether. Revelation 7:9 mentions some partners "After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white …"
They are what the Apostles' Creed calls "the communion of saints." They stand behind us, the present-day church, quietly lending support in ways we're only dimly aware.
John is writing in Revelation to a church caught in the middle of either worshiping the emperor or worshiping the savior. They have to decide if they want to be a community that worships the Lamb of God or the world that worships the emperor. The Roman emperor Domitian had people saying Caesar is Lord, and Choirs following him around calling him holy. Roman leaders thought they were the son of God here to save the world, and there was a small group of people who had the nerve to believe that some man from Galilee was the Son of God instead of them.
The Roman oppressors demand loyalty to them above all others, and anyone who does not get in line is severely and brutally punished. This message is not a future prediction but present-day comfort.
The Gospels referred to crowds repeatedly, indicating that they are the special object of Jesus Christ's ministry. John witnesses a horde of believers shouting a hymn of praise. At first, John saw 144,000, then he looked back and saw a number that no one could count. The text says that the people are from all nations; even though they are diverse, they are unified by the lamb of God. John is speaking of a global community of all nations and tribes, meaning we do not have a lock on heaven; we are not bouncers at the door asking for ID and determining who gets in and who does not.
"Salvation belongs … to the Lamb" because our relationship with God and all the benefits that relationship brings us are a consequence of Jesus' death on the cross.
The believers are choosing one type of blood over another, and they are choosing the blood of Jesus over the potential bloodshed they will receive for not worshiping the emperor.
They are promised a great reward, but that does not exempt them from suffering.
John is asking why they are singing. They are singing because the blood of Christ has redeemed them. Christ took those dirty robes, washed them in his blood, and they are now white as snow.
Everyone knows that even stringent bleach is often insufficient to restore whiteness to garments stained with blood. Therefore, how could anyone believe that blood can itself make something white?
Such an image is, of course, a paradox — a statement that, on its face, must be wrong that's asserted to be true nonetheless. Paradoxes challenge us to reject what appears plain and obvious, and they confront us with a reality contrary to what our experience has taught us is accurate. Christ's blood doesn't stain; it cleanses.
God is going to take care of our needs as well. John is calling back to Isaiah 49:10, where it says
10 They will neither hunger nor thirst,
nor will the desert heat or the sun beat down on them.
He who has compassion on them will guide them
and lead them beside springs of water.
God will provide for his believers and take care of those in need. God will wipe away our tears and be victorious over the enemies of the faith. Not only is God going to take care of us, but while we are in the struggle, we can know we are not alone.
Sometimes things go well; we sense the Holy Spirit at work in our world and realize we're surrounded by God's love, constant as the air we breathe. In bright moments like these, we know that this Christian faith of ours works — that it's the most eminently practical guide for living ever devised.
Of course, there are other times when we feel discouraged and disheartened. Life seems to make us take one step forward and two steps back in such moments.
Yet, in every season — in good times or in bad — we can take comfort in this reassuring fact that we are never alone. Those silent partners, the communion of saints, surround us on every side. The saints are among us spiritually and physically in the life of the church.
Saints are ordinary people who struggle with their faith like anyone else. The communion of saints is the community of the forgiven, not the unnaturally saintly.
Believe in the communion of saints. It is one of the greatest supports for the Christian life in this world and the next!
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