Making All Things New

All Saints' Day is a time for us to reflect on the vast number and diversity of God’s people.  This includes all of us, those who have gone before us and those who are now are in the nearer presence of God.  It also includes those with whom we live and worship today, and those who will come after us. 

The people of God spread beyond the boundaries of race, language, religion, and condition; beyond time and space, and across the divide of death.  In every faithful person the Christian proclamation of hope and promise for eternal life comes to fruition.  When we sing praise to the saints and the faithful of every age we praise God who has triumphed through them and whose bountiful grace and mercy abide in their lives.  They are examples of God’s grace.

Our gospel story about the raising of Lazarus covers a wide range of emotion: grief, crying, anger, and mourning.  As we heard, “Jesus, greatly disturbed, came to the tomb.  It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it.  Jesus said, ‘Take away the stone.’… He said to Martha, ‘Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?  So they took away the stone.  And Jesus looked upward and said, ‘Father, I thank you for having heard me.  I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.’ When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out!’ The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, ‘Unbind him, and let him go.’" 

This is a wonderful story for All Saints.  The troubling disturbance, reassurance, disbelief, thanksgiving, and release comprise the breadth of human feeling as presented in this story.  The experience of death and resurrection, of making all things new, is the story of all the saints throughout human history.

The word “saint” means “holy.”  In the Bible, saints are God’s holy people.  They are the angels who share God’s divine nature.  In any life story of a saint it is important to remember that saints are also human.  They are not perfect, for perfection belongs to God.  The saints are people who have heard God's call to serve human need, to be good stewards of creation, to live faithful lives as baptized members of God's household, and to celebrate the great "cloud of witnesses" whose lives have contributed so much to our own.

Just as we have release and resurrection from death in the gospel account of the raising of Lazarus, in the Revelation to John we have a vision of the end of time.  John “saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.  And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God,…. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.’ And the one who was seated on the throne said, ‘See, I am making all things new.’… ‘It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.’"

John saw the new creation.  The “sea”, a symbol of turbulence, unrest and chaos, is no more.  Sorrow, death and pain, the emotional feelings of the old earth will be wiped away.  God is sovereign over all creation and everything that happens in human history.  God will give the gift of eternal life to all who seek him.

All of us today are bound together in this great community of love and forgiveness.  Saints possess nothing except the love and grace of God.  We celebrate the great women and men of the Bible and those who have lived through the centuries.  They are examples of the grace spoken in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, -- those who feed the hungry, clothe the naked, build houses for the homeless, free those who are in prison or who are oppressed, bind the broken-hearted, work for justice and peace. The saints around us are people whose lives teach us and challenge us to be merciful, "pure in heart," and loving our neighbor.  We need these saints and we need one another.  We grow together, and together we become the community of the saints of God.  We are earthen vessels, but nevertheless also saints.

One of the great hymns of praise sometimes sung during a service of Morning Prayer, or by our choir on All Saints’ Sunday when we can use the organ in the church, is the Te Deum Laudamus.  It is a song of praise to God and it summarizes the calling of all people and all the saints to everlasting glory:

“Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might, heaven and earth are full of your glory. The glorious fellowship of apostles praise you. The noble fellowship of prophets praise you. The white-robed army of martyrs praise you. Throughout the world the holy Church acclaims you; Father of majesty unbounded, your true and only Son, worthy of all worship, and the Holy Spirit, advocate and guide. You, Christ, are the King of glory, the eternal Son of the Father. When you became man to set us free you did not shun the Virgin’s womb, you overcame the sting of death and opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers. You are seated at God’s right hand in glory.  We believe you will come to be our judge. Come then, Lord, and help your people, bought with the price of your own blood, and bring us with your saints to glory everlasting.”  Amen.