Sermon: All Saints, 1/11/15, Woodbridge, LJB

John 11: 32-44, Isaiah 25: 6-9, Rev 21: 1-6

All Saints Day is a day of rejoicing. We remember all of the saints of the

church, the well known ones, the unknown ones and those we sat next to

in church and at home, and we rejoice with them that they are indeed

with God, enjoying God’s company in eternal life. Today we are

celebrating All Saints day, so welcome to all of for it’s your day-we are

all God’s saints. The church recognizes many important saints for the

inspiration they can give us:. Last Wednesday was the day to remember

Saints Simon and Jude. Both died as martyrs for their faith. I particularly

like St Jude, the saint of lost causes! There’s a picture of him above the

tea things on the back wall! (RC appeals to St Jude).

I don’t know about you, but I don’t often give thought to what will

happen to me after I die. The afterlife, eternal life, heaven-whatever it

may be called. I’m curious, of course. I think many people are curious,

judging by the number of stories and movies about ghosts and zombies

and vampires and hauntings and even angels that are around. Sometimes

the dying of someone we know or a funeral can shake us into more

serious thoughts, but they are rare thoughts. I wonder if it’s because we

are relatively comfortable here in Woodbridge in this life, and death

seems a long way off. And we’d rather not think about it anyway!

Most of us are not in daily fear of starvation, or death, of violence or war,

thanks be to God. But these fears have been facts of life for many

throughout history and as we know certainly in many countries today.

Such fears demand answers to urgent questions: is there a purpose for my

suffering? a reason for enduring more years in this refugee camp, or on

the road from Turkey to Germany with my children? Is there a reckoning

for the injustice of this world? Perhaps my answers will come in the

afterlife? Perhaps wrongs will then be righted? Perhaps there will finally

be peace and freedom from suffering?

The OT and the NT bring us stories of peoples who had enduring

generations of strife, wars, invasions, and from these people come their

visions of something more: an afterlife in which God will right all

wrongs, bring justice and peace and comfort and happiness to those who

have endured and sought to do his will.

The readings for All Saints Day bring us some of their glorious visions of

the end of time, when all of the saints (which means all of God’s people)

live forever in God’s kingdom. They assure us that all of God’s people

will meet together in the presence of God for a magnificent eternal life.

Writings about the end times are called eschatology, and there’s some of

it in the OT, in the books of Isaiah and Daniel, for example. Eschatology,

writings about the end times, is the subject of the last book of the NT,

the book called the apocalypse, meaning the revelation, the Revelation of

St John the Divine.

We’ll start with Isaiah who points the way for us today. Jewish people in

King David’s time, if they had led a good life, expected to be buried with

their ancestors and to rest in peace with their ancestors. But Isaiah sees

something rather more wonderful. His vision of the end of time is not

resting but feasting: an eschatological feast on God’s mountain. At this

rich feast of fine food and well-aged wine, Isaiah says, God will finally

destroy the shroud which is spread over all the nations of the earth. A

shroud is of course a grave cloth, and represents deaths, which up until

this last moment is the fate lying over all people. The prophet proclaims

that God will destroy the shroud, swallowing up death forever. He will

wipe away the tears, the suffering and the disgrace of sinfulness of all of

his beloved people. God will save his people finally and forever:  Let us

rejoice in his salvation!,  says Isaiah.

The next heavenly vision comes from the book of Revelation:

our reading is the seventh of a series of visions of St John about the end

of time. In earlier visions John saw God in heaven sitting in judgment

over his people, and over Satan. He saw Satan, the angel who rebelled

against God, cast out of heaven forever, and then death itself banished. A

bit like the shroud of death being torn away in Isaiah’s vision. John’s

seventh and last vision is of a new heaven and a new earth, for the first

heaven and the first earth have passed away.

 They are replaced by what he called the new Jerusalem, a new holy

place, as glorious as a bride decked in finery, coming from God to rest on

earth.

