All Saints' Day

Here it is—one line, and it sums up all the pain that we see and hear and feel every day. One line upon which every human hope finds its fulfillment. One line that every man, woman, and child needs to trust in, when the losses of this life are more than they can bear.

One line, when your belly is empty and your bed is a concrete floor. One line when the guard has locked the cell for the night. One line when the job is lost and the rent is due. One line when your sixteen-year-old has been out all night and has not texted. One line when you are helpless to try to hold your family together. One line when addiction haunts your every hour. One line when you have screwed up your life so badly that there is no one you can call for help. One line when you did the right thing but someone got hurt anyway. One line when the doctor comes in and says, “There’s nothing more we can do.”

One line, and it comes from the faith of a godly man named John, imprisoned on the Isle of Patmos somewhere in the Aegean Sea. One line, that he remembered that the prophet Isaiah had spoken to the people in the despair over their exile, their lives filled with loss upon loss. One line that had imprinted itself upon his heart.

One line that tells us that every enemy who hurts the children of God will fall. One line of the Holy Scriptures that we could not live without. One line in the midst of all the beautiful lines of promise. One line.

And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.

And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.

There are 31 names on the list in your hands. Thirty-one people we love and long for, but see no longer. Thirty-one people we miss. They died of despair in suicide, or from a sudden aneurysm, or in accidents, or of old age. Cancer took many, and we hate that sneaky disease with a loathing we feel in our guts. And there’s no doubt more—more names of more people you grieve. People whose deaths are still an open wound in you, no matter how long it’s been.

And here we are on All Saints' Day, with the names and the pictures and the memories of our dead loved ones, and the saints who have gone before us, and nobody has to tell us that death is real. But I tell you something even more real: death does not win. The grave cannot hold these people, or those out there in the cemetery, or you, or me.

We are not afraid of the dark, whether it is the failing of the November sunlight and the slide toward the depths of winter, the twilight of our mortal lives, or the grotesque violence of this sin-sick world. We are not afraid, for we are not alone. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.

John writes that we don’t know exactly what we will be, but we know that when Christ comes again, when he is finally revealed, we will be like him, and we will see him face to face. He has made us his children, he has purified us and made us holy. Like the saints who are gathered around the throne of the God in heaven, we also have a robe that has been washed in the blood of the Lamb and made white.

What a strange way to do laundry, to wash something in blood and have it become sparkling white. But this is how it is with those who are baptized into Christ Jesus: we are baptized—the word literally means “dipped”—we are dipped into his death, and his blood makes us holy and clean. Nothing can separate us from him. Nothing.

Having died to death in your baptisms, having been washed clean from the decay and sin of this world, having been sealed upon your foreheads with sign of cross, and having been raised to walk this life in the power of the One who shatters the grave and rolls the stone away-- you, once again, on this day, are given the promise that God will prevail, that Christ is the victor over the forces of evil. That the horrors of this world (and there are too many of them to count)-- the horrors of this world will cause more pain than you can bear to see, but your baptized lives are the sign that God still loves this world and everyone, yes, everyone in it, and he is still calling you to bear witness to his love, no matter what.

Blessed are you, Jesus says. All Saints isn’t just about the dead, but also about the saints who are living. About  all of you who trust in Christ, even in the middle of evil and destruction, grief and loss. Blessed are you: the poor in spirit, and the broken-hearted, and the persecuted, and those who mourn and feel like their tears will never end. Blessed are you. Because of Jesus, you are caught up into this beautiful thing called the Church, where you are connected through him with all the saints who have gone before you, and they are connected with you, and with all the believers who will come after you. Because of Jesus, you have a future, and it is not one of crying, but of singing.

“Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honorand power and might be to our God forever and ever!” Standing and singing with the great host in white, around the Lamb at the center of the throne, at the water of life, where God will wipe away every tear from our eyes. Forever. Amen.