All Saints Day 2005

Speaking Index

Delivered 5 November 2005, the Saturday service based on the readings for the Feast of All Saints.

Good evening! We come here at the close of the day, to gather beside the waters of baptism, to gather at the foot of the cross. This is the eve of All Saints Day, the original Halloween. In a little while we'll light the candles you see here on the font, one for each of the saints that this congregation has added to the hosts of saints in this past year. We do this every year, to celebrate their ministry and to remind ourselves that we, too, will soon join them. We were baptized in the same water, we share their faith, we will share their fate.

Revelation 7:9-17
Psalm 34:1-10, 22
1 John 3:1-3
Matthew 5:1-12

Grace and peace to you from God our Father, and from his son Jesus the Christ, and from the Holy Spirit. Amen

Today is all about heaven and who we'll find there. We limit this to one day a year, possibly because we don't know much about heaven, what we'll do there, or who we'll do it with.

When Luther nailed the 95 theses to the chapel door at Wittenburg, he did it on the eve of All Saints because he knew there would be a big crowd that day. In that superstitious era, earning your way into heaven, both for yourself and your family, was a major preoccupation. We can be thankful that since Luther expanded our understanding of the grace we receive as children of God, we no longer feel the need to focus as much attention on getting in when our time comes.

We have little glimpses of heaven from scripture, but just like the Bible is not a science text, it's not a travel guide. We're told in Revelation that the twelve gates of heaven are each carved from a single pearl. Are we to treat this as a factual report, or as a metaphor that we don't yet comprehend? If it's fact, it's kind of scary. If there are pearls in heaven big enough to carve entry gates from, how big must be the oysters? I'm sure a lot of folks, delighting in moving through water in this life, expect to continue swimming when they get to heaven, but they probably haven't thought about swimming in waters where hundred-foot-wide oysters are opening and closing their shells on the sea floor!

No human has gone to heaven and come back to report on the experience. Maybe it's not possible, although with God it's hard to imagine that anything can't be done. Maybe God has a reason for not sharing the details - would you be more likely to want to go to heaven if you knew more - and therefore keeps those in heaven from coming back to report. I've always suspected it was because once you get to heaven you don't care about earth anymore.

Two years ago this day, one of the candles that was lit at Trinity Lutheran at Lynnwood represented my father's life and ministry. Jim was a musician, a devout Christian, and I think of him as one of the saints, although opinions differ. When I think of him knocking back a few glasses of wine with Mozart, helping Handel stage concerts, playing some four-hand harpsichord with Scarlatti, or asking Bach how he got his tenors to behave in rehearsal, I just can't see him having time to worry too much about what's going on down here. I'm sure he'll be glad to see me when I get there, he'll doubtless offer me a comfortable chair and a good drink -- as soon as I've helped setup the music stands for some concert. But to interrupt the good times he's having now to come back to this grubby place? I can't see it.

Will Paul Skinner be comparing notes with Gregor Mendel and Booker T. Washington about getting the most out of a garden? Will Millie Schultz and Trudy Paulin be cooking with Irma Rombauer, Julia Child, and James Beard in their heavenly kitchens? Just think, our bodies will be restored to flawless condition, they'd never again have to worry about cutting back on the butter!

Personally, I'm expecting the beer and bratwurst to be far beyond anything I've ever experienced, and I'll never overcook anything again.

Or maybe there isn't any sense of time once you get to heaven. I'm reminded of an event from years ago, back when we actually worshipped in that tiny little building up by the highway. Pastor Jim had just finished the sermon and the congregation was doing a spirited job of Amazing Grace. Now, there are five verses to Amazing Grace, but if you look up hymn 448 in the LBW you will see they've only included four. I was singing tenor and Larkin was singing alto, but around verse three I looked at Larkin, held up my hand with all fingers out, and raised my eyebrows in question. She nodded, and when Margaret stopped playing at the end of verse four, Larkin and I just sailed right on in to verse five. By the time we had sung "When we've been there" the congregation had joined in with "ten thousand years" and Margaret was back in with the organ by the time the next phrase started. I think it was at that point that Jim knew he could never count on complete control over this congregation as long as there were Van Horns present!

We all know that fifth verse, and I have no idea why the hymnal committee left it out. The hymn we'll sing in a few minutes has eight verses, so there wasn't some fixed limit. I think it likely that John Newton had caught an important truth about heaven in that verse. "When we've been there ten thousand years, bright shining as the sun, we've no less days to sing God's praise, than when we'd first begun." There may be no sense at all that time is passing, those who have been gone from us for decades may not have any awareness that we're waiting for them to report back.

