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Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Brothers and sisters, be looking at the Revelation reading for the sermon text. Please be seated. This time of year is quite eventful in the Christian calendar. Of course, October 31st is Halloween, which does have a Christian connection because since 270 A.D., Christians have had a day to honor Christ. Christians who had died, especially those who had died because of their faith in Christ. Eventually, that date landed on November 1st, and it became called All Hallows Day or All Saints Day. Hallow means holy or saintly. All Saints Day is November 1st even today, including for Lutherans, but it’s mostly celebrated on All Saints Sunday, the first Sunday in November, which would be today.
And October 31st, Halloween, the supposed day of the dead people terrorizing the earth, the day before All Hallows’ Day, became known as Hallows’ Evening, and shorter to Hallows’ Even, and eventually Halloween. No, this is not a sermon about Halloween, okay? It’s over with. All right. For Protestant Christians, especially Lutherans, of course, October 31st is Reformation Day, celebrating Martin Luther’s posting of the 95 Theses. So in the Christian calendar, there’s Halloween, Reformation Day, and All Saints Day, all crammed into just three days, and then tack on All Saints Sunday, so within a week, four holidays.
And this weekend, we got to celebrate the most blessed of all government-sponsored holidays, the return to standard time, as we got an extra hour of sleep. Saints be praised. Well, today, we recall and honor the lives of the saints who have gone before us. They’ve gone into heaven, while we saints here on earth wait for that day. And it’s a day to remember the death of these saints, but more so to celebrate their life. Not just their life here on earth with us, but also the life that they enjoy now too. And we can celebrate also being saints that are alive.
Now the book of Revelation too often is seen only as a book of scary things about the future. Right? And it certainly has those, but that’s not what’s the most important thing there. Because what Revelation offers to the Christian is great comfort and hope. Comfort in what we suffer here on earth now and what may be coming in the future. Revelation offers hope beyond that. Revelation offers hope beyond death. It offers the hope of life. It offers the hope of life.
And we see this hope in Revelation in two ways. Number one, the saints who have gone before us, they’re alive. In the early days of Christianity, when a Christian died, it was considered to be their birthday as they entered into their heavenly life. And in the reading, we see that. We see that the saints in heaven are alive because they’re doing stuff. You see that in there? They’re standing with clothes on, holding palm branches and crying out and then bowing down and blessing, thanking, and honoring the living God and serving Him day and night.
They’re alive. They’re doing things in heaven. And it says the saints who have gone before us, they’re experiencing life in heaven without the troubles of earth because it’s there. There’s no hunger. There’s no thirst. There’s no thirst. There’s no tears. There’s no scorching heat. There it is. Contrary to popular belief here, heaven is not Texas. And the saints alive in heaven are drinking from springs of living water.
And the saints in heaven don’t experience the enemy of life that we have here on earth, which is sin. The dirt and filth of sin is not there. And it’s hard for us to picture something like that because we live in a world of sin. We oftentimes take part in this world of sin. But it’s not so in heaven. It’s a place where the saints have been washed clean in the blood of the Lamb, eternally forgiven of their sins. And in other places, Revelation shows that heaven is a place of life because it’s where the tree of life is.
It’s where the river of life is. It’s where the Lamb’s book of life is. It’s a place where there is no death. There is only life. Because the giver of life, the bringer of life, the provider of life, the Lamb of God is there, the living Jesus. Jesus gave his blood. He gave his life to wash those saints alive. And he rose again to give them life. And they now are saints alive. Jesus said that he came to give life and to give it abundantly. That means eternally. Those that have gone before us, they have that now. They are saints alive. And we can have comfort in that, but there’s more.
We can also have comfort that the same life destination of those saints is ours too. We have comfort in our present tribulations here on earth and sometimes even persecution. Yeah, we have the tribulation of the worries of this world. We have the tribulation of stress over health and finances and relationships and the future. I remind the students at University Lutheran Church that there’s the tribulation of the world of academia and homework and tests and pressure. And I always remind them, remember, you paid for this.
