All Saints

Revelation 7:7-17

⁹ After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands.
¹⁰ They cried out in a loud voice, saying,
‘Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!’
¹¹ And all the angels stood around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshipped God,
¹² singing,
‘Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom
and thanksgiving and honour
and power and might
be to our God for ever and ever! Amen.’
¹³ Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, ‘Who are these, robed in white, and where have they come from?’
¹⁴ I said to him, ‘Sir, you are the one that knows.’ Then he said to me, ‘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.
¹⁵ 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.
¹⁶ They will hunger no more, and thirst no more;
     the sun will not strike them,
     nor any scorching heat;
¹⁷ for the Lamb at the centre 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.’

Today we come together in celebration of “All Saints”, all those people who have loved and lived in the light of Christ throughout all of history. It is a time of celebration, but it is also a time of loss. We are people of hope, but hope does not preclude grief. We are resurrection people, but resurrection not the same as being able to magic the people we love back to life and wholeness. So this week is a week to hold the tension of lamenting and being a people who, even at the grave, make our song “alleluia, alleluia, alleluia”.

Within this reality, we are also called to find our identity as living saints. Each of us, by our baptism, has been called to this path. How do we live as saints of Christ, working God’s will in the world among all the temptations and corruption we are embedded in?

John’s revelation was a source of hope to the early Christians who were struggling with loss. We have all experienced loss of some sort – not just that of death, but loss that deserves notice and demands. It comes in leave-takings, as we depart for a new job and home and leave beloved friends and colleagues behind. It comes as you slowly lose a loved one to Alzheimer’s. It comes in the loss of employment or dignity. It comes from struggles with illness both of body and mind. It comes from the exhaustion of caring for a special needs child and the occasional recognition of all the things given up in order to offer that care. It comes from disappointment at home or work or school, of dreams deferred or hopes dashed. It comes from realising a Church community is still a place of human brokenness, and not the safe haven we needed it to be. It even comes from knowing that some of the most valued and loved people in your own life are not going to find the light of God on this side of death. Such loss comes at us from so many sources, and I think there may be value to wondering together how this day could address them as well.

The people this revelation was addressed at were surrounded by the fear and discouragement that comes from a dashing of hope. A time when the loss of a clear identity, independence and even life was imminent. A time when the multitude in white, freely proclaiming God in word and action, must have seemed like a beacon of peace and perfection.

Who were those people robed in white? Who are they?

The vision of the great multitude in Revelation is a startling one if we let it stand on its own. I think the majority view in mainline churches like ours has been to read this passage as if the great multitude were white, Anglo-Saxon, protestant Christian, well educated, liturgically conservative middle- to upper-class! What a pale vision that is! The seer of Revelation says that this multitude comes from every nation, from “all tribes and peoples and languages” (Rev. 7:9). In the First-Century world, I would imagine that as a description of just about every distinction that could divide the human family. In our day and time we have added some distinctions—creed, social class, sexual orientation, political affiliation, just to name a few. But the point of the vision is that the “great multitude” cuts across all of these ways in which we like to divide humanity and segregate others who are different from us.

This is the vision of the kingdom of God. Some people have tried to make it made only of Christians, worse, of the ‘right kind’ of Christians, but that is never said nor implied. When we limit our perceptions of who is welcome, we limit the expansiveness of God’s creative love. Who are we to deny any created creature access to the multitude when Gods very self has welcomed them? If we go back to the very beginning of God’s promise to Abraham, Abraham’s call reaches far beyond the chosen few - “in you all the families of the earth will be blessed”. The implication is clear: from start to finish, God’s purpose is to restore all people. And the vision of the vast and diverse crowd around the throne in Revelation gives us an idea of what that might look like.

In the presence of God, all tears will be wiped away. In the presence of God, all sins are gone. In the presence of God, there is no hunger or thirst, or any physical discomfort that could mar the celebration. The saints are active participants in the life of God, not passively waiting for God to serve them, but washing away the blood of sin and singing praises to our redeemer and Lamb. Such a vital, passionate image of worship and hope! Sheltered, cherished, led to the springs of life by the ultimate guide.

We celebrate this life for the saints, but how do we live it is saints on earth? How do we live out a life of such sanctity and perfection that we are worthy to take our place among the throng?

When we look at the lives of those saints who have gone before us, we find that though they were capable of great acts of mercy and compassion in the name and service of Christ, they were but human, flawed and broken just as we are today. It is here that Lawrence Hull Stookey’s perspective becomes helpful:

“…those we rightly revere are ‘God’s saints’ in the sense that God creates them by grace. Men and women do not by sheer determination and self-discipline become saints. Sanctity is a divine gift. It is indeed the power of the resurrection at work in human lives. Thus commemorating the saints is nothing other than a way of affirming that the transformative power of Christ is at work all about us in human lives…We are saints because God’s sanctity is at work in us, not because on our own we have come to great spiritual attainment. In exploring the lives of the historic saints, it is necessary to be thoroughly honest about their limitations and faults, for only in this way do we come to believe that God can also work in the people around us and even in us, whose faults we know fully well.”²

Such a relief, in a way. A relief to be reminded once again that God is working through my brokenness, shining through my cracks. A relief to know that I am a saint of God not by my virtues but by that of the divine. A relief to be able to continue my feeble and often seemingly ineffective moves to make the kingdom of God real today in the knowledge that it is not merely my will and energy that are directing the move but the force of the Spirit moving through me.

Above all this, there is the joy of knowing that I shall be made whole, and that all I love shall be made whole. That loss does not mark the end, but a new beginning. That even in the middle of pain and suffering, Jesus is there in the mud, sitting with us as we cry and mourning as we mourn, with God wiping every tear from our eye. That when are finally returned to our ultimate destination, we will join that multitude and truly sing

‘Blessing and glory and wisdom
and thanksgiving and honour
and power and might
be to our God for ever and ever!’

Amen.