What We Shall Be

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.