All Saints
Revelation 7:9-17
Epiphany, Winnipeg
Maybe this All Saints Day is a different day than it’s been before. Maybe it’s different for you – it is for me – because someone you love was here and with you and a part of life among us in this life the last time All Saints rolled around…but now that one we have loved is one of the ones we hold today only in our memories and in the flickering of a candle. Maybe you’ve heard Jesus say, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted,” and though you’ve heard it a thousand times, today feels like the very first time you’ve needed to hear it.
Maybe this All Saints Day is different for you than it’s been before. It is for me. I’m 62 years old, so if my math is correct I have lived through 15 sets of U.S. midterm elections, which roll around just after All Saints Day every four years. 15 sets of midterms and I can honestly say that I really have never bothered to notice. But this All Saints Day, a few days before the 16th midterms in my lifetime, I’m frankly kind of worried. I feel, I think most of us feel, like our country is kind of threatened, and the world is going bonkers, and an election day in the U.S. could enable who knows what to happen for us in the next two or more years? I watch what seems to me to be the collapse of our friend to the south, and it all reminds me that we too could live in some kind of collapse in our own lifetime too. Even if that kind of thing doesn’t happen to us, right?
This time around, All Saints is different.
We heard that brief reading from Revelation a few minutes ago. We saw multitudes of people, too many people to count, from every land and tribe and nation and language, coming to stand before the throne of the Lamb of God. They’re waving palm branches, just like that crowd that welcomed Jesus to Jerusalem, except this time Jesus is a Lamb on a throne, not a carpenter on a donkey. They sing and pray and maybe even dance around the throne, maybe even forever…(someone at Bible Study on Monday said that they thought that praying and singing hymns all the time and forever would get pretty boring after awhile….)
These ones who wave their branches and sing their praises are the ones who have lost their lives in struggles and persecution, but who know that the Lamb on the throne has given them back their lives. Now they rest and wait to see a world made new, a new Jerusalem, a new heaven, a new earth. There will be no more hunger and thirst, because those who hunger and thirst for justice, like Jesus said, are blessed, and there’s no need to hunger and thirst for righteousness or justice or real food and drink on the table before them, because those who hunger and thirst are filled.
God will wipe away every tear from their eyes…Like the tears shed by those who mourn, like those who will be comforted. Like the tears shed by those who fear for their life or for their country or for the ones they love.
The ones who stand before the throne of the Lamb sing their praises, because the Lamb seated on the throne has already won the battle, and all the life that has been lost is being given back.
A little word about Revelation, the last book in the Bible. I’m guessing that it’s something that most of us have heard about – raise your hand if you’ve heard about Revelation. I’m guessing that most of us know that it’s kind of weird – a show of hands again… I’m guessing that most of us haven’t read all twenty-two chapters of it, and I won’t ask for a show of hands, but if you haven’t read it all, you’re not alone. I’m guessing that none of us who have read it all have it all figured out – raise your hand if you do have it all figured out…
One thing to remember about Revelation is that it’s not a book written for people in the twenty-first century. Revelation is not a book, it’s a letter. Like a reeeaaallly long e-mail. About sixty-one years after the word got out that Christ is risen, there was someone named John who was on a Greek island called Patmos. While he was on that island, John wrote a letter to seven churches in what we now call Turkey. The Christian church was young, and there was no such thing as Christian nationalism then. Christianity hadn’t taken over the world or colonized anything, and it would never have occurred to anyone that a country could call itself a Christian country. The church was just a small and strange new Jewish offshoot, people meeting in one another’s homes, sometimes ignored and sometimes persecuted. The small church just tried to survive in a world where the politics was falling to pieces. The small church trying to survive when the world around them didn’t trust them. People in that small and weak and meek church had lost their lives because they were loyal to Jesus, and not to the emperor.
For that small group of people in seven churches, it could seem like the world was coming to an end, and they were afraid. So John wrote them a letter, a long letter that would be read to them when they gathered like we do, and John’s letter really said something like this: “In so many ways, your world has fallen apart. It might seem like your world is coming to an end, and all of the worst kinds of powers and tyrants and hatred are finally going to win. But Jesus, who has died and risen and given you life, has already won the war. All the powers and tyrants and hatreds are just blowing hot air and trying to survive another day, and they know that they will not survive. Jesus, who sits on the throne, says, “Look! I’m making everything new! And there won’t be hunger or thirst any more, and your tears will be wiped away. I’m making everything new.”
John writes a letter, that we call Revelation, to people who are afraid that the world is coming to an end. And John says, “God is not bringing the world to an end. God is making everything new. Christ it risen; death has lost – and God is making everything new.”
We started all of this with some talk about those who have gone before us in the faith – we call them saints, people born with us in baptismal waters. Maybe some of us have remembered people who are not born in those waters, and I’m willing to trust that God can make saints of them too.
As I think of saints I remember today, I can hear them telling me stories of their lives and stories of their faith. There have been saints who quietly told me that even when the world seems to be coming to an end, it’s not. Sometimes that sounded like the simple but deep trust that they had, a trust that what happened in Jesus means that everything is going to be OK. It may seem like the world is ending now, and we do everything we can to be sure that that doesn’t happen; but there’s this faith those saints taught me that still says that Christ is risen; the battle is already over; life has won the day; The world is being made new.
So many of those saints, the ones we know and the countless ones we have never met, lived through persecutions and tragedies and wars and hard times that someone like me, who has grown up with such comfort and ease, could not even begin to imagine, let alone survive. But those saints, along with living saints who have told me those stories from your own lives, tell of a simple and deep trust that even when everything seems to be falling apart, the world will not come to an end. Everything is being made new.
If you have stories like that please make sure some of the rest of us hear those stories; those stories help keep our faith alive.
Today we’re remembering the saints. They’ve been in our prayers and they will be again. We’re lighting candles, as though the saints are lights among us, and they are. We’ll come to a dinner table today, and it’s not just us but it’s all the saints who have come before us, and all the saints who pull up a seat to the table all over the world today. Listen to those saints while we dine together. You might just hear them reminding us what we most need to hear: the world is not coming to an end; it’s always being made new. Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again. Everything is being made new.