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Grace, Mercy and Peace to you …
For me it began when I was about the age of five. My great aunt Kitty Harmon had died. All I remember is seeing the open coffin at about my eye level and seeing her lying in it with what people told me later was an Eastern Star next to her on the satin casket lid.
She was the first. Then there were the grandparents … Somehow, due to distance, my brothers and I were spared having to attend those ceremonies.
But then it was my brother Mark’s turn. He was 19, attending a junior college in California; while the rest of us lived in Illinois… My parents at that moment were attending a convention in Montreal. No one had cell phones back then. Word traveled with difficulty. But finally, we all gathered and questioned and mourned.
Then I was called to be the celebrant, the one who says those final words. And the procession has not stopped. Numerous individuals from my previous congregation … some I knew as the hospice chaplain in that community… and many from before this altar. In my own house that has included a wife and my mother.
It is bitter sweet. The Book of Revelation has that wonderful passage which is included in our first reading for today that speaks of God personally wiping away the tears from our eyes. Words spoken twice in the Book of Revelation …
and both times, harkening back to that same promise first given to the saints by God through the prophet Isaiah: God Himself will wipe away the tears from our eyes.
The lesson is simple. Name those things in your life that can cause tears. You can lose a dollar, and it can cause tears. You can lose a piece of property … and it can cause tears … You can lose your reputation … and it can cause tears …
But all those things can be replaced. The dollar with another one. That property with even a better piece … your reputation can be restored and even grow in the process …
But when it comes to losing another saint in this life … and individual made in God’s image … not in His perfection … but in His ability to love, and be loved… There is no real one-for-one replacement.
Oh, God may bring healing. He may bring new relationships that did not previously exist … But that departed saint will have left a lasting imprint on your soul.
Somehow, as painful as that can be, that’s also good. Because, as our reading from Revelation attests … that departed soul is still actively loving and being loved in God’s creation.
That soul, we pray, is one of those who have washed their robe in the blood of the Lamb. The Lamb who is at the center of the throne who will be their shepherd. That soul is one whose tears will be wiped away. Why the tears? Well, when there is love, there always seems to be tears.
However … the break in our relationship with that soul is only temporary. You might say, that even though we experience a hole where that relationship used to be, that person will one day perfectly fill it again.
So, if that’s the reality… how does that make a difference in what we do today?
First … it should make a difference in how we think about those who have gone before us. There are several blocks here in Louisville, which for the past month, have looked a lot like a horror movie brought to life. Is that how Christians view death? Gouls and Vampires and things that go bump in the night … all out to get you?
Should a graveyard be seen as a creepy place? …maybe not. A place of mourning? Perhaps … But… maybe a place that says:
Here are memorialized a few of those from every nation, and tribe, and people, and language who are now holding up palm branches in their hands and saying:
“Salvation belongs to our God, who sits upon the throne, and to the Lamb!”
You know where all those saints pictured in the Book of Revelation come from? They come from these places set aside as hallowed ground! So instead of seeing a final resting place as a place infested with ghouls and ghosties … perhaps we might better picture such a place as an earthly conduit to that throne in heaven … and treat it with such honor and respect.
So First … think thankfully about those who have gone before us.
Second … We, hear these words of St. Paul from the Book of Romans which are also helpful as we think of those who have departed this life in faith.
St. Paul writes in the 14th chapter:
“None of us lives to himself alone and none of us dies to himself alone. So if we live … we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. So whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord.” (Ro 14:7-8)
Our picture we have in our Reading from Revelation may be a bit figurative … But what we see there are the saints in heaven who have in Paul’s words … Died to the Lord!
The question Paul puts before us … is sort of profound. “Can we live on earth to the Lord … the same way those who have died to the Lord now live to Him in heaven?”
The answer is both yes and no. The Saints now in heaven are in those White robes … they have received the Promise God made them in Christ Jesus … their sin has been put away.
But isn’t that also true for us?
When were your sins put away? When we spoke the confession and absolution earlier in the service? Or later, after you come up here to communion? No. Your sins were put away, forgiven, the moment you became God’s Child. For most of us, that was the moment we were baptized.
God assures us of His forgiveness in many and various ways in this world … just as the Devil, the world and our own flesh try to undermine our confidence in God’s grace. But that Promise in Christ Jesus now stands for all time. You are forgiven… and You stand as in a white robe, free of your sins as those pictured here in heaven, even right now!
But there is still a difference. Sin still mars our faithfulness to our desire to live to the Lord. We are forgiven, but our words and actions in this life often betray our self-centeredness and our failure to be all that God has made us.
Yet, those failures are not held against us. And God gives us His Holy Spirit that we may live each day to Him … and so that we need not try to rely on our strength alone.
Here’s the catch. We don’t think of ourselves like those in the white robes in heaven very much, do we? We look forward to joining them someday … but for now … we often cringe at our failures, fearing the wrath of a just God … and praying that somehow He might forgive us.
The truth is: He already Has! … The Lamb at the center of the throne did it all for us. And even already, springs of living water, the Holy Spirit Himself, flows out of us.
Simply put. This side of heaven … we often despair … We see ourselves as struggling sinners … waiting for God to lose His patience with us. But that’s Wrong!
Even now HE sees you wearing the robe He’s provided you with, the white robe made white in the blood of the Lamb.
What does that do for your God-esteem? Not Self-esteem, but God-Esteem, how God esteems YOU! IT gives a more positive outlook on life, doesn’t it?
So .. first we think about those who have gone before us thankfully.
Second, we think thankfully about ourselves being true saints here on earth.
And Finally, and it always comes back to this, because that’s why we’re here. God has not translated us to join those in heaven yet, because He has work here yet for us to do.
How does God’s message of grace get to those He is calling from every nation, tribe, people and language? We don’t see the angels anywhere in the Book of Revelation doing it.
Early on in the Book of Revelation we hear about churches doing it. Some better than others. But they are the ones God has called to take His message of Love and forgiveness into the world.
And that message of God’s grace takes us full circle back to where we started. The coffin. The gravesite … the cemetery.
Without the message of God’s love for us and His grace poured out upon us for the sake of Christ Jesus … what do the coffin, the gravesite, the cemetery all have in common?
Without Christ … they all signify a dead end. A flower that has lost its bloom finally succumbing to the earth. Here today… but tomorrow, gone and forgotten.
But with God’s message of Jesus Christ and His promise of Grace through the Gospel, the coffin, the gravesite, and the cemetery become a path to the scene we have in Revelation 7 … a path to glory … where God himself wipes all the tears from our eyes.
As those to whom that message has been entrusted, yea, even called to share it … what are we doing with it?… individually and as a congregation?
Shortly, all of our mission teams in this church will have the opportunity to ask themselves that exact question, and to set some goals for us and for themselves for the coming year.
Our function as a Church is to worship God … but our purpose here on earth is to join Him in what He is doing … bringing that message of salvation … that message that brings the white robe of righteousness to every nation and tribe and people and language … even to the person next door.
So, on this Observance of All Saints Day … maybe we can see this world and the world to come more closely joined together by the One who has made us all.
Rejoicing with those who have gone before us … looking forward to our blessed reunion … and while we’re here, doing the work of the Father, that all might be gathered … before that night comes, when no one can work. In Him. Amen.
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