All Saints C - November 1, Sunday November 2, 2025

Many Congregations Will Transfer All Saints to Sunday this Week; So here is your bonus Hitchhiking for All Saints

A Good Passage to Begin With:
Ecclesiasticus 44:1-10,13-14

44Let us now sing the praises of famous men,
our ancestors in their generations.
2 The Lord apportioned to them* great glory,
his majesty from the beginning.
3 There were those who ruled in their kingdoms,
and made a name for themselves by their valor;
those who gave counsel because they were intelligent;
those who spoke in prophetic oracles;
4 those who led the people by their counsels
and by their knowledge of the people’s lore;
they were wise in their words of instruction;
5 those who composed musical tunes,
or put verses in writing;
6 rich men endowed with resources,
living peacefully in their homes—
7 all these were honoured in their generations,
and were the pride of their times.
8 Some of them have left behind a name,
so that others declare their praise.
9 But of others there is no memory;
they have perished as though they had never existed;
they have become as though they had never been born,
they and their children after them.
10 But these also were godly men,
whose righteous deeds have not been forgotten;
13 Their offspring will continue for ever,
and their glory will never be blotted out.
14 Their bodies are buried in peace,
but their name lives on generation after generation.

Quotes That Make Me Think

"Saints are "holy ones" (Greek: hagioi), the 'blessed of God' (Greek:makarioi: Luke 6:20-22). But who are they really?"

Commentary, Luke 6:20-31, David Tiede, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2010.

"This is a great text to preach as a high calling to the character of Christian community. Preaching it as pre-conditions for being resurrected - that would be a mistake. Preaching it as a calling to live as those who have been raised from the dead - that would be a blessing."

Holy Textures, Understanding the Bible in its own time and in ours, Luke 6:20-31, David Ewart, 2010.

General Resources for Sunday's Lessons from Textweek.com

Prayer

As one poor in spirit and gentle of heart, your Son, O God, came to live among us, that we might hear the charter of your kingdom and see those words made flesh in the mercy and peace with which he faced insult and persecution.  As we celebrate the witness of all the saints whose lives were shaped by the Beatitudes form us according to Christ's teaching and their example, that, having shared in the communion of the saints on earth, we might take our place among them in the joy of your kingdom. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God forever and ever. Amen.

From Prayers for Sunday and Seasons, Year C, Peter J. Scagnelli, LTP, 1992.

Some Thoughts on Luke 6:20-31

Oremus Online NRSV Gospel Text

Resources for Sunday's Gospel

I don't normally do this, but this week I want to do a bit of comparison between the synoptic Beatitudes in Matthew and Luke. Let me begin with a bit about Matthew's version:

As we look at Jesus’ ministry, it is important to see that there is a framework at work in Matthew. One that is out of sync with our current reading cycle of Luke so is aware of shifting gears as you take on the All Saints' Day lessons. In these first chapters of the Gospel of Matthew we see that the individuals who come in contact with Jesus do not have to do anything, Jesus is not teaching about discipleship, he is not charging them to reform the religion of the time, and he is simply giving of himself. He is intentionally offering himself to those around him. The people in the first chapters of Matthew and in the Sermon on the Mount receive Jesus; this is the primary action taking place between those following and the Messiah himself.

Jesus is giving of himself to others.

The Sermon On the Mount begins in Chapter 4.25 and the introduction runs through 5.1. We are given the scenery, which is the mountain beyond the Jordan (previous verse). This continues to develop an Exodus typology which is the foundation of Matthew’s interpretive themes in these early chapters. It follows clearly when one thinks of the passages leading up to this moment: the flight from Egypt, baptism and now the Sermon on the Mount. In Matthew’s Gospel the first five chapters parallel the Exodus story. So, Jesus now arrives at the mountain where the law was given.

The structure of the following verses are beautiful and I offer them here so you can see how they play themselves out in a literary fashion (5.3-5.10).

5.3 Inclusive Voice: Theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.
5.10 Inclusive Voice: Theirs is the kingdom of heaven
5.4 Divine Passive Voice: They shall be comforted
5.9 Divine Passive Voice: They shall be called sons of God
5.5 Future Active Voice with Object: They shall inherit the earth
5.8 Future Middle Voice with Object: They shall see God
5.6 Divine Passive Voice: They shall be satisfied
5.7 Divine Passive Voice: They shall have mercy

Matthew uses these formulas and structures throughout the Gospel.

Scholars tell us that the classical Greek translation illustrates the pains that Matthew took as he rewrote Luke’s and Q’s Beatitudes to create the parallels we see. He also writes so carefully that when he is finished, there are exactly 36 words in each section of the Beatitudes (5.3-5.6 and 5.7-510). This combined with the parallels highlights the two sections that must have been meaningful to the church at Antioch (comprised of those who have fled persecution).

