All Saints Day With Tears in Our Eyes: 1 John 3:1-3

Grace to you and peace from God our father and from our Lord and savior Jesus Christ Amen.

Dear friends in Christ Jesus our Lord: A blessed All Saints’ Day to you. All Saints Day isn’t like Christmas – we don’t decorate for it. It’s not like Easter – we don’t dress in our finest clothes. It’s not like Epiphany, or Lent or Advent, those long seasons that lead to great festival celebrations, either. It’s a uniquely Christian commemoration, one that – thankfully – hasn’t been commercialized. It remains in the realm of the sacred, the holy, the consecrated. I am glad it does.

As much as I love Christmas, or Easter, or Pentecost, I especially love and appreciate All Saints Day. It stands as a day of reverence as we remember the saints of God who have fallen asleep in Christ over the past twelve months since All Saints Day of last year. All Saints Day reconnects us to the faithful who have gone before us as we remember them, their lives of faithfulness in Christ, and the witness they bore in life and in death.

I’ve stood at the graveside of brothers and sisters in Christ some sixty times and commended their bodies to the ground, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Children and parents, fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, wives and husbands all laid to rest, trusting in the promise of Jesus, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who lives and believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live. Do you believe this?” And with those words read for us, we answer with Mary and Martha, usually in the silence of our minds, “Yes, Lord, we believe you are the Son of God.” Yes, we do so in Easter hope and confidence, as the hymn sings:

“And now the Savior is raised up, so when a Christian dies,
we mourn, yet look to God in hope – in Christ the saints arise” (LSB 486 v.2b).

We can make this confession because, as St. John says in this morning’s Epistle lesson, we are called children of God. And, remember, when God speaks it is most certainly true. Being a child of God is not just mere wishful thinking: it is truth. God declares it: you are His child, through faith in Christ Jesus. United with Christ in Holy Baptism, you are part of an inclusive group of people. You are part of the church.

Church has a lot of meanings. We talk about the church building – let’s go decorate the church for Christmas. We talk about a congregation – What church is that? Oh, that’s Zion Lutheran Church in Mission Valley. We might even talk about a church body, a denomination, such as the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod. These are all good uses of the word. Nothing wrong with it. But never forget that first, and foremost, when we speak of the church we speak about people, the body of Christ.

In the Greek New Testament, this is called the ekklesia, which means “the called out ones.” In our modern usage, we don’t like being called out. Your boss calls you out for being late; your teacher calls you out for inappropriate behavior; your spouse calls you out for spending too much money. In this case, though, being called out is a blessing. This begs a few questions: Called from where? Who called us? What are we called to do?

In his first Epistle, Peter answers the question this way: “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, to proclaim the virtues of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy” (I Peter 2:9-10). You are called by God, through Christ, to be His own dear people. You are called out of darkness, that is out of a world of wanton sinful selfishness, and into His light so that you might proclaim the love and mercy of God in Christ. And, most importantly, you are called a holy people.

What does it mean to be holy? We usually think of holy as being sinless, but at it’s root it means set apart. It pairs with church. The set-apart, called-out ones.

But, unfortunately this is where we sometimes get in trouble when we think about saints. We think that a saint is holier than any of us can possibly be. We consider the lives of the men and women whom the church refers to as saints – St. Peter, St. John, St. Paul, St. Mary, St. Joan of Ark, just to name a few – and we rationalize we aren’t worthy of tying their sandals, let alone being placed on the same pedestal as they are. We look at their lives of faithfulness and confession in wonder and amazement, and consider our own plight as being unworthy.

Remember: when God declares, it is true. God declares you holy in Christ. God declares you a saint through faith in Christ. In Christ – see, that’s the key. We will confess this again in the Creed: “I acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins and I look for – I yearn for - the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.” There it is: the forgiveness of sins. This is what makes us saints: Christ’s once-for-all satisfactory holy death payment for all of my unholiness. If there is no Jesus, there are no saints; none of his holiness, none of our holiness. But there is Jesus, there is His holiness, there is His forgiveness imparted fully, freely, richly through baptismal waters onto you. So you are holy - you are set apart by God, by His grace, through faith in Christ. In Christ, you are holied, you are sanctified, you are sainted in Christ Jesus.

