Palm Sunday isn’t just palm branches; it’s a question: Will we hush the parade to keep the peace, or let creation sing and join Jesus in remaking his house for prayer and community repair?

Kids have a fierce sense of “fair.” (Some of us once measured juice to the millimeter!) But our adult “justice” can still shrink to protecting our interests and punishing others. Scripture’s imagination is deeper: justice is putting things right—noticing what’s off and actively mending it. John 5 gives us a living picture through four movements in Jesus’ ministry.

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It had seven horns and seven eyes, which are God's seven spirits sent out to the whole earth. He came forward and took the scroll from the right hand of the one seated on the throne. When he took the scroll, the four living creatures and the 24 elders fell down before the lamb. Each held a harp and a gold bowl full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. They took up a new song, singing You are worthy to take the scroll and open its seals because you were slain and by your blood you purchased for God persons from every tribe, language, people and nation. You made them a kingdom and priests to our God and they will rule on earth. Then I looked and I heard the sound of many angels surrounding the throne, the living creatures and the elders. They numbered in the millions, thousands upon thousands, and they said in a loud voice, worthy is the slaughtered lamb. To receive power, wealth, wisdom might honor glory and blessing. I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea. I heard everything everywhere say blessing, honor, glory and power belong to the ones seated on the throne and to the lamb forever and always. Then the four living creatures said, amen. And the elders fell down and worshiped.

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Don't think about an elephant. Don't. I said, don't this, don't think about an elephant is a classic thought experiment that people have done for many, many years because of course, the moment that we hear that our minds just pop up with an elephant. It teaches us something fascinating about the human mind, that whatever we name and focus on, we give our attention to and it creates the reality for our mental world. What we give mental space to, we empower, and even when we think we're resisting something, if we keep it at the center of our attention, it still holds power over us. Don't think about an elephant for much of this summer.

As Pastor Garrett said, we are taking a deep dive into the book of Revelation, this very last book of the Bible, one that is very misunderstood but is also so beautiful and powerful and is so rich with imagery. And as Garrett talked about last week at its core really this book is a letter from John, two churches to seven churches in Asia who are struggling under Roman empire, who are being oppressed and who are being forced to pledge allegiance to this empire. And they're sort of trying to navigate what do we do? Can we give over partially to the empire? Should we escape it? Totally? How do we avoid the practices of injustice that are coming at the hand of the empire? How do we navigate? And John speaks poetically about what is going on as he is giving charges to these churches to tell them how to live in this time.

He's writing from an imprisoned island and he has to sort of write in code as Garrett said, so that this letter won't be intercepted. So he uses a lot of imagery that on the surface sounds very bizarre and scary, but these churches were entrenched in this imagery and they would've understood, and he uses Babylon as this poetic name for empire, for the Roman Empire in particular at the time, but also for any empire, even those that exist today. This book often is thought of as sort of a future predictor, end of times guidebook. But actually when we look into the context and the images, we see that John is speaking to this particular group of people to help them figure out how to live here and now on earth under empire. So it begins with Jesus coming down on a cloud and saying, God is the only alpha and omega beginning and end.

No empire actually will last. And from there, it goes on into a specific word for each church in particular. And we get to hear in chapters two and three what each of these different churches in these cities are struggling with, how in their own context they are feeling the pressure and the weight of empire. And then the vision begins in chapter four and chapter five. John goes into the call for what these churches can do here and now. And it begins with a vision of worship and not just a vision or an explanation of it, but actually an experience of worship. Even John as this sort of narrator of vision is drawn into the worship. He smells incense, he sees things he weeps. He is a part of this experience of worship.

We hear about this throne and these beautiful colors. There's rainbows surrounding it. It looks like shining gems. And there are 24 thrones surrounding the center throne of elders. There are living creatures around the throne, an ox, a lion, one like a human and an eagle. And they begin by singing Holy, holy, holy, worshiping the one. And then as we just read, John sees this scroll in the middle of the throne and nobody really seems able to open it to break the seals. And so people are projecting. One of the elders says, there's a lion. A lion will come. And as the vision gets a little more clear, John does see a creature, but it's not a lion. It's a lamb as if it had been slain, wounded, but standing with horns and eyes representing the spirit of God in the world. And when the lamb touches the scroll, suddenly everyone sings a new song. The elders, the living creatures, those on the earth of all tribes, nations, lambs, even those under the earth and creatures in the sea, everyone is singing and worshiping to the lamb of sacrifice.

