All Saints' Day (Year A)

All Saints’ Day

In the name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Brothers and sisters in Christ: grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

This is a difficult day for many people. This All Saints’ Day when we remember our loved ones who have joined the Church Triumphant in the last 12 months. It is an addition to our already difficult grieving period, which for many of us can extend for quite a while.

The Feast of All Saints’ Day has a long history, going back at least to the mid-4th century, although it was held at a different time of the year (early summer). “The idea of celebrating the first day of November as the day of all the saints can be traced back to the eighth century in the West. It has been argued that the date was chosen because it was on that day, in the reign of Pope Gregory IV (d. 741), that a chapel to all the saints was dedicated in Saint Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican.” [Daniel G. Reid, Robert Dean Linder, et al., Dictionary of Christianity in America (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1990).]

Knowing that many would be attending church services on November 1, 1517, the young Martin Luther posted an academic paper on the door of the church the day before, on October 31. He knew that many would see his posting and hoped it would generate some healthy debate on how the Church needed some changes…some reform. After all, All Saints’ Day was a fairly big Feast Day on the church calendar, so attendance was sure to be higher than usual. It was a fair bet that the best minds would be there and would see his paper.

All Saints’ Day is an important day for Christians. And it is indeed a day of remembrance. But I want us to take a few minutes to talk about what we remember on this day, and why we remember it.

If you remember what we talked about last week, I emphasized quite strongly that “We cannot make ourselves right before God. Only Christ can do that.” This was a central principle in Luther’s discovery and his teachings. And it is applicable to our celebration today. When we talk about the Saints, I’m the first thing most of us think about are those super-holy people who have “earned” the title “Saint” in the front of their name. People like St. Peter, and St. Paul, and St. Luke, and St. Teresa, etc. To be “sainted” by the Church is called “canonization”. It is a long and difficult process, and those who are canonized (like Mother Teresa in 1999) have unquestionably lived God-pleasing lives. But that is not what today is about.

We are remembering all of our loved ones who have passed away in the last year. None of them have been put through this canonization process, so why do we call them “saints”? We didn’t put their names in front of the Church Council and measure them against the 10 Commandments or anything. We did not check to see if they lived blameless lives. We did not do background checks or look to see if they had any speeding tickets recently.

It would be very easy for us to think that to become a Saint was something we earned over the course of our lives. After all, this is what the world tries to tell us. Movies & television are filled with storylines that show us arriving at the Pearly Gates, met by St. Peter who looks in his “big book” at your life and checks to see if you are worthy to enter into heaven. This same idea can be found in children’s cartoons and throughout all manner of entertainment. It would be VERY easy to let ourselves fall into the trap of believing that lie.

And make no mistake, that’s what it is: a lie. That may sound a bit harsh, but it is. The world does that…because the Prince of the World - Satan himself - is also the Prince of Lies. He twists the truth of God’s Word to get in the way of our relationship with our Heavenly Father. Lies like this, that have some element of truth to them - such as “we must be righteous to enter the Kingdom of God” - are easy to believe. Satan knows God’s Word, and he can use that knowledge to lead us astray. And so we find ourselves buying into this lie. We have to follow God’s Law to get into heaven. We have to obey the 10 Commandments to get into heaven. We have to live righteously to be called God’s saints. These are lies.

Remember: we cannot make ourselves right before God. Only Christ can do that. And that is truly what Christ *has* done. We are made righteous before God because Christ paid the price for our sins. We are made righteous before God because the stain of our sins has been washed clean in the blood of the Lamb. That’s who Christ is: the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. We are Saints because Christ has bought us with His Precious Blood. THAT is why believers can be called “Saints”. That is why those we will remember this morning are called Saints - because they were believers in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.

John explains this in the epistle reading this morning: “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.” That’s what a Saint is - a child of God. We are children of God not because we deserve to be, or because we can somehow earn that status eventually. We are children of God simply because God has claimed us. Because of the “kind of love the Father has given to us.” The Father is the actor in this transaction, not us. We are simply recipients of that love.

Let’s just dwell on that thought for a moment. Isn’t it a relief that our eternal future is *not* dependent on our own actions or behavior? Thanks be to God, right? We don’t have to be worried about what will happen. We don’t have to worry about what has happened to our loved ones who have gone before us. Why not? Because God has promised us exactly what will happen.

This is the gospel of Jesus Christ - that first, God’s Son took on our flesh and walked with us, experiencing fully what it is to be human. As a human, he taught us the meaning of God’s Word and His Law and His Promises to us. And then he took that flesh and let his flesh be beaten and whipped and eventually executed in the most excruciatingly painful way, not because of any crime on his part, but to atone for the sins of all the rest of God’s children. And in his death, he descended to the very depths of hell and defeated the devil, sin, and even death itself. Once he had defeated death, he rose again and showed us his victory. This is a preview of the plan the Father has for all of us. Death does not win. That war is already won, and that is why we need not fear it.