5.3ff describes the persecuted state of the followers of Jesus
5.7ff describes the ethical qualities of the followers of Jesus that will lead to persecution

The Beatitudes are blessings, not requirements. The teachings, therefore, are words of grace. In the initial teachings of Jesus’ ministry, healing comes before imperative statements, here Jesus preaches that grace comes before requirements and commandments. This is perennial Christian teaching: one must receive first before service.

The difficulties required of followers of Jesus presuppose God’s mercy and prior saving activity.

The Beatitudes are clear that the kingdom of God brings comfort, a permanent inheritance, true satisfaction and mercy, a vision of God and divine sonship. This may be Matthew’s most important foundation stone within the salvation story. We are given, through grace, our freedom to follow. We are like the Israelites and sons and daughters of Abraham, delivered so we may follow and work on behalf of God.

The Beatitudes also are prophetic as in the passage from Isaiah 61.1. Jesus is clearly the anointed one. Jesus is the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecy from Isaiah, bringing Good News to those in need. Furthermore, the words of Jesus are the result of the prophecy and so they set him apart from all other teachers.

The beatitudes then are also words which not only promise Grace to the follower, they fulfill the prophetic words of the old message from Isaiah: Jesus was meek (11.29; 21.5), Jesus mourned (26.36-46), Jesus was righteous and fulfilled all righteousness (3.15; 27.4, 19), Jesus showed mercy (9.27; 15.22; 17.15; 20.30-1), Jesus was persecuted and reproached (26-7). The beatitudes are illustrated and brought to life in Jesus’ ministry, they are signs that he stands in a long line of prophets offering comfort to God’s people, and he is also clearly the suffering servant who epitomizes the beatitudes themselves. Origen wrote that Jesus is offering this grace he fulfills and embodies his own words and thereby becomes the model to be imitated.

The Beatitudes are words of proclamation. Are we in a place where we can articulate Jesus’ story and life as a fulfillment of God’s promises to his people?

The Beatitudes are words of mercy. Are we in a place where we can hear Jesus’ words for us? Have we allowed ourselves to be saved before we begin to work on Jesus’ behalf?

The Beatitudes are words of care for the poor. Are we in a place where we can hear Jesus’ special concern for those who are oppressed in the system of life? Are we ready to follow him into the world to deliver his people imitating the work of Moses and Jesus?

So let us turn to Luke now and see what the Gospel offers:  Luke’s version of the Beatitudes is quite different. While clearly laying out the boundaries of those who belong within the reign of God Jesus then turns to charge those who follow in the working of God’s will in their lives and in their discipleship.

Love your enemies
Do good to those who hate you
Bless those who curse you
Pray for those who abuse you

If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt

Give to everyone who begs from you if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again

Do to others as you would have them do to you.

These are the standards of our lives in Jesus Christ. Many of us pray for God’s will in our lives, here it is.

Luke Timothy Johnson says, “Ultimately, of course, Luke grounds this morality in the covenantal attitudes and actions of God. As God is kind toward all creatures, even those who are not themselves kind, even wicked, so are these disciples to be. The reward is itself the reality of being of God toward the world.” (LTJ, Luke, 112)

We blessed in so many ways. One of those ways is the unequivocal invitation to be members of God’s creation and inheritors of his reign. This is our baptismal promise. We cannot read this without Matthew’s own story of it residing deep within the ancient history of the Israelites planted firmly within our current mission context. We are also blessed because God does not simply invite us but beckons us to join him in the garden as partners in the stewardship of his reign. You and I receive the blessing of God for the purpose of blessing the world through our mission and ministry.

Some Thoughts on Ephesians 1:11-23

Oremus Online NRSV Epistle Text

Resources for Sunday's Epistle

Our passage is a kind of blessing or beginning for the whole text; within it is a brief summary of Ephesians.  Many scholarly articles and texts spend a great deal of time using this blessing section as a tool for touching on the themes of the letter.  Our context though is in the midst of the celebration of All Saints and it is to that particular message that I think we should try and listen as we prepare for preaching.

The first piece of the passage is not news to those who read a great deal of Paul.  Paul is clear our inheritance (Jew or Greek) is always obtained by and through the work of God.  Moreover, the purpose of our receiving such an inheritance is the praise and glory of God.

20God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, 21far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come. 22And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things

God's grace is abundant and always comes first and it is our response then that marks us outwardly as Christ's own, even though that claim is assured only by the work of Jesus and the Holy Spirit.  We were "marked" and "sealed"; words that echo even today in our baptismal liturgies.

