Homily for All Saints

[Revelation 7:9-17 / 1 John 3:1-3 / Matthew 5:1-12]

Today God gives us the gift of celebrating All Saints. Is He a good God or what? For when the thought of death would weigh any of us down with that empty and frightened feeling, along comes a day like today. The entire liturgy of All Saints – from the readings to the hymns to the prayers – calls us to throw overboard all sadness and fear and to celebrate with overflowing joy the gift of God in Jesus Christ – the gift of a life that never ends; the gift of souls gathered into the hand of the Lord; the gift of bodies that will be raised in triumph o’er decay on that unfathomably joyous day when our Lord Jesus Christ returns in glory.

St. John in today’s Epistle stands in awe of the gift of God. “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God!” St. Athanasius put it very bluntly: “He became man that men might become gods.” That sounds almost Mormon-like, I know, but it is the truth! Said in a way that we’re more comfortable with: Our Lord Jesus, the eternal Son of the Father, became a son of Man, born of the Blessed Virgin, so that we, the children of men, might become by grace children of God.

Every once in a while, you’ll hear someone say: “We’re all children of God.” But that, of course, is nonsense. Just ask the Lord Jesus and he’ll tell you: “You are of your father, the devil, and your father’s will you do.” Ouch. That’s where all humans are by birth, children of their father the devil because they do the will of the devil: we place ourselves front and center and expect the whole world to kow-tow to us and our wishes. If you don’t believe me, just try telling a little child that horrid word: “No!” As we grow up, we learn to hide the temper tantrums, sometimes, but the angry child who is furious at being thwarted still lives within. We call him the “old Adam” but we could just as easily call him the “old cry baby.”

But to us rebels who follow the bidding of that arch-rebel, Satan, God in unimaginable love sent His Son to give us a new birth, a new home, a new inheritance, a new life. To make those of us who by nature are the children of wrath become by grace the children of God’s favor. And while it is not true that we are all children of God, it IS true that God wants us all to become His children. To be born again in the waters of Baptism. And just as little as you had to do with your physical birth (did your parent’s consult you?), just so little you have to do with your spiritual rebirth. It comes as gift. Gift of God. In Baptism, He washes away your sins in the fountain of living water; He names you His own child, His own heir; makes you be a joint-heir with His Son of all His blessings and of all His sufferings. “The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know Him.”

“Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when He appears, we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is.”

When He appears. You know, more often than not, the Bible speaks not of our Lord’s return, but of His appearing, His being revealed. He has left us. Did He not say Himself: “I am with you always, even to the end of the age”? The One who is always with us – in both His humanity and divinity, in His body and soul, in His flesh and blood – that One will at the Last be revealed, and we shall see Him whom we have believed without seeing. And what a joyous transformation will take place at that moment. “We will be like Him.”

Ponder those words, people loved by God. We will be like the Lord Jesus. See Him shining as He appeared to John at the beginning of the book of Revelation. See the light that comes from His body – a real body, the same body that was born of the Virgin and that hung on the Tree for your forgiveness – that body now raised in incorruption has become the source of eternal salvation. The self-same body that has been fed into you countless times at the Supper. The glory of that body will be shining indeed on that day, not only upon you, but from within you. Glory to You, O Lord! Glory to You!

“And everyone who thus hopes in Him purifies himself, as He is pure.” Now, don’t get the cart before the horse. You don’t get that Hope of resurrection by purifying yourself from your sins. You can’t. But having received that hope of the resurrection, it is your joy in Christ to purify yourself indeed. To live in communion with the Blessed Trinity: To confess your sins, to learn to hate them and turn from them, to receive the forgiveness and pardon of God, to give an attentive hearing to the Word of God, to feast regularly and often on the Body and Blood of Your Jesus. To love and serve your family, your neighbors, knowing that the Lord takes the service as done unto Him. To intercede for family and friends, and all those in need, lifting them up to the Lord. To remember the faithful departed in your prayers, giving thanks for their witness and their hope.

Which is, of course, the great joy that God gives us today. Today we’re inside the readings. Today we join that white-robed crowd with the palm branches in their songs – just as we do every week when we unite with them in their song. For when the Church gathers, it is never some piece of the Church that gathers, but the whole family of God that comes together – only some are visible and some are not. But together with the angels and the faithful departed we worship as one body at the Throne of God and of the Lamb, our Lord Jesus, giving thanks that He has redeemed us and called us into that blessed life described in the Gospel, where even amid the sorrows of this world, we are a blessed people because we have the gift of the Kingdom, the hope of eternal life, the certainty of the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Today you get to worship again with your loved ones whose bodies sleep yet in the dust, but whose souls are the hand of God, awaiting with you the joyful moment of resurrection when Christ will bring them and us with them into His Kingdom, to which may we all attain by His grace and love for mankind. Amen.