Revelation does not begin with pictures of beasts or descriptions of battle. It begins with the story of worship with an open door to heaven and these beautiful lights and sounds and songs and smells. Before John says anything about what to do, he invites the churches into an experience to see who is at the center of the throne and to worship. We have to remember that these seven churches are in political crisis. Some of them feel at the end of their rope. There is evil surrounding them. They're desperate for instructions on what to do and how to defeat the empire. Many of us feel that way today too, even in 2025 and a political climate where we just feel a sense of urgency and stress, we wonder what do we do? Where do we begin? How can I act? Who should I call? What is the first thing I need to do? And John's message is very simple. Begin with worship, not with a strategy or an agenda or even a march, but with worship.

Now, even as a pastor, I have to admit that that sounds a little frustrating and anticlimactic. Isn't there a better use of our time? There is so much to do. There is evil to resist. There is empire to fight back against. And you're telling me to go to church. And yet, if this wasn't the most important place to start, John would not have started here, begin with worship. And I wonder what kind of worship he's thinking of. Worship, of course, is much more than just a church service or the hours that we spend opening hymnals and saying prayers together. So what does real worship look like?

Poet Andrea Gibson died this past week, and if you are familiar at all with their work, you will know what a loss that is. They were an amazing poet, an artist and soul. And I was first introduced to their work a few years ago, shortly after they were diagnosed with incurable ovarian cancer. And I heard this interview with Andrea and they were describing the experience of being diagnosed with beautiful vulnerability and pain and openness. And it just touched me so deeply that I couldn't help but pay attention. Andrea talked about how up until the diagnosis, they had been an extreme hypochondriac and worrier, particularly around health. They spent all of their life and attention on avoiding pain, avoiding bad things, avoiding hard diagnoses like the rest of their family had received. Sort of like the elephant, don't think about it, don't think about it. Don't get sick, don't get sick.

Avoid pain, avoid hardship. And so when the worst actually happened and Andrea was diagnosed, it almost felt like freedom. Suddenly, Andrea was able to focus on living life and not just avoiding suffering. Andrea said they could focus on gratitude for the first time and living in the moment in a new way. And this quote in particular caught me. This attitude is not about turning my head away from the grief of our world. I don't believe healing ever comes from ignoring what aches, but orienting toward beauty fuels me and reminds me why this precious earth and these precious lives of ours are so worth fighting for.

After diagnosis, Andrea's life became more full. And the way that I see it, it was a life of worship. It's my term one. I don't put in Andrea's mouth, but listen to the life and love. Andrea says, when you tap into the brevity of something, suddenly everything is special. There's so much time in a moment, as much as in a decade if you pay attention, lifespan is no longer a word I use to measure length but width. The poet's job is to remind us that we were born astonished. We were never ever supposed to grow out of that. Sometimes the break in your heart is like the hole in the flute. Sometimes it's the place where the music comes through.

I know you think this world is too dark to even dream in color, but I've seen flowers bloom at midnight. I've seen kites fly in gray skies, and they were real close to looking like the sunrise. And sometimes it takes the most wounded wings, the most broken things to notice how strong the breeze is, how precious the flight. In the end, Andrea says, I want my heart to be covered in stretch marks. Worship is about our attention, about what we focus on, what we give energy to, what we repeat in our heads over and over and over, the things that we give weight to. I wonder what your attention is on avoiding pain, worry, your own success, maybe even taking down the empire. But John reminds us, even if our minds are fixated on resisting empire, it still holds the central space in our imagination. Worship is a radical act of putting something else. Someone else at the center, the lamb of sacrifice focus, John says to these churches on the Christ, the one who gave, the one who sacrificed, the one who won by losing. And in this sense, worship isn't just an escape or a break from doing justice or activism, but it's a means of resistance.

The lamb is such an unexpected image. We expect something mighty, something with power that will take over and it's jarring. It's like preparing for battle and walking into the battlefield only to find a banquet table laid out for you to feast at. It's like my friend Ryan, who lives in Los Angeles, who was walking to work the other day and saw this car expertly parallel park in a teeny tiny parking spot, and he walked up to the side to see who this amazing driver was and there was nobody in the car. It was one of the self-driving cars that can parallel park, and he just stared at it so confused. It was jarring. When you expect to see someone of power and might, but instead you see a lamb, what do you worship? Where's your attention? What are the things most repeated in your mind? I was unsettled when I started answering that question this week. Often I wake up and my mind is filled with things like to-do lists, worries, should have, would've, could have. Imagining things that are the worst case scenario.

What if instead a worshipful mind was focused on things like gratitude and wonder and prayer? Start with worship. It doesn't mean we don't also act to take down empire. It doesn't mean we don't also do direct action against things that are unjust in our world. But to begin with, the imagination of the lamb of sacrifice means we reorient our hope and that hope never leaves. It's the kind of hope that gives our life with and not just length. It's the kind of hope that allows our hearts to break. As Andrea Gibson says, not apart but open.

