The Feast of All Saints White Robes & Palm Branches Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. In today’s first reading, St. John peeked into heaven: I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” Dear Christian friends, In our culture, people commonly expect a funeral sermon to include a certain amount of praise for the person who died. Even a Christian might become angry if he or she believes the preacher did not measure up to expectation, not saying enough about the deceased. I wonder why this happens. · Certainly the unbelieving world should at its funerals remember many good things about its dead—as many good things as possible. God declares concerning the unbelieving world, “They have no hope and they are without God in the world” (Ephesians 2:12). Fond memories are the only comforts available concerning those who die outside the faith. The unbelieving world needs to praise its dead because the unbelieving world has no one else to praise. We are not the unbelieving world. God has saved us out of the world by the blood and death of His Son. · Many Christians likewise expect many good things to be said at the funerals of their Christian dead. Certainly they could argue that the deceased produced many good fruits of faith in his or her life, and those good fruits offer good comforts in time of grief. To a certain extent, they have a point. But the performance of works can fool you, as our Christ our Lord repeatedly warns (Matthew 23:27-28, Mark 7:6-7, Luke 12:1). Beyond that, good works are only a shadow of the bright and sunny things that Jesus has done for our Christian dead. In a funeral sermon, time spent discussing the good works of the deceased might take away from time spent proclaiming the Christ who created those good works. And what is preaching, anyway—funeral or otherwise? Has not our God taught us in His living Word that preaching is the proclamation of Christ and His crucifixion (1 Corinthians 1:23, Galatians 1:8) for our forgiveness of sins, for our resurrection and our life? Who are these, whose caskets we place before the altar before we bury them in the Christian faith? A great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” With these Words, God wants us to know that our Christian dead are now speaking. They stand before the throne and before the Lamb; they cry out in a loud voice but they choose not to speak about themselves. Pleading ignorance of their own works (Matthew 25:31-46), our Christian dead now shout at the tops of their voices, with everything they have in their lungs, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” God wants us to know that our Christian dead are now clothed in white robes. Stated another way, our Christian dead now wear the righteousness and holiness of Christ, just as you likewise wear the holiness of Jesus. They wear His good works, which cover and sanctify their own. Everything about our Christian dead has been covered in Christ, just as you also clothed yourselves and your children with Christ in Baptism (Galatians 3:27). The white robes of the saints in heaven perform roughly the same service for you as do the white robes of a pastor or a vicar: these robes have the effect of covering over the person so that you may focus your attention exclusively upon the proclamation of Christ and His life. Our Christian dead now hold palm branches in their hands. They do not hold résumés or service records or college transcripts or bibliographies or photo albums. They hold palm branches. Our Christian dead hold the very same symbols of victory that the people outside Jerusalem held before our Lord (John 12:12f), anticipating His crucifixion and heralding the good news of His resurrection. They are standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” Today is All Saints’ Day. Stated another way, today is the last feast day of the Church Year. The Church Year began with Advent, which is all about Christ and His gracious coming amongst us. Christmas and Epiphany are likewise about Jesus, rejoicing in human and bodily presence of God in our midst. What are the seasons of Lent and Easter, but a journey with Jesus to His bloody cross and His empty tomb, where He “was put to death for our sins and raised for our justification” (Romans 4:25)? Then came the season of Pentecost, the season we are now in, where we rejoice that Christ and His Holy Spirit continually live and dwell among us, producing within us the good fruit of faith. Simply stated, the entire Church year is all about Jesus and only Jesus (Luke 9:28-36). Today is All Saints’ Day. We should not think of today as the day we move our attention away from Christ in order to focus upon our Christian dead. No, today really only wants to impress upon us that, when we fix our eyes on Jesus (Hebrews 12:2), we are not alone. Our Christian dead likewise continue to look upon the Christ who has saved both them and us. As happy as it would make us feel to look around and find them in the crowd, they bid us to keep our eyes focused in the same direction in which they themselves continually and joyfully look, for they know where true joys are found: A great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” _______________________________________________ Sermons mailing list [email protected] http://cat41.org/mailman/listinfo/sermons
