All Saints' Day (Observed)

All Saints’ Day (Observed)

November 4, 2018

Text: 1 John 3:1-3

            “Saint” means “holy one.”  Now a saint is not someone who is morally perfect, or sinless, or even less sinful than the average person.  A saint is not someone who is holy before God by his or her own works.  A saint is rather one who is declared righteous and holy on account of the sin-atoning death and life-giving resurrection of Jesus Christ, and who receives Christ’s own holiness as a gift, by faith.  All Saints’ Day is particularly about those saints who have washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb by Holy Baptism, and who are with Christ in heaven, awaiting the resurrection of their bodies and eternity in the new creation, the new heavens and the new earth.  That is to say, this day is about your loved ones who have died in Christ.  They died, yet they live.  No one who believes in Jesus ever dies.  They live.  They are safe in Jesus.  Their bodies rest in the ground, but their spirits are with Christ.  They have come out of the Great Tribulation.  They are before the throne of Christ.  They see Him face to face.  And they sing.  And by the way, they are not gone from us.  We say confess it every Sunday.  As we gather around the altar of Christ’s body and blood, we are caught up together with them in heaven.  Heaven breaks in here, and we stand there.  Heaven and earth are joined, and our voices are joined in praise of the thrice-holy God “with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven.” 

            And the “all the company of heaven” includes all the great saints of the Bible: Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Moses, Joshua, Ruth, King David, Esther, Mary and Joseph, Peter and Paul.  And you know of every one of them that they are saints by grace, through faith, and not by their own righteousness.  And there are the great saints of the Church gathered around the altar with us: St. Augustine, St. John Chrysostom, the blessed Reformer Martin Luther, Martin Chemnitz, Johann Sebastian Bach, C. F. W. Walther.  And there is my dad and my brother-in-law.  And there are your parents and grandparents and great-grandparents who died in the faith, and who are responsible for you being here today.  There are all your loved ones who died in Christ.  They meet us at the altar.  If you miss your loved ones who are in heaven… if you want to be with them once again… This is the place.  Here, around the altar, where Christ is enthroned, where He gathers us together for the Wedding Feast of the Lamb that has no end.  We best celebrate All Saints’, by gathering together with all the saints around the altar.  They are saints by grace.  And you are a saint by grace.  And in our Epistle this morning, St. John explains to us just how that can be.

            You are a saint because, in His unimaginable love, the Father calls you His own child.  “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are” (1 John 3:1; ESV).  This is baptismal language.  Where does the Father make us His own children?  At the font.  In the water; the water included in God’s command and combined with God’s Word.  There He puts His Name on us, the Name of God in all its fullness: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  There He washes away our sins in the blood of the Lamb, the blood of Jesus Christ, and makes our robes white with Christ’s own righteousness.  There He joins us to the Lord’s death and resurrection.  There He makes us one with Christ, and so one with each other, one holy, Christian, and apostolic Church; one Body of Christ; one spotless and holy Bride for our Bridegroom, Jesus.  And so God loves us and gives us to call upon Him as “Our Father.”  We are His dear children.  He is our dear Father.  We call upon Him as dear children ask their dear Father.  And He loves us.  He is for us and not against us.  He has redeemed us for Himself at the price of His own Son’s precious blood.  So now as His children, we have all the rights and privileges pertaining thereto.  We are heirs with Christ of the heavenly Kingdom.  We have a place at the royal table.  We are brothers and sisters with Christ and with one another, and we have a home, the Church, where we always belong. 

            It should not surprise us, though, that the world laughs at us.  The unbelieving world, the world that has rejected the Lord Jesus, rejects those who are in Jesus.  “The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him” (v. 1).  The world despises us, considers us Christians as of no account.  She calls us haters, intolerant, bigots.  It doesn’t matter what we actually believe or what we actually say.  The lie of Satan doesn’t have to be fool proof for the flesh of man to buy in.  We should expect rejection.  We should expect persecution.  Jesus promises it, and here St. John echoes that promise.  But we do not lose heart.  Instead, we rejoice.  Because suffering the rejection and persecution of the world is actually a reflection in us of our dear Lord Jesus Christ.  It is evidence of our unity with Him, and it is the way our loving Father molds and shapes us into the cruciform image of His Son. 