I want to end with a short story about an experience of worship that was so meaningful in my own life. And as a pastor, I go to church every Sunday. I have had a lot of experiences of worship, but the worship that I experience that has touched me the most actually happened in a hospital room. As part of pastoral training, we are all required to go through a season of chaplaincy. So I spent a summer working as a hospital chaplain in New York City and I was assigned to the oncology ward. There was a woman who was in and out of the hospital quite a lot the summer that I worked there. And she had a very aggressive type of cancer and knew that she likely was not going to live for very long. I got to know her well because she was in and out of the hospital so much, but also because she was a former ballerina and so we had a lot to talk about.

So near the end of my chaplaincy program, she was in the hospital. She'd been there for several days and she knew the end was coming. She called me specifically to her room the day before I was going to leave the chaplaincy program. And I knew that this was going to be goodbye, not only because my program was over, but because she had been told she would likely only have a few more days to live. So I remember walking to her hospital room and just sort of imagining the conversation we were going to have. And I was imagining that we would be focusing a lot on the end of her life, that maybe she would have questions, that we would probably pray, that we would be thinking about this end point. But instead, when I got there, she had her iPad out and she said, I want you to watch something with me. Her sister had sent her a video of ballerina, Misty Copeland performing Firebird, and she said, I've been saving it to watch with you. So I sat down next to her and we held hands and we watched Misty Copeland perform Fire Her Bird. And we both cried and we hugged and she said, see, life is beautiful.

And that was the most worshipful moment I could have imagined. We didn't focus on the end, we focused on what is so beautiful about living. That's what deserves our attention. There is empire weighing down on a lot of us right now in the beginning of resistance is to worship, to recognize that we have a God who comes as lamb, who loves, who gives, who's lasting, and when that is at the center, we can't go wrong.

Blessed is the one who reads the words of this prophecy aloud, and blessed are those who listen and keep what is written in it, for the time is near.

John to the seven churches that are in Asia: Grace and peace to you from the One who is and was and is to come, and from the seven spirits before God’s throne, and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn from among the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.

To him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us a kingdom—priests serving his God and Father—to him be glory and power forever and ever. Amen.

Look! He is coming with the clouds; every eye will see him, even those who pierced him; and all the tribes of the earth will wail because of him. So it is to be. Amen.“I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “the One who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.”

I, John, your brother and partner in the hardship, kingdom, and endurance we have in Jesus, was on the island called Patmos because of the word of God and my witness to Jesus. I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet saying, “Write what you see in a book and send it to the seven churches: to Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea.”Then I turned to see whose voice it was that spoke to me, and on turning I saw seven golden lampstands, and in the midst of the lampstands I saw one like a Son of Man, robed to his feet with a golden sash across his chest. His head and hair were white as wool, white as snow; his eyes were like a flame of fire; his feet like fine bronze refined in a furnace; and his voice like the sound of rushing waters. In his right hand he held seven stars; and from his mouth came a sharp, two-edged sword; and his face was like the sun shining at full strength.

When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. But he placed his right hand on me and said, “Do not be afraid; I am the First and the Last, and the Living One. I was dead, and see—I am alive forever; and I have the keys of Death and Hades.Write, therefore, what you have seen, what is now, and what will take place after this. As for the mystery of the seven stars that you saw in my right hand and the seven golden lampstands: the seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands are the seven churches.”

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A quick story. I was plating food in the kitchen when our four-year-old, Naima, came up and said, “Dad, hold still.” She stuck out her tongue in concentration and pointed her hand at me. I thought, Oh—she’s pretend-shooting. I played along: “Ah! You got me.” She looked horrified. “Dad, we don’t shoot people.” “Right, right—I thought you were joking.” “Dad, we don’t joke-shoot people. I’m taking your picture. Hold still.”

She was mimicking me taking a photo—phone in one hand, thumb tapping the screen. Her imagination for “how to take a picture” is different from mine. And that imagination literally postures her body differently in the world.

It made me wonder: where else does a formed imagination change our posture?

One place is our ideas of hell. Many of us were handed images of fire and torment. Super brief (and admittedly fast): in the Hebrew Scriptures, the afterlife is mostly Sheol—the place of the dead, shadowy and non-moral. Later, Greek imagination adds wandering, rivers, and the Lethe, the river of forgetfulness. By Jesus’ time, Jewish language also includes the very literal Gehenna—Jerusalem’s burning trash valley—used metaphorically in his warnings. Early Christians largely treated these as metaphors to reflect on life now.

