All Saints’ Sunday
November 5, 2017
Revelation 7:9-17; 1 John 3:1-3; Matthew 5:1-12
First of all, you should probably know that All Saints’
is my favorite holy day in the church calendar. Not Christmas, when God decided
to become one of us and sent his son, Jesus; and not Easter, which is the whole
reason for our Christian faith, and not Pentecost, the whole reason there is a
church, but today, All Saints’ Sunday, when we look not just at the church here
but at the whole church triumphant. All Saints’ Sunday may be my favorite
because the church I was baptized in was called All Saints’ Episcopal Church.
It may be my favorite because one of my favorite hymns as a kid was the one we
just sang, “I sing a song of the saints of God.” That song has all those great
concrete images of what a saint looks like: a doctor, a soldier, a shepherdess;
and all the everyday places we can meet saints: at school, in the store, at
church, next door. Saints are all around us, if we have but eyes to see. And keeping
that in mind, and thinking of all the saints who have gone before us, knowing
that we’re not the first ones trying to lead a Christian life, well, it just
gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling. This day is one of those “thin places” that the
Celts talked about, where the boundary between earth and heaven is especially
close, and we can peek beyond the veil and dare to see and feel the whole
church triumphant, the church throughout two millennia. I find comfort in
knowing that others have followed Jesus before us. There’s something reassuring in knowing that
we’re not alone. We’re not the only
church struggling. We’re not the only
ones trying to figure out how to live faithfully and what that looks like for
us in this place at this time. Many,
many others are doing that, both in 2017 and in the two thousand years of
church history that came before us.
In 1
John, we read, “See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we
should be called children of God! And that is what we are! ...Beloved, we are
God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed.”[1]
We. Are. God’s. Children. And what we will be has not yet been revealed
to us, but it has been revealed to
those who went before us. I don’t know about you, but I think that’s exciting.
That gives me hope. What we will be,
we don’t know, exactly. But our loved ones who have already entered into glory?
First John says that “What we do know
is this: when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he
is.” It’s like John is letting us in on a secret. We don’t know exactly what we
will be. It’s not the fullness of time for us yet. But the saints who have gone
before us? They have been purified and sanctified and perfected, like Jesus. Does
that not give you the warm fuzzies?!
However,
we live in the meantime; we’re not there yet. What we are now are God’s children. This part we know. And we’ve
talked about what it means to be children of God. When we’re baptized, we join
God’s family. Being God’s children means that we’re brothers and sisters. Some
churches actually call each other Brother and Sister, because we are all part
of the same family. Being God’s children means that that’s how much God loves
us. That warm, fuzzy feeling you usually have for your children? That’s what
God has for us. Being God’s children means that we are our brother’s keepers. Just
as God held Cain responsible for Abel’s well-being, we are responsible for each
other. Now, we could get quite negative here and also talk about the division
among God’s children, about the brokenness, about the restless wandering. And
I’m reminded of Paul’s advice in Romans to “live in harmony with each other.”[2]
In harmony is not always agreeing, because that would be the same. A harmony
has different notes that get along, that work well together. And that is what
we, God’s children, are to figure out how to do. You may have noticed in all of
the Beatitudes, there’s only one where the result is that they will be called
children of God, and that’s the peacemakers. “Blessed are people who make
peace, for they will be called children of God.”[3]
The catch here, of course, is that that’s not an easy task. It’s not easy to
make peace after war, after division, after hurtful words, after conflict. Did
you know that after apartheid ended in South Africa, the new government created
a Truth and Reconciliation Commission? Their job was to listen to the stories
of witnesses and victims of the horrible oppression of apartheid as well as to
receive the testimony of the perpetrators of that violence. They had the power
to grant amnesty and to make arrangements for reparation and rehabilitation as
they saw fit. Archbishop Desmond Tutu was part of that commission and wrote a
beautiful book about it called, “No Future Without Forgiveness.” It is holy
work that peacemakers are called to and it is not work for the faint of heart. It’s
work for God’s children. That’s what we are. We are already God’s children. We
are called to be people who engage in the hard work, harder even than making
candy, the hard work of making peace.
