When I was
a young boy, I became fascinated by the book of Revelation.
I say I
was fascinated.
But I was
also fascinated by pictures of mushroom clouds and stories of World War II.
The kind
of fascination I found in the book of Revelation was much more akin to these
kinds of fascination than, say, my love for the stories of Robin Hood or
Redwall.
The book
of Revelation for many in our day has become a kind of Rorschach test
Upon which
people project their fears and desires – and many of the books we can read
interpreting Revelation for today can tell us much more about the interpreter
than about Revelation or today.
The writer
of Revelation, John, was in prison on the island of Patmos – it was a time when
Christians were being imprisoned and executed at the hands of the Roman empire
because they would not denounce their faith in Christ. The book describes a battle of good and evil
that was a very real experience for John and his community – and this is why it
still fascinates people today – because we still see forces of international
greed and violence at play – and in every generation since this book was
written, people have seen their time revealed in these apocalyptic pages.
But the
book was not written to give people a new code to decipher and forecast what
will happen next, it was not written to be a textbook for the future. It was written to be a source of imaginative
hope for the experience of the present suffering at the hands of the empire.
It’s a book that seeks to renew hope, to sustain those who live in the valley of the shadow of death –
To remind
people of what is true in the midst of their fear and confusion and grief.
God has
not abandoned the earth,
God has
not abandoned humanity.
God
remains steadfast in love.
And this
is what I failed to see in my fascination with the book. It took it so literally that I failed to see
the forest for the trees. I got so
morbidly fixated on impending cosmic disaster that I forgot that the whole
point of the book is to point to the God in whose care the creation is and
always will be. I was not able to take
comfort in passages like the one we read today that paint a picture of the
heavenly community.
And what a
picture! A “great multitude that on one
could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages,
standing before the throne and before the Lamb”
And there
they sing – there they rejoice,
in the
nearness of God, in the care of God,
Who
shelters them in his temple,
where they
“hunger no more…thirst no more”
They are
kept from sun and heat (a very desirable image for someone living in the
deserts of the Middle East)
And even
more desirable – they are lead by the Lamb,
who is their
shepherd, Christ himself,
Lead “to
springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their
eyes.”
This is
the picture John paints of those who he and his community saw imprisoned and
executed for their faith. And he reminds
his readers – nothing can separate us from the love of God.
This is
the picture of All Saints.
And so I
got to thinking about what we mean when we talk about “saints.”
We often
use the word to speak of someone who we think of as having a self-sacrificial
character – “She’s a saint.”
We can
probably imagine one or two faces as we think about the word saint.
And it’s
good to appreciate the faith and love of people who we deem saints in the usual
sense of the word.
It’s good
to allow their example to inspire us.
But it’s also
important to remember that the Bible never uses the word saint in that way. It wasn’t until the fourth century that the
people began using the word saint to indicate those exceptional spiritual
heroes.
So then, who
is a saint according to the Bible?
A saint
was anyone who had come to trust God
for salvation.
They were
awakened to a different reality – God’s love that “has been poured into our
hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”
To the
kingdom of God within and among them.
A saint is
not someone who is perfect.
A saint is
someone who has realized that they are not made healthy or whole or safe by
something that they accomplish or something that they attain.
Rather
they are made whole by a gift of God, by receiving from God in faith – made
whole by that sustaining love.
A saint is
someone like Paul – who thought he was perfect and hated and persecuted
Christians until he was transformed by the grace of God and though he continued
to struggle with his pride and fear, he pressed on knowing that he was
sustained by God’s love.
A saint is
someone like Lydia, whose story we read in the book of Acts,
who might
have had no idea what to make of Paul and his crazy companions when they showed
up by the river in Philippi, they were strangers with a strange message
and yet
she welcomed them into her home.
And in her
home fostered a community that celebrated grace and forgiveness, shared meals
and lived as sisters and brothers.
Consider
now the saints that you know.
Those
imperfect people who have realized the joy of knowing God’s grace in their
lives.
“Through
many dangers, toils and snares,
I have
already come;
’Tis grace
hath brought me safe thus far,
And grace
will lead me home.”
A saint in
the sense that the Bible uses the word is not someone who has achieved
perfection or a superior holiness. A
saint is someone who has responded to God’s love for them, someone who has
allowed God to transform their hearts, and heard Jesus’s call to “follow me.”
A saint is
someone who has realized and received the love of God, and who has recognized
the need to walk in the way of forgiveness and grace.
Ultimately
a saint is someone that you can’t recognize.
Because
they’re just like you and me – they struggle with their own fears and sins and
addictions and doubts.
But they
have come to realize that they have a shepherd who will walk with them, and
they’ve come to be able to see the hope of reconciliation with God and with
their neighbors – an image like the one in the book of revelation today, of
singing multitudes from every corner of the earth, no longer hating, no longer
fighting, no longer separated,
but
reunited in the love of God, in the shelter of God’s grace, led by the
Lamb. Led to water, where everyone has
enough, and is fulfilled in the presence of God.
This image
gives us a sense of who we are as children of God.
We are not
alone. We are not left to our own
devices. We are not abandoned in pain or
grief. We are not smothered under the
weight of guilt or fear.
We are part of a community of people of all times and places, gathered around the well of God’s abiding love.
We have
come to realize that the same God who was with us in our beginning will be with
us in our ending.
And so we
sing now even as we will sing then.
And so we
fellowship with one another now even as we will experience reunion then.
And so we
delight in God now even as we will delight in God then.
And we
realize that those who we love who have gone from us also dwell in the same
shelter of God’s care which knows no bounds, not even death itself.
Let us
remember those saints even as we look around or imagine in our hearts those in
our lives who inspire us with the life of amazing grace.
And as we
realize the “great cloud of witnesses” which have gone before us and shown us
the pilgrimage of faith, may we live now inspired by the vision of a place
where grace is fundamental, where the hungry are fed, the vulnerable are given
safe haven, and all people can drink deeply from the well of God’s love.
Amen.
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