Sermon - All Saints Day - All Texts

Revelation 7:(2-8) 9-17

1 John 3:1-3

Matthew 5:1-12

The people of God are his saints.  This is the primary insight and point of All Saints Day.   

We don’t consider some sort of hierarchy of more and less holy, or better and worse qualified Christians.   

There’s no years long process for a person to be declared a saint by the church, and only if they meet certain special criteria.   

But rather, sainthood, saint status, is afforded to everyone who is in Christ, and that is, simply, all Christians.  All are equally sinful and fallen, on our own, and all are justified freely by the righteousness of Christ.  There is no distinction. 

And this condition, this status, this standing before God as holy and righteous and saintly, is itself a gift.  Just like the grace of God in Christ and the faith that believes it all.  You are a saint, in Christ, because of God’s free gift to you. 

Just look at the three pictures of saints that are presented in our readings today – the great multitude cleansed by Christ in Revelation 7, in John’s letter, the term is “children of God” and for Jesus, they are called the “blessed” ones.  Let’s consider each of these in turn. 

John’s vision of the great multitude from every tribe and nation and language, standing before the throne of God and the Lamb, is a picture of the saints in glory.  They are the people of God who have finally come through the great tribulation, that is, earthly life with all its troubles and sorrows.  They’ve known sin and suffering and death.  They’ve known loss and grief.  They once mourned but now they are comforted and now they inherit the earth, and see God face to face. 

But what is most notable about them is not their diversity or their accomplishments or anything really about them, per se, but that they have received a cleansing, a washing, like no other.  They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the lamb. 

This was no good work of their own, mind you.  The shedding of blood was the Lamb’s work.  The dying for their sins was Christ’s job.  They are recipients of his good grace and mercy, each one of them, cleansed and restored and made fit to even stand before God.  They sing of his salvation and wave the palm branches of victory – a victory he has won for them, a victory he gives to them.  They are the saints of God in glory, and they include you and me, dear Christian. 

In John’s letter to the church, an old and wizened apostle writes with fatherly affection to young church he has seen grow in the first several decades after the resurrection.  He’s seen many come to believe in Christ, and many of them even die for the faith.  He would see all of his fellow apostles likewise martyred. The world does not know us, even as it did not know our Lord.  The world is against us, and may even kill us, as it did our Lord. 

But we have a hope.  The love that the Father has lavished upon us is such that we should be called Children of God.  And so we are.  Not by our achievements or decision, not by our own doing or desiring.  It is God’s love in Jesus Christ that has made us his children.  It is our adoption into the family, through the waters of baptism, by which we can say, I am “God’s own child”.  And this is already a present reality.  But there’s still more to come. 

When he appears we will be like him.  That is to say when the resurrected and glorified Christ appears, we, his people, we God’s children, will also be resurrected and glorified.  Children now, glorified children then.  Purified now by grace, wholly cleansed from sin in that new day.    

And just as you don’t choose to be someone’s child, but are born into a family, so the Father has adopted us by his grace in Christ, and we are born of water and the word, children of God by his doing and not our own. 

The saints are washed in the blood of Christ.  The saints are the very children of God in Christ.  And then to turn to the Beatitudes, we see the saints are the ones blessed by God in Christ. 

Here Jesus offers us a poem, 8 lines of blessed-ness, describing the people of God in beautiful verse.  But the key word is “blessed”. 

A blessing, you see, is a gift.  It is undeserved, and often unexpected.  It is given freely by the giver, and in no wise deserved by the receiver.  It’s not a wage that is owed, or repayment of a debt.  It’s not a prize for achievement or an honor that is due.  A blessing is a matter of grace.  And Jesus begins his sermon on the mount, his teaching about life in his kingdom, by speaking in terms of such blessing. 

What do the blessed saints receive in his kingdom? 

Well, for starters, and for finishers, the kingdom itself is theirs. 

Those who mourn are comforted (and that comfort is the same word by which the Holy Spirit is called – the parklete, the comforter) 

Those who are meek will be blessed to inherit the earth. 

Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness will be blessed with food and drink, their hunger filled and their thirst quenched.  We might think of the blessings of the Lord’s Supper, by which we receive the very bread of heaven, Jesus Christ himself! 

The merciful are blessed to receive mercy.   

The pure in heart are blessed to see God. 

And the peacemakers are blessed to be called sons of God (and we’ve already mentioned how blessed it is to be a child of God) 

Even those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake are blessed, blessed with the very kingdom of heaven.  I wonder if Jesus mentions the kingdom of heaven twice in this little poem because we have it now, his kingdom, by grace, and yet we also look forward to the kingdom that is to come, the kingdom of glory, which is also ours by grace in Jesus Christ. 

No, we don’t meet these beatific criteria fully or always very well.  We are not always merciful or peacemakers.  Our hunger and thirst for righteousness could often be stronger.  But thanks be to God for the most blessed one, the saint of all saints, the Holy One of God, Jesus Christ, who perfectly fulfills all righteousness for us, stands in our place under God’s judgment, and hangs on the cross we deserve.  He is the source and font of every blessing, the one and only one through whom we are blessed beyond measure.  We are saints, through him, by him, and in him. 

Dear Christians, dear saints of God, you who have washed your robes in the blood of Christ, you who are called children of God, you who are blessed in so many ways by our Lord Jesus Christ.  Be blessed to live as his people, trusting in his grace, living out your faith, and looking forward to the day when all the saints of God are reunited with him in the kingdom that has no end.