All Saints’ Day: At Home With God
Revelation 21:1-6a / John 11:32-44
Visit our YouTube page to view service recordings.
Today is All Saints’ Day when we remember the Saints, those in our lives who’ve died and have joined the church triumphant. This is a day we celebrate their lives, remember their lives and give thanks to God for the ways they helped us make us who we are as individuals and as a church.
Friends, death is not easy. It is personal. It is real. It is hard.
The names we will read later in the service, represent serious and real voids for those who have lost a loved one during the year. I wanted to name this reality for us and know that this is a safe place to be.
This morning we’ve heard from two—pretty familiar texts from the Gospel of John and the book of Revelation. We hear of a new heaven and a new earth. Mary crying, (Martha) stating the facts, Jesus weeping and then bringing a dead man back to life.
These are our images, our companions, for All Saints. They situate us in the tension between now and what is to come, and they ground us in the glorious truth that God has made, is making, and will make God’s home among us. God is in the business of moving into the neighborhood of humanity. In the joys and the sorrows, in the peaceful times and in the crisis moments, God sticks it out right alongside us. Thanks be to God!
First, let’s dig into our Gospel reading from John. In it we have the shortest passage in the bible: Jesus wept. Jesus wept. 2 simple words. Words that have a way to connect our humanity with Jesus’ humanity. In Jesus—we have God incarnate—the Word made flesh. Divine. And yet human—with emotions. Emotions that each of us have.
Perhaps, today, on All Saints’ Day, in Jesus’ tears we find the freedom, the permission, to weep for our own losses. We need to give space for that as we worship today. Tears and sadness as we remember those saints in our lives- are not to be seen as lack of faith or hope. No, we can hold both things together, grief and hope. Joy and sadness often sit side by side in our hearts and in our communities. The heart of Christianity is the trust that even in the deepest sorrow and thickest darkness, there is light and love and hope. And it comes from the witness of scripture, beginning to end: the history of God’s people down through many centuries, the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and the history of the church.
The heart of Christianity is also the trust that God is with us through it all. There is light, love and hope through Jesus. Jesus, who knows what it is like to be angry, frustrated, and grief stricken. Jesus, who weeps for his friends. And Jesus who performs this incredible miracle so that they might believe—that they may have hope. What an incredible text for us today!
And then we have our text from the book of Revelation. Many people prefer to ignore the book of Revelation. It makes us nervous with its bizarre and frightening imagery. One way to try and make sense of the text is to know the context—when and why the book of Revelation was written. We do know that it was written by a man named John decades, maybe more, after the life and death of Jesus, a man who was exiled, in a prison cell, a cave actually on the Greek Island of Patmos. We know that the book is actually a letter he wrote to several small Christian communities. We know that they were undergoing fierce persecution by Rome at the moment. That is who John was writing to, communities that had very real fears. And because of that danger he uses the wildest, most bizarre and creative symbols he can think of. His readers know who he means when he describes the great beast. It is Rome. They know what he means by a New Jerusalem, a beautiful city of peace and security and wholeness descending from heaven: the old Jerusalem is a pile of rubble, having been destroyed by the Romans in 70 A.D.
John tells them that there is light in the midst of their current darkness, that the absolute power in the universe is not Rome, it is God, a God of mercy and peace and compassion and love. And ever since, his words of comfort and hope have inspired people in trouble, people oppressed and to people facing the reality of death. Such words of comfort! And I could end my sermon right here. But…
But there is also a call and a vision for us…as John shares his vision with the churches in Asia Minor—his message is true for us as well. Perhaps if we are to be the New Jerusalem where God is at home among us, we must put an end to the violence in our homes, cities, countries, and world. In the New Jerusalem we embody the unity God dreams for us.
You might be thinking that this is impossible. Maybe it is impossible to change the whole world all at once. However, it is not impossible to change ourselves and the way we embody Christ. There is no room for fear, hatred, and violence. We live in such a divided world and a divided country. This presidential election has shown us just how much. It is heartbreaking on so many levels. We don’t know what will happen on Tuesday or Wednesday and the days that follow. No matter what the results reveal we must remember that Jesus hated no one and sought to bring healing and hope to all he encountered. How will we do the same?
We must love. We must love-through it all. Perhaps then we will be close to the Kingdom, the New Jerusalem, and God will truly be at home among us.
May it be so. Amen