Even now, Paul reminds us, we are being redeemed.  Such a faith is what Paul speaks to in verse 15:  "I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints..."  - the mark of the outward claim God has on our hearts.  Love for others is key to our ministry and our mission; it is the mark by which we are known as Christ's own forever.

Paul then urges that the church in Ephesus is filled with this Holy Spirit and that the "eyes of your heart" be enlightened so that they may see clearly what is God's hope.  This hope is nothing less than a) that all creation praises God; b) that all people are drawn to God for this purpose.  This is the richness of the witness born by the saints who believe and have lived and are living accordingly.

Paul believed that a Christian, a follower of Jesus, would live such a life that others in witnessing the living out of faith would then turn to God and receive salvation.  He is very clear that people don't save other people, nor do they save themselves.  This is once and always God's work.  Nevertheless, the Christian who lives out the saintly life is one who lives life for God's glory so that they might join the rag tag group and be saved by God themselves. (I Cor 7.16; I Cor 10:31-33)

God is even now saving us.  Paul's invitation is to live a saintly life by acting as a people who are saved and that such action is marked by a love of neighbor just as the love of God is the saving power.

Proper 26, Year B, November 3, 2024

Prayer
You are one God, O Lord, and beside you there is no other.  You alone are we to love with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our strength, and our neighbor as ourselves.  Sharpen our ears to hear this great commandment.  Arouse our hearts to offer this twofold love.  We ask this through Christ, with whom you have raised us up in baptism, the Lord who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever. Amen.

From Prayers for Sunday and Seasons, Year B, Peter J. Scagnelli, LTP, 1992.

*Most people will transfer All Saints to this Sunday. If you do not, this is the set of lessons for the day.

Some Thoughts on Mark 12:28-34

"Sacrifices and outward worship never pleased God unless we first did the things which we owe to God and our neighbours."

From the Geneva Notes.

"All of us who spend our days swimming in the fickle currents of the church, at war with things both petty and impossible -- tired, sometimes, before the meeting begins -- that we are not far from the kingdom."

"Extra Credit," Robin R. Meyers, The Christian Century, 2000. At Religion Online.

Oremus Online NRSV Text


The passage is one set with a narrative of confrontation between the religious leaders of Jesus' day and the message that he brings to the world.  The re-genesis of the world is now and the kingdom and dominion of God is now.

God is one, not a static one, but one forever.  God is unity and unifying.  God is working the unity of the world with God and has been doing so from the beginning of time.  The world above and the world below are being unified in the work of Jesus and the work of God. (Marcus, Mark, vol 2, 845)

In a time when God seems distant and when all seems lost, both for the first followers of Jesus and for the Jewish empire itself, this is a radical message.  God is even now joining heaven and earth.

And even more radical is the message it entails: Love God and love neighbor and we shall be connected.  Part of the very work from the creations time is the work of becoming a loving community focused upon God and the neighbor.

I am rereading The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky and remember now the Elder's words in the section entitled "An Unfortunate Gathering," chapter 4.  Here the Elder speaks of active love.

"By the experience of active love. Strive to love your neighbour actively and indefatigably.  In as far as you advance in love you will grow surer of the reality of God and of the immortality of your soul.  If you attain to perfect self-forgetfulness in the love of your neighbour, then you will believe without doubt, and no doubt can possibly enter your soul.  This has been tried. This is certain." (1912 trans by Constance Garnett, p53)

This is love which Jesus speaks about is a "one way love" as my friend the Rev. Dr. Paul Zahl talks about it. God has one way unifying love for the creation and for the creature wherein the two dominions are to be joined together beyond any one man's ability to try and put it asunder.  Jesus tells us that we are to be about this one way love as well.  Our one way love is to be directed towards God and towards others.

On this occasion when I read the passage I enjoyed most Jesus last words to his dear inquisitor: "You are not far from the kingdom of God."  This one way active love is greater than all burnt offerings and sacrifices to be sure; and yet it is so very hard to do!!!

As the Elder offers consolation to the young woman seeking to communicate how hard this active love is he comforts her and then offers:

"I am sorry I can say nothing more consoling to you, for love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams.  Love in dreams is greedy for immediate action, rapidly performed and in the sigh to fall.  Men will even give their lives if only the ordeal does not last long but is soon over, with all looking on and applauding as though on the stage.  But active love is labour and fortitude, and for some people too, perhaps a complete science.  But I predict that just when you see with horror that in spite of all your efforts you are getting further from your goal instead of nearer to it -- at that very moment I predict that you will reach it and behold clearly the miraculous power of the Lord who has been all the time loving and mysteriously guiding you."  (Ibid, 55)

How easy is the dream of doing Jesus' guiding commandment, how hard to be constantly about active love. So you see we are all so very near the kingdom of God.  Just in the moment when all is lost we may in fact clearly recognize the one way love of God and so be redeemed.  And, in the moments when we offer such love on way to the other we are near.

