Twenty-first Sunday after Trinity/All Saints Day, 2009

Text: Rev. 7:2-4, 9-17

The Rev. Jerry Kistler

St. Stephen’s Reformed Episcopal Church

Montrose, Colorado

“All Saints Day”

“They were all of them saints of God – and I mean, God helping, to be one too.”

I love that little hymn. It reminds us that the saints of God are not those, whose good works exceed what God’s law requires. On that definition there is no such thing as a saint. But we all of us are the saints of God who have been called out world and made holy – set apart for God – through the waters of baptism and through our ongoing-discipleship. We are the saints of God – the holy ones – because we bear the holy name of Jesus - have had that holy Name sealed upon our foreheads - by which He calls us his own. Therefore we have a holy calling: to be who we are; “Called,” writes St. Paul,” to be saints with all who in every place call on the name of Jesus Christ our Lord.”

Today is All Saints Day, and we had as our Pro-epistle this morning - the scripture passage that stands in the place of, or “for” the epistle – a reading from the seventh chapter of the book of Revelation. It’s not often that we have a lesson from the Revelation. As a matter of fact, we read from Revelation on only four occasions during the church year. Interestingly they happen to be four holy days - Trinity Sunday, Holy Innocents, St. Michael and All Angels, and All Saints Day. So why Revelation on these days? Because Revelation is about holiness. It is a revelation of the holy God, the holy martyrs, the holy angels, and the holy people of God, the saints. And so we have Revelation chapter seven – St. John’s vision of the 144, 000 of the holy nation of Israel, having the seal of God upon their foreheads – on All Saints Day.

Unfortunately, we have heard so many goofy interpretations of this passage from the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and from Hal Lindsey and the like, that we probably can’t understand right-away why this passage was chosen for All Saints Day, rather than, maybe, for a Sunday in Advent when we focus on the second coming of Christ. A lot of confusing things have been said about this passage, and about the whole book, for that matter. So hopefully I’ll be clearing up a little of that confusion, this morning, and not adding to it.

St. John was in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day. That means he was in worship. And he was suddenly caught up to heaven and brought into the very throne-room of God. That becomes the vantage-point from which John sees all of his visions of the things which would shortly come to pass. Actually, John hears and sees these things. This is a recurring pattern in the Book of Revelation. John first hears, then he sees.

In chapter one, he hears a great voice, as of a trumpet. Then he turns to see the voice, and he sees the resurrected and glorified Christ in all His splendor. Again in chapter five, John hears that the Lion of the tribe of Judah has conquered to open the book with the seven seals. Then he turns to look, and he sees the Lamb of God, as it had been slain, standing on the throne. It is one and the same Christ whom John heard called the Lion of Judah, and then sees as the Lamb that was slain.

And now when we turn to chapter seven, we see the same pattern. John hears the number of those who were sealed with the seal of the living God: one hundred and forty-four thousand, twelve-thousand from each of the twelve tribes of Israel. Then he turns, and what does he see? A multitude so large that it is beyond counting, from every nation, and kindred and tongue – all of them standing before the Lamb on his throne, clothed in white vestments, and singing the praises of God and of the Lamb. What is John seeing? He is seeing a vision of the true nature of the Church.

As the one Christ was revealed under the double image of the Lion and the Lamb, so now the Church is revealed from a double perspective. From one perspective, the Church is the perfected nation of Israel, the complete number of God’s chosen people. From the second perspective, the Church is the countless multitude from every nation and tribe – a global people, who are ordained to stand as priests before God and to offer up the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving.

You see in the first place, the true Israel, the Church, is that faithful remnant of the nation of Israel – those faithful Jews who received Jesus as their Messiah. They became the true recipients of the promises God made to their father Abraham. They became the blessed in Christ. Jesus proclaimed them blessed on the mountain. “Blessed are you who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for you shall be satisfied.” They weren’t satisfied with their own righteousness, which was by the law; they ate and drank of Christ by faith and received the great Gospel promise: the blessing of justification, the blessing of being declared right with God.

But God’s gospel promise to Abraham was that in His Seed – that is, in the one true seed, Jesus Christ – all the families of the earth would be blessed. It’s only when all the peoples of the world are united together with the faithful Jews in Christ that God’s promise to make Abraham a great and blessed nation is ultimately fulfilled.

So in Revelation seven, the whole Church is seen from the one perspective as the holy nation, the kingdom of priests, the perfect Israel. And then again, the whole church is seen from the other perspective as the people gathered together out of every ethnic group, every language, every family of the earth. It’s that vast multitude that transcends all national, cultural, spatial, and even temporal boundaries.

But now, how can the Church, which is such a mix of peoples and languages and cultures, be at the same time the one nation of Israel? We have to ask a more basic question. Who is Jesus Christ? What do the Scriptures say? He is God’s own Son called out of Egypt. He is the One who was tempted and tested in the wilderness, and ministered to by the angels. He is the Son of promise, the One to whom the promises were made. He is the Son of David who builds the house of God. He is the Lord’s anointed. He is the baptized. He is the Prophet like Moses. He’s our Great High Priest, and our Passover Lamb. He is the perfect law-keeper, the circumcised of heart. He is the suffering Servant, the circumcised in the flesh, the cursed of God. He is the Risen one who fulfills the prophecy of Hosea, “After two days he will revive us; in the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live in his sight.”

You see, the Lord Jesus Christ is the true Israel of God, and all of us who are in Him by faith are the children of Israel. Paul says in Galatians chapter three that the true seed of Abraham is Jesus Christ. And then he says that as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is now, therefore, neither Jew or Gentile… for we are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” In Christ both Jew and Gentile have been made the seed, the promised nation, the blessed people, the Israel of God. The wild branches have been grafted in among the natural branches; both are planted in the Root of David and grow together as one great tree. Together they are one new man, one body, fellow citizens of one nation, siblings in God’s household. Together they are being built into a holy temple in the Lord. This is what the Scripture says about the Church.

So you see, Revelation chapter seven really is the perfect passage for All Saint’s Day. It tells us who we are in Christ. We are members of a great nation, a holy nation. It tells us that we are part of a body that goes back to Abraham. We are his descendants and recipients of the promises made to him. We receive the promise blessing which according to St. Paul is our justification before God. In Christ we have become heirs of the promised land, which according to Romans 4 is no longer limited to the land of Palestine, but encompasses the entire earth. The Church is the blessed company of the meek in Christ who shall inherit the earth. As the spiritual Israel our worship is in Spirit and Truth. “We are the circumcision,” says St. Paul, “who worship God in Spirit, and rejoice in Jesus Christ.” We no longer worship in an earthly temple, but in the Spirit we are lifted up into the true temple in heaven, and we join with all the ascended saints, with the Patriarchs, the prophets, the apostles, all believers great and small from every generation and nation of the world, in the liturgy of heaven. This is what we confess in our creed when we say, “I believe… in the Holy Catholic Church, the Communion of Saints.

And so this All Saint’s Sunday, as we remember those great saints and those little saints that have gone before us, and as we join them now in worshipping our holy God, let us remember who we are:

We are all of us the saints of God. And therefore let us be saints, let us be a holy people.

We are the Israel of God because we have been baptized into Christ the true seed of Abraham. So let us persevere in faith.

We are a kingdom of priests. So let us offer a pure sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, and our selves as living sacrifices before our Holy God. +