And
yet we do it keeping our eye on the goal. The apostle Paul also wrote, “Run in
such a way as to get the prize” and “I press on toward the goal to win the
prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”[4]
This is what we will be, not yet fully
revealed, yet we know we will be like Jesus. Note there that “Jesus doesn’t
save [us] so [we] can keep being like [us].”[5]
Jesus saves us, smoothes our rough edges, talks us down from the edge, so that
we can become like him. “This “being like him” implies something
counter-cultural.”[6]
“All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.”[7]
Purifying ourselves means rooting out what is selfish and greedy and inwardly
focused and pleasing people and hurtful and false and twisted. It means we
become more selfless and loving and outwardly focused and pleasing God and
honest and true. It means we decrease so that God can increase. It means it’s
less about our personal preferences and more about what God is calling and
inviting us to do.
That
passage we read from Revelation has become one of my favorite Bible verses
because it offers a vision not just of what could
be, but what will be: so many people
that you can’t count, from every nation, tribe, people, and language, all worshiping together. And it doesn’t
say they’re all using the same language or the same style of worship, but they
are joined together so that all their voices sound like one voice. Can you
picture it? Everyone, from all different backgrounds and cultures and
lifestyles, are all worshiping God together with one voice. It may sound messy
to our ears, but you can be sure it’s a sweet, sweet sound in God’s ears, when
God’s children figure out how to worship together, how to be church together,
how to all come around one big family dinner table. That’s where we’re going.
That’s where the saints who have gone before us already are.
So,
in the meantime, what do we do? We keep
joining God in his work of bringing his kingdom here on earth as it is in
heaven. We keep our eyes open for glimpses of when and where that happens,
times when God’s children work together even when they are different. We take
advantage of opportunities that come our way to help our brother and sister. We
keep our ears open to listen for God’s call and invitation, and keep our hearts
open to accept that call and invitation. We continue to read and study God’s
Word, to join our brothers and sisters in worship, to participate in the life
of the church. You’ve probably heard somewhere along the way the mission
statement of the United Methodist Church, “to make disciples of Jesus Christ
for the transformation of the world,” but did you know there’s a second sentence?
The second sentence says that the local church is the most significant arena
through which disciple-making occurs. Participating in the life of the church,
being an active part of God’s family is how we grow as disciples of Jesus, how
we grow more like Jesus. You can’t do the Christian faith by yourself. You need
the faith community, the church, the rest of the family, to learn about Christ,
to learn about yourself, to purify yourself, just as Christ is pure.
And
so we look for glimpses of what could be, of new creation, of God’s family
being family. One place that happens is here at the big family dinner table
where we all share in a meal together. Jesus invites everyone, whether you’re
sure about all this or not, whether you’ve been baptized or not, whether you
think you’re worthy or not. Jesus invites everyone to the family dinner table.
That’s what it means to be God’s children. We know that what we will be has not
yet been revealed and we claim the promise for those who have gone before us. Sometimes
we even claim the promise for those who will come after us.
An
article came across my Facebook feed Friday afternoon called “Why Nobody Wants
to Go to Church Anymore.”[8]
It cited a study that was done a few years ago that listed the top four reasons
people don’t want to go to church. The reasons are that people don’t want to be
lectured, they see the church as judgmental, they see the church as
hypocritical, and they see the church as irrelevant. However, this author
doesn’t think that any of those
reasons are the real reason why people stopping going. He thinks it’s because
we’ve diluted and twisted the idea of church to the point that people don’t
know what it’s supposed to be anymore. This author says, and I agree, that “The
church is supposed to be the family or body of all Christians.”[9]
And so for a Christian to say that the church is judgmental, hypocritical, and
irrelevant is for that person to say that they
are judgmental, hypocritical, and irrelevant. When we forget that we are the church, we are God’s
children, we are members of this family of all Christians, past and present, when
we forget that, then we tend to “see the church as an institution which [we]
can either choose to support or not,” we see church as an event to attend, and
we “lose the entire concept of Christianity. Jesus did not come to redeem
individuals, but a people.” We are part of that people. Our loved ones who have
gone before are part of that people. I have a mug from the Capital District of
the North Carolina Conference that says, “Why go to church or do church
when you can be the church?” Be the
church. We are the church. Us, and
all those who have gone before, and all those who will come after. That’s the
cool thing about this family. You don’t have to raise the dead or hold a séance
or pray to your ancestors to commune with them. They’re here, among us, just
beyond the veil. And God willing, God helping, we’ll get there, too.
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