Divine Diversity

 

Jesu Juva

Revelation 7:9-17                                                       

November 5, 2023

All Saints’ Sunday                       

Dear saints of our Savior~

        The leaves aren’t messing around anymore.  They’ve passed their peak and are furiously falling.  Everyone loves those fall colors; but every falling leaf is a dead leaf.  The first snowfall of the season fell on Reformation Day.  But beneath the beauty of those frosty flakes is the bitter cold reality of death.  Right now we’re all refreshed by a bit of extra sleep and some additional morning light.  But the daylight will be disappearing into darkness right around 4:30 this afternoon.

        As the world around us slips into the dark, lifeless chill of winter, All Saints’ Sunday is brimming with light and life.  This Sunday is a regular reminder that we believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.  And our attention turns to those who have gone ahead of us—those who are already with Christ—those who rest from their labors, whose tears have been wiped away by the gentle touch of Jesus.  We feebly struggle; they in glory shine.

        On All Saints’ Sunday the curtain between heaven and earth gets pulled back just a bit.  We catch a glimpse of the saints in glory.  We don’t worship the saints.  We don’t pray to them.  We don’t venerate them.  But we do remember them.  Article XXI of the Augsburg Confession tells us why we remember them:  It is also taught among us that saints should be kept in remembrance so that our faith may be strengthened when we see what grace they received and how they were sustained in faith.  Moreover, their good works are to be an example for us, each according to his own calling.

        We can hardly get any closer to heaven than in Revelation chapter seven.  There we see and hear the saints and their Savior.  And we join them in their resurrection song.  St. John, the last living Apostle on earth—is our divinely inspired guide on this tour of heavenly sights and sounds.

  And the first thing St. John points out is a crowd of unimaginable size and scope:  After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands. 

        Beloved in the Lord, that multitude is your multitude.  That crowd is your crowd.  That is the great cloud of witnesses who constantly surround us and cheer us on in the good fight of the faith.  Let that multitude remind you—you are never alone.  No Christian is ever alone:  Not the martyrs—bloody, beheaded, or burned—not the Christian business owners, bankrupted for standing firm against the sexual lunacy of our land—not even the confessing Christian holed up in solitary confinement.  They are not alone; for we are one with them in the body of Christ, the Communion of Saints.  This crowd is a great comfort.

        And this crowd of saints is a diverse crowd.  They come from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages:  Famous and anonymous, rich and poor, male and female, black and white and every color and shade of human flesh.  This is diversity on a scale we can scarcely imagine.  Our human institutions cry out for diversity and demand diversity and conjure diversity—helping some, while hurting others.  Lifting up some, while trampling others.  “Our diversity is our strength,” the culture cries.  But what we see behind heaven’s curtain is a divine diversity—diversity achieved by the Lord Jesus and by His strength.  His gospel goes forth to all nations, for He desires that all people should be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth.  All people are precious in His sight—as evidenced by the diverse crowd of saints in heaven.

        But there are other kinds of crowds, too—crowds that will quickly pull you away from your Savior and away from His body, the church.  The Old Adam in us is a conformist; and if we’re not careful we’ll find ourselves conforming to the wrong kind of crowd—a deadening crowd that wants to swallow you up—body and soul.  We often warn our teens about the perils of peer pressure; but it’s not just a teenage problem.  The pull is powerful to conform to the popular crowd—to go along with the “group-think” and drink the “kool-aid” everyone else is sampling.

        You must resist those trending crowds.  Those crowds will suck the life right out of you.  The crowds that swarm around you—they welcome sexual immorality in all of its deadening manifestations.  That crowd wants you to view your body as a mere instrument for the pursuit of pleasure, rather than to see it for what it is—a temple of the Holy Spirit, designed to glorify God, destined for resurrection glory.  The crowds that swell today want you to live as if this life is all that matters—to nourish your narcissism—to view yourself a victim rather than humbly to help and serve those who are truly victims.  The crowd out there wants you to view your suffering as proof that God doesn’t exist (or if He does exist, that He’s unjust and uncaring and unloving), rather than to see your suffering the way the saints see suffering—as the crucible where faith is forged and strengthened, and where the glorious grace of God is proved sufficient, and where His power is made perfect in our weakness.  

        But, as Jesus says, rejoice and be glad.  For Jesus has called you from this world’s crowd of the walking dead and has made you a member of that great heavenly multitude.  You’ve already heard about the impressive size and the amazing diversity of that multitude in heaven.  But the most unique thing about that multitude is not its size or even its diversity.  It’s their unity—the unity of their attention—their laser-like focus.  In St. John’s description of those white-robed saints, the thing that stands out above all else is that they aren’t paying the least bit of attention to themselves.  Instead, they are united as one as they look with undivided attention to the Lamb upon His throne, the Lord Jesus Christ victorious over death and the grave.

        And right there is the secret to being part of that holy crowd of saints.  You don’t join that holy crowd by squeezing in and trying to imitate them.  You don’t do it by putting a Jesus bumper sticker on your car, or flying the Christian flag, or by stitching up a white robe for yourself.  Those things don’t make you a part of this crowd.  No, the only way you can share in the blessedness of the saints is to join them in looking at what they are so fixated upon—the Lord Jesus Christ—the Son of God—our Savior.  For you received your white robe of righteousness when Jesus claimed you as His own in the waters of Holy Baptism.  Jesus humbled Himself and became like you . . . so that He might lift you up to become just like Him—a holy child of God.

        To be part of the crowd of saints is to fix your eyes upon Jesus.  And yet, don’t think of it as Jesus on the pitcher’s mound and you somewhere up in the nose-bleed seats.  No, every single member of this crowd enjoys the gentle, tender, individual attention of Jesus.  “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”  Think about that.  Whatever tears of tribulation stain your face, Jesus will wipe them away.  And the only way to wipe away another’s tears is to be right there, up close and personal—face to face.  With a touch of His nail-scarred hand, Jesus will wipe away your tears and you will never weep again.  As St. John writes (in what might be the most profound sentence of All Saints’ Sunday), “We shall see him as he is.”

        And those nail-scarred hands will remind us of how it is that we poor sinners can stand before God in that great multitude—because our tattered and sin-stained robes have been washed and made white in the blood of the Lamb.  All of your sin—all that should rightly keep you out of this saintly crowd—it’s all been answered for in the blood of Jesus, shed on the cross, as your sacred substitute.  And that same cleansing blood He offers to this crowd, here today, as we gather around this altar: Drink of it all of you.  This is my blood of the New Testament which is shed for you, for the forgiveness of sins.

        In just a few minutes the chimes will toll for Ron and for Nancy—dear saints of our Savior who now stand in the Savior’s presence.  One day the chimes will toll for you.  But do not be afraid.  Rejoice and be glad.  For today we realize just how precious each saint is to Jesus—how precious your life is to Jesus.  Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints.

        Today we have our fair share of trouble and tribulation.  But because the Lamb is victorious on His throne, we know.  We know that tribulation is temporary; life with the Lamb is forever.  He has called you into His holy multitude.  On the day of resurrection He will raise your body from the grave.  Your white robe will be waiting.  And your voice will be clear and strong to join in that delightfully deafening chorus:  Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever. 

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