Preacher: Pastor Elizabeth Damico
All Saints Sunday 2017
Revelation 7:9-17
If you have ever read the final book of the Bible, Revelation, then you know that this short piece is full of apocalyptic visions that are both disturbing and beautiful (like today’s reading). It is the only book of it’s kind in the Bible, it’s no gospel account, nor is it a letter to a new-born church, nor is it a Hebrew book telling the story of Israel. It is the vision of one man and it carries every reader or hearer to another world.
So it is the vision for us on this day, a day when we pause to name the saints who have been carried to a place beyond our knowing. In today’s portion of Revelation, it sounds like a party beyond what we can even comprehend. A great multitude, from every nation and tribe and they are all robed in brilliant, sparkling white. And this crowd gathered from all over the earth is shouting out praise to God! They cry, “Salvation belongs to our God…blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving be to our God!” It sounds like a passionate, loud time of worship that will know no end and a sea of people dwelling around God that will know no pain or suffering any longer.
Hunger is filled, thirst is quenched, perfect protection under the watchful eye of the Shepherd that leads them to the water of life and God, God almighty and merciful will be the one to wipe every tear from their eyes. It certainly sounds like a saint-like gathering, doesn’t it? Fittingly, this would be the vision before us on All Saints Sunday — the vision of pure joy in being in fellowship with God forever.
We all have saints that we have encountered while on our stumbling, often uphill path of life. People who paved the way for us to thrive, or open God’s Word to us, people who have forgiven us, people who have inspired and strengthened us. When I think of the saints who have upheld me, well, a large gathering also comes to mind for I have been blessed beyond measure. And yet, that is also why I’m struggling with this vision this morning to be perfectly honest. This vision is of another place, another realm or however you want to think about that distinction of the adventure after death. I want more for the saints of this world, I want more peace, more healing, more certainty, more joy. I grieve for all of us who live lives that fall short of this vision.
On Friday I attended the Memorial Service for my friend, Tom. Tom was the carpenter at Holden Village while we lived there as well as being an incredible guitarist. He created beautiful woodwork and beautiful music with his able hands and generous heart. While his living was dedicated to creating and restoring, his dying was wrought with debilitating symptoms and the ugliness of a terminal illness. It was difficult to see this strong, able man brought to such weakness and pain in his final month. In the midst of my own grief, this vision of the heavenly saints experiences pure peace brings both hope and frustration. Because I wanted that vision to be enacted here and now, I wanted more for my friend, a saint of my life. We want more for the saints we love. That is the grief we sing in verse three of “For all the Saints” when we sing “We feebly struggle, they in glory shine.” How often do we pray for less struggle, more shining.
My grief also led me to ponder, “Why?” Why is Revelation in the bible at all? It’s a crazy book, it doesn’t match the others, it often leads cults to start predicting end times, it’s a Scriptural troublemaker! Perhaps, this extraordinary vision at the end of the Bible is meant to hold the dichotomy of our mortal experience. Holding both the suffering of our world and the hope for eternal life! God’s hope and mercy come to us and enter our entire lives — not just the happy living and beautiful, creative moments — but certainly, God’s hope and mercy come to us in end of life suffering, in disease and disarray, too. The book of Revelation proclaims to us the boundless presence of God in this world and the next, in this life and in the life eternal.
By the grace of God, because of the hope of the cross of Jesus Christ, we have hope in this fantastical vision. We have hope in a life that will know no end, in a presence with God so rich and fulfilling that we will rest in experiencing all of God’s promises coming to fulfillment in our beings. Because of the faith we are gifted with, we can be brave to face the ugliness of dying, we can be compassionate towards one another’s grief, we can even speak words of eternity as our bodies remind us of our mortality each day.
This past week I spent time with Kris Wee. Kris joined our church family in absentia last week and her daughter, Marit stood for her. Kris has cancer and has entered hospice care, she is walking the journey she has accompanied so many on in her life as a Lutheran pastor. Kris told me the story of how she, a girl from Wisconsin married her college beau, a boy from Minnesota and many years later they learned that they both had family buried very near each other in a little, country cemetery in western Minnesota. In fact, there were only six empty grave plots that separated his family from hers, so naturally, they bought those six plots to bring the families together. That is a story of coincidence and family lines joined together through love and generations. The rest of the story, however, is a story of faith and hope.
Kris told me that in the summers, when she and her husband (both pastors) would drive the children up to the cabin, they would stop at that cemetery. There they would lay out the blankets, feast on a picnic and then, they would dance. Dance for joy at families that found love and a future, dance in hope for the saints who had gone before to the great gathering with God, dance in faith knowing that each of them would find the same end in God’s eternal love holding this family forever.
That is the audacity of faith right there! It is the same courage that we all face when we walk to our loved ones grave and dare to believe that grave marker is not their ending, death will not have the final word. We join the mighty chorus of revelation singing praises to God, even in the graveyards, especially in the graveyards.
With that same audacity of faith we approach this table. We are fed with the bread of life, given to us through sacrifice and death, covered with redemption and resurrection. At this table we hold the death of our Lord deep in our hearts and celebrate still, that love wins, resurrection is gifted to us all and the great vision of that heavenly party we may not know fully just yet. But our dearly departed now rest there and until that great day…we walk by faith, dance in the cemetery and sing praises to our God even still.
For life that will not end, will say thanks be to God. Amen.