Homily for Easter 4 Year C 2025

Homily for Easter 4 Year C

Revelation 7:9-17

Flannery O’Connor tells the story of a woman who had a vision.  Her name was Mrs. Turpin. 

Big woman. Good shoes. Nice clothes. Head held high.

She thanks Jesus she’s not like others. 

You know the kind—the others--smudged kids, poor grammar, the wrong color. She’s got categories. And, she keeps them in order.

God first. White folks next. Respectable. Hardworking. Clean.

Mrs. Turpin is in a doctor’s waiting room, scanning the crowd like a ledger. White trash. Dirty. Colored folks too loud. That woman’s got too many children. That boy’s got no manners. She’s got them all ranked in her heart.

But then—then there’s a girl. College girl. Quiet… Angry. Reading a book: Human Development.

And suddenly, something happens.

No one sees it coming.

The girl stands up—and hurls the book, right at Mrs. Turpin’s face. Bang. Right between the eyes. Then, she lunges, grabs her throat, and says: “Go back to hell where you came from.”

That’s it. Suddenly, it’s over, and she’s gone.

Mrs. Turpin is stunned. Shaken.

She goes home. The barnyard. The pig parlor. 

That’s where she stomps and shouts and scolds God.

“Why me? I help people. I give to the poor. I sing hymns. Why did she pick me?”

No answer.

Just pigs. Mud. Her rage. The smell of manure.

But then—then it happens.

The sky goes purple.

The sunset turns strange.

And in the field—in the wide open pasture—she sees it.

A vision.

A highway of souls. Stretching to heaven. Singing. Dancing. Laughing.

At the front: the poor. The folks she’d dismissed. The ones she thought were “beneath her.”

Black folks. Farmhands. White trash in homemade clothes. People with too many kids and crooked teeth and rough hands. They’re all there. And they’re first.

Behind them—trailing behind like a long, slow afterthought—come her kind. The proper. The polite. The ones with good shoes and cleaner hands.

But their faces...their faces, they look like something has been burned away.

Still—they’re in the procession.

Still—they’re going home.

And Mrs. Turpin

She stands at the fence. Pig muck on her boots. Silent now. Stunned.

The vision fades.

The sky closes.

But, but she’s not the same.  The vision has changed her.  Visions can do that to a person.

Something’s been burned off her—burned away. 

John of Patmos also had a vision. 

From exile, from the rocky shores of Patmos, from the margins of the Roman empire—John looks up. And he sees a multitude. A great multitude. A gathering no one can count.

From every nation. Every tribe. Every people. Every language. 

Not kneeling before Caesar. Not cowering in fear.

Standing.  Standing before the throne, standing before the Lamb.

And…they are singing.

This is not how power usually works.

Rome knew how to stage a spectacle. When Rome entered a city, it came with banners, trumpets, armored chariots. Power was display, worship was submission.  The medium was the message. 

But this?  John’s vision.

This vision is not about power. It’s not about chariots. It’s not about swords.

It’s robes—washed white.

It’s palms.

It’s a Lamb—not a lion, not a general, not the god of war.

John is drawing a picture. And it’s meant to unsettle.

Because the One who stands at the center of heaven is not the one who conquered through violence, but the one who was slain.

The Lamb is not Caesar in disguise. The Lamb is Jesus—crucified, risen, scarred.  And the crowd sings not because they escaped suffering—but because they came through it.

They have washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb.

And that phrase—the great ordeal. 

This is not theory. This is not abstraction. This is the lived experience of the early church.

Christians in Asia Minor weren’t just disliked. The lucky ones were merely shut out of guilds, or ridiculed in courts, but many were imprisoned, many were killed.

They knew what it meant to suffer.

But John says: They are here.

And, they are still standing.

They’ve come through violence and oppression and suffering.

And, they are singing.

And their song—“Salvation belongs to our God and to the Lamb”—is not just theology. It is protest. It is resistance.  It is defiance in the face of every empire that ever said, “We own you.”

And then the Lamb—becomes the Shepherd. 

The shepherd will guide them to springs of living water. The shepherd will shelter them.  

God will wipe away every tear.

Every grief you thought the world ignored. Every ache those you loved refused to see. Every scar you tried to hide.

The vision is already true.

Already, the angels are singing. Already, the Lamb has risen. Already, the redeemed are gathering—faithfully, across time and language and continent.

Not waiting for it to become real.

We are invited to live in the here and now.

We sing not to the idols of domination, but to the Lamb who loves.

When we suffer—when we hunger, when we thirst, when we mourn—we are not abandoned. 

We are walking the path the Lamb has already walked.

And, the shepherd is leading us.

Picture it.

A multitude.

A sea of faces.

Some with scars you can see.

All of them singing.

And, there’s room still, room for more.

There are plenty of robes.

More tears to be wiped away.

More voices to join the song.

The throne is set. The Lamb is present. The Shepherd is calling.

Will you join the multitude?

Will you follow the Lamb?

Will you live now—the Lamb already reigns.

And the song is rising.

“Blessing and glory and wisdom

and thanksgiving and honor

and power and might

be to our God forever and ever.”

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