She asked, “Do you preach the gospel of Jesus Christ or do you preach more about all the different saints?” I answered.
Visit our Library of Sermon Blog Posts
Subscribe to our sermon video clips on YouTube
A few weeks ago, as I was out in the community running a few errands, I got into a conversation with a staff member at a store near Jane and Sheppard about the Christian faith. She wanted to get an idea of what I preach about at St. Stephen’s, and she asked me this: “Do you preach the gospel of Jesus Christ or do you preach more about all the different saints?” I reassured her at the time that I do preach the good news of salvation through Jesus and the need to repent and be born again.
What I might have added, though, is that when we do talk about the Saints – as we are doing this All Saints’ Sunday – we do so in order to draw our attention to the good news of Jesus Christ expressed in their lives.
Our first reading from Revelation chapter 7 gives us a picture of who the saints are and what they do. And what I intend to show this morning is how we who put our faith in Christ form a part of this picture as well.
This passage occurs during a series of visions revealed to John the Apostle (hence the title Revelation) about God’s plans for the world. Beginning in chapter 5, we learn that these plans are written double-sided on a scroll with 7 seals. A mighty angel calls out to see if anyone is worthy to open the scroll and break its seals. At first, no one is found, and John begins to weep. But then one of the 24 elders, who are always worshipping before God’s throne, tells him not to worry, because Jesus is worthy to open the scroll. John sees a vision of Jesus, but not the one we may be used to. Jesus is described as a lamb who had been slaughtered but was still standing, and this lamb had 7 horns and 7 eyes which represent the Spirit of God sent out into all the world.
The 24 elders fall down before the lamb, each with a bowl of incense (representing our prayers) and a harp in their hands, and they begin to sing: “You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slaughtered and by your blood you ransomed for God saints from every tribe and language and people and nation; you have made them to be a kingdom of priests serving our God, and they will reign on the earth.”
They continue to worship for some time, along with something like 100 million angels, and then the Lamb, Jesus, begins opening the 7 seals on the scroll.
- The first seal releases a white horse going out to conquer;
- the second seal releases a bright red horse whose rider removes peace from the earth;
- the third seal releases a black horse, whose rider carries a weighing scale and brings about massive price inflation;
- the fourth seal releases a pale green horse which kills a fourth of the world’s population by sword, famine, pestilence, and wild animals;
- the fifth seal reveals the souls of people who have been killed for their testimony about God’s word – they were given white robes and told to keep resting while more of their brothers and sisters would continue to be killed;
- and then Jesus opens a sixth seal which causes terrifying signs to appear in the sky and makes all the powerful people on the earth go into hiding to avoid God’s judgement.
Which brings us to chapter 7. Here there is a pause in the action. We are made to picture four angels at the four corners of the earth, holding back the next terrifying vision – the winds being unleashed to damage the earth, the sea, and all the trees. They are told to wait, so that the servants of God can be identified and sealed with a sign on their foreheads.
Those who are sealed belong to two groups. The first group contains 144,000 from the tribes of Israel, equalling 12,000 from each of the tribes: Judah, Reuben, Gad, Asher, Naphtali, Manasseh, Simeon, Levi, Issachar, Zebulun, Joseph, and Benjamin.
The second group contains a great crowd, which no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people group, and language, standing before the throne with palm branches in their hands.
Both of these groups, along with the 24 elders, four living creatures, and 100 million + angels, bow down around the throne, and worship God with a loud voice saying: “Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne and to the Lamb! Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honour and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen!”
As this vision of heavenly worship continues, one of the elders turns to John and asks him if he knows what is going on: “Who are these robed in white and from where have they come?”
When John says he doesn’t know, the elder says, these are they that have come out of the great ordeal (often referred to in English as the Great Tribulation); they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.
They remain close to the throne to worship day and night in the temple; and because they remain so close, they fall under the shelter of the one seated on the throne. From now on they will lack nothing, and an allusion is made here to Psalm 23. They will not hunger and thirst again; they will be protected from danger; the Lamb will be their shepherd and will lead them beside the waters of life; and he will wipe away every tear from their eyes.
I will spend the remainder of this time speaking about what these visions mean for us in our walk as saints, and in particular what all of this has to do with baptism, which we will be celebrating in this church on December 6th, God willing.
First, the visions which the seals describe seem very relatable to life in this world – and it is in the midst of a world such as this that we are called to be saints.
It is a world in which peace has been taken away – both peace between nations and peace between individuals.
It is a world in which people cannot afford food and the other necessities of life;
It is a world in which people die from violence and natural disasters of every kind – and sometimes the two are connected.
It is a world in which some who speak the world of God are persecuted and even killed.
And it is a world in which the powerful and the rich do what they can to escape the consequences of their actions while others are left to suffer.
It is in the midst of a world just like this that saints are called and marked as Christ own forever.
This is what we say when we baptize both adults and infants in this church: “I sign you with the cross, and mark you as Christ’s own forever.”
When we baptize adults and mark them as Christ’s own forever, we are saying that their life does not need to be defined by the past, by what people have said to them or about them, or by their past sins and mistakes. Forever is longer than the past, and so being marked as Christ’s own forever means at some point who Christ says we are and what Christ has done will be what shapes us and defines us more than anything else we have experienced.
And when we baptize children, we are speaking a blessing over their lives at the very beginning which we pray will not be overshadowed by all the curses the world, the flesh, and the devil will speak over them in times to come. Forever is also longer than their future in this world, and so there is nothing that can happen in this life that can bring that blessing to an end.
In both cases we are saying, “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God. And that is what you are!”
Now this is not to say that when we baptize children they are all set for a great Christian life and will be automatically protected from all evil.
