Sunday, November 3, All Saints Sunday
“Everyone Who Has This Hope”
Psalm 149; Revelation 7:2-17; 1 John 3:1-3; Matthew 5:1-12
Divine Service III with Holy Communion
Hymns: #677 “For All the Saints”; #644 “The Church’s One Foundation”; #744 “Amazing Grace”
Dear Friends in Christ,
Grace, mercy, and peace to you, from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and from the blessed Holy Spirit, alive and still working in the world. Amen.
Today we’re going to read the roll and toll a bell for all our loved ones who’ve left us for heaven in the past year. That’s hard. And while we do that, we can’t help remembering all the dear ones we’ve lost in all the years before that. Whoever it was who came up with the phrase “time heals all wounds” didn’t know what they were talking about. Losing a loved one leaves a wound, a hole that nothing can really fill. It’s not that time will somehow heal the wound; it’s more that we grow accustomed to the wound being there. We learn to live, somehow, with the empty space.
I’ve had people tell me many times, “I keep expecting them to walk through the door,” or “Every time I turn a corner, into the kitchen or the living room, I expect them to be there.” Some people tell me they still talk to their husband or wife, months or even years after they’re gone; and I don’t see anything wrong with that. I knew a lady in North Dakota whose husband had been gone for over twelve years; and when you’d call her on the phone, his voice was still on the answering machine. She didn’t want to change it. She said, “I like to hear his voice.”
We don’t name the names and toll the bell on All Saints Day to make everybody cry or to make people sad. Quite the opposite, in fact. Remembering where they’ve gone and where they are a is good thing; because that reminds us of where we’re going one day and what our hope is. What we’re doing this morning isn’t mourning over our losses, or crying over a permanent separation, but looking forward to a happy reunion. That’s why Jesus can say, “Blessed are you if you’re poor in spirit” and “Blessed are those who mourn.” “You will be comforted,” He says, beyond anything you can even imagine today through your tears.
The Book of Revelation, despite all the bad press it’s gotten, wasn’t meant to frighten or terrify us. Again, quite the opposite. Blessed apostle John was given a picture of how we’re going to get where we’re going, and how things will be when we all get to the end of things – and the answer is “it’s going to be good.” God’s Book has a really happy ending. The cross and the Resurrection has sealed it for us. Everything is going to be all right!
Our reading from Revelation this morning has us in Revelation 7; and there the news for us is good; in fact, it’s very good. Revelation 7 begins with what’s sometimes called a “pregnant pause,” a pause for effect, a moment when everything stops in anticipation that something really big is about to happen. John sees four angels, “standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds.” You can feel the tension in the air.
Then John sees another angel coming up from the east, “ascending from the rising sun.” The four angels had been given power and authority to release those four winds, and to let God’s final wrath loose upon the earth and the sea. But before they can act and carry out their orders, this other angel arrives, “having the seal of the living God.” This seal is a signet ring, the signet ring of heaven’s High King. A signet ring, in ancient times, was pressed into wax on a king’s official documents, to signify that what was in the document was the king’s own word, a word that couldn’t be ignored, altered, or changed, except by another decree from the king himself. So here the angel arrives with the seal of the living God Himself, to tell the other angels, “Wait! Not yet! Do not harm the land or the sea or the trees until we have put a seal on the foreheads of the servants of our God." So before the end of all things, God’s servants themselves get the seal, God’s mark of grace, pressed like a ring into wax on their foreheads.
What is the seal that marks us as belonging to God? It’s the mark of faith in Christ! Not an outer mark that the world can see, but a mark that God makes on the inside of us. (“Circumcision of the heart,” Paul called it). It’s faith that comes by hearing and believing the Gospel of Jesus. It’s faith that comes by the Sacrament of Holy Baptism, where we received the sign of the holy cross on our foreheads and on our hearts, to mark as those who’ve been redeemed by Christ the crucified. It’s faith that comes as the blessed water is poured upon our heads, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Jesus was calling for people to be sealed in just that way when He said, “Go ye, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” That was the work the angels were being instructed to carry out before the Day of Judgment should come. That good work is still going on today; that’s why Jesus established His Church on earth, and what this Church is here for.
“Then,” says John in our reading, “I heard the number of those who were sealed: 144,000 from all the tribes of Israel.” That number 144,000 is not a literal number; it can’t be. The idea that only 144,000 people from all the ages of the world are going to heaven, and everyone else is going to hell, is ridiculous. It doesn’t fit with everything else God says, and everything our Lord Jesus says, about righteousness, mercy, and truth, and how people are to be saved. “Everyone who believes and is baptized will be saved,” Jesus says. If 144,000 was an actual tally of the saved, we wouldn’t have much to be hopeful about on this All Saints Day.
