All Saints Sunday
I’d like to start this morning by asking you a question. And this is not a rhetorical question. I’d like to know what your answer is: What does it mean to call yourself a child of God? What’s a saint, then? We’re observing All Saints Day, today, after all. What constitutes someone being a saint? When we talk about being a saint and being a child of God, aren’t we really talking about the same thing? So, when we ask the question, “what does it mean to call yourself a child of God”, we can just as easily ask, “What does it mean to call yourself a saint?”
So let me ask you that: What does it mean to call yourself a saint?
Revelation is a strange book. It’s filled with all kinds of strange images: Images that, a lot of the time, don’t seem to make much sense to us. And that’s because it was basically written in code. The book of Revelation isn’t concerned with making predictions about the future. Revelation was written for a collection of faith communities that were facing extreme difficulty.
They were suffering through persecution, torture, execution, you name it. It was not an easy time, to say the least. Some of these communities were holding up well, and remaining faithful to the Gospel, even thriving in the midst of persecution. And others? Well, not so much. Some were holding their own, treading water as it were. And some were falling away and falling apart.
It was because of this persecution that Revelation was written using coded language. If a copy of it fell into the hands of the Roman authorities, they would have looked at it seen the imagery and said, “This is nuts. It’s about the end of the world. This has nothing to do with us.” If Revelation’s only concern was to predict the future, then what was the point in writing it to address these communities that were facing persecution? It wouldn’t have had any spiritual significance for them.
They question which is the key to unlocking the meaning of Revelation is, “What does this book have to say to a community that is suffering violence, persecution, and death at the hands of a violent and repressive government?” Suddenly, Revelation begins to make a lot more sense to us. What this text is saying is that regardless of what is happening to these early Christian people (and let’s never make the mistake of underestimating the level of persecution and violence they faced), they can rest assured in the knowledge that God has not abandoned them, that God is still with them. This great multitude worships God because they “have come through the great ordeal”. And they have done so by virtue of God’s grace, love, and strength. They were forced utterly and completely to depend upon God and God’s grace to sustain them because of the tremendous suffering they faced.
Suffering for the sake of the Church, they gave of themselves completely so that the church would have a future. They dedicated themselves to the furthering of the Kingdom of Heaven, knowing that they were already part of the universal church in the world to come. "These are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. For this reason they are before the throne of God, and worship him day and night within his temple, and the one who is seated on the throne will shelter them.”
“These are they who have come out of the great ordeal”, the ones who had nothing upon which to fall back other than the death and resurrection of Christ.
“They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb”.
And yet, it also talks about that which is ongoing and that which is to come. But it happens so seamlessly that we barely even notice it. “…the one who is seated on the throne will shelter them. They will hunger no more, and thirst no more; the sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat; for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes."
It’s a testament to God’s response to the human predicament. This is amplified for us by Jesus’ teaching in the Beatitudes. Jesus is trying to help us imagine what it looks like to live according to God’s will and rule. It’s a set of ethical instructions – some of which challenge long-held ideas of what’s right, right up to today even. But even more so, it overflows with promises. And this section is particularly promising.
The main promise in this passage is that, when God is present and we live according to kingdom principles, all is not as it seems. Let’s be honest, the list of those considered “blessed” doesn’t exactly match our expectations for a typical list of the blessed: those who are mourning, or are humble, or extend mercy rather than exact revenge, or strive for peace rather than exert their will through violence, just to name a few. But this promise and blessing also comes challenges. We’ve already named one – Jesus calling many conditions we seek to avoid “blessed.” We also tend to think of “blessings” in largely material terms. But Jesus’ words stretch our imagination to see God present and at work in so many other, often counter-cultural ways, particularly in our service to others, but also in the dark and difficult elements of life.
When I ask you to think about the tone, character, and import of Jesus’ sermon, what word comes to mind? The word that comes to mind for me is “transformation.” We are invited to transform our sense of where God is at work. It’s primarily in places of vulnerability: Amid our grief, alongside those who exercise mercy and work for righteousness, and in so many other activities the world considers not just meek but weak.
The God we know in Jesus always shows up where we least expect God to be. In a feeding trough in a stable rather than in a jeweled crib in a palace. Among the poor and needy rather than with the rich and powerful. Nailed to a criminal’s cross rather than astride the war horse of a conquering hero. By the same token, God shows up most clearly in our acts of sacrifice and mercy. Not when we force our of will upon others or try to accrue worldly power and stuff.
Jesus invites us to stretch our notions of what God’s presence means. God promises not to remove our grief, but to transform it as we see in the resurrected Christ. In the resurrection we see the concrete expression of God’s promise that love is more powerful than death and that life, rather than death, will always have the last word. What can feel like “small gestures” of being merciful in a world where “an eye for an eye” still reigns or working for justice in a world where injustice rages? Those are precisely the places where God is at work blessing, sustaining, and supporting God’s beloved children and the world. Standing and acting in the light of the resurrection, there are no small gestures, and we are reminded that nothing done in love is ever lost or done in vain.
Jesus calls us to anchor ourselves both in the invitation and command to live according to God’s kingdom-ethics; to allow God’s kingdom-promises to transform our thoughts, words, and deeds. In doing so, we are joined to all the Saints across the centuries redeemed by the grace of the God we know in Jesus.
Do we recognize our blessedness? Do we know what it means to be a child of God? Do we recognize our sainthood? Do we recognize that we find ourselves leading a dual existence? That we are at once entirely grounded in the present, able to rejoice in God’s presence in our midst and God’s ongoing work in the world, but at the same time definitively oriented towards the future?
We are at once part of something that has already been achieved, yet at the same time we are part of something that continues to move towards its completion. This is made even more clear by Jesus. Each of the beatitudes is formulated to reflect both a current state (blessedness), and the movement towards a fuller expression of God’s Kingdom. A movement towards being brought to perfection in God. We do the work of the church in the present, knowing that in doing so, we help to bring about the perfection of the Kingdom of Heaven in the future. The fulfillment of Kingdom of Heaven in the age to come flows from our leading faithful lives of integrity in the present.
As Children of God; as sisters and brothers of Christ; we present to the world a different vision for what this life is about. The Kingdom of Heaven is not some pie-in-the-sky future, that’s dangled before us, the proverbial carrot on a stick. The Kingdom of Heaven occurs in the present when we sincerely strive to embody the values of the Kingdom of Heaven in the here and now. This is true for the faithful who are humble and poor. It’s true those who show mercy, who strive for peace, who are pure in heart, and who endure persecution for Jesus' sake. The kingdom of heaven is not only for the poor in spirit, but for all who are sanctified. For all the saints. For all the baptized. For those who have been baptized for 40, 50, 60, 90, 100 years.
John the Baptizer and Jesus proclaim: "The kingdom of heaven has come near." The signs of that kingdom are the lives of the saints. The people who live according to kingdom values. We assist in bringing the kingdom about when we demonstrate mercy and work for peace. It’s not anything that we accomplish on our own, of course. It’s inspired, enabled, and brought to perfection by God, who makes all things new.
What does all of this mean for us on All Saint's Day? It means that we align ourselves today with the historic chorus of people who have been sanctified by Christ, people who regardless of circumstances, found their hope in Jesus and made their way as part of the kingdom of God. We join their work in the present as people who live according to the kingdom values outlined by Jesus in this Sermon on the Mount. And we live our lives knowing that our blessings reside both in the present and in the world to come.
AMEN