Revelation 7:9-17 and Matthew 5:1-12
Tradition tells us the book of Revelation was written by the apostle John, who composed his mysterious visions about the end of time while exiled from his faith community. Witnessing from a distance the persecution piled upon his brothers and sisters, John commits to paper promises about a new Jerusalem descending from heaven, a tree of life inaugurating a restored Eden, and God making all things new. Then he sends the missives of hope across the sea. When life was threatened all around him, John’s answer was to engage in theological imagination. In the spirit of Revelation’s promises, I invite us to engage in some theological imagining today, too.
Aaron was fresh out of nursing school and studying for exams when an aide’s position opened in a retirement community. Needing the work, thinking the experience would strengthen his resume, Aaron wound up walking the hallways during the overnight shift. Georgina resided in the room at the end of the hallway; cut off a bit from the rest of the floor. Soon her room became the room Aaron entered only when necessary. “Nothing I do is every good enough,” Aaron thought on those nights when Georgina’s room was too hot, then too cold, when the dinner was deemed disgusting, and the bedpan did not come fast enough. Beneath the complaints, Aaron could sense his patient’s discomfort, how fear rose like a chaotic wave within her. Georgina was something to tolerate; someone to manage; and feeling a failure at doing so, Aaron avoided the assignment.
Until the day came when Georgina lay dying. It has been years since she had had any visitors. At first, out of sympathy for her isolation, Aaron lingered in the room, straightening the blankets, wiping her forehead. As he did so, he realized the spirit within the room was changing and with it, his own heart. The anger, typically so fierce upon Georgina’s face, was easing. The fear, usually next to the anger, was also leaving. Rushing into the space was love. Aaron could feel it, nearly stretch out his fingers to feel it. Looking at a person he had steadily avoided, he felt strangely close to her. It is okay, he said, taking her hand. She nodded. You will be well, he continued, and he knew it to be true. As the love rushed through the room, he knew it wasn’t his love exactly. God’s love had swept Georgina and he up in its stream. The love flowing from God’s heart was carrying Georgina into new life and giving him, for just a moment, a glimpse of heaven.
The message of All Saints Sunday is a promise; a promise that a world exists beyond this wounded one; a world where the great multitude, persons from every walk of life, are gathered around God’s throne, standing firm in the fullness of God’s love. This is a place where one cannot help but sing Alleluia, Alleluia. We touch that space today. We step into the stream of love.
So often, though, we glimpse God’s promised world by way of grief. A loved one dies, and we are heart broken. The world crashes down around us and we wonder whether the chaos will pull us under as well. The newspaper names the innocent killed, the shelter beds filled, the food banks running empty, and we ask, “when God, will the hungry be fed, the thirsty satisfied, and the tears wiped away for good?” Did you know grief can change your vision? Grief, and the love that makes us grieve, teaches us to see new things. “Every lament is a love-song” writes Nicholas Wolterstorff, “we mourners who have glimpsed God’s new day … will break out in tears when confronted by its absence.” Today we stand in the gap, having glimpsed heaven while also wiping away our tears born of our still-broken world.
Each year, the roll call of saints who have died in the past twelve months bears witness to ones who have lived faithfully in that gap between earth’s incompleteness and heaven’s overflowing love. This year is no different: mothers, sons, wives, doctors, engineers, teachers, sons, fathers, missionaries, kitchen workers, and protector of the aging. The losses accumulate each year. Sometimes when I enter the sanctuary, I can remember those we have loved and lost in this congregation so clearly that I step into that stream of love and see them again: Bill and Carol, sitting in the pew right before the cross aisle, Doris over by the window, Lee, greeting persons in the narthex, Lois and Bill on the very last pew. How deeply they blessed our lives. How lucky we are to be on the sacred journey they have now completed. Their witness helps us remember that even when we mourn, we are blessed, even when we feel meek, insignificant, we are blessed, when we thirst for a different world, Jesus is blessing us. Hold on to the vision of saints singing around God’s throne. Remember God’s reality beyond our time and space. Step into the stream of love. Amen.