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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. (Amen.)
In a series of Peanuts comic strips published in March and April of 19‑72, Charles Schulz had Snoopy reading one word of Leo Tolstoy’s book War and Peace per day—a rate that would have taken Snoopy more than 16-hundred years to read the book’s nearly 600-thousand words in its English translations (one of the book’s 365 chapters per day might have been a more realistic rate). Regardless, four days and so four words into his reading, when Snoopy’s best friend Woodstock, one of a flock of little yellow birds, wanted Snoopy to read War and Peace to him, Snoopy thought Woodstock was being unreasonable for wanting him to “go way back to the beginning”, and so the two had what Linus called “a falling out”, perhaps intentionally illustrating the first half of the book’s title, War and Peace. The title War and Peace came to my mind in preparing to preach on today’s First Reading, in which St. John both initially saw an angel and heard about the sealing of 144‑thousand servants of God ordered as if for war and then saw an innumerable multitude at peace. So, considering primarily today’s First Reading, this morning we direct our thoughts to the theme, “Saints at War and Saints at Peace”.
Although this past Wednesday was All Saints’ Day, Pilgrim’s Elders transferred our observance of the Feast to today. Regardless of when the Feast is observed, we may especially appreciate its hymns and Readings, Readings that one liturgiologist says are “unsurpassed” by any other group of Readings “in point of harmony, depth of sentiment, and poetic beauty” (Reed, 571; confer Pfatteicher, Commentary, 322 n.241). Our Midweek Bible Study is currently in chapter 2 of Revelation, so that Study will get to today’s First Reading eventually, but today we remember that the advantage of apocalyptic literature like Revelation is not its precision or clarity but its power that is brought to bear on our minds, imaginations, feelings, and wills (Franzmann, The Word of the Lord Grows, 272), and we note that the vision in the second portion of the Reading is said to be one of only two visions in the whole book of Revelation that receives a detailed explanation (Franzmann, ad loc Revelation 7:13-14, p.65). But, even though it does not get a detailed explanation, the first portion of the Reading can be correctly understood.
In the first portion of the Reading, St. John saw an angel and heard about the sealing of 144‑thousand servants of God ordered as if for war. The 144‑thousand consists of 12‑thousand, as it were, from every tribe of the sons of Israel, though the twelve tribes named are perhaps not the twelve tribes that we might expect. Still, we recall how, for example, each tribe provided one‑thousand armed men for war when the Lord called for vengeance on the Midianites before Moses’s death (Numbers 31:4-6), and we recall how the Israelites assembled by tribe relative to God’s presence with the Ark of the Covenant, both when marching as for war (Lutheran Service Book 662:1) and when encamping as at rest (for example Numbers 10:11-34; 2:1-31, respectively; confer CSSB p.191). The figurative number of 144‑thousand is said to represent the true Israel on earth, the saints at war, all true believers in Christ, from the time of His Ascension until the time of His coming with glory to judge both the living and the dead. Of course, the mission of the Church Militant today is not a war of vengeance per se, but, nevertheless, the Church is understood as “ordered and organized” (Poellot, ad loc Revelation 7:1-8, p.108), even though the Church on earth may appear anything but ordered and organized.
As the hymnwriter says, “with a scornful wonder / The World sees [the Church on earth] oppressed, / By schisms rent asunder, / By heresies distressed” (LSB 644:3). Fed up with organized religion, people wrongly claim that they are Christians apart from the Church. And, we may have our own doubts about what we confess in the Nicene Creed as the “one holy [“catholic” or] Christian and apostolic Church”. What appears to be the Church on earth tries to live more on the basis of human constitutions, bylaws, resolutions, and rulings and less on the basis of God’s Word and the Lutheran Confessions, which we say correctly testify to and are in agreement with the Word of God. We may not attend to the mission of the Church on earth as we should, maybe in part because we are too caught up in our own wars, such as that war going on inside of us between our redeemed nature and our sinful nature, not doing the good that we want to do, and continuing to do the evil that we do not want to do. Who shall rescue us wretched people from these bodies of sin, the death that we deserve on account of sin, and the devil who originally brought about sin and death? Thanks be to God, Who leads us to repent, and so Who gives us the victory through Jesus Christ our Lord! (Romans 7:7-25; confer 1 Corinthians 15:57.)
