Revelation 7:2-17; 1 John 3:1-3; St Matthew 5:1-12
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
Red. Open the hymnal to Roman numeral nine and you’ll see. Most saints days are red. Red for the blood of the martyrs. Red for the fire of the Holy Ghost at Pentecost. Red for the scarlet stream of Christ’s own Blood shed for all the saints.
But today is white. This is because the Feast of All Saints’ is one of the principal feasts of our Lord Jesus Christ - like the Annunciation, Nativity, Circumcision and Name, Presentation, Easter, Epiphany - which are always white. Today shares with Christmas the dies natalis, the day of birth, that is, the commemoration of a Christian saints’ death, their birth into heaven. With Easter it shares a celebration of the resurrection, since all who have died with Christ Jesus have also been raised with Him (Rm 6:3-8).
This feast is the most comprehensive of the days of commemoration, since the number of those who have laid down their lives in the confession of Christ far outnumbers the days available in the Church Year. Today encompasses what the author to the Hebrews calls the great cloud of witnesses with which we are surrounded (Heb 12:1).
The joy of this feast is its celebration of the blessed communion, the fellowship divine of the Church Triumphant - all the saints who from their labors rest - and the Church Militant - we who feebly struggle, amidst the fierce fight, the long warfare against the wiles of the devil, the snares of the world, the passions of our own flesh, bearing our daily crosses. Together, God has knit His faithful people of all times and places into one holy communion, the mystical Body of His Son, Jesus Christ.
This is the crowd glimpsed in the reading from the Revelation to St John. He hears the number of the sealed: 144,000. And to us who live by faith which comes through hearing and not by sight, this perfect number seems ridiculously and depressingly small. Yet St John, who is privileged for a moment to see that by which he lives, he turns, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number. This is the heavenly reality, far surpassing what our eyes can see.
What makes them one is what they have received from the Lord: They have washed their robes and made them white in the Blood of the Lamb. They have received full and free forgiveness, they shed their sin in the resurrection and left it to rot in their graves. For they rise in the eternal newness of life, the unending Last Day, with joy they cast down their cross and receive into their hands the palm of victory from Christ the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
Look at this crowd. St John readily discerns their individuality. Some were among earth’s famous and powerful. Most were quite unknown to history. Some are black, some white, and every color of the flesh of humanity, still bearing their character; each a unique fingerprint of the Lord God who formed them from clay. Some were very wealthy upon earth; most were quite poor. Some spoke this language, others that. They come from every tribe and nation. They are not some homogenous mass, but perfectly exemplify the Church from among all the nations, the elect in Christ gathered from the four winds.
What is most captivating about them, though, isn’t their diversity - and it is a real diversity, not a fabricated one, bureaucratically enforced one - its the unity of their attention. They don’t pay the least bit of attention to themselves. They aren’t concerned with life below. They are united in their gaze upon the Lamb on His throne, the Lord Jesus Christ victorious in His sacrifice of love.
These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation. They have washed their robes and made them white in the Blood of the Lamb. Therefore they are before the throne of God, and serve Him day and night in His Temple; and He who sits on the throne will shelter them with His presence. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst anymore; the sun shall not strike them, nor any scorching heat. For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their Shepherd, and He will guide them to springs of living water, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.
What about you? You who still experience and live within the great tribulation, these evil Last Days in which the Church has always lived since the time of the Incarnation and Nativity, Passion and Death, Resurrection and Ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ. You don’t see white. You see red. We are curved in on ourselves, living like animals, red in tooth and claw, heaping up red in a ledger full of a debt of sin.
For rather than learn contentment in the poverty of spirit, we have stuffed ourselves with the riches of this world. Rather than mourning our wretched sins, we have pilled up iniquities. Rather than practicing meekness we have lashed out in anger and contempt. Our hearts have been soiled with sin, our lips have not spoken peace, our hands have not shown mercy. Our robes, like our sins, are like scarlet; crimson red in the blood we’ve shed (Is 1:18).
Repent, dear saints. Learn and listen from the fathers of the Church. Not only Isaiah and John, Paul and Matthew, Augustine and Luther - the names you know - but even from our local, parochial saints - our dear brother Dutch who we remember today. For all the saints, from the beginning of the world who have died believing in the Redeemer, whether He was yet to come or had come in the flesh, all members of the people of God of all times to the present day - in this sense, all are fathers of the Church.
Learn from them, this great cloud of witnesses, to lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely, and run with endurance the race set before you; looking to Jesus, the Founder and Perfecter of our faith (Heb 12:1-2). Listen to them as well. For they cry out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne and to the Lamb!”