Baptizing an infant is not a shortcut to get in one day what most people strive for their entire lives
Baptism is not magic; it is a moment for us to declare where we stand and whose side we are on, and its is a moment to invite the Holy Spirit into our lives to be present and to guide us in all we experience.
The ones in this scripture who experience God’s protection are those who worship him day and night and remain in his temple. They are close enough to him to be under his shelter at all times. For baptism to have its full effect, we must never wander too far away from the fountain or pool where it all began.
As I have mentioned in the past, I was baptized by a former incumbent of this parish, and my prayer is that those I am given the privilege of baptizing in this font will also grow up to lead this parish – not just as priests but as saints in every sphere of life, who never get too far from the place where it all began. Please join me in asking the Lord to do this.
Secondly, these visions of John teach us that being a saint does not come naturally to us but requires transformation.
In the vision we see people from every tribe and tongue and nation. Even though we as humans like to think so, there is no nation or tribe or tongue that is naturally closer to God than any other. Amid all of our God-given diversity we find so many diverse ways of walking away from the God and Father of us all.
The reason the Lord gave us baptism and taught us about our need to be born again is because there are some things we cannot have by natural birth. There is something deeper than DNA about us that is missing without Christ.
In fact, the Scriptures go further and teach that we are all born with a sinful nature. That means there is something natural about sinning that, left alone, will lead us further and further away from God over the course of our lives. And the Bible says that what is wrong goes deeper than just our actions.
As the Apostle Peter says, 1 Peter 3.21: “Baptism now saves you – not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus.”
Baptism represents our need for a washing that is more than just skin deep.
And as another one writer has expressed it, when Adam and Eve first sinned, it was like a breakup happened between their physical and spiritual nature.
We can understand this: rather than our spiritual nature giving power and direction to our bodies, we use our bodies in ways that weaken and mislead the spiritual part of us.
Baptism responds to this by reuniting what God created to be one and what sin tries to tear apart. In baptism what we do physically – have water poured onto our heads, receive holy oil, hold up a candle of new light in Christ – finds its true meaning in relation to the Holy Spirit. And so with all of life – what we see, what we hear, what we touch, what we say, what we taste – from now on all of this will be done by the leading of God’s spirit and with a focus on our spiritual well being and that of the people around us.
And finally, the visions of John teach us that the transformation which makes us Saints comes only by the blood of Jesus.
As one of the 24 elders explains to John, the reason the saints were wearing white robes is because they had washed them in the blood of the Lamb. This is an unusual metaphor, but it does make a lot of sense. As I have mentioned, the problem that makes sainthood unnatural goes deeper than culture or upbringing or DNA. Sin becomes soaked in so deeply that there is nothing like bleach that can get it out. If we try to use something stronger, or to scrub harder, all we will do is wreck the fabric of who we are.
What God offers is a beautiful exchange. We are made clean because Jesus took our sin upon him. “He became sin who knew no sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him.” We receive his clean, white garments, and he puts away our guilt through his death on the cross. It is through the ugliness of the cross that our true beauty finally begins to shine.
And once it begins to shine in us, it will radiate the beauty of holiness far beyond the walls of this sanctuary.
The Beauty of Holiness and of being one of God’s saints is all about what happens when we leave this room. Far from what we might imagine, holiness is not about escaping this world – it means getting ready to live for real in this world. It means there is nothing you will see or experience in this world that holiness is not meant for. That is why, in addition to All Saints, we wear white to mark the rites of passage in our lives: baptism, marriage, and funerals – this is to represent the importance and relevance of holiness to every day and moment of our lives.
We’ve been learning about Moses on Thursday nights recently, and in his case the calling on his life lay dormant from the time he was born until he was 80 years old. And it is possible for some of us that the gift we received at baptism is still asleep within us, waiting to come alive and change the course of our lives.
What we need, in this case, is not to get baptized again. As Jesus said to his disciples on the night before he was killed, if we have a part of him we are already clean. “One who has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet, but is entirely clean.” This means that the washing at baptism is definitive, but we can find ourselves tracking around mud from our journey through this world. Repentance is how we keep our feet clean, and it is a reminder – no matter where we are or what we find ourselves doing – that at the core we are washed. And as the Apostle John says, if we are looking forward to seeing Jesus we will begin to purify ourselves now so that we will be like him when we see him.
As I mentioned, we are planning to have a baptism service (God-willing) on December 6th. If you have not been baptized, please accept this invitation to consider if this is the time for you to experience all that we have heard about this morning. And if you have been baptized but want to rekindle the Spiritual gift you received at that time, you are welcome as well to reaffirm your baptismal vows in a special way during the same service. All who are interested, we will begin classes today around 1pm in the Balsam room. I encourage you to join us.
I will close with the words of a song called “The Blood” by Bethel music, which I believe describes so clearly what a glorious journey it is for us to walk as saints of Christ.
Oh everything’s changed, it’s getting harder to recognize, the person I was, before I encountered Christ. I don’t walk like I used to, I don’t talk like I used to. I’ve been washed from the inside. I’ve been washed from the inside.
Hallelujah, I know it was the blood, could have only been the blood.
I cannot explain, but nothing’s more real than this, in the presence of God, Oh , what my heart experienced. When my shame hit the wayside, and my sin met the most high, I’ve been washed from the inside. I’ve been washed from the inside
It’s never been a about performance or perfection or striving for acceptance, let me tell you, it’s only by the blood. It’s never been about deserving or earning, it’s a give that’s freely given, let me tell you, it’s only be the blood.
Does anybody want to be holy and righteous, purified and spotless, let me tell you, it’s only by the blood. Does anybody want to be worthy, forgiven, justified, really living, let me tell you, it’s only by the blood.