For that matter, there is some confusion about when any of this happens. Jesus told the thief on the cross, "This day you will be with me in Paradise." Other verses suggest that we're buried and just molder away, to be resurrected at the last day.

We can't really speak to who will be in heaven. Will our pets be there? James Thurber wrote, " If I have any beliefs about immortality, it is that certain dogs I have known will go to heaven, and very, very few persons." Comprehending God's grace much more clearly, Mark Twain observed, "Heaven goes by favour. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in." Will Rogers opined, " If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went." We don't have a clue about whether or not our pets will be there, or whether we will be reunited with our most recent pets or every pet we ever had.

We don't know which persons will end up in heaven. Today's text from Revelations says "a great multitude that no one could count". At least a couple of sects maintain that there will only be 144,000 admitted, which isn't much of a kingdom in my mind. That would place heaven between Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, population 115,000, and Guam at 155,000. God knows no limits, nor does his grace, it doesn't seem likely he would limit his kingdom numerically.

A few years ago I was at a funeral at Langley, at the Methodist church. The deceased was a teenage boy - a star soccer player, well loved by his teammates, his family, and many other friends - a young man who had taken his own life. Pastor David Vergen, who we know here at Trinity because he's been involved with us in the Easter Vigil and Good Friday services for many years, addressed this point early in the service. Yes, traditional theology has painted suicide as an unforgivable sin. If it's wrong to take a life and you take your own, it's hardly possible to seek forgiveness afterwards. Looked at with judgmental, hair-splitting, human logic, how can you argue the point?

But God is not limited by human logic. One of his creatures was so plagued and tormented by demons that he was driven to take his own life. Would our God consign this soul to the fiery pit? I don't accept that as a possibility.

We look to the book to see what tests will be applied. Mark 16 says it's those who are baptized and believe, but that whoever does not believe will be condemned. Does that mean that those too young to believe are condemned? What about those who have lost the capacity to reason through disease, accident, or the infirmity of old age? What of the newcomer who has found a vital relationship with Jesus and wholeheartedly accepted Him as savior, but was waiting to be baptized until his mother could attend the baptism when a car accident ended his life? Christian missionaries have been to all parts of the world, but not to every person on every day; what of a child growing up in Tibet for whom a Christian is nothing more than a rumor from two villages down the trail? God's love knows no bounds, I don't expect anyone to be thrown into the outer darkness on a technicality.

In Matthew. Jesus speaks of the last judgment, ""Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.'"

What a disappointment to the judgmental human hair splitter this account is! I can't say that so-and-so isn't going to be in heaven. I can't say that the Methodists or the Roman Catholics or the Mormons or the Hindus aren't going to be there. In reading that lesson of the sheep and the goats, after they had been sorted we notice that *both* groups were wondering how they ended up in their respective categories. The righteous hadn't claimed to have fed, clothed, nursed, or visited Jesus, but he had accepted their efforts. And those that were bound for eternal punishment were shocked because they felt they had earned their place in heaven. Both groups were surprised. In a few moments we'll share the peace of the lord, peace which passes all human understanding. That's not the only thing about our God that passes all human understanding.

These candles still burn for Millie Schultz, Paul Skinner, Stella Nilsen, Roald Melver, Millie Egerton, Dolly Mullen, Robert Pollard, Joe Reichman, Jack McDonald, Jim Ramsey, Tom Burkholder, Millie Cochran, Elmo Thomson, Pauline Campbell, George Makela, Trudy Paulin, and Sam Mattson. The eldest of these had lived ninety years, the youngest for fifty four. I've been to funerals where the departed had only lived two days, and every year there are some who have lived over a hundred years. It isn't about age or length of service, although these seventeen certainly had performed long and well in the vineyard.

This candle (point to Paschal) burns for all, those who have gone before, and those of us who continue today. It is the light of Christ, the light God shining on our weary world. It is the light that draws us to Christ, leads us to the waters of baptism, calls us to service to those around us, and brings us at last to sainthood.

We don't know when, we don't know how, we don't know who. What we do know is why: The blood of the Lamb has cleansed us, we are his, and God's grace will take us home. Home with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Home with the angels. Home with the saints.

And this is what we call Good News. This is the Gospel of the Lord. Amen.