Introduction
Good morning dear friends. Happy All Saints’ Day. This is a special day in the church calendar in the western part of the church where we commemorate those whose rest is won; those we know of and those we don’t. I love how this day frames the trials and joys of everyday life now. It invites us to remember our baptism and remember our death. It invites us to think about who has discipled us in our journey with Jesus. Who are the people who are now present with the Lord or those who are still present with us who have made us who we are and been a part of our story? A mentor of mine died a few months ago and I was thinking about the season of life where I was in graduate school and in the ordination process. It was a challenging and confusing season where I needed older examples. God put three people into my life: a Roman Catholic Priest, a Serbian Orthodox Priest, and Anglican professor. The Orthodox Priest would hear my confession and even though he couldn’t canonically offer me absolution, he would point to the icon of Jesus we were looking at and would say, “I can offer counsel, but I cannot offer you absolution. But you know who can? This guy.” I appreciated those times of learning from this older saint who was mellow and tempered in his soul. I had an Anglican professor who is a brilliant Aramaic scholar that would meet me on Fridays with two other students and we would occupy the tiny Maronite Chapel at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception and we would pray midday prayer then eat lunch together. Finally, my doctor-father was a Roman Catholic Priest who spent his entire vocation as an academic. He made space for me to wrestle with ideas, helped me do cross-disciplinary work, and showed me how to love the church and do good academic work without sacrificing the quality of either pastoral ministry or academic rigor. My prayer is that I get to do for others what they have done for me. Discipling others and holding out the goodness of the Gospel for others to hold with you takes the remembrance of our baptism and the remembrance of our death.
I would encourage you today when we are done to go home and consider one or two people who have left a mark on your story. Why were they significant? Who do you want to emulate as examples of Jesus and why is that? Commemorating the faithful frames our present. Our passage in Revelation this morning gives us a vision for the future that also frames our present and can help us make sense of our past. St. John is encouraging some churches that are undergoing real hardship. People have done a real disservice to the book of revelation by trying to take a vision and chronologically map it out. As someone once said, “Visions are not for diagramming but for insight into truths which lie beyond the [comprehension] of human intelligence.”[1] As we look at the apocalypse, first, I want to talk about how we relate to the communities to which we belong and make an application as we think of the elections this week. Then I want to say something about coming home to ourselves as a part of the eschatological community to which we belong.
As we look at Revelation 7 together, let me pray for us:
“In the name of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen. As you call us to Yourself, O Lord, give us confidence to come and trust that your grace will make us more fit to receive what you long to give. Amen.”
1. The final multi-ethnic nation to which we first belong (9-10).
First, let’s look at how we relate to the communities to which we belong. Jesus’s beatitudes from Matthew 5 remind his followers that when they enter physical and spiritual states of desolation because of following their Lord they should count themselves blessed. The book of Revelation continues that theme after the disciples of Jesus had been following him for over five decades. Christians in Asia Minor feel a deep unsettling at the prospect of state-sponsored persecution. How do they count this as being in state of good fortune with the Lord?
The big reveal, or the apocalypse, of Jesus’ plan provides them a vision for blessedness. It is the hope and framing they need to endure what is coming. In Revelation 6:17, the unredeemed ask in the midst of the day of God’s wrath, “...who is able to stand?” The answer is in chapter 7 and a cosmic vision of the redeemed. It’s framed as 144,000 in verses 1-8 which is the same group with a different description in verses 9-17. John sees a great multitude that no one could count. There is so much Scriptural imagery baked into the vision. This innumerable crowd reminds us of the fulfillment of God’s promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, where there descendants would be as numerous as the stars in the sky or the sand of the sea.
God had planned to bless all humanity through Abraham.[2] His heritage is an innumerable crowd of the redeemed surrounding God’s throne from every tribe, people, and language.[3] This crowd stands around the throne, robed in white which are the robes that were earlier promised to the victors and vindicated martyrs.[4] Their robes were made white by the blood of the Lamb. They are holding palm branches, a symbol of God’s acts of salvation in the exodus.[5] Together, in a loud voice, all of these people from all these families of the earth are proclaiming that rescue and deliverance belong to God, and to the Lamb.
