After this I looked, and there was a great crowd that no one could number. They were from every nation, tribe, people, and language. They were standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They wore white robes and held palm branches in their hands. They cried out with a loud voice:

“Victory belongs to our God

        who sits on the throne,

            and to the Lamb.”

-Revelation 7:9-10

 

When I was in seminary, one of my favorite parts of the day was Chapel. Though there was no requirement to attend, most days you could find the majority of students, faculty, and staff gathered together, Monday through Friday, at 11am. 

Usually, the faculty took it in turns to preach monthly, with occasional guest preachers and a whole month of about-to-graduate preachers every April. Each week, the chapel website listed the preacher for each service. Sometimes my classmates would use the schedule to decide whether or not to attend chapel based on the interest in the day’s preacher. I understand why they might have especially wanted to hear those whose style or perspective was most comfortable for them, but I took a different approach. I wanted to hear from the whole range of preachers: church history scholars, homiletics professors, Bible experts, visiting bishops, neighboring pastors, classmates about to graduate, even those professors I’d disagreed with in class.

I am convinced there is something sacred about gathering in worship and listening together with those who are different from us. Faculty at Luther Seminary included Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and even a Coptic nun, alongside the slew of Lutherans. Classmates represented an even broader swath of beliefs. Yet we could worship as one, daily listening to God and to each other in song, scripture, and sermon. It was a glimpse of the scene described in Revelation’s vision of a crowd from every nation, tribe, people, and language (and, I’ll add, from every denomination, preaching style, and worship music preference, too!) gathered around the throne of God.

We at RLC have a unique circumstance running from March 2 through April 6. All those Sundays in Lent, plus the Sunday of Transfiguration just before Lent have one thing in common: a different preacher every week. 

Yes, you read that right. Six weeks in a row with a different person in the pulpit, bringing us the good news of Jesus Christ. A 54-year-age gap from oldest to youngest. Five Lutheran, one Methodist. Three male, three female. Four pastors (two of them retired) and two students. A prison minister. A robotics team member. A state soccer playoff teammate. A melodica player. A grandpa. A county spelling bee winner. Six children of God. Six different perspectives. Six sinners. Six saints. Six sermons.

In other words, we get to listen. We get to hear God’s word from six different voices. What a blessing! And what a reminder for us, too: to remember that God’s voice may call out from different people! In a time in our society when so often we are used to listening only to those who echo what we have already heard, six weeks in a row of different preachers is a wake-up call: listen! 

All of us will be together around the throne of God in the end, after all. What if we started acting like it now?