What does a saint look like? Look around: go ahead. Look at those who are around you. You see a snapshot of the saints of God. You remember the uses of “church?”  I say a snapshot because this church (congregation) only represents a small sliver of the whole Christian Church on earth and in heaven. Last Tuesday I was at a pastor’s conference in San Antonio hosted by our new District president. Most of us were Anglo men of Germanic or Wendish heritage – much like Zion, if you add in a few Czechs. But there was a small group who came from Mexico; there was a missionary from Germany; there were two Brazilians who were supposed to be with us, but they came down with the flu and – thankfully – stayed home. There were a half-dozen women from the District office who were there. There were members of the hosting congregation who cared for us. It was a bigger snapshot of the church on earth. Now, keep blowing that picture up…the church knows no limits: all people, all nations, all skin colors, all languages, male, female, adults, children, infants to elderly, all united through faith in Christ. Now, you’re getting close to what the church – the called out, set apart saints of God - looks like.

And, there is even more.  And, here is why All Saints Day is so important for us who still live and breathe out lives of faith and witness this morning. We are reminded that the church exists also into eternity. In the first reading from Revelation, St. John saw the heavenly multitudes that no one could number, the ones who are coming out of the great tribulation. In other words, the Spirit allowed him to see the faithfully departed who are already at peace with Christ.  In Christ, you are united to these saints of God as well. In the old Scandanavian Lutheran Churches, the communion rail was a half-circle. The design was intentional: the idea is that you imagine the remainder of the communion rail continuing through time and space into heaven where the saints join with you in celebrating the resurrection. We will confess this in the communion liturgy, “Therefore with angels and archangels and with all the company of heaven we laud and magnify your glorious name, ever more praising you and singing…” and then we join in singing the sanctus, “Holy, holy, holy Lord God of power and might.” And, in that moment, the entire church on earth and in heaven rejoices and you are united, through Christ, with those who have departed the faith.

But, as St. Paul says in 1 Cor. 13:12, “We see through a mirror darkly.” Yes, we admit this. We know the grave is conquered and blown open by Christ’s Easter triumph…but, when we stand at the graveside sometimes it’s hard to see anything but the grave itself and the body of our loved one lying there in peaceful rest and repose as if asleep. Don’t look at the grave…look through the grave. So, we follow in the footsteps of the saints who have gone before us, who followed the saints before them, who followed in the footsteps of Christ. Confess it in the Creed as they did before you – I believe in the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.”

I was finishing my last year of seminary when my dad died on the morning of April 25, 2000. I preached that morning in chapel, in fact – ironically, it was the commemoration of St. Mark the Evangelist, two days after Easter. Now, when I didn’t find out Dad had died until after chapel was completed and a friend found me, delivering the message relayed through a friend. When Laura got to campus, we made our way to the Dean of Students office. He started to complement me on the sermon, but I cut him off and told him my tragic news. I remember he deflated and flopped into his desk chair. After a moment, he said this: “Now, you are called to live the faith you just preached.” This is what All Saints Day does for us, the Christian Church on Earth: it gives us the opportunity to live the faith that was taught to us by those who have gone before us. Many of us do it with tears – and that’s OK. The tears stand as testimony of our love for the departed.

The hymns of All Saints Day always get me. They keep us leaning forward, looking towards the day of Christ’s blessed return. We’ll join with the countless throngs that St. John saw, with holy and whole bodies, raised and glorious, the consummation of Easter that never ends.

But, lo, there breaks a yet more glorious day: the saints triumphant rise in bright array;
The King of Glory passes on His way! Alleluia! Alleluia! (LSB 677 v3).

But we’re not there, yet. We still wait, in eager expectation for the return of Jesus. As we wait, we continue to sing:

Oh, that day when freed from sinning,
I shall see Thy lovely face!
Clothed then in the blood-washed linen,
How I’ll sing Thy wondrous grace!
Come, my Lord, no longer tarry,
Take all sin and death away!
With your angels come and raise us,
Bring the realms of endless day. (LSB 686 v. 4, revised)

And the Spirit and the Bride say, “Come quickly, Lord Jesus. Come.” Amen.