All Saints Day (Observed)
Text: Revelation 7:9-17
If you visit my mother-in-law’s house, you'll be greeted by a family tree that dates back over a hundred years. On one wall of the home, the names and dates of each person are carefully and meticulously written beside their photograph. The dates of birth and death are inscribed. The children from each marriage naturally branch out, along with all the vital information about their lives, captured and documented in the family history.
This journey into ancestry is not only a testament of love for family, but it also narrates the family story. It ensures no one in this long Lutheran heritage is forgotten. In a way, this family tree serves as a reminder of God’s faithful saints who now rest from the toils and labors of this earthly life.
I’m unsure how many of us try to remember, or even know, the story of our family’s long history: where they came from, where they lived, what they did for a living, what they believed, and how the Christian faith passed down to them the story of Jesus and provided the assurance of eternal life.
Despite all the technological advances in genealogy, it really seems that the learning of family heritage is fading with each passing generation.
While on vicarage in Palo Alto, CA, I was told one of the saddest quotes I had ever heard. The psychiatrist Irvin Yalon wrote,
Some day soon, perhaps in forty years, there will be no one alive who has ever known me. That’s when I will be truly dead - when I exist in no one’s memory. I thought a lot about how someone very old is the last living individual to have known some person or cluster of people. When that person dies, the whole cluster dies, too, vanishes from the living memory. I wonder who that person will be for me. Whose death will make me truly dead?” (Irvin D. Yalom, Love’s Executioner and Other Tales of Psychotherapy)
No doubt, we ordinary people might never become famous; our names may never be recorded in a history book or included in college course lectures. Our likeness will never be carved into marble, granite, bronze, or steel. But does this mean the memory of your life will vanish with future generations? Will their deaths truly wipe away the memory of your life?
To be sure, this is an incredibly heavy thought to ponder. Will someone else’s death make you truly dead?
While much of the world may sympathize with this idea or even embrace it in the culture of death we live in, where assisted suicide has become legal in many places around the globe, the Christian must stand on God’s Word and respond with an emphatic “No.”
No, I will not die. But I will live in my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
And we should join Job as he faithfully wrote,
Oh that my words were written!
Oh that they were inscribed in a book!
Oh that with an iron pen and lead
they were engraved in the rock forever!
For I know that my Redeemer lives,
and at the last he will stand upon the earth.
And after my skin has been thus destroyed,
yet in my flesh I shall see God,
whom I shall see for myself,
and my eyes shall behold, and not another. (Job 19:23-27a)
Jesus’ death did not end your existence; it did not erase your life or the memory of it. Instead, the new life given to you through Holy Baptism guarantees you will never be forgotten, but that your name would be inscribed with an iron pen into the book of life.
You have been made members of the choir immortal, washing your robes in the blood of the Lamb as you enter this sanctuary, confessing your sins and receiving your Father’s forgiveness. In this way, you are being delivered from the trials and tribulations of this present life and prepared to be released from the great tribulation of this earthly life on the last day.
This is the image John speaks of in our first reading from Revelation this morning, as he wrote.
These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation. They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.
The blood of the Lamb, Jesus’ sacrificial death, ensures that you will never pass away, you will never cease to exist, and never become just a memory because you already live in and with your Savior.
Like the multitudes, those faithful Christians from your family tree who make up your heritage also live and now dwell before God’s throne. They find shelter in His presence. They no longer hunger or thirst. Nor do they experience hardship or pain. No, their Shepherd, your Shepherd, has led them to springs of living water.
The water of Holy Baptism has led them to eternity.
Similarly, the water of the font continues to lead you to follow the example of the saints who have gone before you, to give thanks for their lives and how God used them in His Church. As we remember those who rest with Jesus, we allow our faith to be strengthened as we reflect on the ways God was merciful and faithful to them. And finally, we strive to imitate their love for God and love for neighbor in and throughout our daily vocations.
Reflect on this and consider how the memory of God’s saints endures. It lives, and every time we gather here, the proper preface leads us to remember how God’s saints live with Him as the pastor sings, “Therefore with angels and archangels, and with all the company of heaven, we laud and magnify the Lord, evermore praising you and saying…”
Think about that, in this instance, heaven comes to earth and the voices of the church militant, those still living on this side of heaven, and the church triumphant, those already in the eternal presence of Jesus, are joined in one gloriously spectacular choir, singing to Jesus, the Lamb who sits upon His throne. The Lamb who dwells in our midst. The Lamb who wipes away your tears and brings an end to all sadness.
This is a heritage worth following, worth living, because it ensures, by the grace of God, that you are more than a memory, you are an everlasting saint, a child of God who shall never die, but live with Him forever. +INJ+
Rev. Noah J. Rogness
Good Shepherd Lutheran Church
Tomah, WI
