This morning we are celebrating All Saints’ Sunday. You may know that the observance began many centuries ago to honor Christians who experienced the fierce persecutions of the Roman Empire, who were executed for their faith, and maintained their testimony of Christ through it all.
Folks like a monk from Syria who was watching the gladiators fighting to the death for the entertainment of the crowds in the Roman Coliseum. His name was Telemachus. And he jumped out of the stands, down into the arena to try to stop the violence. When people realized what he was doing, some of the fans also climbed into the arena and they beat him to death in front of the whole crowd. It may seem to have been a waste of his life, but the Roman Emperor saw it, saw the brutality of his people that it displayed and his conscience was moved and he put an end to the use of gladiators for sport in Rome.
When the persecution of the church came to an end the early church looked back at the courage and devotion of their leaders who stood strong in such circumstances, and wanted to never forget the example they set. So they established All Saints’ Day to remember the courage and faithfulness that carried the church through a very dark time.
So what do great heroes of the faith, people who lived really exceptional lives of devotion to God have to do with folks like us? We are ordinary. We don’t know ourselves as saints. We don’t know ourselves yet, for who God sees us to be. We don’t know ourselves, yet, for what we shall be.
But, to the Apostle Paul, all who have put their lives into the hands of the Lord, Jesus Christ, are saints. It’s not so much because of what they have done, but what they trust Christ will do in them and for them. And so, when Paul wrote his letters to the churches in Philippi and Colossae, he addressed them all as saints.
So I see this day as a celebration of the completion of God’s people, that those who have died in Christ from this congregation, or those who have died in Christ in any time or place, folks just like us, warts and wrinkles and all, are today, by God’s grace renewed into the very image of God in a way that we on earth cannot yet comprehend. The hope of sainthood is now fulfilled.
Our text for this morning is one of my favorites, 1 John 3:1-3.
1 See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. 2 Beloved, we are God's children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is. 3 And all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.
Do you ever have a day when you really feel the weight of the world on your soul? That the stresses and pressures squeeze you into something less than you want to be for God? I do. We all do.
A boy is born with ears that stick out away from his head a little bit more than the rest of the kids. If you measured the angle, the difference might be less than 15 degrees beyond average. But some of the kids at school pick out that one trait in him and label him as a weirdo. And once they labeled him as a weirdo it was open season to say all sorts of nasty things about him. And he was convinced for life that there is something deep down wrong with him, that somehow he just isn’t presentable in polite company, that even God couldn’t accept someone whose ears stand at an angle 15 degrees different from everyone else. His confidence is undermined. His pain sometimes overflows in irrational anger. Most people saw his anger and stayed away.
But God had put some other, wonderful, beautiful traits in him. His grandmother saw some of them and worked very hard to encourage them to come out, but they rarely came to the surface. He barely dared to dream that those precious traits were there and the rest of the world never saw them. But God saw and treasured his longings to be whole, longings that most humans never saw.
And on the day of his arrival in heaven, he met Jesus Christ, face to face. And Jesus welcomed him to a place where people are treasured for their little physical differences, not abused. Perhaps in a moment, his eyes were opened to see scenes from his past where he had felt totally abandoned by God, when in reality God was weeping for his pain, calling out to people to come to him as healers and comforters. And several of those whom God had called to bring healing to this boy had ignored his voice. And this dear boy had struggled, but held to his faith somehow.
Seeing the whole picture meant that he also saw times when he had done wrong, when he had spitefully taken revenge on his tormentors, when he had tried to raise his own social status by bullying someone who was socially vulnerable like him, when he had cut himself off from his family in order to wallow in self pity. It was hard to admit to those things. He was sorely tempted to pull away from Jesus in order to keep them hidden. But he didn’t. And he was healed. As the Apostle Paul said in 1 Corinthians, now, on this earth we “see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face.” In heaven we will see the whole picture.
A young mother goes through a time of stress and some hormonal fluctuations. She loves her children dearly, but in this period she loses control and says some very painful things to her young daughter, things that scar that little girl for the rest of her life. The daughter is never able to fully believe that anyone can love her. She is never able to fully relax. There was a stretch of several years where she went looking for love in some very destructive ways. And God is reaching out to both that mother and that daughter, wanting to help them sort out the things that drive them deep in their hearts, to give them what the Psalmist describes as ‘truth in the inward being.’ As the years go by, they both experience a degree of healing and in some beautiful ways they learn to channel their pain constructively, into better understanding of others who have suffered in similar ways. They are known as wonderfully compassionate people. People at church see them as shining examples of Christian faith, which they are. But the scars never go completely away. Who they are is still tarnished. They can’t yet clearly see how completely God is ready to forgive them and heal them.
But the day comes where they stand face to face with their creator. And he speaks forgiveness and acceptance to the depths of their souls. He speaks love that fulfills every longing and sets their hearts free to love God and each other as they never had on earth.
A baby is born with a defective gene, a gene which has shown up in the family before, which means that all his life alcoholism will be twice the temptation for him as to the average person. And because of the damage done by that defective gene in past generations, he is raised in a family that hasn’t learned very well how to deal with stresses in positive ways. The example he unconsciously learned from his parents was to avoid facing problems directly and to deal with their stress by dulling their senses with alcohol.
And God calls out to that man all his life, wanting to give him the extra support and love which will enable him to stand, and he does go to church sometimes, and he prays a lot more than anyone else realized. But other times he gets sloppy and he falls and the chemistry of his addiction takes over and he causes himself and his family so much pain. And there are many gifts which God has given that young man, but they are lost in the turmoil. And there are times when he feels that God has deeply failed him and he is very much alone and hopeless. Who he is will never be seen on this earth.
But I can picture him coming face to face with his God, who had wept over how far this earth had gotten from the way he created it to be. Who watched him going through the struggles. Who rejoiced at all his later years, when he did stay dry, even though it was so hard. And he saw God’s care for him for the first time. And God fixed his genes and so filled his heart with love that he was set free, at last.
These stories are the stories of all of us. We each carry wounds, some greater, some less. We each have our moments of struggling to find God in the chaos of this world. We each carry our thorns in the flesh. We each have gifts that got nipped in the bud. We each have our questions of where God was at our times of pain.
But today we celebrate the blessed hope that the pain and failure of our lives on earth will not go on forever. There is a finish line. There is rest ahead. There is total victory ahead. There is a day when all will be made clear. Every tear will be wiped away. The chaos of our lives will make sense. And the love of God will wipe clean every wound and make us whole for the first time. Today our loved ones who died in faith are saints indeed. And there is hope for us, too.
As our scripture said, ‘What we will be has not yet been revealed…” But “when he is revealed we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.” AMEN
