All Saints’ Day. October 5, 2023

Revelation 7:9-17

Rev. Neli Miranda

 

All Saints’ Day, celebrated on Nov. 1, commemorates all saints known and unknown. This celebration began very early in Christian piety to celebrate the lives of martyrs, women and men who had remained faithful in the face of persecution and offered their lives in service to God. All Faithful Departed Day, celebrated on Nov. 2, is an extension of All Saints’ Day to celebrate the lives of our beloved ones, family and friends who have died in the Christian faith. In our Anglican tradition, many congregations commemorate All Faithful Departed together with All Saints’ Day. 

Our liturgical order allows us to celebrate All Saints’ Day on the Sunday following November 1.  Thus, today we honor and rejoice in all those who through the ages have faithfully served God, especially our beloved ones who have preceded us into the eternal kingdom, where there is no more pain and suffering but full joy. This celebration embodies our Christian belief in Jesus’ victory over death, which assures us that death is not the end but the passage to a full life. Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live” (John 11:25-26).

Today’s first lesson, taken from the Book of Revelation, speaks to us about a great vision: the victory over death of a great multitude of believers who celebrate in the presence of God.  John, who tells us about this vision, testifies about “a great multitude… from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages…” They are robed in white before the throne of God and Jesus the Lamb, and with palm branches in their hands they cry out saying, “Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!" (7,9-10).   John’s vision tells us that all the boundaries and divisions that separates people from one another in this world no longer exists in God’s presence.

“Who are these, robed in white, and where have they come from?” asks one of the elders in this scene, but John does not know. So, the elder says, “These are they who have come out of the great ordeal [tribulation]” (7,13-14). The Book of Revelation was written in the last years of the first century, in the midst of oppression and suffering perpetrated by the Roman Empire, particularly under the brutal persecution ordered by Emperors Nero and Domitian. Many people resisted bending knee before the Roman power and participating in that violent kingdom; as a result, many were persecuted, tortured, and murdered like Jesus. Apparently, the empire of death had won, and the peoples’ resistance had ended in nothingness. However, John’s vision reveals that those slaughtered by the Roman Empire are in the presence of God, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands, celebrating before the throne of God and Jesus the Lamb, saying, "Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!"

Through this vision, John encouraged the early Christian communities, who still were in resistance, by telling them that violence and death do not have the last word. The great multitude who participated in Jesus’ resistance are now beyond the reach of the empire of death, living a full life, “They will hunger no more, and thirst no more; the sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat… and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes” (7,16). No pain can reach those believers who have come out of the great tribulation, for they now live the great resurrection while bringing about a new world. Later, in the Book of Revelation, John announces in new visions the coming of a new world, which means that these believers’ struggle and resistance have not been in vain; guided by Jesus the Lamb, they are the first fruit of a recreation in the world.

Dear sisters and brothers, John’s vision, in chapter seven, is part of the greater vision of the Book of Revelation, which tells us of a struggle between evil human powers and God’s life-giving power.  This struggle ends with God’s victory over ALL evil powers and the recreation of heaven and earth. At the closing of Revelation, while John envisions this recreation, he hears a voice from the throne saying that God dwells among mortals, among the peoples of the earth and “will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away” (21:4). This vision encourages us today to think of our victorious, beloved ones in the presence of God bringing about a new world. Their struggle and faith remain among us and remind us of the coming, glorious world where suffering and death will be no more. Amen.