The numbers in the Book of Revelation are symbolic. Three is the number of the Trinity. Four is the number for the earth; thus those four angels standing at the four corners. Four plus three equals seven, a number that indicates holiness and perfection. (The number six, especially when you string those three sixes together, indicates sin and evil, and falling short of God’s perfection; one number short to spoil the heavenly equation). Four times three equals twelve, showing that all things in heaven and on earth have been brought together. (Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven). The number 1000, which turns up often in Revelation, is a number that signifies endless time and eternity. Twelve times twelve times 1000 equals 144,000. All things are complete. It is finished. All God’s saints have been sealed and saved. Everyone is home again.
St. John’s vision in Revelation gives us a picture of all of us home again. This is a vision of our future, and of what we have to look forward to. There are going to be many, many more than 144,000 of us around that throne in heaven. It will be a great multitude, a crowd so big that no one can count them, like stars in the sky or sand on the seashore. And they’ve come from everywhere, from every nation, tribe, people, and language. There will be people from this Church, who’ve heard the Good News and believed it in faith over all the years this Church has been here, standing around that throne. “A faithful crowd of witnesses,” the book of Hebrews calls them. And there will be Jesus the Lamb at the center of the throne. And there will be you and me and all of our friends, wearing those white robes that show that our sins have been forgiven, and waving those palm branches that show that we give all the glory and praise to God and His Son for bringing us to this place.
And then all heaven begins to sing. Do you know how it is when we’re singing in church, and we’re singing one of those hymns we’re all familiar with, and all our voices sort of blend together? How nice it is when we hit all the notes and get it just right? Multiply that 1000 times 1000 and you’ll have an idea of what the singing and praising in heaven is going to be like. "Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb." “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty; the whole earth is full of His glory!”
Then the angels and the elders and all those glorious creatures who serve God in heaven fall down on their faces before God and join in the praise: "Amen! Praise and glory and wisdom and thanks and honor and power and strength be to our God for ever and ever. Amen!" (I’ve always thought that when we sing God’s praises down here on earth, the angels in heaven are singing along; “Therefore with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven, we laud and magnify Your glorious name.”)
I want to be there. I want to get there. I want to see my mother and my brothers, and my grandfather, and my grandma, and my aunts and uncles, and all the great-grandfathers and relatives from generations past that I never got to meet. I want to see again every dear and sweet person that I’ve had to bury over the years, and catch up on things. I want to see all of you when I get to that place.
So how do we get there? That’s the question the elder asks John in the reading in Revelation: "These in white robes - who are they, and where did they come from?" “Sir, you must know,” John answers. "These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb,” the elder tells John. What is “the great tribulation?” It’s what we’re going through right now. It’s life in this world, where we have to hang on to our precious faith while going through sickness and sorrow and mourning and tears, and where we have to plan funerals and stand by the gravesides of our friends. Coming through the great tribulation means facing the death of our loved ones, and then our own death, and never losing faith in the promise Jesus made that “whoever lives and believes in Me will never die,” and “because I live, you shall live also.”
And if you make it – if you guard and keep your precious faith, if you live in this precious pattern of confession and repentance and forgiveness that God has given us through His Church, and if, when you close your eyes and leave this place, all your trust is in Jesus to carry you home – then you’ll be there in that crowd with the white robes and the palm branches, joining in the praises and singing along. “He who sits on the throne will spread His tent over them. Never again will they hunger; never again will they thirst. The sun will not beat upon them, nor any scorching heat. For the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their Shepherd; He will lead them to springs of living water. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes."
What strikes me about the little reading we heard from 1st John this morning is the ‘us’ and the ‘we.’ God never meant for us to walk through the valley of the shadows by ourselves, or to bear the burden of our losses all alone. Little Church, God has poured out His love and mercy on us, week after week and year after year, giving us comfort in His Word, and strength and peace through His Sacraments, and reminding us always that we are His children, and always will be, no matter what the world around us does, or what life in this world does to us. The world around us may not know Him, but we know Him, and we know where we’re going, and that is the reason for the hope that we have on this day. Even as we’re naming the names and ringing the bell, we’ll do it in hope, knowing that when He appears, when Jesus comes again at last, we – all of us together - shall be like Him, and we shall see Him as He is. That is our hope, and that is our peace. Thanks be to God. In Jesus’ name; Amen.