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Fellow sinners, repentant and forgiven in Christ,
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Another version of the following sermon was preached for the Festival of All Saints, at The First Lutheran Church in Lufkin, Texas, back in the year of Lord, 2013. It has been updated for your hearing, today.
The vision Jesus and His angel show to Saint John the Apostle, Evangelist and Revelator includes a multitude that no one can number; the multitude includes people clothed in white robes; they are from every nation and tribe and peoples; they are from lands in which the Gospel has been heard in Spanish, German, Norwegian, Swedish, Swiss, Swahili, Urdu, Mandarin, Arabic, Russian, Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and even in English; they are from lands where languages have been spoken which you've never even heard.
Notice, now, John describes absolutely no national flags flying over their heads, for their One eternal head is the One seated on the Throne of our Most High God; He is the Lamb of God of Whom John the Baptist says He is the One Who takes away the sin of the world! They have come out of the Great Tribulation. They were persecuted and some were even killed, and killed brutally, for confessing Jesus Christ and Him Crucified for the sins of the whole world. In fact, they have made their robes (some which had been stained with their own blood) they have made their God-given garments of salvation white; they have made their robes white, by washing them in the Blood (not of their enemies) but in the Blood of the Lamb of God.
They are the ones of whom Jesus speaks in today’s reading from the Gospel. Blessed are they, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. They are comforted; they have inherited the earth; their hunger and thirst has been satisfied forever; They have received mercy; those called sons of God see Him face to face; On earth they were persecuted and theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
They are the Saints for whom we thank God; they are the Saints we celebrate at the annual festival for All Saints every First of November and on other Holy Days when particular Saints are commemorated on the Church calendar. They are the ones who have endured Great Tribulation and who have made it to where we are being led by God's Word and Spirit as He is proclaimed to us and administered to us through His Sacraments every week.
At Halloween, which is English slang for the evening before All Saints' Day, lots of people in these United States have fun wearing costumes. Just so we're clear, God's Word makes no law against wearing costumes to have fun. Pretending to be something you're not can be harmless fun as long as everyone around you knows you're just pretending. Otherwise, to pretend you're something you're not, is called hypocrisy, which is clearly criticized, if not condemned, throughout scripture.
As children, most of us have worn costumes for Halloween parties and for trick-or-treating. We enjoy costumes so much, that weeks before Christmas Day, some men dress up as Santa, some women dress up as missus Claus, some dress up as elves. At Easter, it's too often a bunny or something else that makes no Biblical sense.
Once, at a winter holiday party for state employees and their families, I was asked to dress up as one of Smokey Bear’s forest friends. Dressed up, wearing the full façade of a field mouse named Otis, …I learned a new lesson about people. What people expect from you is often determined by how you are dressed.
As mothers brought their bug-eyed children to meet Otis, it became very apparent what role I was to play and how I was to play at it. Some children were excited to see Otis; they were easy to play and have fun with; but some were terrified by the sight of a man-sized mouse just standing there holding his tail. The children who were scared took some coaxing. As the Man-sized Mouse, of whom they were afraid, there was nothing I could do but wait for them to come around by the encouragement of their parents, who with their own words and behaviors helped give their children the courage to get over their own fears.
With the help of their moms and dads, some of them, after their tears of fear began to dry, some of them did come around and get their Winter Holiday picture taken with Otis. But some never did. Not every little child understood how a man-sized mouse was anything close to normal or fun or safe. That mouse was not Santa Claus.
The little children who came whether or not they were afraid, came because their moms and dads brought them and stood by them as they came; what I learned, even from this entirely secular experience, was that moms and dads are vitally, crucially important for showing their children what to fear and what not to fear, what to like and what not to like. Without help from mom and dad, lots of children will fear what is harmless, and fail to protect themselves from what is dangerous.
Isn't that how it is with all of us?
We run around in whichever vocations (not just façades but God-given vocations) we've been given and raised up to wear which are acceptable and helpful in the eyes of the men and women we encounter each day. These duties are usually good, except when we fail or refuse to wear or to wash the robes God makes white for us in the Blood of His Son Who is the Lamb of God Who has taken away the sin of the world by dying and rising from the dead never to die again.