That is good news it seems to me.  We are being joined and knit together in a new creation by God through God's love.  And, we in life, as we draw close we automatically begin to give that love to others.

I doubt this Sunday that a "work harder on loving God and neighbor" sermon will produce the desired results.  But a sermon of God's one way, uniting love, may in fact be just the medicine for the wounded heart and just the thing to knit our own fractured lives together.

Some Thoughts On Hebrews 9:11-15

"We might even seek to emulate the level of creativity our author has shown when we face the challenge of speaking this same message to people in our day who live in a different symbolic world but face substantially the same needs."

"First Thoughts on Passages on Year B Epistle Passages in the Lectionary,"Pentecost 23, William Loader, Murdoch University, Uniting Church in Australia.

Oremus Online NRSV Text

God first came to Jesus' people in the wild places. The message in this week's lesson from Hebrews is a great missionary encouragement. It reminds us that the Gospel took place out in the wild in the midst of a tent. The author also reminds us that the old ways were ways that were repeated on a seasonal and regular basis.

Jesus is our great high priest, and while we are called to remember his sacrifice - this is not a repeat of it. We are invited to ponder instead the perfection of Jesus' sacrifice and to worship a living God who has broken open the temple, mended the gulf between heaven and earth, and who invites us once again out into the world, into the wildness for we are free and a redeemed people.

Some Thoughts On Ruth 1:1-19

"Ruth followed her mother-in-law's advice to the letter, and it worked like a charm. Boaz was so overwhelmed that she'd pay attention to an old crock like him when there were so many young bucks running around in tight-fitting jeans that he fell for her hook, line, and sinker and, after a few legal matters were taken care of, made her his lawful wedded wife."
Ruth," sermon discussion from Frederick Buechner, Frederick Buechner Blog.

"People are often surprised to find that the words from Ruth 1:16b-17, often heard at weddings, are not about the joys of beginning a new life together."
Commentary, Ruth 1:1-18, Alphonetta Wines, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2015.

"I wish the church could be as open-hearted and buopen-minded and free as it was on that little patch of front lawn as the sun came out from behind the clouds. I wish that we could affirm as truly as we did there that wherever people love each other and are true to each other and take risks for each other, God is with them and for them and they are doing God's will."
"Buechner on Marriage Equality," sermon discussion from Frederick Buechner, Frederick Buechner Blog.


"I hear in my own life a call to love those who chose to stay behind in a theology of literalism and punitiive justice AS WELL AS those who are determined to journey with me into a life with the God of love, radical hospitality and social justice."
"And She Blessed Them Both," Kimberly Knight, Day1, 2009.

Oremus Online NRSV Text

First, It is too bad that this Sunday lesson falls where it does. We get so few chances to read Ruth! I do hope that in the coming few weeks you will recapture this first reading and do some preaching on this part of God's narrative.

Now, so you don't have to look through your books, let us have a bit of a refresher. The story takes place sometime before 1000 B.C.E. Israel is ruled by tribal chiefs. Mostly these are small communities that are internally focused. From time to time they might have to fight but for the most part they are a people living unto themselves. There is no overall unity and the scripture describes the time as one without a leader. The story is important for a number of reasons. Partly, the story is important because the scribes will link David to Ruth's son. He is to be David's grandfather. 

This is a story about migration. It is a story about people on the inside and people on the outside. It is a story about how foreigners were blamed for the problems of the society to which they came. It is about scapegoating foreigners and migrants who wander into the land. There is intermarriage, as we will see, and this causes no shortage of consternation for the tribal elders. 

This reading tells us there is a famine in the land. That the land is ruled by judges. Elimelech migrates to Moab to escape the famine with his wife Naomi. There are two sons. They marry and then they die. There are three widows now and they are trying to discern what to do. They find out the famine is over and they want to go back...to return.

It is Naomi's thought that she will leave the two widows to live and remarry in their own native land. She will return to her family. There are no more sons to marry. Naomi frees the two women as she leaves.

But Ruth says the following:

 “Do not press me to leave you or to turn back from following you! Where you go, I will go; Where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God. 17Where you die, I will die— there will I be buried. May the Lord do thus and so to me, and more as well, if even death parts me from you!”

With these words Ruth pledges herself to Naomi. So it is that they all leave and go with Naomi back to Judah. What is profound is that Ruth does not have to do this. Ruth returns to a land where she will not be welcomed, where she will be seen as a foreigner, and where she has no future.

This very first chapter reveals God's faithfulness and the faithfulness, the steadfastness, of faith that is a characteristic of God's people. It is a characteristic found even in the foreigner who comes and dwells among the chosen. She will go where Naomi goes. Ruth is a character in the narrative of God marked for her tenacity of faith.

While she will not be welcomed and even seen as part of the "calamity" that befell Naomi, Ruth will be a key ingredient to the health and vitality of the people of Israel.

How often we see the other, the foreigner, the migrant person seeking life among a new people as a burden. God's story, God's narrative flips this on its head. Not unlike most of God's narrative, the story of Ruth takes what we see in the world and flips it so we see the world differently. In this story, we will discover, the migrant and foreigner are essential ingredients to the overall faithfulness and steadfastness of the people of God. We discover that we are not complete without the outsider.


Sermons Preached

All Saints Day All Saints Year B

Thoughts for All Saints Sunday

Quotes That Make Me Think

"The epiphany is that we are to see ourselves in Lazarus and see the miracle of his restoration of physical life as the beginning of our entry into eternal life that begins the moment we accept Jesus' offer of relationship with us."

"Lazarus Is Us," Reflections on John 11:1-45, Alyce McKenzie, Edgy Exegesis, Patheos, 2011.

"This story about Lazarus shares much in common with that of the Samaritan woman at the well. With the Samaritan woman the issue was seeing Jesus as the source of living water as compared to ordinary water. Here the issue is to see Jesus as the source of living life as compared to ordinary life."

Holy Textures, Understanding the Bible in its own time and in ours, John 11:1-45, David Ewart, 2011.

General Resources for Sunday's Lessons

Prayer
is the multitude, God of all holiness, countless the throng you have assembled from the rich diversity of all earth's children.  With your church in glory, your church in this on lifts up our hands in prayer, our hearts in thanksgiving and praise.  Pattern our lives on the blessedness Jesus taught, and gather us with all the saints into your kingdom's harvest, that we may stand with them and, clothed in glory, join our voices to their hymn of thanksgiving and praise.  We ask this through Christ, with whom you have raised us up in baptism, the Lord who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever. Amen.

From Prayers for Sunday and Seasons, Year B, Peter J. Scagnelli, LTP, 1992.

Some Thoughts on John 11:32-44

Oremus Online NRSV Text

Textweek Resources for this week's Gospel

Some congregations will move All Saints to this Sunday, so it seemed appropriate to also spend a few minutes reflecting on the Gospel appointed in this year's cycle for All Saints.  This is also our reading in Year A, Lent 5.  I begin with one of my favorite prayers:

O my all-merciful God and Lord,
Jesus Christ, full of pity:
Through Your great love You came down
and became incarnate in order to save everyone.
O Savior, I ask You to save me by Your grace!
If You save anyone because of their works,
that would not be grace but only reward of duty,
but You are compassionate and full of mercy!
You said, O my Christ,
"Whoever believes in Me shall live and never die."
If then, faith in You saves the lost, then save me,
O my God and Creator, for I believe.
Let faith and not my unworthy works be counted to me, O my God,
for You will find no works which could account me righteous.
O Lord, from now on let me love You as intensely as I have loved sin,
and work for You as hard as I once worked for the evil one.
I promise that I will work to do Your will,
my Lord and God, Jesus Christ, all the days of my life and forever more.

Prayer of St. John Chrysostom

"The point of the saying, and ultimately of the narrative as a whole, is to make and celebrate the claim that people who believe in Jesus find life. It is eternal life, which includes timelessness or eternity in the temporal sense, but the focus is quality not quantity. It is sharing the life of God here and now and forever." writes William Loader.

John's Gospel is a wonderful proclamation of the power, divinity, and transformation that is available to every person through Jesus Christ. The author has written, among the four Gospels, a compelling witness to Jesus as Lord and Savior, as the giver of light, breath, and life from the very creation of the earth.

The story of the raising of Lazarus has never ceased to inspire and enliven both my imagination and my heart for the work of the Gospel. Our Gospel this week is the highest of revelationary narratives in the Gospel in both form and in content.

Jesus' raising of Lazarus is a reason why so many follow him and is clear in 12:17-18. He is as we know and have been experiencing throughout the Lenten readings the giver of life. (see 5:25-29), and precipitating his death (see 11:53). If we were reading along we would see that this is the last of a second set of miracle stories in John's Gospel that follow and highlight Jesus' teaching and conversation with his followers.