Then Dante Alighieri writes the Divine Comedy. His Inferno does more to shape the Christian imagination of hell than anything in the Bible—levels, punishments, named sinners. Over centuries, those images colonize our imaginations. In the 20th century, some churches even weaponized hell to scare people into decisions.

It isn’t only hell. Think about the pictures of Jesus we’ve absorbed—“white Jesus,” flag-draped Jesus, gun-toting Jesus. I recently saw a Department of Defense ad set to Isaiah’s “Here am I; send me,” inviting service as if it were allegiance to a nationalized Christ. My point isn’t necessarily a take on the military; it’s that images like these leverage a religious imagination for other ends.

Imagination is powerful. We need to be careful what takes root.

Which brings us to Revelation. The book opens as a letter from a person to people. John names himself. He writes to seven real churches. He’s been exiled to Patmos—a Roman island used to sideline troublemakers the empire doesn’t dare execute. If John wants to encourage his churches, he has to write in coded, imaginative language. He even decodes some of it for them: the stars are angels; the lampstands are churches.

And how does he begin? With an overwhelming image of Jesus—eyes like fire, feet like burnished bronze, voice like many waters. Why? Because his people’s imaginations are colonized by Rome: by the spectacle of violence, the threat of soldiers, the tax that required confessing “Caesar is lord.” Some believers were tempted to fold in and become indistinguishable from empire. Others were paralyzed by fear.

John’s pastoral move is to reclaim their imagination: Jesus is Lord. Not Caesar. Start there. Let that image take up space in your mind.

We know this feeling. News cycles monetize fear. Leaders—left and right—get treated as ultimate. When a bill passes (or fails) and our response is, “The world is ending; what’s the point?”, our imagination has been colonized. Fear reshapes our posture: we disengage, give up, stop loving neighbors, stop resisting evil.

Revelation says: don’t let fear have your imagination. Don’t let empire write your liturgy. Let the gospel do the colonizing—with hope.

This doesn’t mean we deny fear. It means someone greater than the powers is at work. If Jesus holds “the keys of Death and Hades,” then our imaginations can be formed by resurrection, not doom. Formed imaginations change posture: instead of slumping into despair, we stand to join God in resisting empire; instead of bowing to idols (nationalism, whiteness, wealth, violence), we worship the weak and the marginalized.

So here are the questions I’m carrying this week:

* What images have colonized my imagination—about God, myself, my neighbors?

* Where am I mistaking empire for God?

* What practices (prayer, Scripture, Sabbath, service) help re-posture me toward hope?

Then the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many Israelites died. So the people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned, because we have spoken against the Lord and against you. Intercede with the Lord, that He may remove the serpents from us.”

And Moses interceded for the people. Then the Lord said to Moses, “Make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole. And it shall come about that everyone who is bitten, when they look at it, shall live.” So Moses made a bronze serpent and put it on the pole, and when a serpent bit anyone, they looked at the bronze serpent and lived.

So, Sarah, Naima, and I were at a park in Southfield the other day, going on a hike. And just so you know: going on a hike with a toddler is more like going on a hike with a sandbag on your hip.

Except the sandbag wiggles and shifts whenever it feels like it. It has very strong opinions about which way to go and which sticks to stop and gather. Sometimes the sandbag drops the sticks and then tells you to pick them up again. The sandbag also asks for snacks. And it’s actually socially unacceptable to leave this sandbag in the car unattended while you enjoy a quiet walk.

When we came to the trailhead, it was evening, and the wooded path looked more like a shadowed cave. Naima—the sandbag—looked at me and said, “Hey, Daddy-O”—my latest nickname—“this one looks pretty scary.”

I laughed and agreed. Then she quoted her current favorite book: “Oh no. We can’t go over it. We can’t go under it. We have to go through it.” She was quoting We’re Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen. (Anyone read it? Show of hands?)

In the story, a family decides to go on a bear hunt—like, you know, a lot of young families do—and along the way they bump into obstacle after obstacle. There’s resistance from the world—or perhaps, we might say, resistance from God.

First it’s the grass. Then a river. Then a slew of mud. A random snowstorm. A forest with lots of roots for tripping. And the whole time they chant, “We’re going on a bear hunt. We’re gonna catch a big one. What a beautiful day. We’re not scared.”

Now, I know we’re a people of love and that perfect love casts out fear. But a little fear—say, if you’re going on a bear hunt—is actually a very good thing, especially with small children.

Their final obstacle is the cave itself. Ironically, the thing they’ve been seeking is right there, a few steps ahead. Still, they look for a way over it, a way under it, and they have to remind themselves again: you have to go through it.