Here, dear saints, lies the mystery into which you are joined and how you become part of that crowd seen by St John. You don’t squeeze in and try to imitate the look of astonishment and awe upon their faces. Rather you share their blessedness by joining in what they are so fixated upon: Jesus Christ, who humbled Himself to become what they were - a child of man - in order to lift them up to become what He is - children of God.
Is this not what else St John preaches to you today? See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. How can this be so? You who see your sin and shame, guilt and tribulation?
Because you have the One who though He had all authority in heaven and on earth, became Meek for you. He bore your poverty that you should receive the inheritance of His heavenly kingdom. He wept over Jerusalem and Lazarus and you, that you should be comforted by His Word. He hungered and thirsted for your righteousness that you may be satisfied with the Bread of Life. He has shown you mercy by offering His pure heart in obedience to the Father to make peace between heaven and earth.
Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool (Is 1:18). Baptized into Christ Jesus, dear saints, you have washed your robes and made them white in the Blood of the Lamb. That Blood which has atoned for the bad you’ve been and the bad you’ve done. That Blood makes possible your eternal blessedness and unfathomable joys which await you.
And not only you, but the whole Church of God in Christ Jesus. See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called the children of God, and so we are. This is the other great comfort of this day. Like Elisha’s servant, your eyes are opened by the prayer of your Lord and Master, Jesus Christ, to behold that those who are with us are more than those who are with them (2 Ki 6:16). The Church Militant and the Church Triumphant is the Una Sancta, the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.
Whether Christians have found themselves in the loneliness of a Siberian prison camp or the isolation of the diaspora or suffering inner alienation within the great secularized “churches” of our century, it has become ever more the consolation of those who have suffered for the sake of the Church and whom God has led on a “lonely path” to know that they are not alone in the one Church of God. They who have been removed from every error and sin of the earthly Church stand with you in the seamless fellowship of the Body of Christ.
See what kind of love the Father has given this congregation, that here, at this Altar, you join in the unity of angels and archangels and all the company of heaven, with the great cloud of witnesses surrounding you, to behold Him who is your Light and your Life, the Lamb of God, who has atoned for your sin and taken away your guilt and shame.
As you come forth in poverty of spirit and true meekness, clothed with His robe righteousness, kneeling before Him, He gives you a share in His Blood which forgives all your sins, grants you life and salvation. And all the angels fall on their faces around the throne of His Altar and worship God saying, Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - forever and ever! Amen.
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
Red. Open the hymnal to Roman numeral nine and you’ll see. Most saints days are red. Red for the blood of the martyrs. Red for the fire of the Holy Ghost at Pentecost. Red for the scarlet stream of Christ’s own Blood shed for all the saints.
But today is white. This is because the Feast of All Saints’ is one of the principal feasts of our Lord Jesus Christ - like the Annunciation, Nativity, Circumcision and Name, Presentation, Easter, Epiphany - which are always white. Today shares with Christmas the dies natalis, the day of birth, that is, the commemoration of a Christian saints’ death, their birth into heaven. With Easter it shares a celebration of the resurrection, since all who have died with Christ Jesus have also been raised with Him (Rm 6:3-8).
This feast is the most comprehensive of the days of commemoration, since the number of those who have laid down their lives in the confession of Christ far outnumbers the days available in the Church Year. Today encompasses what the author to the Hebrews calls the great cloud of witnesses with which we are surrounded (Heb 12:1).
The joy of this feast is its celebration of the blessed communion, the fellowship divine of the Church Triumphant - all the saints who from their labors rest - and the Church Militant - we who feebly struggle, amidst the fierce fight, the long warfare against the wiles of the devil, the snares of the world, the passions of our own flesh, bearing our daily crosses. Together, God has knit His faithful people of all times and places into one holy communion, the mystical Body of His Son, Jesus Christ.
This is the crowd glimpsed in the reading from the Revelation to St John. He hears the number of the sealed: 144,000. And to us who live by faith which comes through hearing and not by sight, this perfect number seems ridiculously and depressingly small. Yet St John, who is privileged for a moment to see that by which he lives, he turns, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number. This is the heavenly reality, far surpassing what our eyes can see.
What makes them one is what they have received from the Lord: They have washed their robes and made them white in the Blood of the Lamb. They have received full and free forgiveness, they shed their sin in the resurrection and left it to rot in their graves. For they rise in the eternal newness of life, the unending Last Day, with joy they cast down their cross and receive into their hands the palm of victory from Christ the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
Look at this crowd. St John readily discerns their individuality. Some were among earth’s famous and powerful. Most were quite unknown to history. Some are black, some white, and every color of the flesh of humanity, still bearing their character; each a unique fingerprint of the Lord God who formed them from clay. Some were very wealthy upon earth; most were quite poor. Some spoke this language, others that. They come from every tribe and nation. They are not some homogenous mass, but perfectly exemplify the Church from among all the nations, the elect in Christ gathered from the four winds.
