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The Sunday Following All Saints Day, 11/05/2017
“Called to Be Saints”
Sermon on Matthew 5:1-12, by Paul C. Sizemore
Revelation 7:2-17, I John 3:1-3, Matthew 5:1-12
All Saints Sunday – November 5, 2017
The Arlington House was a mansion built as a living memorial to the late President George Washington by his adopted grandson. The estate was built on 1100 acres of land across the Potomac River from Washington DC.
Decades later, a distant cousin named Robert E. Lee would become the resident of this magnificent home. Between 1841 and 1857, Lee was away from Arlington House, for several extended periods while serving in the Mexican War and then as superintendent of the U. S. Military Academy at West Point, his alma mater.
In 1857, Lee returned to Arlington to join his family and to serve as executor of the estate.
Robert E. Lee and his wife Mary Anna lived at Arlington House until 1861, when the Commonwealth of Virginia ratified an alliance with the Confederacy and seceded from the Union.
Lee, who had been a Major General for the Virginia Military Forces in April 1861, feared for his wife’s safety and anticipated the loss of their family inheritance! Therefore he moved her and his family to a new residence. Following the ratification of secession by Virginia, Federal Troops crossed the Potomac and took up positions around Arlington.
Following the occupation, military installations were erected. In punishment for his allegiance to the South, the land was them made into a cemetery so that Robert E. Lee would never be able to claim the Arlington House as his residency ever again. The Arlington National Cemetery was established there on June 15, 1864.
Even though Arlington National Cemetery may have been created as an act of retribution, it has become a tribute to our fallen warriors in battle. The over 400,000 graves on site are a remembrance of those who made the supreme sacrifice for our country; both casualties of war and veterans. The white tombs arranged in straight lines as soldiers in formation are not unlike the white robes of the saints of martyrdom pictured for us in the Book of Revelation, surrounding the throne of God!
The parallel message in our three appointed Scripture readings for this All Saints Sunday is one of sacrifice. It is a message of believing so much in a cause that no sacrifice is too great, even that of surrendering one’s own life.
There are many noble causes for which one can make the supreme sacrifice, and on “All Saints Sunday” we remember with grateful hearts those men and women of God who died in service to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. But to celebrate this day properly, we must recall that Christ Jesus is the One who suffered the ultimate sacrifice in his death on the cross to redeem us and to make of us now, by God’s grace, a people “holy” and “acceptable” to him. Jesus suffered the ultimate sacrifice as the One who was completely free of sin, but was willing “to bear our sins in his body unto death on a tree that we might die to sin and live now to righteousness; for by his wounds,” Peter writes, “we have been healed” (I Peter 2:24).
When the LORD God Almighty revealed himself to Moses at the burning bush in Exodus 3, informing Moses that he was to become God’s chief spokesman in liberating the people of Israel from 400 years of slavery in the nation of Egypt, you may remember how boldly Moses questioned God.
“If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘the God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ What shall I say to them?’ God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” And God said, ‘Say this to the people of Israel, ‘The LORD, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob has sent me to you!’ This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations!” (Exodus 20:13-15)
God’s name is extremely important to him and God’s name should also be very important to us because God’s name is intimately tied up with his self-revelation to us!
Remember the Second Commandment? “You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain!” And then Moses goes on to further caution us: “For the LORD will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain!” (Exodus 20:7)
Here are just a few of the names by which the LORD God Almighty reveals himself to us in the Bible. In the Old Testament, God has various Hebrew names by which he reveals himself to us. He is “Elohim,” the first name of God revealed in the Book of Genesis: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth!” And God said, “Let us make man in our image!”
Elohim is a collective noun with a plural form, certainly hinting at the doctrine of the Holy Trinity; our God who is One Divine Being in three Distinct Persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Our God is “Yahweh,” the “One who causes things to be!”
He is our “Adonai” the “Our Master.”
He is “Jehovah Jireh,” the “Lord will provide.”
He is “El Shaddia,” the “Almighty God.”
He is “Jehovah Shalom,” the “Lord is Peace.” He is our “Creator” and our “Redeemer.”
And then there are many more names by which Jesus the Holy Son of God is revealed to us. He too is the “Almighty One,” the “Alpha and the Omega,” the “Anointed One,” the “Messiah,” the “Savior,” the “Branch of David,” the “Bread of Life,” the “Son of the living God,” the “Heavenly Bridegroom,” the “Good Shepherd,” and he is “Emmanuel,” which means “God with us.”
Our God is the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, the Advocate and our Counselor.
And then there are a number of names that the New Testaments ascribes to believers; words used to describe us in our relationship to him. One of these words is “disciple.” In its most basic meaning, a “disciple” is a “student” or “one who learns; a lifelong learner” with respect to one’s teacher. In every case the word “disciple” implies that one not only accepts the teachings of their teacher as true, but that he also seeks to put into practice the teachings of his teacher in his personal life every day.