            You see, we live now in the time of what Luther calls the “Already/Not Yet.”  We are redeemed by Jesus’ blood and we belong to God, but that reality is not yet apparent.  Heaven is already ours, but it doesn’t yet look like it.  No Christian, no one who believes in Jesus Christ, actually dies, but it sure does look that way when we’re lowering our loved one into the ground.  “Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared” (v. 2).  For we live by faith, not by sight.  Faith, by definition, necessarily has as its object what we cannot see.  All the articles of the Creed are statements of faith.  We cannot see them.  Jesus loves us and is always with us.  We cannot see that.  He forgives our sins.  We feel guilt.  He gives us eternal life.  We get sick and we die.  He promises we’ll never die.  We go to funerals.  But always in faith.  Always believing and confessing what we cannot see but know to be true: Jesus Christ, who died for us, and who is risen from the dead, will raise us bodily to live forever with Him. 

            And it’s true, we do not yet know what we shall be.  We don’t know what that will look like, how it will feel, what our experience of it will be.  But we do know this: “We know that when he appears we will be like him, because we shall see him as he is” (v. 2).  We will see Him face to face.  We will see His resurrection body, the very body we’ve received in our mouths week after week for our forgiveness, life, and salvation.  We’ll see the scars, His hands and feet, His side, mortal wounds, and yet, He lives.  And we’ll be like Him.  Our resurrection bodies, fully physical bodies, these very bodies, made perfect, as they were always meant to be, in the image and likeness of Jesus, our Savior, who is risen from the dead.  And knowing that is enough.  It is enough to get us through the “Already/Not Yet.”  We will be there soon.  Jesus is coming soon to raise the dead and deliver us.  The Church can wait with patience and joy.  You can wait, because you know the full reality and where this all ends up.  November 6^th will come and go, and who knows what kind of government we’ll be left with.  Go vote, of course.  But it ultimately doesn’t matter.  Jesus reigns, and He is coming soon, and then every eye will see it, everyone will know it, every knee will bow, and every tongue will confess it.  The dead will sit up in their graves to say it: “Jesus Christ is Lord,” to the glory of God the Father (Phil. 2:11).

            So as those who live in this hope, what do we do in the meantime?  St. John puts it this way: “everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure” (v. 3).  How do you purify yourself as Jesus is pure?  Well, not by your own works, we can say that for sure.  Your works only get you dirtier.  No, you purify yourself in the same way you become a saint, a holy one.  Jesus must speak it.  So you come to Church and have your sins forgiven by Christ Himself through the mouth of His preacher: “I forgive you all your sins in the Name of the Father, and of the Son +, and of the Holy Spirit.”  You dive right back down into your Baptism.  You gather with the saints of God in the holy congregation, some of whom you see sitting around you, but most of whom you cannot see, and you hear the gracious Words of your Savior, forgiving you and teaching you what it means to be a child of the heavenly Father.  And then you come together around the throne, the altar, with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven, those on this side of the veil, and those on that side of the veil, to be fed with the Bread of Life, the crucified and risen body and blood of Jesus Christ, to forgive you and mark you for the resurrection of your body on the Last Day.  Thus having been purified by Jesus, now you can get to work.  Now you can go love your neighbor, help your neighbor, give to your neighbor, and bring your neighbor here to be purified and join us in the mystical Body of Christ, the holy Church. 

            All Saints’ is all about the Church.  Saints are the members of the Church, here below and there above, which is to say, saints are sinners redeemed by the blood of Jesus and made holy by His saying so.  The Church is full of sinners.  Only sinners.  For only sinners can have their sins washed away.  To be a saint is a gift Jesus gives you.  It is His own holiness credited to your account.  It is His own righteousness wrapped around you as a robe, to cover your sins.  It is Jesus making you His own, so that you should be called a child of God.  And so you are.  And it is enough.  In the Name of the Father, and of the Son (+), and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.