The Feast of All Saints

(Audio)

Matthew 5:1-12; 1 John 3:1-3; Revelation 7:2-17

 

In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.

The kingdom of heaven is not so much a thing or a place as it is an action: the power and authority, the ruling and reigning of King Jesus. Thus, when Jesus preaches in the Sermon on the Mount, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” He is saying that the poor in spirit are the recipients of His kingly action: His forgiveness, mercy, and grace.

Notice that Jesus does not say they will be blessed, but that they are blessed, right now. Nor is the kingdom something they will receive only at some future time, when Christ returns. It is already theirs, and they continue to receive it until the fullness of His kingdom comes. Indeed, all the other Beatitudes are founded upon this first one. Those who mourn, who are meek, who hunger and thirst for righteousness, who are merciful and pure in heart, who are peacemakers, and who are persecuted for the sake of Christ are all blessed, even though they may not appear so from the world's perspective.

For this is what the kingdom of heaven is like. This is the kind of King Jesus is, and this is how He rules and reigns. His kingdom is not of this world. When Pilate questioned Jesus about His kingship, Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world.” That conversation took place just before Pilate handed Him over to be crucified. And there, on the cross, we see the ultimate expression of His kingship. His kingdom reaches its culmination in His death and resurrection, although it will become visible to all when He returns in glory on the Last Day.

For now, His kingdom remains hidden beneath poverty, mourning, meekness, hunger and thirst for righteousness, and persecution for His name's sake. But when King Jesus returns, every knee will bow and every tongue confess that He is Lord.

Therefore, when we pray in the Lord's Prayer, “Thy kingdom come,” we are praying both that His kingdom would come among us now and that He would return in glory. As Luther explains in the Small Catechism, God's kingdom comes when our heavenly Father gives us His Holy Spirit, so that by His grace we believe His holy Word and lead godly lives here in time and there in eternity. We pray that King Jesus would reign in us, upon us, and through us. Through faith, His kingdom is not only near us but among us.

The kingdom of heaven is the real and actual reign of King Jesus. There are no neutral kingdoms. One is either a subject of King Jesus or of Satan. Jesus has entered the world of His creation, a world enslaved to sin, temptation, and death. Through His incarnation, obedience, suffering, and death, He has overcome them all. Crowned in blood upon the cross and enthroned in His resurrection, He has begun the restoration of this fallen creation. He is making all things new through mercy, forgiveness, love, and grace. And He continues this redemptive work through the preaching of the Gospel in His body, the Church.

On this Feast of All Saints, St. John gives us a glimpse of the totality of God's kingdom, both on earth and in heaven. He first describes the saints on earth, you and me and all believers, who come through the great tribulation, having washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Then he sees “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 and crying out, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”

But we must not mistake our final goal. It is not simply to pass from this earthly life into a heavenly existence, as though the death of the body were the release of the soul into its final state. Such thinking despises the body and the good creation God has made. No, our hope, as the Scriptures consistently proclaim, is the resurrection of our bodies and the eternal life we will enjoy with our Lord in the new heavens and the new earth.

John writes, “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth.” And he hears the voice from the throne proclaiming, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore.” That is our goal: eternal life with God in the new creation, in our resurrected flesh and blood bodies.

And that remains the goal of the saints who have died in the faith, whom we remember today. While it is certainly true that “we feebly struggle, they in glory shine,” they are not yet complete or fully glorified. Their bodies still rest in the earth. When Jesus returns, the dead in Christ will be raised, and those who are living will be transformed.

We must remember this because it is easy to fall into the pious sentiment that this earthly life is something to be discarded and that death is a blessed friend who releases us from it. But that is not what the Scriptures teach. Death is not our friend. It is our enemy, the last enemy, which will finally be swallowed up in Christ's victory when He returns on the Last Day. That is what we and all the saints are waiting for!

Therefore, keep your eyes fixed on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith. Keep your eyes on the whole Jesus and the fullness of His saving work. God did not send His Son into the world to condemn and destroy it, but to save and restore it through Him. Wherever Jesus went, He forgave sins, healed the sick, cast out demons, calmed storms, and raised the dead. His miracles were not merely demonstrations of divine power; they were manifestations of God's reign breaking into this fallen world. In Jesus, the restoration of creation had already begun. And when His reign comes in its fullness, He will heal our bodies, restore all creation, and raise us up forever.

Until that day, we wait with all those who have come through the great tribulation, whose robes have been washed in the blood of the Lamb. We take comfort knowing that those who die in the Lord are blessed, at peace and at rest in the presence of God. And we take comfort knowing that we, too, are blessed right now, even as we struggle through poverty, mourning, meekness, persecution, and reviling. For theirs is the kingdom of heaven. This is the gracious reign of King Jesus among His subjects, His body, the Church.

As St. John reminds us in his epistle, “Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.” This is our promise and our hope.

Our hope is to dwell with God in the new heavens and the new earth that Christ will bring when He returns. There we will enjoy the great wedding feast of the Lamb, of which this feast today is but a foretaste. Even now, our King and Bridegroom comes to us, hidden in, with, and under bread and wine. Then we shall see Him face to face.

Until that day, the Church on earth joins with the saints in heaven, with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven, in singing the praises of our King: “Holy, holy, holy Lord God of Sabaoth; heaven and earth are full of Your glory. Hosanna. Blessed is He who comes in the Name of the Lord.”

In the + Name of Jesus. Amen.