In the second portion of the Reading, St. John saw an innumerable multitude at peace. Spiritual descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as innumerable as the stars in the sky and the sand in the sea (Genesis 22:17; 26:4; 32:12). The Church Triumphant arguably is composed of both the full number of believers before Christ’s Ascension and the full number of believers after Christ’s Ascension, those represented by the 144‑thousand in the first portion of the Reading. The saints at peace are at peace because the Lamb, Whom they are standing before, ransomed them for God from every tribe and language and people and nation of the single human race (Revelation 5:9). Salvation belongs to God and to the Lamb, and They freely give it to us! Out of God’s great love, Jesus died on the cross for the sins of the world, including your sins and my sins. The Lamb looks like He was slain (for example, Revelation 5:6), because He was slain, slain in your place and in my place, and then He stood again, rose from the dead. In the revelation to St. John, the Father on the throne, the Lamb, and the Holy Spirit are all present and all equally worshiped as God (for example, Revelation 1:4-5). To them is perfect praise in terms of seven attributes—blessing, glory, wisdom, thanksgiving, honor, power, and might—all of that from the saints at peace, clothed in white robes, and in their hands the festive palm branches of their victory, in Christ, over sin, death, and the power of the devil.
People unholy by nature become holy people, or “saints”, first on earth and then in heaven, by God’s working through His Word in all of its forms, especially its Sacramental forms. In the First Reading, the angels’ sealing the servants of God on their foreheads can be their imposing a sign of a soldier, but sealing also can be a mark of one devoted to a God and so a mark of those who are protected by that God. Before Holy Baptism, normally pastors put the sign of the holy cross both upon our foreheads and upon our hearts to mark us as those redeemed by Christ the crucified (LSB 268). The Baptism itself puts the Triune Name on us, works forgiveness of sins, rescues from death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation to all those who believe what God says about Baptism. After being baptized, we may also receive white garments to show that we have been clothed with the robe of Christ’s righteousness that covers all of our sin (LSB 271), as those in the First Reading had washed their robes and, counterintuitively, made them white in the blood of the Lamb. The baptized who privately confess their sins and are individually absolved in the Triune Name are then admitted to the Sacrament of the Altar, eating bread that is the Body of Christ and drinking wine that is the Blood of Christ, and so receiving forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. The liturgy calls the Holy Supper “a foretaste of the feast to come”, that is, “the marriage feast of the Lamb in His kingdom which has no end”, and, truly, blessed are those who are invited to that marriage supper of the Lamb (for example, LSB 166; confer Revelation 19:6‑10). Yet, heaven and earth come together already now, as we join with angels and archangels and with all the company of heaven, we are united with Christ and, in Him, with all believers of every time and place, including those we love who have gone before us and who will come after us in the faith, communing with us, it is sometimes said, on the other side of the altar (for example, Stephenson, CLD XII:218).
As evident also with both today’s Epistle Reading (John 3:1-3) and today’s Gospel Reading (Matthew 5:1-12), presently we are so caught between the “now” and the “not yet”: now part of the saints at war, the Church Militant, and “not yet” part of the saints fully at peace, the Church Triumphant. The saying goes that no one gets out of the Church Militant alive, that, unless the Lord returns first, temporal death is needed to enter the Church Triumphant. While individual Christians’ temporal deaths now might spare them future suffering, the Church as a whole is not “raptured out” before She experiences great tribulation, the various afflictions that we experience that test our faith (confer Daniel 12:1; and, for example, Matthew 24:21). Yet, that tribulation, all of those afflictions, will come to an end, and God will bring us to Himself and, as it were, by His presence both protect us from anything that afflicts us now and provide the fullness of what His blessings now only begin to give us. Our “hope” in both the resurrection of the body and the blessed reunion in heaven is sure and certain.
This morning we have considered “Saints at War and Saints at Peace”. By God’s grace through faith in Jesus Christ, we who are unholy by nature are made holy, “saints”, and so we have peace already now, even as we wait for the full realization of that peace. As Charles Schulz continued that series of comic strips I mentioned earlier, Linus thought that the over-sized cat next door “got” Woodstock, and Snoopy heroically dove in, saving what turned out to be an old yellow glove. Later, just before Woodstock came back to Snoopy, Linus asked if Snoopy was going to keep reading War and Peace, and Snoopy said that he had had the war and now he needed the peace. Likewise we have the “war” now, but, in God’s way and time, we truly will experience fully the “peace”.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +