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Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
The text for this morning’s sermon comes from St. John’s Revelation, the first reading, and that heavenly vision that he was given for your sake and mine. You may be seated.
Though many Christians have taken revelations about saints mentioned in Scripture to a different direction than what we’re putting forth this morning, what we’re putting forth is what God says. It’s His revelation. All Saints Day occurs on the 1st of November, so we’re a few days late, but we’re celebrating it nevertheless. All Saints Day has two important functions or purposes. One is what you heard read before you: those names of people whose lives many of you knew and knew for many decades. Some of you had never heard of some of those people. But you know what? They may never have heard of you when your name is read. Because the common disease that infected them, whose names we have read, and you, whose names we have not yet read, are one and the same: sin. And death will come to us all because of sin. Your name and my name will be read. Not read because those people are better than everyone else, but because God made it clear to you in their names from this text that they are saints because their robes have been made white in the blood of the Lamb.
To have those names read brings a sobriety to our reality living every day where we go hither and yonder, thinking that death is so far away from us and then when we find out it is so close to us, someone we know dearly, someone who isn’t of an age that they should be dying, and we’re shocked.
It is the second reason, which has everything to do with this morning’s text, why we celebrate All Saints Day. Because it is your and my victory day. Not just the specific instance that John is recounting to you, but it is what John is recounting to you for you who do not see the heaven that awaits, for you who do not see the tears being dried at the end, for you who are still experiencing the great tribulation where the faith is continually attacked and put upon by the world.
Brace yourself, I’m going to blow your mind. Okay, in the text, John says he sees this vision. He makes it very clear that in this vision, he sees all of the saints. If John is seeing all of the saints in this vision, that means he is seeing the first saint, Abel, the first human being to die and go to heaven, all the way to… He sees you in heaven in this vision. Because it’s the complete vision of the church. It’s not what is sometime now. It’s what is in the future. John is seeing the church as God sees the church. God is not bound by time. So God doesn’t see the church the way you and I see it as a chapter book where one page turns upon another. God sees the church as a complete reality.
Right? John, in this text, is seeing the church as a complete reality. He is seeing a veritable who’s who of all believers in Christ, from Mary Magdalene to you. And here’s the part that should blow your mind: if Christ does not come again for another 20, 30, 40, or 50 years, he’s also seeing your unborn great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren, as well as your mother and father and great-great-grandmother and great-great-grandfather, all in this one vision.
Why is that comforting? Because it’s trying to tell you this is not some fluffy thing. This is true revelation of God for your comfort and peace as we live out our faith in this time of tribulation. These people that John sees are not ghosts or specters. They’re bodily human beings, because that is our existence in heaven—bodily human beings. Did you not hear John say, we shall see him as he is? Jesus was not a ghost. He became flesh and blood when he was born. Actually, when he was conceived in the womb. Jesus died and rose again in a bodily form that could be touched and handled. Jesus reigns from the right hand of God in bodily form and fills the bread and the wine as much here as elsewhere.
Poof. We begin to see the article of faith that John is presenting to us. It is not understood by reason or intellect but by God’s revelation alone. As they gather around, there are some unusual creatures there with John to see. First are mentioned the elders. They’re not necessarily the old people, because people in heaven do not have old age or young age. They are all the same age. The elders are people of honor. You and I know that the apostles will have higher honor than you or me. I’m okay with that, and you’re okay with that. They’re the elders. Who this exact elder is, we don’t know. He’s just referred to as an elder, one of the faithful church fathers that’s conversing with John.
There are two other things that are mentioned. We’ve got the angels, and those are well-known—the good angels who always are with God, serving God and whom else? You, the crown jewel of God’s creation. The third thing is kind of a bizarre abstraction: these four creatures. The church really has never grabbed hold of what exactly that could mean, really. But as you walk on the way out of church, if you notice the stained glass windows in the back of the church, in the upper right, upper left, lower right, lower left, you will see four creatures. Each of those creatures—one’s an eagle, one’s a man, one’s a lion, and one’s an ox—represent the four Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. It doesn’t matter. God does not reveal all of the details, but it is a good and correct, beneficial understanding to think of it that way, that those are the Gospels that go out to all the peoples.
Bottom line is this: John sees these people and they’re not naked; they’re wearing white robes. Will we be naked in heaven or be wearing white robes? They’ve got them wearing white robes here. Adam and Eve didn’t wear white robes, I don’t know. Why is the white robe important? Well, let’s get to that man’s question.
So the elder asks John, “Who are these?” as if John knows. But John does know. But John doesn’t have the answer that this elder does have. If you were to see who is in heaven, and you had the ability to reflect upon whom you saw in heaven, I think you would be shocked: how in God’s name did a sinner like him or her get in heaven? That’s the question that the elder is really asking John when he says, “Who are these?” Because he’s trying to make John see that only, only the answer that the elder will give will be sufficient for this question that the elder asks.
Yes. The elder asks, John says, “You know,” and the elder gives the answer: “These are they who have washed their robes in the bleaching blood action of Christ Jesus, the Lamb of God, whose blood makes everything white and pure, which is why you are a saint here and now. Not because you’ve been canonized by the church, but because you’ve been covered with the blood of the Lamb. In your baptism, beginning there and never stopping from God’s perspective from that moment, you wear the white robe of righteousness because of the Lamb’s blood shed and poured out for you. They are holding palm branches because in the Middle East there’s not a lot of green things that stay green very long. And the greenest tree that stays green all year round in the Middle East is a palm branch. Oh, it just happens to be also what the people of God waved in great jubilation when they said, “Save, save, save,” meaning Hosanna, Hosanna, Hosanna on Palm Sunday, remember? It is a form of victory of the shaking of the palm branches and the dressing of the robes.
Here is how they are standing there where they stand. So we will not be shocked in heaven. But John had the vision. John has to continue living out his life knowing himself and knowing the people he saw in heaven. Whenever there is a funeral, typically, whoever it is, the people—and it’ll happen to you too, who love you—will all rant and rave about your greatness. They will talk about your hard work and you can’t tell them, “Oh, stop, you’re embarrassing me,” because they’re going to go on and on about you. They’re going to talk about all kinds of things about you, but most people will not talk about you the way God’s Word reveals you to yourself and the way that all of us do remember everyone who lays in a state in a coffin or casket at the front of the church. Yes, they died a believer, but yes, they were a sinner. Because the reason they died, they were a sinner. It is interesting for us to grasp that that’s going to be our future as well.
And what makes us inherit this victory of which John speaks and reveals to you for your comfort is not because you did everything right. Because if you look at all those blessings that Jesus spoke in the Sermon on the Mount, the Gospel reading, you and I know I wasn’t always a peacemaker, so how am I blessed by God? I don’t always hunger and thirst for righteousness, so how am I beloved of God? I am not a desirer of mercy and peace all the time, so how can God call me blessed? You begin to see how we grapple with the great contradiction in which we are finding ourselves day in and day out.
God calls us a saint, and yet our loved ones point out to us our inconsistencies and our sins, and we grapple with that. And so either we bite off the head of our loved one, or we embrace what God declares about us. And what God declares about you is right and true in that Gospel reading: “Blessed are you because His robe of righteousness that has been made white in the blood of the Lamb covers you now.” And you stand before the throne of the Lamb in John’s vision, then and will be, because of what God has done for you in His holy Lamb, Jesus Christ.
Yes, we live in a time of great tribulation out of our faith as we continually live it out here among the world that does not love us. But God gives us comfort and helps us know the second part of that question that John should have asked.
Because John, above all the other apostles, didn’t die a martyr’s death, did he? Remember? All the other apostles died as young men or died because they died at the hands of those who killed them because of their Christian confession of faith. John had to grow old. He had to die a normal and natural death. And do you not think he, just like you, would not think, “Why could I stand in God’s sight when God did not deem me holy enough to die as my brothers and sisters who died at the hands of someone else and died martyrs? I’ve got to die a normal sinner’s death and feel the pains of old age.”
And yet John was reminded of the strength to persevere through the old age that God allows sometimes, and to also endure when God takes someone before their time from our perspective. How do we endure? How do we persevere in this truth? How do we continue? Because we wear the same robe as they who died in it. Whether they died at 10 or 105, whether they died as a newborn or in a tragedy, or died of cancer or some other form, or just old age and cardiomyopathy—something like that.
The hope is that same shed blood and the white robe that God bestows upon you, and in which you stand before the throne. John said this to you and me: “Beloved, we are God’s children now. And what we will be, which John revealed to you, has not yet been revealed in its fullness.” John gave us a little glimpse, but that’s kind of like a little Polaroid. That’s all we get. We don’t get a high-definition photo; we just get the Polaroid. Good enough.
Secondly, John says, “We know that when He appears, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.” Yes. And finally John reminds us, “Everyone who hopes in Him, the shed blood, the righteousness, the white robe that He bestows, everyone who hopes in Him purifies or is made holy just as He is holy and pure.”
That’s why you wear the white robe in spite of all that Satan reminds you of, of yourself. This is the hope in which we will die as John reveals to us. God, grant us that strength that such hope gives in the midst of our tribulation now. In the name of Jesus, Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and your minds on Christ Jesus to life everlasting. Amen.
