Brothers and sisters,
Grace be unto you and peace from God our Father and
our risen Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
You may ask today, on All Saints Sunday, just what
is a saint? What is it that makes someone a saint? Saints refers, as we are reminded of today,
to those who have successfully completed their race and have died in the faith,
holding fast to the promises of Christ bestowed unto them in their baptism. But
this is not to say that we don’t become saints until we die for there is a “now”
and a “not yet” element to being a saint. Sainthood is not just a future
reality it is a present reality also.
Sainthood
is a present reality for you through faith in Christ because of Christ. John
emphasizes this in the lesson from his 1st epistle letter where he
writes “Beloved, we are God’s children now..” To be a saint is to be a child of
God. And in baptism you are re-born as a Child of God. At the same time though,
there is definitely something more awaiting you. This is not all there is.
There is a glorious and victorious future awaiting you. You await a time in the
future when all things will be made new and God will wipe the tears from every
eye. But in the mean time there are still tears. There is still grief. There is
still sorrow. There is still pain. There is still weakness. As Paul says in 1st
Corinthians For now we see in a mirror
dimly….
So while
you are a saint now, you have not yet experienced the fullness of what that
means. What you will be has not yet fully appeared, but Jesus does give you
palpable blessings in this life. And I am not speaking of material wealth and
prosperity as some wrongly teach. Jesus provides for your daily physical needs
but for you His saints He also provides for your spiritual needs. When it comes
to spiritual opposition-that opposition which seeks to draw you from Christ-
Jesus sustains you with His glorious promises, and the essence of these
promises can be heard in the beatitudes; the eternal promises that you see in
the Gospel lesson for this morning.
These beatitudes are not demands. They are
not new laws. Instead they show you how Jesus, in a very friendly way comes
with promises for His blessed saints. And the first promise He makes is a
promise of the very Kingdom of God to the poor in Spirit. And it’s fitting that
this is the first promise since poor in spirit describes a condition that is
the exact opposite of trying to earn something through your own best efforts.
Being poor in Spirit is to realize that you cannot do it on your own; it is to
acknowledge your moral bankruptcy; it is to acknowledge that you are born dead
in your trespasses and sin. Jesus humbled Himself to such a degree that He had
all but laid aside His divine powers. This humility lead even to His death. He
made Himself totally dependent upon the Father as the Poor in Spirit depend on
Jesus.
Jesus
promises that He will comfort you in mourning. So when wallowing in guilt He
comforts you with forgiveness. He comforts you when you mourn over oppression
and affliction. And it is a comfort that will be fully realized in God’s
glorious and eternal Kingdom. He promises that in your meekness you will
inherit the earth. Jesus promises His blessed saints, you will be vindicated
and you will inherit the promised land.
In Psalm 37 David says But the meek shall inherit the land and delight themselves in abundant peace.
That abundant peace is rooted in the glorious promise of the coming Kingdom
wherein you will find eternal rest.
By
creating faith in you through the Word of Christ the Holy Spirit fills you with
a hunger and a thirst for righteousness and Jesus promises that hunger and
thirst will be satisfied. He does not
say exactly how it is satisfied but certainly the Lord’s Supper as a foretaste
of the feast to come would have to be included as one of the ways. Martin Luther writes of the hunger and thirst
for righteousness: “We have the clear
assurance that God does not cast aside sinners, that is, those who recognize
their sin and desire to come to their senses, who thirst for righteousness.” That
hunger and thirst for righteousness and awareness of sin is at the very heart
of what it means to be a saint.
And when in the awareness
of your sin you are driven to cry out to your Lord Jesus for forgiveness, He
mercifully forgives your sin, and moves you, the blessed, to forgive those who
sin against you. And though for now, you
blessed saints only hear His comforting
word you are nevertheless cleansed by His Word through the washing of water
with the Word, so that you are assured that you will one day enter the Lord’s
dwelling for all eternity where you will see God.
