A Reflection about All Saints/All Souls Day

(Click on the above title to hear the sermon from Nov. 2, 2008)

This past Sunday we celebrated All Saints and All Souls Day. From the first century, the Church has always honored those who have died in the Lord. During the church’s first three centuries, Christians often encountered severe persecution, suffering torture and bloody death because they refused to deny Christ, even when this denial might have saved their own lives, or the lives of their children and families. The stories of these martyrs provide models for how Christians throughout the centuries should live as Christ’s disciples. Even today we know the importance of remembering people of extraordinary achievement and exemplary character. We celebrate President’s day (honoring Lincoln and Washington as exemplary presidents), Columbus day, July 4th, Veteran’s day, Memorial day, Martin Luther King Day, etc.

Furthermore, there are at least two places in the New Testament that hint at such a practice. The first is in Hebrews 12:1-2, which says since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses (referring back to the heroes of faith in chapter 11)…let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us. The second place is in Revelation 7, our New Testament lectionary passage for this week.

I confess that I am intimidated by the book of Revelation. I just don’t understand apocalyptic literature. It has been helpful for me, however, to understand that Revelation was written to address a specific historical context. The emperor, in this case Domitian, claimed to be God and everyone was expected to acknowledge his deity. Rome was seen as the ultimate power in this world and that it bestowed the blessings of peace and prosperity on those who were loyal. Therefore, all patriotic citizens would support the state as the ultimate source of blessing. However, to the first century Christian, such claims could only be heard as a blasphemous usurpation of God’s sole authority as the Almighty – Jesus is Lord, and not Caesar.

The Asian Christians claimed that God is the Almighty ruler, and that Jesus is Lord, but their life experience was one of pain and frustration, suffered at the hands of pagans. How were they to make sense of this paradox?

John gives their experience meaning by telling a story in which the power of God is contrasted with the power of the emperor and empire. The story assures the reader that those forces currently at work against God, forces of oppression and injustice, will be overthrown by the liberating act of God. The Christ, the agent of God’s liberating act, appeared, confronted the kingdom of this world established on violence and oppression, and conquered.

But instead of conquering through violence and oppression, he conquered through suffering and death. The king is also the lamb, and the suffering and death of the Christ represents the very power of God to overthrow the dark forces of this world. Therefore, as suffering and death was Christ’s ultimate victory, so death and suffering is to be the Christian’s ultimate victory.

So at last we come to Revelation 7 where we are transported to the heavenly throne room. There are the four living creatures surrounding the throne, and the angelic host, and the 24 elders, all singing – “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God for ever and ever! Amen.” There is an innumerable group of people from every nation, tribe, and tongue, dressed in white robes, holding palm branches and crying out “Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!”
An elder comes and tells us that “these are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb…” These are the people whose faith stayed strong in the face of the might of the empire, who never wavered from their conviction that Jesus is Lord, and who ultimately gave their lives for that confession of faith. These are the martyrs.

This vision was given to give us hope regarding the outcome of our difficult, threatened, persecuted existence in the world of the empire. “Stay strong in the faith,” says John’s apocalypse, “because you will join this group, in a place where the physical trials of this life will be gone, the injustices of this world will be put to right, and where you can enjoy being in the presence of the king.” "Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses," says Hebrews 12:1, "let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us..." Jesus put it this way - "Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven..."

We no longer suffer under the tyrannical rule of an emperor and empire that persecutes us because we do not recognize it as lord of our lives. I think, though, that we would have to admit that the rule of the empire is alive and well. It doesn’t threaten us with torture and death…it tempts us with prosperity and an easy life-style. Our ordeal is trying to resist buying into the way that this world works. In our day and age, the great ordeal is not the threat of death, but the grim conflict of loyalties in which a Christian may well be in genuine doubt about where his or her duty lies. Common sense says: The true power in the world to save is the United States, or capitalism, or democracy. The Revelation says: the true power is the Lamb of God, whose power is made manifest, not in the weapons of violence, but in the intentional submission of life to death for others. The problem we face today is the same as in the past…how do we not cave in to a common sense that defines reality as the power of wealth, violence, and exploitation of the environment, rather than defining reality as the Lamb of God who conquered and achieved victory through service, selflessness, suffering, and death on the cross?

Today is All Saints/All Souls Day. It is a day where we are challenged to remember the martyrs who gave themselves for the cause of Christ and to be encouraged in our faith because of their example. They remind us that church is not just a social club where we go to get our social needs met; Christianity is not simply where we come to suck the blood from Jesus in an exercise of cheap grace while we ignore his call to radical discipleship where there is no compromise to be brokered between the power of God and the power of the empire. Those people in white robes, those who put their lives on the altar of faith in Christ believed that Christianity was irreconcilable with “good citizenship” in the empire of this world. The martyrs remind us that the call of Christ is to radical discipleship, where we are asked to leave father and mother, leave the comfort and security of the promised prosperity from the modern empire and asked instead to follow Jesus down Calvary’s road.

Therefore, let us raise our voices and cry with that great host of martyrs in heaven “Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!” Let us join with those who are now enduring the great tribulation, those oppressed by poverty, or war, or natural disaster. Let us unite ourselves with those holy martyrs robed in white before the throne, those of every nation and tribe and people and language: Men and women, all races, all ages who through their enduring witness, have taught us what it really means to stand up on proclaim and bear witness that Jesus is Lord.