The passage begins with Jesus away and teaching, he is not present for his friend or his friends family. They come to get him and tell him that Lazarus has died. The words used to describe Jesus reaction to this are words that tell us he was affected greatly by the news. Again Jesus speaks of the work that must be done while he is with them, and that the work must be done in the light. Certainly these are like the other sayings that we have seen apocalyptic forecasts. Nevertheless, the very real human loss and desire for life is ever present as Jesus leaves to go to where Lazarus is buried.

He is of course returning to a place where he has shown power before and a place of danger. You might remember that he was almost stoned though he passed through them. 10:31, 39.

Jesus states that Lazarus has fallen asleep. This is a common reference to death in the time of Jesus and after. Chris Haslaam has done some very good research and provides links for other parts of the New Testament that say the same thing: "A common New Testament description of death: see Matthew 9:24; Mark 5:39; Acts 7:60; 1 Corinthians 15:6; 1 Thessalonians 4:14; 5:10. (In several of these verses, the NRSV has died; however, the Greek can also be translated fell asleep.) [NOAB]"

Jesus words of peace and comfort are kind and simple....things will be better...they will be all right. Yet we must also realize that the word used here is one that means "to be saved." Sosthesetai is translated into "be saved." It is the word for salvation. Our witness to the raising of Lazarus is not simply a witness then to healing story, or an act of kindness, or a hopeful act, but a transformational act of restoration of health - of true salvation. It is a miracle, which like the other miracles in John's Gospel, clearly represent the work of glorifying God through the ministry of Jesus.

We are told that Lazarus had been in the grave for three days. There is a lot written around the idea of the Jewish burial services and the timeliness of such activities once the person has died. But I do not wish to get into this though it is interesting. I believe that the real meat of the text is in the conversation about salvation and resurrection.

As we continue the discourse on the resurrection we note that the Pharisees believed, along with other popular movements of the day, that all the Jews would be raised. Gentiles too if their integrity was judged by God to be suitable. I like how Chris Haslaam has written about these next two verses.

Verse 25: Jesus modifies Pharisaic doctrine. His words are not only about resurrection but also about the fate of those faithful to him. Jesus is not only the agent of final resurrection but also gives life now: see also Romans 6:4-5; Colossians 2:12; 3:1. Mere physical death can have no hold over the believer. [NOAB]
Verse 26: The believer has passed from the death of sin into life: see also Revelation 2:11; 20:6, 14; 21:8. [BlkJn]

Jesus then gives life now and in the age to come. Immediately Martha offers the same statement as the blind man in last weeks lesson. Her words, while a question refer to previous affirmations in the Gospel. She is convinced...convinced that the proclamation of Andrew on the Galilean shore was true 1:41. She is convinced that Nathanael's proclamation is true. 1:49. She is convinced that the good news revealed int he feeding of the 5 thousand is true. 6:14.


Jesus approaches the tomb and calls Lazarus forth. It is not a resurrection story. But we cannot miss the connections as Jesus calls forth the dead from the tomb as he will most certainly do in the Easter miracle bringing all of the saints into light.

I also am struck by the reality that Lazarus must be unbound and that many participate with Jesus in this work of freeing him from death into life, from darkness into light.

The Gospel tells us that this miracle of reviving Lazarus is for the glory of God. It is also brings many more into the Jesus movement. We cannot see the disturbing events that lay ahead of Jesus without seeing the impact of this great miracle on the movement itself. For surely, as the Gospel testifies, the leaders of the day were worried and concerned.

This is a great miracle story. It is one that is rich with inter-textual meaning and connections. It highlights Jesus' as the one who gives life and breath. As Jesus says in the beginning of the text day is becoming night, and yet as we read we see that it will be Jesus who brings us out of the shadow of the darkness of the tomb into the light of day.

The witness of this passage is an evangelical one pointing us to the truth of the person of Jesus Christ so that we might believe and then raise the dead ourselves!

We are here at the precipice of our readings of Jesus' ministry.  On this day we remember the saints of God who have gone before us, we are mindful then of our own tomb and our own death yet to come.  We hope in God and Christ Jesus that this death will not be an end but a passing.  We hoep with sure and certain faith that God has raised Lazarus and in his work to bridge the kingdom of God with the world that we shall be scooped up into his harms, unbound from our eathly ego and all that binds us.