And with
this glorious promise Jesus-who is the greatest peacemaker ever-fills you with
the peace that surpasses all understanding. It is a peace that the world mocks
because it transcends any worldly comprehension of peace because it is not a
peace with man but peace with God. It’s a peace through which you are transformed
from being an enemy of God to being a child of God; identified with Jesus as a
son or daughter of God.
But because
the world does not know God; because the message of the cross is foolishness to
those who are perishing; because the world would prefer to remain in darkness
there is persecution for the blessed saints of God. There is opposition. This opposition
could come from people at large, an overreaching government, even from with the
church-any time there is anything that is an obstacle to the proclamation of
the pure Gospel the blessed saints of the church of Christ are persecuted. But
in the midst of persecution for righteousness sake there is once again the
promise that the eternal Kingdom of God is your’s.
In all of
the beatitudes you are assured that not only can you accept suffering but you
can even rejoice in it. In Acts 5 Luke writes that the apostles were beaten and
told not to tell anyone about Jesus. Not only did the apostles endure that
suffering but they rejoiced that they were counted worthy to suffer for the
name of Christ. And that is a poignant reflection of what Christ does in that
He takes what the world sees as defeat and makes it victory for His blessed
saints. The idea of rejoicing at suffering might seem foolish but our reasons
for rejoicing are hidden under the cross.
In all
that Christ Jesus has done for you you are given reason to rejoice, but the
reason for your rejoicing cannot be seen with the eyes. It cannot be seen
outside of faith in Christ. But through the eyes of faith you look through the
cross to the hope that lies beyond this broken world of sin and you are
comforted for you are inheritors of the new earth where all things will be made
new. Your cup is overflowing with the righteousness of Christ because of His
rich mercy in which He gives all of Himself for sinners like you and pays the
price for your sin, and you are made a saint with a promised place in God’s
kingdom.
No matter
how much darkness and despair you see around you, no matter how much poverty of
spirit the law drives you to, no matter how tempted you might be to lose heart,
in the promises of Christ-the blessed beatitudes and all of the promises of Christ
you have the assurance that your future is one in which you will be joined with
all the other saints in the eternal victory celebration.
Your
future as a blessed saint is among the great multitude that can not be numbered
from the lesson from Revelation. You will be surrounded by fellow children of
God coming from every nation and tribe. They will speak all different
languages. You will join them in proclaiming victory in the words “Salvation
belongs to our God who sits on the throne and to the Lamb.” We don’t really
know what heaven is going to be like but here we are given a glimpse and it is
a glimpse that includes rejoicing around the throne of our Lord.
And so
maybe you think that can’t be all that we’re going to do in Heaven. It can’t
always be rejoicing. Really, what else will there be to do? I mean it will be
the final victory. God and the Lamb will have won the final victory over sin,
death and the devil. Paradise will have been restored. All things will have been
made new, including us. We’ll have new eternal bodies instead of human bodies
that become burdened with sickness and fatigue and break down over time. Who knows what it will be, but it will be
great because it will be after we have come out of the tribulation.
The
final victory over sin and the devil is your’s because Christ has accomplished
it on your behalf. God has blessed His saints and saved you from death and God’s
wrath. He has saved you from your enemies. Nothing can separate you from the
love of God in Christ Jesus and He delivers you His beloved and blessed saints
to the final goal. When the enemies of God seem stronger and the church may
seem on the brink of extinction God has still not forsaken you.
And you
have all of this not because of your bravery or heroism. Were it up to you you
would be doomed. You have this sustaining comfort and peace and mercy because
God could not stand to be separated from you so He gave of Himself to make you
a child of God and a blessed saint. And
though you do not live up to the descriptions in the beatitudes, in Christ Who
does, you are truly blessed. May the Lord make the reality of those blessings a
great comfort to you. May they ease your pain under your crosses. May you
continue to cling to the hope that you have in the One who blesses you, His
saints, trusting in Him to sustain you and purify you as He is purified and to
bring you through the great tribulation.
Amen
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