NOV 1, 2009  SERMON ARCHIVE

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

In today’s first reading, St. John got a chance to peek into heaven:

I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, "Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!"

Dear Christian friends:

You frequently hear me tell you, both from the pulpit and in everyday conversations, that it is important for you to be regular and faithful in your worship attendance. I habitually say these things to you for your individual benefit and for the sake of your Christian family:

Skip worship and you skip the miracle of resurrection and life that Jesus pours out for you and your loved ones here.

Fail to gather here and you fail to receive the many assurances of forgiveness and peace that your Lord Jesus relentlessly piles upon you and upon your neighbor during the course of the liturgy.

Miss Holy Communion, and you miss the most important meal of the week.

You might get the impression, hearing from this pastor in particular, that worship is all about YOU, what YOU receive from Jesus, and how YOU benefit from being here. I will not apologize for that. If the only thing I managed to accomplish in the past nine years was to help you to know and to believe that Jesus is the one who truly serves you here in worship (and not the other way around) I have no regrets.

That being said, I believe that so much more work needs to be done concerning the way you love and serve your closest and dearest neighbors here in worship. In other words, your faithful attendance in worship gives great assurances and consolations to your dear loved ones and your fellow Christians. After you have died, your mourners will carry these consolations in their hearts and minds for the rest of their lives.

Today is All Saints Day. Today we remember with joy all those who have gone before us in the Christian faith, and who have now joined that "great multitude no one could number, from every nation."

As you think about those Christians who were closest to you who have now died in the faith, what gives you the greatest joy and the sweetest comforts concerning them? Don’t tell me it was their sense of humor, or their love for the outdoors, or any of the other things you commonly read in obituaries. What gives you joy and consolation at the memory of your Christian dead? The memory of their faith in Jesus does.

You remember their favorite Bible stories and their memorized verses that they frequently repeated.

You remember their prayers at the table, even when they ate alone and thought no one was watching.

You remember how they taught Sunday School or served as usher or lent a hand when the church building needed repairs.

You remember how they sang the hymns, especially at Christmas.

You remember them sitting in these pews, or in other pews in other buildings.

Today is All Saints Day.

Today we rejoice, but not merely that our Christian dead are now in heaven with Jesus. We also rejoice because these departed loved ones of ours lovingly let their Christianity be known to us. They did this through the words and deeds that our God miraculously produced in them through His powerful Word.

On the other side of the coin, how do you handle the memory of those Christians whose faith was not nearly so apparent to you? What comforts do you have concerning those whom you want to think were Christian, but you are not really certain?

You want in the worst way for them to be in heaven, but you cannot speak about it with certainty because they never put forth much effort making their faith known to you. What do you do with them?

I know what you do because I do it too: you grasp at straws. You search your memory and you cling to even their smallest expressions of faith. Whenever I visit a deathbed, I search for the evidence of Christian faith and I gather up every shred I can find.

I once prayed the funeral liturgy for a woman whose one and only evidence of faith shown to me was that she squeezed my hand when I spoke God’s promise of forgiveness to her in Christ.

I buried a man in the Christian faith because I asked him, "Do you believe this?" (John 11:24) and he nodded his head with nearly his last bit of strength—and that is all I ever got from him.

Another man received a Christian funeral from me because, not long before he died, he interrupted his barrage of profanity long enough to tell me he truly believed in Jesus and he knew he could have done things differently with his life.

In each of these cases, I would have loved to have more—more assurances of faith, more expressions of love for Jesus, more good deeds of Christian charity, more to hold onto as I grieve their deaths.

You know what I am talking about because you also have suffered deaths such as these. How much happier would you be today if your Christian dead had been careful and pointed about showing the Christian faith to you while still in this life?

I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, "Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!"

Your heavenly Father is exceedingly rich in His grace toward each one of you, and He has gone to great lengths to gather up into salvation as many people as possible. Other than God Himself, who knows from whence they all came, or even how they all got there!

! The Lord Jesus lovingly and earnestly snatches people from the fire as though by the hem of their clothing. The heavenly Father commits His angels to the care and protection of His dear saints, so that travail of this life might not become to great for them and they end up falling from the faith.

God wants you and all people to be baptized because He wants to give you His promise and seal that you are His child and shall never be abandoned. He wants you and all people to hear His words preached to you so that these miraculous Words can do their good work of destroying doubt and unbelief.

He wants to give you and all people His miracle of Holy Communion because here is the body and blood of Jesus, God’s very best gift for you, given for the forgiveness of all your sins.

"A great multitude that no one could number…"

Would to God that you and I could see many people—even unexpected people—in that great multitude on the Last Day.

Would to God that you see those people whom you lost before you could become even more certain about their faith:

...the baptized child who was never brought to confirmation;

...the wayward son or daughter who was trained in the faith but who now seems too busy or too disinterested to be concerned with it;

...the angry fellow Christian whose indignation prevents him or her from coming to worship;

...the lazy or sidetracked or over-scheduled Christian who has more important things to do.

Could it be that your God would jealously guard His precious gift of faith, even against the temptations of your own flesh?

When people die on what seems to be the fringes of the Christian faith, do you console yourselves as best as you can. Do you pick up whatever expressions of faith you can find, like gathering walnuts one by one. Do you give them Christian burial, but in the backs of your minds always wonder and in the forefronts of your minds always wish for more.

On a lot of Sundays, you might get the impression from me that worship is all about YOU, what YOU receive from Jesus, and how YOU benefit from being here. I’m still not going to apologize for that. Worship is still primarily about you. Just don’t forget your neighbor.

Today is All Saints Day.

Do not let today merely be about those saints who have gone before. Think also about those saints whom you will leave behind when you die. What gift will you give to those who mourn your death?

Don’t worry about a big inheritance. You probably should spend all your money before you die, lest your heirs be tempted by a false god.

Don’t content yourself merely to pass on your family genealogy and folklore. Tall tales are likely only to grow taller.

Teach your family—and your fellow Christians here with you—the Christian faith. EVEN MORE THAN THAT, give your Christian loved ones beforehand the assurances and comforts they will need when it comes time to mourn your passage from this life.

Tell them that you love them, but that you love Jesus your God and Savior even more.

Show them your hunger and thirst for righteousness by making regular visits to the banquet of our Lord.

Do not hide your sin from them. Wear it on your sleeve. Sin openly if you must and repent all the more. Make no bones about the fact that you have nothing apart from Christ, but that in Christ you have all things—including the certainty of your place in the "great multitude no one could number."

Leave behind something more than a headstone. Show your fellow saints who are still here on earth how to live and how to die—fully wrapped in and never too far away from the gifts your God gives to you here in worship.

Make no mistake about it, my dear, baptized Christian friends! You have your place in God’s eternity, earned for you by Christ, and no one can ever take it away from you. You have been given God’s life in His miracle of Baptism; you have been assured of your forgiveness of sins in the absolution and in the preaching of the Church; you have been nourished by the Body and Blood of the Lord, by power of which you shall without doubt live eternally.

Keep coming back for more. These things will serve you well so long as you remain in this life.

Praise be to God!

These things in your ears and in your mouth will also serve your Christian family and friends long after you are gone.

Christ Is Risen.

AMEN