Another name which the New Testament ascribes to us concerning our relationship to Jesus is that of being “sheep”! We are sheep who live out our whole lives in relationship to God the Father, through Christ, who is now our “Good Shepherd,” who laid down his life unto crucifixion on a cross to save us from the greatest enemies of our faith: sin, death, and the power of the devil. Jesus says, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand!” (John 10:27-28)
The New Testament says that Jesus is the True Vine and that we are the “branches” and reminds us how important it is that we remain connected to him if we are to bear any fruit to the glory of our Father in heaven! Jesus, the Vine reminds us who are his branches, “It is not you, who chose me, but I chose you and apart from me you can do nothing!” (John 15)
The New Testament says that we are “living stones” in our relationship to Jesus Christ, who is the “chief cornerstone!” Now here’s a real oxymoron if ever there was one! How can a “stone” be “living”? But this is precisely what St. Peter writes in I Peter 2:4-6: “As you come to him a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For it stands in Scripture: ‘Behold I am laying in Zion a stone; chosen and precious and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame’!”
These are just four on the many new names that God has given to us who have been brought to faith in his only-begotten Son our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
But St. John in our Epistle Lesson today (I John 3:1-3) mentions another powerful metaphor by which God seeks to give us a much sharper understanding of our true identity in relationship with him through the life, death and resurrection of his Son, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ: “See what kind of love the Father has given to us that we should be called children of God; and so we are!”
Brothers and sisters, the Apostle John was not a young man when he wrote these words. He could easily have been a man, by this time, in his 90’s and maybe even pushing 100 years old! You would think that by this time he could have easily taken his place in the family of God for granted. But the aged apostle John apparently did not! Can’t you just hear the great sense of wonderment and enthusiasm and great personal delight in John’s voice that comes across to us when he says: “See what kind of love the Father has given to us that we should be called children of God; and so we are!” (I John 3:1)
Have you ever seen the musical “Annie?” All the children in the orphanage hope that someday, someone will want to take them home and make them their own children.
Never in Annie’s wildest dreams could she have ever thought that someone as rich and wonderful as “Daddy War Bucks” would end up choosing her to be his own daughter and invite her to come and to live with him!
“Why would anyone ever want someone as plain and ordinary as Annie perceived herself to be, to become their adopted child? For a long time, Annie questioned herself. For Annie, this new reality she was experiencing was so doubtful to her that she needed it to become a “pinch-me-and-tell-me-it’s-real” kind of experience.
So it is in being a child of God—but in a much, much more dramatic way because it is real.
There is no reason I ought to hold this hope in my God that God would want me and choose me to become his very own child. I have no right of birth. The human race lost the right to be counted in God’s family when Adam and Eve fell into sin. And every one of was in that same category as we heard Paul remind us last Sunday: “For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and all are justified by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith!” (Romans 3:23-25)
Paul says the same exact thing in a slightly different way when he writes in Ephesians 2:3-7, “We all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, who is rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ and raised us up to be seated with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness towards us in Christ Jesus!”
But on this All Saints Sunday, God himself invites us to think about our identity in our relationship to him; as that of being his children—and as those of us who know for a certainty also, from the clear teachings of the Holy Scriptures, that our God has called us to be saints, just as he called the believers in Rome and in Corinth and in Ephesus to know and believe that they were saints—“holy ones”—made holy through the shed blood of our Savior for us on Calvary’s cross!
We know that our God has called us to be “saints.” Why St. Paul begins the vast majority of his letters to the various New Testament congregations he is writing by addressing the members of those churches to be “saints.”
Take the beginning of his letter to the church at Colossae: “Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother, to the saints and faithful brothers and sisters in Colossae: Grace to you and peace from God our Father!”
In his opening words to the church at Philippi, Paul writes: “Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi, with the bishops and deacons: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”
In his opening words to the churches at Corinth and Rome he calls the many people who are believers there “saints.”
The English word “saint” is derived from the Latin word sanctus which means “holy,” and is most always used to translate the Greek word in the New Testament hagios, which also means “holy one,” or those “set apart” to be used by God as his own people for his own special purposes the word appears 229 times in the Greek New Testament.
As we Lutherans read and study the New Testament Scriptures, we believe that all Christians, whether in heaven or on earth, are regarded by God to be saints. While Lutherans may refrain from praying to the saints in glory, since there is only Mediator between God and man; the man Christ Jesus who loved us and gave himself up for us all (I Timothy), we are still given the opportunity to celebrate various “Saints’ Days” on the liturgical calendar.
Philip Melancthon, the author of the Apology of the Augsburg Confession, approved honoring the saints by saying that they are best honored by us in three different ways:
(1) First by our thanking God that he has made of them examples of his mercy;
(2) Secondly, that by their testimony to Christ and their willingness to suffer for him they also serve to strengthen our own faith; and
(3) Thirdly, we honor them when we do our best with the help of the Holy Spirit to imitate their faith and other virtues.
Who are the saints?
Doesn’t St. John answer this question so beautifully for us in our First Lesson this morning from Revelation 7:9-17? Here the aged Apostle John is exiled on Patmos and one day, on the Lord’s Day, on a Sunday, when suddenly he was caught up by God’s Spirit out of himself and given the opportunity to glimpse into the very corridors of heaven and then commanded to write down what he saw.
And what did St. John see there? He saw all of God’s saints in glory gathered around the throne of God, together with the 24 elders. And one of the elders asked John, “Who are these clothed in white robes and where did they come from?”
And John said to him, “Sir, you know!” And the elder said to John, “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.”
Amen