But there’s also the tribulation of our sin. Sin is the cause of our death, but it’s not the end of all things. Jesus gives us life. See, God intends for us to live life. That’s how it is for us saints here on earth, that it’s a place of life for us. There’s no death in heaven, but death has no power over us here either. I know that’s hard for us to imagine. We live in a world of sin and death, but death is not the last word for us. We are supposed to live.
We live in the power of life given to us in Jesus Christ’s death and his resurrection life. What he did for those saints who have gone before us, he does for us. We are Easter people. We are forgiven people. We and the saints who have gone before us are living people. God wants us to live. God created us to be living beings. Death is not supposed to be something that we are a part of. We’re supposed to be living creatures, and in Christ, we are. We are saints alive.
Yeah, there’s this prospect of death. There’s this death penalty that we live under, but it’s not final. Someday we will be reunited with those saints who have gone before us. And that usually brings up questions like, well, will we know each other in heaven, Pastor? Will we recognize each other? Will we be able to hang out with each other and talk with each other? And really, that’s another sermon, or Bible class, anyway, but I’ll just say it for now. I think so. That’s because on the last day, when Jesus returns, even our bodies are going to live again. Amen.
Resurrected, glorified, made new, rejoined with our soul in heaven to be there eternally. God wants eternal life for us. Body, soul, mind, spirit, the whole shootin’ match. He wants it all for us. That’s a weird idiom, isn’t it? The whole shootin’ match, I guess. It’s almost as good as the whole ball of wax, I guess. God wants that all for us. And I think the concept of life is a vital aspect of Christianity.
Christianity is a religion. It’s a way of life, but it’s also a worldview of how we see things, how we observe the natural and the supernatural world. And I think that worldview boils down to life. Christianity is all about life. And we confess it in the Nicene Creed, especially, as we will here in a moment. We confess that we believe in God the Father, maker of heaven and earth, the maker of all living things, maker of life.
And we believe in Jesus Christ, who was conceived, born. He died and rose again. God becomes human. God becomes part of our earthly life in Jesus and experiences all the things about life. And we believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life. And we believe in the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Christianity, we confess life. This world we live in confesses death. That’s the best it has to offer. That’s where it ends up, is in death. Christianity brings life.
And everything… All the social, political, natural, and supernatural views that Christianity has, it’s in support of life. Let me put it this way. Christianity is rife with life. Like the saints who have gone before us, Jesus gave his blood, he gave his life, and rose again to give them life, and he does for us too. They are saints alive in heaven, and we are saints alive right here. Jesus said he came to give life and give it abundantly, and that’s what we get. We are saints alive.
It’s one of those great questions in Christianity. We believe that dead people live. How can that happen? How can dead people live? There’s one answer. It’s a Sunday school answer. It’s Jesus. Because of him, we live. There’s a great scene in the movie Hook, starring Robin Williams as Peter Pan. If you didn’t see it, that’s okay. I encourage you to see it. Actually, it’s pretty cool. Peter is in a sword fight with Captain Hook, who was played so well by Dustin Hoffman. What a great job he did in that.
Anyway, Hook says to Peter in this fight, he says, prepare to die, Peter Pan. And Peter replies, well, to die would be a grand adventure. And Hook says back to him, well, death is the only adventure that you have left. Death. Well, later in the film, after a lot of changes in Peter Pan, and he returns back home from Neverland, somebody asks him, So, Peter, your adventures are over now, huh? And he replies, Oh no, to live. To live is an awfully big adventure now.
For the saints of God, death is not the only adventure we have left. It’s not the end. It’s not the final word. We are saints alive. Yeah, we live in a world of death, and it’s sometimes scary, but death has no lasting power over us. We’re alive in Christ. We look forward to that eternal life in heaven one day when we join the saints who have gone before us. It looks pretty cool there. We get some pretty nice robes, too, it looks like.
And today, we celebrate those saints alive, and we celebrate that we are saints alive in Christ as well. Amen.
Now may the peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
