Sermon for All Saints Day + November 1, 2020
The Festival of All Saints
November 1, 2020
Revelation 7:9-17
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
We’ve all been there, the lonely walk to the grave. No other walk seems to take so long or be so difficult. The hole in the earth stares back at you, open-eyed and awaiting another body to consume - the body of your father or mother, your brother or sister, or your son or daughter. The pastor speaks, he speaks words of comfort - words of hope, the Words of Christ Jesus Himself. Yet, the hope and comfort of Christ proclaimed is met with tears and sadness, ears that have gone deaf from grief. Is this the end? Are we left with only memories or will they too depart and fade from our minds as the leaves that fall to the ground?
However, today, Revelation presents a very different vision of life, a vision of overwhelming beauty and heavenly glory as we reflect on the lives of the saints - those who have died in Christ. In all His splendor, the Lamb is upon His throne. The multitudes are those whose ragged and soiled garments have now been washed in the Lamb’s blood. These are the saints no one can number, people of every nation, every tribe, every language. These are your fathers and mothers, your brothers and sisters, your sons and daughters.
Here is your All Saints Day, a glimpse into heaven and those who have died and gone before us. For the saints in heaven, the troubles of this life have ceased, sin and Satan are no more. The multitudes surrounding the Lamb now await the resurrection of the dead, the new heaven and the new earth that are to come.
But, for you, you continue to journey through this life, this veil of tears. While today is a day we as a Church remember the faithful departed, St. John’s vision also serves as an encouragement for you and for me to endure what lies ahead for the faithful. What lies ahead is tribulation.
We live in 2020; if we never knew tribulation, this year would have to rank up there with the great tribulations of our time. Pandemic, riots, unrest over political elections, some of you may have lost jobs, some have seen careers come to their natural end with little pomp or circumstance. All news is breaking news and the sound of a tweet or a news alert pierces the silence of the day - conditioning you to stop, pay attention, and by all means - fret. As the R.E.M. song goes, “It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.” But, I don’t feel fine and I’m betting that you do not feel fine either.
Tribulation appears to be in everything and at every turn. Tribulation is the state of affliction, it’s the state of suffering for the righteous, it’s the intensifying battle between good and evil. And when St. John asks the elder in Revelation, “who are these arrayed in white robes?” The elder responded, “You know who they are, they are those coming out of the great tribulation.” The “great tribulation” leads us to look for a specific time in history, a specific event, and it would be appropriate that the “great tribulation” mentioned in Revelation takes our minds to Jesus’ prediction of Jerusalem’s fall, the destruction of the temple, the days nearer to Christ’s return, but it should also take us to Calvary.
While teaching 7th grade theology this past week we were discussing angels, ghosts, demons, and saints - you know, the usual topics. We were reading Matthew 27 and the events immediately following Christ’s death upon the cross as it pertains to whom is exactly a saint. The Gospel of Matthew records, “Jesus cried out again and yielded up His spirit. Then, behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom; and the earth quaked, and the rocks were split, and the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised; and coming out of the graves after His resurrection, they went into the holy city and appeared to many.” (Matthew 27:51-53) Isn’t this beautiful, in the cross the battle of good and evil intensifies to its climax, and through the suffering and death of Jesus the saints arise, and come out from the great tribulation.
To be a saint is to die with Christ and be raised in His resurrection. A saint is a person God places His name upon, sets apart from what is evil, and claims as His own. St. Paul reminds us of this in Romans, “We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.” (Romans 6:4) The life of a saint (the life of Jarid who was baptized this morning) is now the daily repetition of drowning the Old Adam in the death of Christ and being raised again by God the Father. Every time you walk past the font, the font proclaims and confesses this truth and reality to you once more. The font demands you confess your sins and wash your baptismal garments once again in the blood of the Lamb. (Revelation 7:14)
2020 hasn’t been the journey many of us (okay, probably all of us) imagined. But, as we awake on the days in which the sun shines and the days the clouds of life appear to be darkening, the font continues to call you to faith in Christ Jesus again and again and again. The history and lives of our parents, grandparents, and even their ancestors reveal the struggles of this life through the world’s story and through the personal and intimate struggles of family life. Many of us have family members that survived the Spanish flu, lived through world wars, the Great Depression, or even race riots of another era. Still, the night of affliction for others came more personally through broken relationships, the loss of a child, or the diagnosis of terminal disease. As we sit here and wonder what will the world looks like in another year, two years, or five years – the memories of the saints continue to teach and direct our eyes through our sadness to their Savior and ours.
The strength of the saints is not in themselves, but in Christ Jesus. For the loved one who has fallen asleep in Christ, they stand among the multitudes in heaven. The story of the saints continues to point us to Jesus, just as Mary and St. John do above the altar now. We are reminded as we reflect on the lives of those who have died in Christ that there is no assurance of lollipops or happy days. Rather, the Lutheran Confessions teach us to thank God for the faithful servants that have gone before us, in remembrance of these dear children of God, our own faith is to be nourished and strengthen as we see the mercy God has shown to them, and we look to imitate their faith in our callings throughout our life. (AC XXI)
You know, there was a time when a church’s cemetery was planted right outside the building, sometimes even budding up to the altar and chancel wall. We are unable to do this these days due to building codes, urban crowding, and so on. But, when the time to travel with the body to the grave arrived, the distance would not be so great as it is today. The memory of the saints at rest would not fade for the local congregation, but only for the decay and weathering of a tombstone. And each Sunday, the saints of the Church on earth would remember the saints at rest as they approached the church and as they join in song and approach the Lamb at His altar to receive His most precious flesh and blood for the forgiveness of their sins. What a joyful image of heaven!
I pray this brings you comfort. Because nothing has changed in the life of the Church, when Christ dwells and feeds us in the Holy Sacrament, the whole Church is gathered together; angels, archangels, and the multitudes coming out of the great tribulation - standing before the Lamb, who dwells among us.
The truth is, we are not simply left with memories that fade from our minds, but the assurance that on the day of our coming out from the tribulations that possess us, we too will join in their eternal presence before the Lamb in His Kingdom. Until that day arrives, we travel to the grave and we pray and listen to the words of Christ Jesus, “the Lamb in the midst of the throne - [He] will be [your] shepherd, and he will guide [you] to springs of living water, and God will wipe away every tear from [your] eyes.” +INJ+
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
Rev. Noah J. Rogness
Associate Pastor, Immanuel Evangelical-Lutheran Church
Alexandria, VA
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