Some Thoughts on Revelation 21:1-6

"In Revelation 21, people do not go to heaven as most people have been taught but rather God comes down to earth to dwell with mortals -- "the new Jerusalem descends from heaven," and God makes a home among mortals (21:2-3)."
Commentary, Revelation 21:1-6, Israel Kamudzandu, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2016.


"Contrary to popular apocalyptic thinking, there is no 'rapture' or a future snatching of Christians up from the earth in Revelation. Instead, it is God who is 'raptured' down to earth to take up residence among us."
Commentary, Revelation 21:1-6, Barbara Rossing, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2013.

"Revelation envisions a renewal, not an escape."
Commentary, Revelation 21:1-6, Greg Carey, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2015.

Oremus Online NRSV Text

We continue the longest series of readings from the book of Revelation this week.  In today's passage the vision is of a new heaven and new earth.  The first things have passed away.

As a number of theologians point out the book of Revelation squarely places the kingdom of God's work on earth.  Rather than the heavens consuming the earth as in many other apocalyptic tradition the image and theme of Revelation is that heaven comes to earth; the fulfillment of the incarnation and the work of Jesus.

At the wedding at Cana of Galilee one can imagine the bride and groom and the many attendees gathered around enjoying the company of one another.  The image though of the bride of Christ given in the previous chapter is not a wedding feast where earth is brought into heaven and all rejoice.  It is instead an image of a beautiful and wondrous earthly city.  It is a place of hospitality to the stranger and  a place of rest for the weary pilgrim, and peace for God's people.  Tears are wiped away in this place and the world itself is transformed.

Such a city has been on the hearts and minds of Christians from Augustine to the slave, from the missionary to the persecuted.  It is found in the writings of William Blake and is present in the abolitionist and civil rights leader's voice.

In revelation we are not offered a future hope of heavenly bliss but a transformed earth.  The resurrection happens on earth and so to will the reign of God.  We can all think of the Armageddon images and films which promise some form of escapism from the world.  This is not quite the image we find in Revelation.  The earth is made new.  Not unlike the Christ after resurrection where he is more present, more real, than he was before the same may be said for the new earth.  The reign of God on earth will be more present and more real.  What has been seen only in part will be revealed in an even greater way.

The earth which has been sowed for power and ruled by authorities other than God will be changed.  It isn't so much that the earth or seas will be no more as they will no longer be used and corrupted by powers outside of the reign of God.  The earth that is made new is sustainable and God will provide for his people.  This will be a new world, remade, and reordered such that the power of Rome or Babylon cannot keep the waters of life from those who seek it.  This vision is transformative and promises a different world which will provide all that is needed for its population. The hungry and thirsty will receive good things to eat and drink.  The powers that have ruled the world and corrupted the creation and the creatures will no longer have dominion.

The city which John envisions comes down from heaven to earth is a sight for us all.  It is a revelation of a new earth; and the promise of a creation which supports bounteous life under the reign of a loving and providing God.

Some Thoughts on Isaiah 25:6-9

"The theological tension in Isaiah 25:1-9 means that while we aren't given an earthly means for overcoming all disasters and tragedies, we are given a glimpse of a world in which death is swallowed up forever and 'God will wipe away the tears from all faces' (v. 8)."
Commentary, Isaiah 25:1-9, James K. Mead, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2008.

"In this remarkable passage, the Lord prepares a lavish feast at the Lord's own sacred mountain."
Commentary, Isaiah 25:6-9, Anathea Portier-Young, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2015.

"Lofty poetry does matter. It may even change the world. For instance, the words of the American Declaration of Independence, "we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, have been reutilized several times to envision equalities that lay well beyond the imagination of its original writers."
Commentary, Isaiah 25:1-9, Patricia Tull, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2014.

Oremus Online NRSV Text

This passage is an Easter passage and also comes up in year A as an option around this time of year.

It is of course the great banquet on Mount Zion.

Isaiah prophesies to the people in Babylon a message of hope. He has prophesied that God cares about his people who are dispersed, enslaved, and treated as instruments of the victor. He writes:

Therefore strong peoples will glorify you; cities of ruthless nations will fear you. For you have been a refuge to the poor, a refuge to the needy in their distress, a shelter from the rainstorm and a shade from the heat. 

Isaiah prophesies that God will remove the shroud that covers the people and they will return home. God will not only feed them good food as promised, rich food, but fat and well-aged wine. God will even defeat death. These next words are the words we recall at Easter:

Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken.

The prophet then speaks of religious violence and how the feast of the table will be set on the backs of the defeat of the Moabites.