The robes the saints in heaven are wearing were given to them by the One Who invited them; they were made white by the Blood of the Lamb; the Lamb shed His blood at the cross outside Jerusalem; there at the cross, out of the Lamb's side flowed blood and water; the two divine fluids flowed from the Holy side of the Lamb of God; the two, Blood and Water, belong together; in Baptism, the water is not just plain water; in Baptism, the water is combined with the Word of God's Power; in Baptism, by the Word of God's Power you were clothed with Christ and His Righteousness; just as the animal skins worn by Adam and Eve protected them from the curses caused by their sin, so God has provided you with the robe of Christ's Righteousness to protect you from the curse of death; that robe was given to you by God at His Baptism of you and it continues to be washed white as you confess your sins and hear His forgiveness of your sins and, especially, for those who have learned to examine themselves, His blood continues to wash your robe white as you drink His blood each week for the forgiveness of your sins and eat His Body given for you.
This never-ending celebration at the Lamb's High Feast in heaven among the angels and archangels and all the company of heaven, including all the saints in heaven, is the same feast in which we participate each week in the holy communion.
The saints were NOT always saints; their robes were NOT always white; without the help of mom and dad and faithful pastors and teachers speaking the Word of God to them, telling them the Bible stories and how all the Bible stories tell us about Jesus and His saving work on the cross, they might have grown up hating what is good and loving what is evil.
Without the help of mom and dad and faithful pastors and teachers speaking the Word of God to them, telling them the stories of how Christian martyrs have remained faithful, even to the point of death, to the Son of God Who remains faithful to us in every trial and temptation, they would have grown up hating what is good and loving what is evil.
To the extent that moms and dads and pastors and teachers cave in to the popular culture today, they and their children will not be persecuted. Those who go along to get along, have their reward. Their reward is a temporary peace with the world and its ways. They will NOT be coming out of the Great Tribulation, for they will become part of it, forever.
The people who call themselves Christians while at the same time saying and doing things that deny the One True Faith, are the worst kind of hypocrites.
The feminist movement that seeks to remove God-given male and female distinctions and that seeks to remove, discredit, and dishonor the household headship of husbands and fathers, seeks what God has not given and leads men and women to sin against God. It has led entire groups of nominal Christians to ignore what God says as they act like they can ordain women, unrepentant homosexuals & adulterers to be pastors and teachers of men.
The sexual revolution that has been adopted by the world has crept its way into once Christian communities and corrupted them to the core. What their own people once recognized as sin because God's Word calls it sin, they have gotten used to ignoring God's Word in favor of their own desire to avoid any Tribulation on earth. They now defend sexual immorality, rather than calling it sin and proclaiming God's forgiveness and His call to repentance; they celebrate each other’s perversions and call love, what God calls death.
When the false, physically impossible, unbiblical, and dehumanizing teaching of the evolution of the human race from genetically simpler creatures wins the approval of popular scientific opinion
and, then, when Baptized Christians who want to maintain professional relevance and jobs pretend like it's true, then they avoid coming out of the Great Tribulation and become part of it.
When a woman's right to choose whether her unborn child will live or die becomes the new social and political orthodoxy, the church that is coming out of the Great Tribulation, cannot ignore or give in or pretend to go along with and never oppose the twisted minds of sinful men.
The counterfeit or hypocrite church is the assembly that pretends to give you Jesus but never condemns and therefore never forgives and therefore never separates you from your sin. If sin is never condemned, nothing will ever be said for which the world will persecute you.
But Jesus calls us, each and every one of us, to take up our cross (not just a flag with a golden eagle on it, but a cross) and follow Him. Remember, there are no flags in heaven.
With His Holy Cross, He leads us with our crosses, along a path of faith in Him that remains True no matter what Tribulation may come or try to get in the way. The Great Tribulation is not something faithful Christians seek to avoid. The Great Tribulation is what Christ promises to lead us through and safely to the other side where our robes will be forever whitened by His Blood.
What the saints are wearing in heaven is no costume which is merely concealing a sinful nature; in heaven, standing around the Throne of the Lamb, there is no sin and there are no more sinners; the sin and sinner have been fully dealt with by the Lamb, separated as far as the east is from the west, cleansed inside and out, washed pure in the blood of the Lamb; the Lamb Who is not just another imaginary forest friend, but is the image of the real life, once slain, now alive forevermore Son of God in human flesh. God incarnate. God the Propitiator. God Who loves and has regained the creatures He created in His Image and still, even after their rebellion, wants them to live forever with Him. You are, now and forever, among those who have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.
In +Jesus' Name. Amen