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. 

 

Sermon - Pentecost 19 - Genesis 32:22-30

The Christian life is a persistent wrestling with God, with his word, with faith, and with prayer.  This is what our readings show us today. 

In Genesis, Jacob is about to return from his long sojourn in the house of Laban.  He had left his Father’s house, and God’s promised land, after his little tiff over the birthright with his brother Esau.  So for many years Jacob lived in a kind of exile. He labored for his father-in-law, while God nonetheless blessed him with increasing wealth, wife an increasing family.  But now it was time to return home, and face a possibly vengeful Esau.  How would that reunion look?  Would Esau kill him and his family?  Or would his anger have subsided? The tension was thick, but God’s promises to Jacob still held. 

Now, the night before the big reunion, God appears, in the form of a man, (and I would posit to you, this is Christ before his incarnation),  and he wrestles with Jacob all night long.  Jacob is tenacious, and doesn't even give up when God finally pops his hip like a kung-fu master, showing that he could have beaten him all along.  Like a dad wrestling with his kids, he was going easy on him the whole time.  But Jacob yet persists, and insists on a blessing, which he then receives.  God loves to bless, anyway.   

God renames him, “Israel”, meaning “one who wrestles with God.”  And his words here, “you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed…” may remind us of Christ’s frequent statement, which we even heard last week, “your faith has saved you.” 

Jacob’s whole life is typified by this wrestling match.  In fact, every Christian’s life is the same.  We too, the New Israel, the people of God, also wrestle with God in faith.  It’s not always easy.  We struggle with fightings within and fears without.  Trouble on every side.  The Old Adam and the New Man within us constantly contend for supremacy.  We struggle against sin, and to be faithful Christians.  We, too, wrestle with God... all night, all day, every day. 

And God loves to bless us, too.  He calls us to trust him, in good times and bad, in our coming in and going out, when the sun shines and when darkness surrounds us.  You probably don’t have a brother who’s about to kill you, but you probably have something hanging over your head, some cloud of dread.  Whether it’s your health, or your wealth, or a relationship in turmoil.  Maybe you’re exhausted from wrestling with anxiety or worn out from battling some form of depression.  Jacob’s whole life was a struggle, too, it seemed, and yet look how God blessed him. 

Esau forgave him.  He would live.  His family would live, and thrive even.  But the conflict in his life wasn’t over.  He lost his favorite son because the brothers despised him, and believed Joseph was dead.  Then a famine came and he had to send his sons to Egypt for food.  But through all the ups and downs of this family, through all their wrestling with conflict and trouble and famine, God brought blessings, saved their lives, and made them into a great nation.   

That nation, Israel, would also struggle and wrestle with God, but God blessed them nonetheless, delivered them from bondage, brought them through the sea, through the wilderness, fed them mana and defeated their enemies before them, and then settled them in back in the promised land.  In other words, God kept his promises.  He loved to bless his struggling people.   

And best of all, he blessed them by remembering his promise to Adam and Eve, to Abraham, and Issac and Jacob.  A deliverer who would save them not just from slavery or hardship, from oppression or affliction, but from sin and death itself.  The one who would finally crush the serpent’s head.  The one in whom all nations would be blessed. 

Look how he blesses you, dear Christian, with all good things in Christ.  Though you, too, wrestle with God, he gives you daily bread:  spouse and house, children and friends, food and drink, health and wealth.  He gives all you need to support this body and life.  But even more.  He sends his Son Jesus Christ to the cross in your place.   

Jesus, who strove with God and man and even Satan himself, and prevailed, Jesus the true Israel, the persistent one who endured even death on a cross to accomplish his mission.  He even conquered death itself, and thus we are blessed with a resurrection like his, and a promised land of our own, in the life of the world to come. 

Ah, but the struggle of this life, this long wrestling match, is so much.  We may want to throw in the towel.  We may want to cry uncle.  We may lose heart, lose courage, or be tempted even to lose faith.  But cling to God like Jacob.  Even when he pops your hip out of place.  Persist, Christian, for he will bless. 

But now turn to the other persistent character in our readings, the little old widow in Jesus’ parable.  She simply wants justice from the judge, the wicked judge, who cares not a whit about her or about anyone.  But because she wouldn’t give up, because she kept bothering him over and over, he finally relented.  Not out of any sense of justice, but just to get her off his back.  She just wore him down. 

The point is clear.  If an unjust judge will do the right thing just to get some peace and quiet from a pestering widow, how much more, how much more!  Will the good and kind master, the Lord our righteous judge, how much more will he give to us, if we but persist and do not lose heart. 

For we are not strangers to him.  And he loves to give blessings.  It may seem like our prayers fall on deaf ears, but oh, no, dear child of the Father, your prayers come to the Father in the name of Jesus.  Your petitions are brought by one he can’t ignore, he won’t ignore.  You approach the throne of God with your requests boldly in faith because you know  your prayers are heard for the sake of the one who died for you.   

Don’t get me wrong, and don’t get Jesus wrong, or Moses for that matter.  We don’t receive God’s grace in Christ on the basis of our persistence.  We don’t receive the blessing because we deserve it for not giving up.  But rather, we don’t give up, because we trust our God to bless us, because he is trust-worthy, and therefore he calls us to take heart, and persist in faith and prayer. 

And let’s let St. Paul chime in here, too, with his encouragement to Timothy.  He speaks of the persistence of the Christian life in yet another way:  “continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed”  and he likewise encourages all Christians to “endure sound teaching”.  He’s telling us to persist in the Word.  Holy Scripture.  You see, it all comes together. 

Continue.  Endure.  Persist.  Do not lose heart.  Wrestle with God, and don’t let go of him, cling to him until he blesses you, and even then... remain faithful.  For he loves to bless.  He loves to hear your prayer.  And he has given you his sure and certain word, which points you always to Jesus Christ your Savior.