11-2-08

"After this I looked, and there was a great multitude, that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb...of God" (Revelation 17:9)

The "good news" according to the vision of John the Revelator. A mighty multitude, countless, greater than the grains of sand on earth and stars in the sky, from every race and region of the earth, before the throne of God in heaven. The good news.

We celebrate this good news on All Saints' Sunday, where we have the assurance of our lost loved ones blessed assurance. Unless you interpret literally the text just preceding this one in Revelation, where John's vision "hears" the number 144,000 as those sealed in heaven. And those all being from the tribes of Israel, meaning only Jews are in heaven. 144,000 of them.

But this number is symbolic, intended to be inclusive of John's clan, not exclusive, and then his vision morphs, "after this I looked," and the number becomes countless, "myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands," as John states elsewhere (Rev. 5:11), including from every clan, country, and culture.

So I interpret this to mean our loved ones have made it. All saints. Good news. But All Saints' Sunday is not for the deceased alone. In the biblical sense a saint does not only refer to our dearly departed. The Bible uses saint to refer to the faithful, both those who have passed before us and gone on to their "reward," and those of us who are still here, busy with life on earth, whatever we make of it, with our "reward" still ahead of us.

Furthermore, a saint is not the person who succeeds in living a strenuously virtuous life, slavishly obedient to the law, though we can do worse, but the person who in their freedom of life chooses to live in relationship to God, who, when given the choice, as we always are, to do God's will or to do my will, chooses "thy will be done" over "my will be done," not that the two are always at odds, or even usually at odds.

In other words, a saint is someone who lives out what God wants us to live out with God's good gift of life. And I must say, with even a cursory look around here, I believe most of you are in that number. Not always, not all the time, none of us, but enough, to qualify for this minimum standard of sainthood.

So I ask you, on this All Saints' Sunday, "How goes it with your soul?" This was John Wesley's standard greeting to his parishioners.

Wesley, the former Anglican priest who became the founder of Methodism, would ask, "How goes it with your soul?" When I mention this to my Methodist colleagues, they usually gulp, for in the Wesleyan tradition, when asked this question, you are to pause and answer honestly.

"How goes it with your soul?" In other words, how is your life going with God? Mind you, not asked of the deceased. Not to worry, Ernie Mathews is in my office, awaiting his blessed place in our columbarium, the construction of which may start this week. I can tell you, Ernie is fine.

I spoke with him just before the service.

But for we who are among the living, how is it going with us and God? This is where the tension lies, right? On the eve of this historic presidential election, in the midst of a global economic meltdown, where wars still waste us and peace eludes us, and personal battles as always challenge us, how are we doing in our relationship to God, in what ways are we living faithfully?

In a conversation with a friend a few days ago, who had a recent near encounter with death, he shared with me that he was not ready to die. That he was not prepared to die, that he was not ready to depart from his loved ones, nor had he sufficiently prepared them for his departure. And this troubled him.

To which I said, "Good!" Because he was not dead. And we are not to live preparing to die. This is not the purpose of the pilgrimage, to get ready for death. The purpose of the pilgrimage is to embrace life. This is the gift. This is why we are here.

And this is why Jesus came, in his own words in John, "that we might have life and have life abundantly." I remind you, he purchased this on our behalf at a great price, giving up his life that we might have new life, so we should gobble this up gratefully, not be inching our way toward the grave prematurely.

Pre-needs are good. It is good to have our house in order. So it was time well spent earlier this week with the family of the wife and mom who is in hospice, and for whom death is imminent.

It was time well spent in that she was able to participate in the planning of her service, and in this sense continue the celebration of her life to the very end and beyond. This is good.

But living in proximity to death, as we all do, some closer than others, but none of us knowing for sure, is not for the purpose of preparing to die. Rather death, as one of the two things we can count on, with taxes being the other, is to give us the incentive to seize the day. Not freeze the day, but seize the day. Death encourages us to live fearlessly in relationship to God, for what do we have to lose?

Death gives us the courage to do "thy will be done," which includes hugging our loved ones, not slipping away in anticipation of the day when we will be gone. True, greater is our grief for having lived and loved one another, but to protect ourselves from this is to die before we are dead, and there is enough of this already. Anyway, relative to death, even taxes are not so bad.

So our purpose in life is to live well, as taught in the Book of Life and as shown in the life of Christ. When we are obedient to the book and follow the ways of Christ, then when we die we will have no regrets or worries. In the meantime, we can stay focused on life, instead of worrying about death.

What about heaven, you ask? Most of us most of the time think about heaven as related exclusively to the afterlife. Wrong. Heaven is where God is. And God is here. There, too, but here also.

This is what Jesus preached: the kingdom of God is at hand. This is the proclamation of the Gospels that God is here, in Christ. Not wholly in our experience, as God comes to us in our brokenness, but God is here with us in every way we relate to God and in every way we relate to one another with the love of God. This is heaven on earth, brothers and sisters, when we live in relationship to God and do God's will.

So heaven is not only where we go when we die. But heaven is where we are when we live right. Heaven is not only our eventual destination, but heaven is also our present vocation. Heaven is not only our final resting place, but heaven is whenever we are fully with God, living in relationship with the Lord of Life.

Yes, heaven is forever. The good news is, forever begins now. Don't miss it. Be a saint.

At funerals we sing the beloved hymn "How Great Thou Art," that goes (4^th verse) "When Christ shall come, with shout of acclamation, and take me home, what joy shall fill my heart." Well, true enough, for Ernie, and Dave, and Sue, and Chuck, and our other loved ones lost. Our faith proclaims a glad and joyful ending.

But God is better than this. It is not that Christ shall one day come and rescue each of us from this rather rotten world. It is that Jesus already came, because we could not come to God. We had lost our way, and are always in danger of losing our way. So Jesus came to us, "for God so loved the world." (John 3:16)

The Lamb upon the throne in Revelation is the shepherd who sought the one lost sheep, the stranger who dined with the outcasts, the layman who touched the leper, the Samaritan who stooped to help the man in a ditch.

So our faith is not just for the end of life, preparing us for the day when we shall die and go to heaven. Our faith is at all times preparing us for the fullness of life and in so doing regularly rescuing us from all kinds of kingdoms of death on earth.

As the great theologians Karl Barth said, in what should have been my silent meditation for the bulletin (it would have been shorter), "We are not left alone in this frightful world. Into this alien land God has come to us."

God comes to us in the here and now, to call us to sainthood, that is, to a life in relationship to God. Why wait? Won't you be in that number? "And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes."

AMEN.