Isaiah 25:6-9; Revelation 21:1-6a; John 11:32-44
This morning, we celebrate All Saints’
Sunday, our annual remembrance of … well … quite a lot. To me, if you cut to the chase about this holy
day, here’s what we’re remembering: that in eternal life, there’s a lot more
than meets the eye, both now and later – in this life, and when we die, and
when we’re raised with Christ. All
Saints Sunday seems a good time to step back and at least glimpse the fullness
of heavenly life – which is an impossible task, sort of like trying to take a
picture of the Grand Canyon. Once you’re
far enough away to get the shot in view, you’re miles from the beauty of the detail
you wanted to capture in the first place.
But even if we can’t take in eternal life
all at once, I think it’s important to try.
And today is a good day for that work not just because it’s All Saints
but because of what will happen here in a few minutes. Three small people will come to this baptismal
font – representing the living waters of creation, the cleansing waters that
remove our sin, the liberating waters of the Red Sea through which the children
of Israel passed from slavery to new life – three small people will come to
this font and become followers of Jesus Christ.
And when they do, they will, by
definition, become saints. That word
comes from a Latin word meaning “set aside for holy use,” consecrated for holy
commitment. It doesn’t mean an all-star
of the faith, though it includes the all-stars.
A saint is just someone set on God’s path, committed to doing his or her
best to follow what Jesus asks us to believe and to do … which we can do only “with
God’s help” (BCP 304-305).
So – for the families of those three small
people, and all the rest of us pilgrims – we should know what we’ve signed on
for, as saints. What’s this path all
about, especially the part we can’t yet see – what we typically call “heaven”? When we say we hope to “go to heaven,” what
does our faith tell us we might expect?
To guide us on the journey, I’d invite you
to open your hymnal and take a look at that hymn we just sang – “For All the
Saints,” number 287.1 It’s a
really long hymn, which is why we’re breaking it up into two sections this
morning. But it also captures nothing
less than the Christian hope – not bad work for eight verses.
The first five verses talk about our
experience of eternal life in the here and now.
You’ve heard me say this before, and I’ll say it again: I believe eternal life falls into three
stages, and you’re living in the first one now.
When we come to this font and join the company of saints, we start
living forever. As Jesus says in the
verses just before today’s Gospel story about raising Lazarus, when Martha
confronts him about not showing up and letting her brother die, Jesus says to
her, “I am the resurrection and the
life” – present tense. “Everyone who
lives and believes in me will never die” (John 11:25-26) – starting now.
So, these first five verses of “For All
the Saints” tell us about the first stage of eternal life we’re in. Verse 2 names trust in God as the saints’
foundation: “Thou wast their rock, their fortress, and their might.” And it names Christ as their leader in a life
that’s often not easy, as we well know – he is the saints’ “Captain in the
well-fought fight” and “in the darkness drear, their one true light.” The third verse prays that we might follow
the saints’ example in this life and “win, with them, the victor’s crown of
gold.” It’s good stuff, strengthening us
for the reality that this first stage of eternal life is no picnic. In fact, as verse 5 puts it, “the strife is
fierce, the warfare long.” As every
saint knows, deep down, eternal life is not for the faint of heart but for
those “whose hearts are brave and arms are strong.”
Then, in the next three verses, the hymn teaches
us truth that we often get flat wrong about what happens when we die. We like to say we’re looking toward “life
after death,” and that’s certainly true – but it’s also incomplete. And this hymn helps us get it right.
If our life now is stage 1 of eternal
life, stage 2 comes when we die. At that
point, we enter into what the tradition calls “paradise,” a time or state of
perfect rest, complete healing, and surprising joy as we drink in God’s
presence up close and personal. It’s
what Jesus promised to the thief dying at his side when he said, “This day, you
will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43).
In “For All the Saints,” paradise comes in verse 6:
The golden evening
brightens in the west;
Soon, soon to
faithful warriors cometh rest;
Sweet is the calm of paradise the blest.
And in our church building, we can see
stage 2 of eternal life in the amazing window here in the columbarium. The angel welcomes us into a garden of
unimaginable beauty and bids us to “let the peace of God rule in your hearts,
and be ye thankful.” Absolutely. There are days when I can hardly wait.
But the amazing thing is, stage 2 isn’t
the end. As the theologian N.T. Wright
puts it, we still have ahead of us “life after
life after death.”2 We still
have an entirely new creation to witness and inhabit. This is what the last two verses of the hymn
are about. It’s the promise foreshadowed
by Jesus raising Lazarus. It’s what
Jesus meant when he talked about his second coming. It’s what’s going on in that stunning reading
we heard from Revelation. It’s the end
of the story that’s actually the beginning, again.
In God’s good time, “there breaks a yet
more glorious day,” as verse 7 of the hymn says, when “the saints triumphant
rise in bright array.” The Revelation
reading describes it like this: God
speaks the divine Word, just like in Genesis, and unites heaven and earth
again, making all creation new (21:3-5).
That new creation includes us. And it includes the lives we live. In stage 3 of eternal life, we saints come
into the fullness of what God intended for us “in the beginning” (Genesis 1:1),
with humankind truly, finally reflecting the image and likeness of God. In the big picture, the last verse of the
hymn tells us, that looks like “the countless host” coming “from earth’s wide
bounds and ocean’s farthest coast,” streaming through gates of pearl and
praising “Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.”
But for each of us individual saints – then
what? If all creation is made new, if “mourning
and crying and pain will be no more” and if “the first things have passed away”
(Revelation 21:4), what might that look like in terms of what I do when I get
up in the morning? What’s the life and
the work of a saint eternally?
It won’t surprise you to hear me say it in
one word: Relationship. I don’t know, precisely, how that will play
out, but we get glimpses of it all through Scripture. It’s no accident that the next scene with
Jesus in John’s Gospel, after what we heard this morning, is a sumptuous dinner
he shares with his closest friends – Mary, and Martha, and the disciples, and
Lazarus, the no-longer-dead man. Isaiah
describes this life of eternal connection as “a feast of rich food, … a feast
of well-aged wines strained clear” (25:6).
Revelation describes it as the “marriage supper of the Lamb” (19:9). In eternal life, I think we celebrate
together, healed – in peace, in joy, in love.
But you know, along with the party, I
think there will be work to do. I
wouldn’t presume to know what that might look like, but love doesn’t just
happen. Love takes effort. Relationships take work to build – especially
those we’ve managed to break in this first stage of eternal life. Plus, there will be an eternity of new
relationships to build, as we “seek and serve Christ in all persons,” loving
our neighbor as ourselves (BCP 305).
There will be a kingdom of justice and peace to flesh out, in which
every human being respects the dignity of every other human being (BCP
305).
It’s a kingdom we know even now, in our
best moments. It’s the kingdom we know
even now, when we love and serve one another.
It’s the kingdom we know even now, when we comfort those who mourn, and feed
those who hunger, and lift the lives of the oppressed, and show mercy to those
who’ve harmed us, and make peace with those we oppose, and endure persecution
for the choices we make, and live pure in heart (Matthew 5:3-11). That’s the kingdom we pledge to build when we
come through those baptismal waters and step into our own sainthood. That’s the kingdom of heaven – our kingdom – now and forever.
1.
This
look at “For All the Saints” is taken from Wright, N.T. Surprised
by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church. New York: HarperCollins, 2008. 22-23.
2.
Wright,
169.
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