All Saints 2025

The Feast of All Saints
 
In just a few weeks, on the First Sunday in Advent, in the Epistle Reading we will hear the promise, “Salvation is nearer now than when we first believed.”  The distant triumph song of that blessed place steals on the ear.  Its sound is faint, but it is near.  We feebly struggle, we hunger and thirst, we suffer under so many crushing burdens: our own sin, the sin of others, the weight of a world decaying and dying.  The weight we bear is tremendous.  At times we lose hope and are convinced that it’s time to give up the fight, to give into the demonic temptation to believe that God has either abandoned us or forgotten us in a world that would love to dance on he rubble of church buildings and the ashes of the saints, in a world where our personal lives are a mess—pulled in too many directions while lack and need piles up all around, illnesses disrupt and death steals.  In short, all of us are acutely aware of the desperate need for Jesus to return.   But on this Feast of All Saints, the Revelation of Jesus Christ to Saint John does for us What it id for its first hearers about 1,900 years  ago.  It lifts us up out of this world and allows us to see what is going on in heaven right now, a scene we are reminded that, by God’s grace, we will soon enter.  What did John allow us to see with him?  The saints from care released.  The weary ones in rest, no longer scorched by sun, parched, or thirsting, without tear-stained faces.  Their praise is so exuberant that one word doesn’t cut it.  Their joy heaps up almost faster than the tongue can say it: “Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.”   Our blessed dead enjoy that as their reality, which gives great comfort.
 
But it is—present tense—yours as well.  You have that as your reality even though you don’t see it yet.  The term for that is inaugurated eschatology.  Eschatology—the last day—is yours, just not yet—it is inaugurated. By faith’s reception of Jesus’ death and resurrection and your Baptism into the same, what John showed us is going on in heaven is yours.  Your place is reserved in that innumerable company from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation.  You’re there, but you just don’t see it yet.  It’s what you confess in the Creeds: I believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.  It’s what John reassured us of in his Epistle: “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.”
 
Remembering that isn’t our chief struggle as Christians when confronted by death.  More often than not our struggle at death is maintaining our confession.  Our society overwhelmingly believes that everyone goes to heaven, regardless of what they believe—or don’t believe.  We’ve all gone to a visitation or funeral where the good works of the deceased are touted.  Jill was such a good person, so now she’s in heaven getting what she deserves.  Just like the Reformation: Where is the comfort in that?  Jill may have been an outwardly good person, but she was still a sinner.  Her good works could never be enough to cancel her sin and to earn favor in God’s eyes.  Typically we’ll respond to statements about works with a smile and a nod, agreeing that Jill is in heaven for her goodness.  We let the moment pass, not wanting to hurt anyone’s feelings out of fear of starting a fight.  We let an opportunity pass to confess the hope we have.  Which is exactly what the devil wants us to do: be quiet about Christ and rest on imagined goodness on our part.  We know what we ought to say, but fear stops us.  Death is not the time to be silent!  Death is the time to point people to Christ, to gently correct: You’re right, Jill was a great woman, but I’m thankful that she’s in heaven because of her faith God gave her and what Jeus did to save her from her sin.  When you do that, you’re going to get confused looks or an abrupt end of the conversation.  That may be, but God has called us to confess Jesus, the way, truth, and life especially when it’s difficult.  Sometimes it may have to go in the opposite direction.  Sometimes you might have to say the hard thing: He did a lot of good things, but I pray he had faith in Jesus.  He never gave any indication that God was part of his life.  That certainly won’t win any friends, but it is a necessary thing for us to do, to proclaim that there is no hope apart from Christ, no resurrection that works can earn.  The conversation doesn’t have to end there; it gives the opportunity to say something like,  “This is a good reminder to be open in telling people the wonderful work Jesus has done to give salvation.  I don’t want anyone to go without the confidence and comfort that comes from Christ.  I don’t want anyone to wonder if I was a Christian.  I’m not encouraging this to happen out of any kind of better-than-you arrogance, but to show how easily we keep silent about our faith, even when presented with perfect opportunities to point people to the comfort of Christ, the hope of All Saints Day, and the overwhelming joy of the resurrection.
 
Though we have all been sinfully silent at times, there is forgiveness in Christ.  And that is precisely our confidence!  The poor, miserable sinner is forgiven by Jesus, no mater how dark his deeds.  Everyone St. John saw in heaven was a sinner—past tense.  When your last day comes you will no longer have sin to confess, sins of others that hurts you, or the effects of sin slowly ruining this once good creation.
 
So, take heart!  You are forgiven.  Heaven is yours.  Your salvation is nearer now Than when you first believed.