Our beloved saints, those we remember today, we know then are resting in God’s tender care. This, too, is another promise we have. Some of this promise, we don’t yet understand, but listen again to the words of John: “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.” We don’t know exactly what that will look like, but because God first raised His Son from the dead, we know that we will enjoy that same resurrection. This is the resurrection we confess each time we recite the Creed. In that final resurrection, we will be with God, and we will also be reunited with our loved ones.

By now I hope you’ve noticed that I’ve skipped a part. “The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him.” This is an important statement. As Christians, we are different from the world around us. We are. We have been transformed in our baptism. For God’s children, we see the world differently because we are taught to see the world how God sees it, not how the world wants us to see it. The world after the Fall of Adam & Eve became a broken and sinful creation. Once sin entered, everything began to fall away from how God had intended it to be.

So much of the world is opposed to God. So much of the world doesn’t want to operate God’s way. So much of the world wants to defy God, to fight against God. And because we are God’s children, we will face that same opposition. We will face persecution and ridicule and different kinds of strife. For most of us in this building, the opposition we will likely face will be minor. But there are Christians in our world today whose very lives are at stake for the sake of the Gospel. There are Christians who can be arrested, imprisoned, and even executed for being a Christian, owning a Bible, and sharing the Gospel.

And this is what God tells us - that we will likely face this kind of negativity as we live in this world. It’s unfortunate, but it’s part of dealing with a fallen and broken and sinful world that opposes our Heavenly Father, and wants nothing to do with His Son. But no matter how bad our path gets, no matter what the world throws at us, we will always have the promise of God to remind us that God does not leave us alone.

In the Gospel this morning, we hear that part of Jesus’ teachings that we know as the Beatitudes. At first glance, it sounds like a list of things that God will give us if we do the right thing to earn those rewards. “If I’m meek, that means I’ll inherit the earth, right?” That’s not how these work. The Beatitudes are a list of blessings that we ALREADY have…again, because God has given them to us for the sake of His Son. These blessings have already been secured. Think about it: if these were things we had to earn, they wouldn’t be “blessings” would they? No, they’d be earnings or rewards. But these are blessings: they are given to us by God. “See what kind of love the Father has given to us?”

A scholar I very much appreciate explained this list in terms I think are very helpful:

“poor in spirit” - a believer knows that God doesn’t owe them anything, that they are only loved by God because God gives his love to them freely; it’s not something they can earn on their own.

“those who mourn” - these are believers who know and confess their sins; they know that they are guilty before God. When their sins are forgiven, they are comforted.

“the meek” - believers don’t make claims to God’s promises before others; they focus on neighbors first, and in showing love of neighbor first, God will bless them too.

“those who hunger & thirst for righteousness” - believers who know that they have no righteousness of their own; they know that their righteousness can only come when it is given to them by Christ…and they will be satisfied because Christ has already done that for them.

“the merciful” - believers who know that Christ has already shown mercy to them, and in receiving that mercy, they are able to show mercy to others.

“the pure in heart” - believers who confess their sins are washed in the blood of the Lamb, and that makes them pure indeed.

“the peacemakers” - believers who have been given the Gospel of Peace, and they are able to speak this Gospel to the whole world.

“those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake” - believers realize that the world *will* hate us; opposition against the church will never cease until Christ returns, but we are blessed even as we are persecuted. [Rev. Dr. Carl Fickenscher, podcast issues, etc. on the 3-year lectionary for All Saints’ Day]

As believers in Christ, we all experience some parts of this list at some point in our lives of faith. Some at different times than others, some more often than others. We need to remember 2 things: that these blessings are not something we earn, and that we *already* have them. It’s not a question of *if* God will keep His Promise; it’s only a question of *when*.

Much of what we fear surrounds death and what happens. Today’s lessons give us a glimpse of that, and the promise that God has made to us. We do not have to fear death. That doesn’t mean that we don’t hurt when someone we love dies. That doesn’t mean that we should feel guilty if we *are* scared by death. But we have the comfort of God’s promise to remind us that we don’t *have* to fear death, because Christ has already won. And we celebrate that each time we come to His Table and remember his own death and resurrection.

Those who have gone before us have been made saints in the blood of the Lamb. Christ has given them his own righteousness. They are, like us, children of God. “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.” All of us are children of God because He has done what was necessary to claim us as His own. He has done what was necessary to ensure that all of us could be with Him forever. And that is certainly Good News.

In the name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.