I.N.I.

a sermon to be preached at Immanuel Lutheran Church, Mt. Vernon, NY on 3 November 1996, observing All Saints Sunday, and based on the lessons for the day [Matthew 5:1-12; 1 John 3:1-3; Revelation 7:9-17], but especially the lesson from Revelation

Grace, mercy, and peace be yours in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Dear Friends in Christ,

When I was in high school some 25 years ago in Virginia, I was involved in a youth group in which a fair number of the kids were either recent converts to Christianity, or had only recently become actively involved in celebrating their faith relationship with Jesus. The first group of these kids were experiencing for the very first time the power of living in a loving relationship with their God and Savior. The second group had perhaps been raised in a church that did not speak the Gospel to them, or perhaps were ones whose parents had dropped them off a Sunday School but not been reliable role models for them, or perhaps they had been raised in families that had gradually drifted away from the church over the years. The point of contact is that all of these high school kids were for the first time in their lives reading the New Testament and seeing that its message was relevant to their lives. For the first time they were hearing the Gospel. For the first time they were really alive in Christ.

Now, I had been raised in the church from before my Kindergarten years, had sung in the choir, been an acolyte, gone to Sunday School every week, been faithful in confirmation class attendance, gone to a Lutheran elementary school. So all this information about Jesus was not news to me. And while I enjoyed watching these friends, these brothers and sisters in Christ, grow in their knowledge and love of the Lord, there was always something that kind of troubled me. That was something that I heard our youth group leader say from time to time.

He would mention that the Christian life did not always travel down a smooth road. There were going to be bumps along this road, he’d say. He warned that as much as everything in the world looked bright and beautiful to these new babes in Christ, there would come a time when things would darken and look ugly. He told us all that the Christian life was not always and forever one of sweetness and light.

In high school back in the early seventies that meant probably something completely different than it would to high school students today. Back then it meant things like “Just because I’m now a Christian now, it doesn’t mean that I’ll always get A’s on all my tests.” Or “Just because I’m a Christian now, it doesn’t mean that our football team will go undefeated again this year, or that my best friend won’t move away, or that I will get a car for my 17th birthday.”

What we didn’t see clearly back then, both those of us who had grown up in the comfortable arms of the church and those of us for whom this talk of ultimate forgiveness was brand new, what we didn’t see clearly was that our declarations of love for God really cemented us into the history of the whole Christian Church on earth. We didn’t clearly understand that we were being intimately connected with all the saints of God who had gone before us and who would yet come into faith after us. We didn’t understand that along with our relationship to God, we were also in relationship with all the saints and angels “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.” (Rev. 7:9)

Where does that kind of connection come in? Well, for those of us being joined to Christ since New Testament times, it comes in our Baptism. That’s where we are united with Christ and His Church. And it comes in as we look forward together with all the saints and martyrs to our final redemption at the day of Christ’s second coming when he will gather us up to his side.

Our unity with all the saints of God also comes into our lives now, in this in between time, when we live here between our adoption as sons and daughters of the king and our final home going to Heaven. We are united already now with them as fellow saints.

And this seems to me to be significant. Realizing it more fully back in high school would have made that youth leader’s statements clearer to me. And maybe it can focus your attention this morning, too.

Let’s look for a bit at what we can learn from Scripture about the condition of saints. The lesson from the Revelation to John can make us think about the great multitude joining with the angels in praises to God in heaven. But I want to direct your attention to the end of the passage. Revelation 7:14-17. Here, one of the elders present tells St. John about this crowd of saints to which you and I have been joined. And look at what he does. He explains to John what the saints are NOT any longer experiencing. See what that does? That tells us what they did experience on earth. It points out that God sees and understands what we are going through now, what you and I are experiencing.

Those gathered in Heaven, the elder says, “have come out of the great ordeal,” meaning that they–that we–are in some sort of ordeal while on earth. What kind of ordeal have you gone through, or are you going through now, or will you yet go through? Is it outright persecution? Well, probably not like the first readers of this text were going through under the Roman empire. But your ordeal could consist of your whole support structure of family and friends crashing down because of a betrayal of trust. Maybe it’s a devastating illness, your own or someone else’s. Maybe it’s financial loss of some kind. Maybe it’s a chronic condition of some kind. Could it be a rebellious child, a neighbor or co-worker who is constantly complaining about something?