We’ve all met resistance, haven’t we? An obstacle blocking our way to something we’re seeking. Something we fear pops up just as things were going well. Something we don’t want to deal with. Sometimes someone we don’t want to deal with. And it stops us from what we set out to find, be, or do.

Last week Pastor Sarah read about Moses’ call from the burning bush. Moses is sent to free his people so they can have a day off from work, worship God together, and remember they are human beings—not human doings, as I’ve heard one of my friends say, or simply machines feeding Pharaoh’s ambitions. After the bush, Moses and Pharaoh go back and forth through deadly plagues until the people are finally allowed to leave Egypt for the land God promised—a place to worship and be.

On the way out, God appears as a pillar of cloud by day and fire by night—a sight that terrifies the Egyptians and probably some Israelites too. At Sinai, God thunders in fire and smoke and terrifies them again. These are not the images of God we’re used to, and I’m sure they weren’t what Israel expected. This doesn’t seem like a God of comfort. This God is not “safe.” It’s not the companion they thought they’d have in the wilderness. This God must have seemed more destroyer than savior—even as they were being preserved.

By the time we arrive at today’s passage, years into the wandering, the people have grown impatient. On the way to the promised land they grumble about Moses and God—the two who got them into this mess. They regret leaving Egypt and wish things could just go back to how they were. They’re even sick of the manna—the bread from heaven—and call it “worthless.” Apparently, gratitude is as scarce as water in the desert. I’m not sure we can blame them.

In response, the writer of Numbers tells us God sent a tangle of venomous snakes—“fiery serpents,” interestingly the same Hebrew root used for seraphim, the fiery angels. These angel-like snakes, come, apparently, from heaven and bite and kill many. The people assume God is punishing them for the grumbling—for being human.

So they come to Moses: “We’ve sinned. We spoke against the Lord and against you. Please ask God to take the serpents away.” I imagine a collective, “Whoopsie daisy—we’re sorry,” followed by, “We were just blowing off steam,” or, “We were just kidding,” or, “We heard complaining helps on long trips.” And about wanting to turn around—“Did we say that?” Also: “By the way, Moses, we love eating the same bread every single day. Can’t get enough of it.”

After their apology, they ask Moses to find a way around the problem. Moses prays. God answers—but the answer is refusal. The snakes stay. The deadly bites stay. The obstacle will not be removed.

It’s as if God says, “Oh no—some snakes. You can’t go under them. You can’t go over them. You have to go through them.” Then God instructs Moses to make a bronze serpent, set it on a pole, and anyone bitten who looks at it will live. So that’s what they do: they continue the journey through the snakes. Each time someone is bitten, they look to the pole—and live. Here again is a God who is neither safe nor comfortable—and yet is savior.

Back to the bear hunt: the family tiptoes into the cave and finally finds the shiny wet nose, the two big furry ears, the two big goggly eyes of the bear they’ve been hunting. Only then do they admit they’re scared—very scared—and realize they didn’t want a bear hunt at all. It would have been better to stay home where it’s safe and comfortable.

This is true for any of us chasing something—a bear in a cave, a health goal, a promised land, a dream, a job, or (for many of us here) the revitalization of a dying church. We meet resistance. We find obstacles we can’t go over or under—obstacles we certainly don’t want to go through. So we run. We want to go back to the comfort of the past: back when we were young and responsibility was lighter; back when that one pastor was here; back when committees functioned; back when people just showed up; back before fraught history fogged the air between us; back when we couldn’t wait to come here; back when we weren’t running from everything but to something.

We all reach for what’s familiar to avoid what’s unknown and mysterious—and we want a God who gives us that on demand. But we don’t serve a God who promises to remove every immediate problem or satisfy every immediate want. God doesn’t promise to clear the path. But God does promise to walk with us through it—to the end of time. More often than we would like, God does not spare us our suffering, but sits and suffers alongside us.

And walking with God gets messy. To walk with God is to be formed into the divine image—and that isn’t easy. We get dirty. We stumble. We say the wrong thing. We trip up. We get whipped around. We get bit. There’s no perfect path, no way over or under. But there is a way through.

The call is really for us to embrace our reality—wherever we are on the journey, whatever resistance we face. Whether it’s grass, river, mud, a forest, a nest of snakes, or a scary cave, God is calling us to be present, to stop wasting energy looking for shortcuts, and to trust that the Spirit has gone ahead to make a way where no way exists. Trust that whatever we’ve been brought to, we will be brought through, as so many have said before me. And God will be beside us every step of the way.

Whether you're deconstructing, rebuilding, or just wondering what faith looks like beyond dogma—this is for you.

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