Enter the Throne Room

Worshipping at Taizé changed me. Only a teenager, at fourteen years old (give or take), I visited the ecumenical monastery in Cluny, France. My dad and I drove there from our house outside of Geneva, Switzerland, for a spiritual getaway. The phrase “contemplative spirituality” meant nothing to me, and for all I knew, a monastery might as well have been a synonym for a UFO sighting. I still identified as an evangelical Christian, even though many nascent doubts stirred in me about whether God loved me and whether God was trustworthy at all.

Picking up a thick and worn songbook from a stack, I sat on a meditation pillow in the midst of the vast hall. I don’t remember what it looked like; so many people crowded the place that I couldn’t see from whom or where the music originated. It didn’t matter. Unlike the guitar-led praise songs with which I associated worship, these songs didn’t have a pep-rally style leader energizing us. No one person led the singing—we all did. The tones wafted over me, along with the chanting of thousands other voices. I experienced the repetitious phrases, “Bless the Lord, My Soul” as arrows from the Divine Heart to mine. Much of the songs were sung in other languages. This, too, did not matter. All of us sang the same language of the heart to God. I kneeled on the floor, hiding my tears of relief, not knowing how else to receive the undeniability of God’s Presence. It’s a memory I will never forget, a promise, in fact, that even though I would experience ten years (give or take) of depression, doubt, and deconstruction, God was in that place, and so was I.

In John of Patmos’ latest vision, he is transported in spirit to the throne room of God. (We’re beginning chapter four; new readers check out this post introducing the series). After Christ dictates the letters to seven churches, John looks and sees a door in heaven that is open. Remember in chapter 3 when the Cosmic Christ said to the church in Sardis that “I have set before you an open door” (3:8)? Or when the same Christ reminded the Laodicean church that “I am standing at the door knocking” and encourages them to open the door (3:20)? Well, the door to the heavens is not closed, it’s open! A voice tells John “come up here” and John assents as he ascends, because we then read “at once I was in the spirit, and there in heaven stood a throne” (3:2).

The divine throne room is all worship all the time. The details are many, steeped in Jewish sources. John of Patmos prays in the tradition of Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel, each of whom report a visit to the “throne of God.” There are flashes of lightning like on Sinai. There are magical creatures, an amalgamation of Ezekiel and Isaiah’s visions. The whole scene is not pyramidal, but circular: a throne in the center, encircled by twenty-four other thrones of elders. There is unending praise and song, the repetition of “Holy, holy, holy, the Lord God the Almighty, who was and is and is to come” (4:8) filling the universe. I’ll cover more next week; the specifics are important but not the point. The point is to enter into the room and kneel, or to stand and shout in radiant joy, or to weep with relief and receive the undeniability of the Presence. The throne room is the place of worship.

But what is worship, anyway, and why does it matter? I don’t know the answer to the question, but I can say that it is a mixture of awe, wonder, freedom and intimacy with self and God. I know it when I’ve experienced it but don’t know how to describe it. I know that I haven’t experienced it in most churches, except on rare occasions, even though the technical name for the Sunday ritual gathering is “worship.” It’s more a gift from the Spirit that can only be received, and inwardly prepared for, rather than planned. No wonder John takes to wild image and vision. The text, even, is meant to be heard as worship. This is no text to be tamed, historically explained, or stripped of myth. It is a painting of words to stir the soul. My practice this week has been to read chapter four slowly and, rather than think it, experience the strangeness, colors, creatures, and songs as invitation to walk through the open door to the center of heaven, which is right here. If it speaks to you, I encourage you to do the same.

Can we worship while the world is falling apart? Pretty soon in Revelation, seals will be opened, horsemen will ride, and chaos and violence will be unleashed on earth. To prefigure my own take on this, it’s not God who does the unleashing, but we ourselves. Do we need any further proof that human beings are utterly destructive of the planet, even while carrying the capacity to change? Revelation simply provides mythic frame for the crises of our lives and times. John’s clear answer is that we must worship while the world seems at its end (but is not), and when we’re at the end of our wits, certainties and understanding.

The throne is in the center of John’s vision, symbolizing somehow the authoritative center of the universe. But the throne is also our center, the place where God’s presence and our inner knowing meet.

Acocalpytic culture corner: Zack Synder’s Justice League is four hours and, of course, contains an apocalyptic showdown of superheroes vs. villains.

Apocalyptic quote of the week: “Worship is a meeting at the center so that our lives are centered in God and not lived eccentrically. We worship so that we live in response to and from this center, the living God.” —Eugene Peterson

Image credit: Lamb of God Mosaic, c 547, Basilica of San Vitale, Ravenna, Italy, public domain.

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