All Saints Day

This was preached at a joint service with St. Thomas, Good Shepherd and St. Nicholas Episcopal Churches on the evening of November 1 at St. Thomas's:

Perhaps the most effective sermon for All Saints' Day in the nave at St. Thomas’s would take this form:  I would ask you to look at the Pilgrimage Windows on your left.  Then in a slow and meditative way I would read each name with a sentence to explain the person's place in the procession of witnesses to God's redeeming love.  Then every so often, at the end of each bay of lancets, I would repeat this phrase from a popular hymn for All Saints' Day:  “. . . they were all of them saints of God and I mean, God helping, to be one too.”  And at the end change the phrase to: “. . . may God help us all to be saints, too.”  Well, that isn't the one I'm going to preach, but will you invite me back again to preach that sermon?

Tonight, however, I want to hold up two views of sainthood. These two views offer us a sense of tension—creative tension, I believe, but tension nevertheless.  These views can be characterized by two recently published books:  Heaven is for Real by Todd Burpo and Love Wins:  A Book about Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person who Ever Lived by Rob Bell.

Is heaven a wonderful place full of those we love but see no longer and ancestors we have only heard about?  Will we become saints after our death and be in the presence of God the Father, sitting on his throne, and Jesus at his right hand?   Is heaven a place where we hope to find our saintly selves after we have lived a faithful life, following Jesus? 

Todd Burpo, a pastor Nebraska, had four-year-old son, Colton, who nearly died from a burst appendix. Colton experienced very specific visions during his surgery: of his doctor operating on him directed by Jesus, of his family at the hospital, and of heaven.  Todd Burpo claims that Colton's trip to heaven should comfort us, because the specific details he offered, without prompting, assures us how wonderful heaven is.  He gave descriptions of family members he encountered that, according to his father, he could not have known.  He reported things about God, the Father, and Jesus, that he had never been taught in Sunday School, but which can be found in the Bible.

The Book of Revelation, composed of visions by John of Patmos, has something in common with Todd Burpo's book.  John also sought to provide comfort to Christians about their lives after death.  In particular, he offered comfort to those who were suffering persecution, including torture and death, for refusing to recant their belief that “Jesus Christ is Lord.”  John of Patmos’s visions depicted triumphant glory for those who have endured a great ordeal and still clung to their faith in Jesus.  The beauty and majestic nature of heaven cannot be equaled by anything on earth.

The last three verses of Hymn 286 poetically depicts this view of heaven as glory gained after a difficult, but faithful life:

These are they who have contended for their Savior's honor long, wrestling on till life was ended, following not the sinful throng; these who well the fight sustained, triumphant by the Lamb have gained.

These are they whose hearts were riven, sore with woe and anguish tried, who in prayer full oft have striven, with the God they glorified; now their painful conflict oe'r, God has bid them weep no more.

These, like priests, have watched and waited, offering up to Christ their will, soul and body consecrated, day and night they serve him still. Now in God's most holy place, blest they stand before his face.

All that causes us to suffer in our earthly life—and our faithful response despite that suffering—prepares us for what will take place after we die—dwelling forever in God's holy place.

In Love Wins Rob Bell, on the other hand, emphasizes our part in hastening the coming of God's reign on earth.  The chapter in which he describes his thoughts about heaven he entitled, “Here is the New There.”  Heaven is the new age—the age to come—right here on earth.  This is how Rob Bell describes it:  “Justice and mercy hold hands, they kiss, they belong together in the age to come, an age that is complex, earthy, participatory and free from all death, destruction and despair.”  

Later in the chapter he declares: “Eternal life doesn't start when we die; it starts now.  It's not about a life that begins at death; it's about experiencing the kind of life now that can endure and survive even death . . . [Jesus] insisted over and over that God's peace, joy and love are currently available to us, exactly as we are.”  “Available,” of course, means we may choose to open ourselves to God’s peace, joy and love—or we may not.  Our comfort can come from our awareness of this availability—which God has promised never to withdraw.  The Beatitudes we heard read tonight from the Gospel of Matthew also describe a life lived in anticipation of the coming of God’s holy reign now and in the age to come.

Those who have taken this always-available choice populate the Pilgrimage Windows.  Indeed they are among the great cloud of witnesses who have accepted throughout the ages this always-available choice.  They are the saints described in Hymn 293: I sing a song of the saints of God, patient and brave and true who toiled and fought and lived and died for the Lord they love and knew.

Sometimes baptism is described as making a new saint.  In this view sainthood is not reserved for spiritual Olympians, but for ordinary folk.  To quote from Hymn 293 again:  . . .for the saints of God are just folk like me, and I mean to be one too.

So now what are our choices?  To believe that an amazingly wonderful heaven waits for faithful saints at a later time and in another place?  To believe that heaven can be experienced here and now—or at least the opportunity for heaven starts here and now, haltingly present, already and not yet, for those who freely chose to respond to God's love?  But as a confirmed Anglican, I don't like to make choices—rather, I would like to choose both!  To put it another way—let us have faith in a just and merciful God who created us, who loves us and who longs for us to act lovingly in return—details to follow!