 This holy place is to be the new dwelling place of God:  See the home of

God is coming among mortals; he will dwell with them and they will be

his peoples, and God himself will be with them.

He will wipe every tear from their eyes. This is what Isaiah foresaw in his

vision as well.

Death will be no more, mourning and crying and pain will be no more,

for the first things have passed away.

The result of this seventh phase end time scenario is that there will be

perfect peace and happiness between God and his people.

Death is defeated and cast out, no more pain and tears,  Behold, (God

says) I make all things new.I am the alpha and the omega . These are the

first and last letters of the Greek alphabet in which John was writing.

God was in the beginning, before the earth and people, and God is in the

end times, unchanged.

Science agrees that there was a beginning to the universe we know, in a

huge explosion of energy called the Big Bang about 12 billion years ago.

About 5 billion years ago the gravitational field of a small star, our sun,

attracted enough matter around it to form planets, including our earth.

Science also tells us there will be an end to our planet, when the nuclear

reactor which is the sun cools and no longer gives energy to our earth.

We won’t worry too much about that for now, it’s some billions of years

into the future. Actions of humans may of course bring about an end to

life on our planet well before the cooling of the sun does so. Perhaps

that’s a little more under our control! And in the beginning was God and

at the end as well, the alpha and the omega.

So, do we have to wait until the end of time until we join God in his

heavenly banquet, in his kingdom? That’s what Martha thought, when

she went out to meet Jesus after her brother Lazarus had died.

The story demonstrates for us and for Lazarus’ grieving family and

friends the compassion and empathy of Jesus with those who are grieving

and suffering. It demonstrates the enormous power of Jesus to bring life

from death, to bring joy from pain, hope from hopelessness. Tears are

wiped away, just as Isaiah and John foretold and Jesus rejoices with

Lazarus and his family and friends.

Martha said to Jesus, yes, I know he will rise again in the resurrection on

the last day. But something new was happening now. Jesus said to her  I

am the resurrection and the life, those who believe in me, even though

they die will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never

die.  He asked Martha: do you believe this? Yes, she said, for herself and

for Lazarus. Then Jesus turned this amazing statement into a solid, acted

out metaphor, by taking Lazarus, who was dead, and bringing him back

to life. Those who believe in me even though they die, they will live.

What Jesus said means much to us too: everyone who lives and believes

in me will never die. It brings the visions of living in God’s kingdom

much closer, I think. The dead don’t have to wait around until the end

times to be with God, sharing in the heavenly banquet. Death will not

separate us from God and his kingdom for any length of time.

Remember what Jesus said to the thief who was crucified with him:

today you will be with me in paradise. No waiting needed!

Even more startling is knowing that we don’t even need to die to join

God in God’s kingdom. Really, the visions of heaven on earth that Isaiah

and John are foreseeing are what we are asking to come into being when

we pray the prayer our Lord told us to pray: Your kingdom come and

your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

We are praying that God’s kingdom, something like a new holy place, a

new Jerusalem, will come into being on earth, making things on earth as

they are in heaven, making Earth into God’s realm in fact. We are

praying for God’s kingdom to come into our planet now, not just after we

die, or in distant end times.

It’s not just a pious prayer that we say without thinking, but it involves

hard work. In following Jesus commands we are each working away on

the little patch of the fabric of the kingdom to which we have been

assigned. We are weaving our patch into the life of our planet, in our

small ways helping God’s kingdom to come. Every loving act, every time

we forgive someone we don’t like, helps to make the earth into God’s

kingdom.

As we work away at it, it is good to remember that we not alone, we are

part of something really huge: we are members of the great community

of saints-the communion of saints- who have been working away in the

kingdom, who are working today and will work in the future in making

our earth into God’s kingdom. Our fellow workers in the communion

include some very famous ones: St Simon and St Jude, St Peter and St

Paul, St Mary McKillop and  some lesser known ones: my mum and dad

for example, and each one of you, all God’s saints!  God bless you all!

Amen