What is most captivating about them, though, isn’t their diversity - and it is a real diversity, not a fabricated one, bureaucratically enforced one - its the unity of their attention. They don’t pay the least bit of attention to themselves. They aren’t concerned with life below. They are united in their gaze upon the Lamb on His throne, the Lord Jesus Christ victorious in His sacrifice of love.
These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation. They have washed their robes and made them white in the Blood of the Lamb. Therefore they are before the throne of God, and serve Him day and night in His Temple; and He who sits on the throne will shelter them with His presence. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst anymore; the sun shall not strike them, nor any scorching heat. For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their Shepherd, and He will guide them to springs of living water, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.
What about you? You who still experience and live within the great tribulation, these evil Last Days in which the Church has always lived since the time of the Incarnation and Nativity, Passion and Death, Resurrection and Ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ. You don’t see white. You see red. We are curved in on ourselves, living like animals, red in tooth and claw, heaping up red in a ledger full of a debt of sin.
For rather than learn contentment in the poverty of spirit, we have stuffed ourselves with the riches of this world. Rather than mourning our wretched sins, we have pilled up iniquities. Rather than practicing meekness we have lashed out in anger and contempt. Our hearts have been soiled with sin, our lips have not spoken peace, our hands have not shown mercy. Our robes, like our sins, are like scarlet; crimson red in the blood we’ve shed (Is 1:18).
Repent, dear saints. Learn and listen from the fathers of the Church. Not only Isaiah and John, Paul and Matthew, Augustine and Luther - the names you know - but even from our local, parochial saints - our dear brother Dutch who we remember today. For all the saints, from the beginning of the world who have died believing in the Redeemer, whether He was yet to come or had come in the flesh, all members of the people of God of all times to the present day - in this sense, all are fathers of the Church.
Learn from them, this great cloud of witnesses, to lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely, and run with endurance the race set before you; looking to Jesus, the Founder and Perfecter of our faith (Heb 12:1-2). Listen to them as well. For they cry out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne and to the Lamb!”
Here, dear saints, lies the mystery into which you are joined and how you become part of that crowd seen by St John. You don’t squeeze in and try to imitate the look of astonishment and awe upon their faces. Rather you share their blessedness by joining in what they are so fixated upon: Jesus Christ, who humbled Himself to become what they were - a child of man - in order to lift them up to become what He is - children of God.
Is this not what else St John preaches to you today? See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. How can this be so? You who see your sin and shame, guilt and tribulation?
Because you have the One who though He had all authority in heaven and on earth, became Meek for you. He bore your poverty that you should receive the inheritance of His heavenly kingdom. He wept over Jerusalem and Lazarus and you, that you should be comforted by His Word. He hungered and thirsted for your righteousness that you may be satisfied with the Bread of Life. He has shown you mercy by offering His pure heart in obedience to the Father to make peace between heaven and earth.
Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool (Is 1:18). Baptized into Christ Jesus, dear saints, you have washed your robes and made them white in the Blood of the Lamb. That Blood which has atoned for the bad you’ve been and the bad you’ve done. That Blood makes possible your eternal blessedness and unfathomable joys which await you.
And not only you, but the whole Church of God in Christ Jesus. See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called the children of God, and so we are. This is the other great comfort of this day. Like Elisha’s servant, your eyes are opened by the prayer of your Lord and Master, Jesus Christ, to behold that those who are with us are more than those who are with them (2 Ki 6:16). The Church Militant and the Church Triumphant is the Una Sancta, the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.
Whether Christians have found themselves in the loneliness of a Siberian prison camp or the isolation of the diaspora or suffering inner alienation within the great secularized “churches” of our century, it has become ever more the consolation of those who have suffered for the sake of the Church and whom God has led on a “lonely path” to know that they are not alone in the one Church of God. They who have been removed from every error and sin of the earthly Church stand with you in the seamless fellowship of the Body of Christ.
See what kind of love the Father has given this congregation, that here, at this Altar, you join in the unity of angels and archangels and all the company of heaven, with the great cloud of witnesses surrounding you, to behold Him who is your Light and your Life, the Lamb of God, who has atoned for your sin and taken away your guilt and shame.
As you come forth in poverty of spirit and true meekness, clothed with His robe righteousness, kneeling before Him, He gives you a share in His Blood which forgives all your sins, grants you life and salvation. And all the angels fall on their faces around the throne of His Altar and worship God saying, Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - forever and ever! Amen.
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