14 And the four living creatures said, "Amen!" And the elders fell down and worshiped.

I came home for lunch on Monday, when I normally do, right around noon. One of the things that I regularly do is take a quick look at the MSN news page to see what’s going on in the world, or maybe how the stock market is doing. When I did, there was one headline that screamed out so much louder than the others. I called over my shoulder to Jen, "Did you hear about this shooting down in Virginia?" She hollered back, "Yeah, two dead."

My head snapped back to the screen and I said, "That’s not what it says here". Jen came in and looked at the headline, 20 Dead in Virginia Massacre. Her next line was exactly what ran through my mind when I first saw the headline, "Oh my God". As we all know, that headlines continued to vacillate over the subsequent hours until that evening it declared, 33 Dead in VT Killing Rampage.

One of the questions that has been asked as details of the shootings emerged was why wasn’t the campus ‘locked-down’ after the first two victims were discovered? One of the answers that was offered from the police officials was that they thought that it was, "an isolated incident".

I’ve thought about that phrase over the last few days and the more that I thought about, especially as NBC put the ‘video manifesto’ of the shooter into their heavy rotation, was this: who are we kidding?

Who are we kidding to think that the various portions of the world that we have created are ‘isolated’ and have no connection to one another? Do we honestly think that our idealized individualism has not led to a greater sense of personal isolationism? Do we not honestly think that this isolationism that whispers in our hearts and minds that no one cares about us, has no connection to teenagers who kill their classmates in a high school in Columbine, Colorado, or a frighteningly sick and disturbed young man who kills his classmates on a campus in Blacksburg, Virginia? Do we honestly think that showing that young man rant away on national television is going to have no affect on the person who wants to beat the newly established ‘record’, and kill who knows how many students? (How sick is it that killing people has become something akin to sport? And how sick is it that we won’t show people from the stands running around on a sports field because we don’t want to have copycats, but it okay to play it hate filled diatribe because that’s ‘news’.)

To think that our lives are isolated from the events of the world is to sorely miscalculate how connected we really are to the creation and to each other. We are connected and we need to begin to live in that reality.

This truth of interconnectedness is what I love about our passage this morning. Now I admit that if you put 100 people in a room to look at this passage, you’re probably going to get 100 different interpretations of what John is talking about in these words.

However, as I have looked at these verses over the last few days I wasn’t looking for the ‘deeper meaning’. I was just dwelling in the verbal picture that has been created. It starts out in the heavenly throne room. And the vision of this scene describes a room that is big, really big. Surrounding the throne are many angels, the living creatures that numbered myriads and myriads, and elders, the believers of the risen Christ, the sacrificed lamb, who count in the thousands and thousands. These differing entities come together, singing in full voice, "worthy is the lamb!"

This picture of unity despite differences is then broadened further as John writes, "Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, singing, "To the one seated on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!""

Try and conceive of that incomprehensible vision: all of creation, every creature in heaven and on the earth and under the earth, and in the sea, all of it and everyone coming before the Lamb of sacrifice, declaring through their praise that despite their differences, they are connected and in Christ, unified.

Getting back to what Jen said when she saw the updated headline about Virginia Tech, "Oh my God". Instead of just saying it, we should actually start to mean it. First off, we need to remove that little h off of oh when we say, ‘oh my God’, because there’s a world of difference when you say ‘Oh’ and ‘O’. The first is an exclamation expressing surprise, fear, wonder, or pain. The latter pertains how we directly address someone, in this case the Creator of all that we know, the One who brings us together despite our differences.

Think about it: instead of simply saying, "Oh my God" (Oh), we are then able to say, "O my God", (just O) how can I serve you? O my God, how can I actually care for my neighbor, instead of just handing them off to the next guy, who hands them off to the next guy, who unintentionally allows that neighbor to slip through the cracks? O my God, how can I care for this world in a way that glorifies you, and is not in response to a type of science that sees only the facts that it wants to see? O my God, how can I help to create a world that is closer to Your kingdom, instead of our own personal kingdom? O my God, lift us up to a greater understanding of who we are, and who we are in relation to You.

The world we have created is not a series of isolated incidents that have no connection to one another. Instead they are a very clear reflection of the fact that we have not come before the Almighty and recognized, that despite our differences, and yes our failings, we are unified in Christ. We do not come together as we have pictured for us in the words of the book of Revelation. We do not come before the Almighty, and say, "You are the author of all things and we place our trust and our very existence in Your hand". Instead we look to create laws that are established in our biases, and follow science that may, or may not have any foundation in reality. We look to human wisdom, instead of Divine authority. O my God, what have we created? This world we have fashioned is not isolated, it is interconnected by our brokenness, by our sinfulness, by our rejection, or at least our avoidance, of God.

We need to change that, and moments like the innocent slaughter of over 30 kids (and while I know that they are ‘young adults’, I challenge you to look at the pictures that came off of that campus and tell me that you do not see children), we need to take this moment and allow it to be a galvanizing event around which we gather before the Almighty and say, "O my Lord, here we are, as a people unified, not in our beliefs, not in our ideas, not in our histories, but instead unified in our need of and dependence on You!"

How we care for the environment should not be motivated because the Al Gore movie scared you, but instead because the Almighty, the Divine author of Life, has given us the opportunity to be caretakers of this amazing place. The way that we treat each other should not be merely guided by the laws that are created, far too often out of tragedy, that say ‘well you can’t do this and you can’t do that’, but instead by an actual care in regards to the one whom we have been taught by the Almighty to view as neighbor. Instead of only being a world that cries out "Oh my God" after the horrific takes place, let us become first and foremost, as was so beautifully depicted in our reading from Revelation, a unified creation that calls out "O my God, my Lord, might blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever be with You!"

There’s a song that was written and performed by Jars of Clay on their most recent album, Good Monsters. The way that it starts out it’s one of those songs that I might normally skip over. It speaks about doubt and brokenness and how far we have drifted away from being before the Almighty. A couple minutes into the song, the drifting nature shifts to a more focused recognition that we need to come before God, because we are so broken, so fearful of standing up for what is right, for what is of God. By the end of the song, the listener is crying out with the lead singer, "Oh my God".

However, instead of saying it in the fearful way, with that little ‘h’ tacked on, I hope that you might be able to hear it as a declaration of where we have come from, and where, like all of creation in our reading from Revelation, we are able to become unified in our reliance of the Almighty. Oh my God, look at the world that we have created. O my God, we come to You now.

The next time we say that repeatable phrase, what will it mean to you? I hope the next time you say it, you are able to understand it as coming before the Almighty and becoming unified with each other and all of creation. "O My God".

O my God, look at what we have created. We have fostered a world that is interconnected in its fear, brokenness, and rejection of You. O God, reshape us so that our actions, our words, our everything that we are is gathered in Your throne room. Unite us in our dependence on You so that the world that we begin to see is the world that You have believed it to first be. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.