All Saints' Day (Observed)

All Saints’ Day (Observed)

Nov. 5, 2023

Text: Rev. 7:9-17

            “(A)nd God will wipe away every tear from their eyes” (Rev. 7:17; (ESV).

            When you are called out of this earthly life of trial and tribulation to stand before the throne of our Father in heaven, and before the Lamb, who stands, victoriously displaying His mortal wounds, suffered for your redemption… whether it be the day of your death, or the Day when our Lord Jesus comes again… When you stand before Him, I can’t imagine that you will greet that sight without tears in your eyes.  Tears in heaven?  Yes (in spite of the Eric Clapton song).  Tears, because your time of tribulation has come to an end forever.  Tears, because of the beauty and majesty of it all.  Tears, because, for the first time in your existence, you will know fully just how lost you were in sin and death and condemnation, and just how great is the love of God for you, the love that saved you, love that became incarnate, suffered your tribulation, died your death… the death of the cross… and is now risen from the dead.  The Lamb.  The Lamb. 

            On that day, your Father will wipe away your tears.  Personally.  Individually.  Giving you His full attention.  That is to say, He will console you.  He will dry the tears caused by hunger and thirst, that is, the things you lacked, or that were taken from you.  By the striking sun and scorching heat, that is, the things that beat you down, or burn you out, the crosses and trials to which you are exposed.  The grief of death.  Sickness.  Brokenness.  Guilt and shame.  He will dry your tears by sheltering you with His presence in the flesh of His Son, Jesus Christ.  God, Himself, in the flesh of Christ, becomes the Tent, the Tabernacle.  That is the literal meaning of the Greek verb… He will shelter, tabernacle (σκηνώσει) you with His presence, the same word as John 1:14, “The word became flesh and dwelt,” pitched His tent, tabernacled, “among us.”  He will dry your tears with the fleshly presence of Jesus.  And He will dry your tears by shepherding you, pastoring you.  “The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want” (Ps. 23:1).  “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep” (John 10:11).  “When he has brought out all his own, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice” (v. 4).  He shelters you and shepherds you, guiding you to springs to Living Water, which is to say, to the unfailing fountain of His life-giving Spirit.

            But He doesn’t just take away your tears and prevent their cause.  He gives you, in place of your weeping, a song to sing, a Te Deum with which to join your voice with the voices of all saints and angels, an innumerable multitude from every nation, tribe, people, and language, extolling the salvation and glory of our God.  See, as personal and individual as His attention is toward you, it is also catholic in scope.  According to the whole.  The whole multitude.  The whole Church of God, from every corner of the globe, and across history.  All believers in Christ Jesus.  Those who, from the beginning, looked for His appearing.  Those, including us, who bask in His finished redemptive work. 

            Now we meet them in our text.  Here they come, this great procession.  They are coming out… out of the Great Tribulation… out of sin, out of afflictions, out of the reach of our three main enemies, the devil, the world, and our own sinful nature.  And they are coming in… into the presence and joy of the Lord.  Into His throne room and the midst of His court.  Into the visible manifestation of His Kingdom.  And they are radiant.  Their robes are washed white in the blood of the Lamb.  These are the Baptized.  They carry palm branches in their hands.  Palm branches that symbolize victory and life, the victory of the risen Christ over sin and death.  And they sing.  Full throated.  With confidence and conviction.  They sing of the salvation that is theirs from God who sits on the throne, and the Lamb.  With the angels and the elders and the four living creatures.  They all fall on their faces before the throne of God, not because they are afraid, but because they are awestruck by the grace and love of God that has brought them to this eternal moment.  These are the ones coming out of the Great Tribulation.  These are the saints who are marching in.  “O Lord, I want to be in that number.”

            But see, you already are.  You’re already in line.  This is what my whole ministry among you has been about, trying somehow, some way, to get across to you that you don’t come to Church just to hear some boring old lecture and eat a tasteless symbolic snack.  No, no.  This is it!  This is the main event!  This is the goal of our whole life.  It starts right here, right now.  Beloved, you don’t have to wait until your death to enter heaven.  You don’t have to wait for eternity and eternal life.  I know you can’t see it now.  And I know you have trouble believing it.  But here you are.  With angels and archangels and all the company of heaven.  And Jesus enthroned!  With the Father and the Holy Spirit.  And you, washed in the blood of the Lamb.  Clothed in the white robe of His righteousness, which is your Baptism.  The palm branch of your salvation in your hand.  Greeting the Lord Jesus with your hosannas as He comes to you bodily.

            The body born of the Virgin Mary.  The body that, with a touch, healed the blind and the lame, the deaf and the leper.  The body that cast out demons and raised the dead.  The body that was scourged, pierced, bled, died, and was buried, for you, for the forgiveness of your sins.  The body that is now risen from the dead, lives, and reigns, seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty.  That body, that Lord, that Jesus Christ, now present here for you on this very altar.  Touching you, to heal you, to cleanse you, to deliver you from death to life, from sin to salvation, from hell to heaven.  To raise you from the dead.  Spiritually, now.  Bodily, and visibly, on that great Day.

            And now, talk about tears, think about what it will be like as you stand there on that Day, risen, on your own two legs.  Beholding with your own two eyes, saints you’ve loved and lost and mourned, now running on their own two legs to embrace you with their risen arms.  Your two ears, hearing once again their voice.  Falling on one another’s neck, as the Old Testament expression has it.  Weeping together.  But consoled by your Father, who, by the redemption of His Son, Jesus, has brought you together again.  Parents.  Grandparents.  Siblings.  Dear friends.  Resurrected.  Restored.  A grand reunion. 

            And I particularly love to imagine what it will be like when mothers and fathers who have lost children in death (the sharpest sword I can imagine piercing a parental soul), see their precious little ones (or not so little ones) running toward them, jumping into their embrace, filling their aching arms, never to be separated from each other again.  Consolation from God Himself.  “Truly, truly, I say to you, you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice.”  That is the way of it in this fallen world, this side of the veil.  “You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy” (John 16:20).  As death gives way to resurrection.  “You have turned for me my mourning into dancing; you have loosed my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness” (Ps. 30:11).

            There are many things in this life that cause us to weep.  But Christ is risen.  And He will raise you.  And so, you can live now as though those things that induce your tears are already done.  Because they are, in Christ.  “It is finished” (John 19:30).  Now it is just a matter of time being swallowed up into eternity.  Sins forgiven.  Relationships reconciled.  Brokenness mended.  Sicknesses healed.  All in the risen Christ Jesus.  Live now in the eternity which is already yours in Christ. 

            And what about your grief over those who have died and are with Christ?  You know you will see them again.  But in the meantime, meet them here, at the altar.  For they are where Christ is.  Meet them here.  Find your consolation here.  And then take this consolation from here, all the way through your own death and grave, through the valley of the shadow, and beyond, to the resurrection of all flesh.

            Beloved, this is God’s throne.  This is heaven.  Here, God touches you with His flesh.  And with that touch, He wipes away every tear from your eyes.  In the Name of the Father, and of the Son X, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.