Big or small, if it’s your ordeal, it’s the biggest one you have to suffer.

“They will hunger no more,” says the elder, meaning that they do hunger while still here. They will “thirst no more,” meaning of course that they were thirsty on earth. Sure, at various times we’re all hungry and thirsty. Most of us, however, don’t go through the life-threatening hunger and thirst of famine, the kind we read about in newspapers or see on the TV news shows. There must be another way to look at these phrases, and a key to understanding them and applying them to ourselves could be in today’s Gospel. There Jesus tells us “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” (Matt 5:6). So the words “hunger and thirst” don’t always have to apply to physical food and drink. And I would say that your very presence here this morning places you in the class of those Jesus spoke about in this Beatitude. Whether its a deep, gnawing, famine-like hunger for righteousness, or the more habitual kind of hunger you bring to the dinner table, you’re here this morning to have that hunger satisfied. We sing it away. We read it away. We preach it away. We pray it away.

And we are each united with all the saints in going through this hunger and thirst that will be fully, and completely, and forever met in the presence of God in heaven.

The elder continues telling John that “the sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat” (Rev. 7:16). That must mean that the blinding sun and scorching heat are things through which God’s saints need to suffer now. And, again, while sometimes our summers here are pretty unbearable, I would understand this to mean more than 92 degrees and 92 percent humidity. Think of the way that that kind of summer weather just drains all the energy out of you, the discomfort it brings, the weakness and so on. There are any number of other situations in life that can drain all your energy away. There are relationships, and losses, and addictions, and powerlessness, and weaknesses that can gang up on us and drain us of every ounce of energy, every intention toward creativity, every thought of vitality. They can even get us to question our faith, or the certainty of God’s love for us, sapping our spiritual strength.

God knows this. And when, in the middle of this kind of stress, we can look forward to the promised relief at our Savior’s side, we know we will find relief.

And finally, the elder tells John that “God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.” Well, it certainly seems clear that this means that we have been crying in this life. Tears come to us for a variety of reasons, don’t they? We’re sad. We get hurt. We’re lonely. Sometimes anger and joy can bring us to tears. It seems like crying is triggered by extremes of emotional highs and lows. Whether tears come to us quietly at the end of a sad movie, or in great spasms of body-wracking pain when a loved one dies, they indicate changes, imbalances, loss, uncertainty. But we can balance against that the promise here in Revelation that “God will wipe away every tear” from our eyes. Wow! What a relief! It comforts me to know that no matter what pain I’m going through right now, there is always, always Someone to give me an eternal hug and wipe away every one of my tears.

When we come home to Heaven, we will no longer be bounced around the emotional handball court triggering tears at every change. The tears will be gone, because the cause for them will be gone.

Now, while my friends back in high school had to be told that becoming a Christian would not mean that every one of their pains and troubles and difficulties would vanish from their teenaged lives, we all should have learned that there is an end to them. Our tears will be wiped away. We will be shaded from the scorching sun. We will no longer hunger and thirst. And we will pass through the ordeals arrayed in front of us.

It all will end. Peace is there. Comfort is there. Joy is there.

Whether our pains and troubles are huge when measured against someone else’s; or whether they are more like little nagging problems in our lives and we feel like we’re generally smoothly sailing through life and we can identify someone else whose troubles are worse than our own; the point is that they will all be wiped away. You and I are members of the company of saints who will stand around God’s throne one day, relieved of the sadness, and pain, and trouble of this life.

When things are dark, we can hold onto that promise. When things overwhelm us, we can hold onto that promise. Whether our pain is physical or emotional, we can hold onto the promise of God.

St John wrote in his first epistle (our epistle for today) the reminder that “we are God’s children now” (I John 3:2). Now! God’s children now. So the promise is ours. It’s ours now. We have it now, and can gain comfort from it now. God’s promise can bring us peace now, wherever we are in life. It’s a peace that surpasses our abilities in this life to understand it.

May that peace that passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Amen

S.D.G.