Sermon - All Saints' Day 2021 - Revelation 7:2-17

Ghent Altarpiece: The Adoration of the Lamb Upon the Throne, Jan van Eyck, 1430

What is a saint? Often when we think of saints we probably immediately think of the sainthood the Roman Catholic church confers upon certain individuals who lived particularly moral lives, experienced at least two miracles during their earthly life, and are not in purgatory but in heaven. Well it’s a lot simpler than that. According to how the term is used in the Bible and its basic meaning, a saint is a holy person, a person set aside by God for God.

So for example we have the holy Bible, it’s not just any book, but it’s God’s book. We have holy Baptism, it’s not just any washing, but it’s washing by God. We have holy Communion, it’s not just being united with ordinary things, but it’s being united with God. So a saint is a holy person set aside by God for God. This means those beloved Christians in heaven are saints, and it also means that we Christians alive today are saints with them.

Now, historically speaking, the Feast of All Saints’ Day sprung up ages ago according to the narrow Roman Catholic definition of a saint. Each of the saints were given their own day to be remembered, but eventually they ran out of days in the year for all the saints. Thus they came up with a catchall day for all of the less popular saints: All Saints’ Day. 

Well we Lutherans retained All Saints’ Day, but we Lutheranized it! Instead of this being a day to pray to all the saints in heaven, this is a day of encouragement for us. We living saints on earth are encouraged by all the living saints in heaven, especially those saints we remember fondly! Today, God encourages us with the vision of all the saints in paradise when we feel as though the saints have all gone before us, and we’re alone and small.

Our first reading today was the Revelation of Jesus Christ to the apostle John; these visions were given to St. John to comfort and encourage him and the church at large. The year was approximately 94AD, late in the first century. St. John was an old man by this time. All of the other apostles had been martyred, he alone was left. The church was small and struggling, persecuted violently by the rulers and so many Christians were cowardly falling away and going back to their old idols. There were no cathedrals or probably even any buildings used exclusively as churches. Now the beloved Apostle was given a worse punishment than death: exile to a small island 40 miles off the coast called Patmos.

It looked like all the saints had gone before him. The old days of the Israelites in the grand temple of Jerusalem, that jewel of Israel, gone, literally razed to the ground. The good old days with Jesus, the missionary journeys with the other apostles after the ascension, preaching to thousands and baptizing them all, those days are past, now it’s one at a time. John was the Bishop of Ephesus, but there wasn’t any glory in that, it really meant that he was the public figure who would take the fall when the Roman soldiers showed up on Sunday morning. 

It must have felt as if all the good old days had passed, all the saints had died, more funerals and people leaving than baptisms, and he alone was left. It was then that feeling so small on a Sunday morning that God comforted and encouraged him with these visions of paradise! “I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!””

There St. John saw the great multitude in paradise! He must have seen all those Israelites who came before him, Old Testament saints like Adam and Eve, Moses, Jacob, David, Ruth, Elijah, Isaiah! New Testament saints whom he knew personally were there, Mary the mother of Jesus, his brother James, his father Zebedee, the other apostles, other Christians who had been martyred.

But he looks out and he doesn’t just see Israelites, he doesn’t just see a bunch of Jewish people from the Middle East. Rather he sees people from every nation, tribe, and language! He sees black people and white people and every color in-between. He hears people speaking not just Aramaic, Hebrew, Greek, or Latin, but he hears Spanish, German, French, Mandarin, Russian, Portuguese, English and every language! He sees saints like Augustine, Anselm, Luther, Walther, your sainted grandparents, and you!

The angel asks him the question he must have been wondering in his head: “Who are these, clothed in white robes, and from where have they come?” Who are all of these people and how did they get here? The angel answers: “These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation. They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” These people are Christians! These are the saints! These are the people saved by faith in Jesus, whose sins have been washed away in the bloody baptismal waters! These are the saints who had not yet even been born in John’s day!

Things must have felt so small and desperate to John, as if there won’t even be a church left in a few years. So Jesus gives John a bird’s eye view of the kingdom of heaven. As if Jesus were saying: “Look, John! Things may look sad and pathetic to you on earth below, but here’s what I see! Not a miserable dying church, but a church so large and vibrant you can’t even count it! Your faithfulness, your courage and boldness, your writing and teaching, will bear abundant fruit! Don’t give up! On earth you’re looking through the weeds, you see such a small portion of the harvest, but here’s what the true harvest looks like! There’s been a great harvest from the beginning until now, and there will be a great harvest which is yet to come.” Jesus encouraged and comforted St. John by showing him what it’s all for in the end.

Jesus does the same thing for us today on All Saints’ Day. He’s encouraging us by showing us the bigger picture and helping us to see the purpose of what we’re doing here. Just like towards the end of the first century, it’s easy to get discouraged today. You older members remember the good old days when churches were full, but I don’t even remember those days since the church has been in a sharp decline since I was born. If the past 30 years are an indicator of what the next 30 years will be like, my later years of life probably won’t be that different from the apostle John’s later years.

But like the apostle John, we’re looking through weeds and we don’t get to see the whole harvest, except right here in Revelation. The saints who have gone before us are not gone. The church does not shrink, it only grows! The saints in heaven have simply transferred from the church on earth to the church triumphant. Funerals don’t make the church smaller, because when a Christian dies believing in Christ, a victory has been won since no longer can Satan tempt them to fall away. 

Moreover, the church will not die out. Individual congregations may close, but Christ’s church will not close. So long as Christ has not returned, that means that there are still more people yet to become saints. There may be entire generations, yet unborn, who will become saints and be numbered among that great multitude in heaven. Because, like with St. John, God will bless His Word which we must faithfully teach to the next generation.

Jesus Himself blesses His saints, His holy people, us, amidst our many frailties. The saints may be poor in spirit, mourning, meek, hungering and thirsting for righteousness, merciful, pure in heart, peacemakers, and persecuted for righteousness sake. But the saints are blessed, for the saints will be comforted, inherit the new earth, be satisfied, receive mercy, see God, and be called sons of God, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. We saints are blessed by God and we will rejoice and be glad because our reward is great in heaven! May God bless your remembrance of the saints in heaven so that in spite of your discouragement you may have hope.