The message from St. John is to look to the multi-ethnic, multi-national, and multi-lingual kingdom where Jesus is Lord to understand how Caesar’s authority is only delegated and temporal. Be a good earthly citizen insofar as you can: We should see everyone around us as our neighbor, fight for their liberties and their ultimate good; and do so in a way that promotes our true homeland where Jesus is king. It’s in this way that the church becomes a colony of the kingdom of heaven, to promote the welfare of the earthly nation to which we belong. The Epistle of Diognetus, written only about 40 years after Revelation, reminds Christians that “they dwell in their own countries, but simply as sojourners. As citizens they share in all things with others, and yet endure all things as if foreigners. Every foreign land is to them as their native country, and every land of their birth as a land of strangers.”[6] Because election day is this week, I want to encourage us not to fall into anxious systems, don’t give into paranoia about the decay of the world that is out of our control; name the trouble and be in prayer. This week I would encourage you to pray the prayer for an election from the Book of Common Prayer, which says, “Almighty God, to whom we must account for all our powers and privileges: Guide and direct, we humbly pray, the minds of all those who are called to elect fit persons to serve. Grant that in the exercise of our choice we may promote your glory, and the welfare of this nation. This we ask for the sake of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.”[7] Stay prayerful and always grounded in the innumerable crowd giving praise to Christ the King.
2. The victory procured by our king and shepherd (11-14).
First we looked at how we relate to the communities to which we belong. Now we’ll look at coming home to ourselves in the community to which we ultimately belong. What has been true in the times of Roman persecution has always been true for those who follow Jesus, to a lesser or greater extent, throughout every time period. Those who claim the protection of this Lamb will have to go through times of trial, but they will find themselves in a resurrection reality that is more redemptive than the suffering they’ve endured. The work of Jesus has freed his people from their slavery to sin and its ultimate effects and they can now frame their lives in the light of their standing in the throne room of Jesus. When Jesus comes to us to make all things new, we come to ourselves, at home in who we are made to be.
Sometimes when we hear this grandiose vision it can feel disconnected from our current reality. Each individual in this multitude carries in their bodies stories of brokenness redeemed by the death and resurrection of Jesus. It reminds me of St. Paul in 2 Corinthians when Jesus says to him, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” When we get booboos in our household I’ll say to our son “What do we always say about injuries”? And he’ll answer “They make a great story.” The stories that make us fully alive are often those associated with the scars we bear.
Don’t love your injuries. That would be to go through life with a martyrdom complex. Love the grace of Jesus that will show up in power because of your wounding and in your wound. Learn to trace the story of your scars. As you do the work of healing with Jesus in tandem with a spiritual director, priest, therapist and community, notice where His power is evident. Because of the power of the resurrection, as the song says, our anguished stories are sung as victory songs of grace.[8] We will spend all of eternal life sharing redemption stories around the throne of God. Get used to it now.
Conclusion
I may mention this every year, but the white robe you’re given at baptism liturgically finds its counterpart in the white pall that stretches over your casket. Both of these point us to the white robes we are given that have been washed clean by the blood of the lamb. “Remember your baptism” and “remember your death” are defiant Gospel reminders in the face of a culture of denial, decay, and deceit. We belong to Jesus who is the king of nations, delivering a people across time and place and creating stories of redemption. We are placed in communities and households in our time to begin the work of that multitude in heaven of proclaiming that God and the Lamb are worthy of glory and to create in our churches a colony of new creation. Remember your death. Remember your baptism. We don’t yet know the ways that our stories will be part of someone’s story long after everyone forgets our names, but look forward to the day where you get to trace the stories of God’s redemptive work when he comes again and all things are made new.
Let us pray:
“O God of grace and glory we remember before you this day, our beloved spiritual fathers and mothers who have gone before us. We thank you for giving them to us, to know and love as companions on our earthly pilgrimage. In your boundless compassion, console us who mourn. Give us faith to see in death the gate of eternal life, so that in quiet confidence we may continue our course on earth, until by your call, we are reunited with those who have gone before; through Christ our Lord. Amen.
[1] Bill Mounce, New International Commentary on the New Testament: Revelation, 172.
[2] Gen 12:3.
[3] Rev 7:9.
[4] Rev 3:4-5, 18; 6:11.
[5] 1 Macc 13:51; 2 Macc. 10:7.
[6] Epistle to Diognetus 5
[7] 2019 BCP, “Occasional Prayers”, #31 for an election.
[8] “Eternal Weight of Glory.” Wendell Kimbrough, Paul Zach, and Nan Macmillan