Richard Hays, in Echoes of the Scripture in the New Testament, believes that this is part of the divine narrative of ingathering that is picked up by Matthew in his apocalyptic understanding. (137) God will blow a great trumpet, each person will be gathered up, into the divine heavens and sit at the table of the most high God. Matthew sees very much God's restoration of Israel through the Incarnation as a mimetic repetition of God's overarching story of gathering God's people. See also Isaiah 27:13, Psalms of Solomon 17:26, and Matthew 19. (Ibid.)

Many Christians without the benefit of reading the whole text will miss the intertextual role of judgment in these passages. We get blinders on and make this about an apocalyptic/eschatalogical final judgment. However, judgment is more often used through the whole text to mean governing. In other words this final gathering of people at God's table will be to bring to fruition God's garden social imaginary where in all people are living together. God is governing and not the powers and authorities of the world.

Now...what about those Moabites. We would say that Isaiah is listening to God, to the Christ, the Living Word, and pronouncing the vision of God's coming reign. However, that does not mean that he benefits from the full revelation of the God in Christ Jesus. He cannot imagine the table being set without religious violence being enacted to bring about peace. Jesus however reveals that his death upon the cross, Christ's death upon the cross is in fact payment for all. Like a great black hole, when death swallows up God in Christ Jesus, death swallows up all religious violence along with it. When Jesus is resurrected the world begins its next stage of the journey wherein religious violence, and all violence is no longer of value in the faith of man. 

What we have in the Text is God revealing a living word that will gather all people at the table of fellowship. Here it is none other than the suffering servant of Isaiah that has set the table. Jesus' message to love God and love neighbor, his presence with all sorts and conditions of people, and his eating with sinners reveals that we have only a partial revelation in this passage. We must read the text with the hermeneutic of a missional Jesus. We read it with the hermeneutic of Christ crucified, of very God upon the cross, putting an end to all religious scapegoating and violence. We can no longer read Isaiah's prophesy as a mandate to kill the oppressor, the Moabite, the Ammonite, of our day. We are not given license to kill.

As my friend Stanley Hauerwas likes to quip, the Israelites are trying to get over their need for religious violence. We see this in the contradictions in Job (we just read) and in the story of Abraham and Jonah in Nineveh.

Here is what St. Ireneaus has to say about reading scripture without God in Christ Jesus and his cross:

If anyone, therefore, reads the Scriptures this way, he will find in them the Word concerning Christ, and a foreshadowing of the new calling. For Christ is the “treasure which was hidden in the field” [Matt 13:44], that is, in this world – for “the field is the world” [Matt 13:38] – [a treasure] hidden in the Scriptures, for he was indicated by means of types and parables, which could not be understood by men prior to the consummation of those things which had been predicted, that is, the advent of the Lord. And therefore it was said to Daniel the prophet, “Shut up the words, and seal the book, until the time of the consummation, until many learn and knowledge abounds. For, when the dispersion shall be accomplished, they shall know all these things” [Dan 12:4, 7]. And Jeremiah also says, “In the last days they shall understand these things” [Jer 23:20]. For every prophecy, before its fulfillment, is nothing but an enigma and ambiguity to men; but when the time has arrived, and the prediction has come to pass, then it has an exact exposition (ἐξήγησις). And for this reason, when at this present time the Law is read by the Jews, it is like a myth, for they do not possess the explanation (ἐξήγησις) of all things which pertain to the human advent of the Son of God; but when it is read by Christians, it is a treasure, hid in a field, but brought to light by the cross of Christ, and explained, both enriching the understanding of men, and showing forth the wisdom of God, and making known his dispensations with regard to man, and prefiguring the kingdom of Christ, and preaching in anticipation the good news of the inheritance of the holy Jerusalem, and proclaiming beforehand that the man who loves God shall advance so far as even to see God, and hear his Word, and be glorified, from hearing his speech, to such an extent, that others will not be able to behold his glorious countenance [cf. 2 Cor 3:7], as was said by Daniel, “Those who understand shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and many of the righteous as the stars for ever and ever” [Dan 12:3]. In this manner, then, I have shown it to be, if anyone read the Scriptures. (Against the Heresies 4.26.1)

Stanley Hauerwas, commenting on this passage here in a short essay on how to read the bible, writes:

But once the Messiah is raised from the dead and the Spirit is poured out, the Old Testament becomes a luminous testimony to the Savior and Creator of the universe. As Fr Andrew Greeley once remarked: “Christ turned the world upside down; and when the world was viewed from such a remarkable perspective, it suddenly made sense.” 

Contemporary theology and biblical studies, with its privileging of the historical-critical method, inevitably finds the apostolic hermeneutic an embarrassment. Neither the Apostles nor the Church Fathers treated the biblical writings as documents whose meaning lies exclusively in the text itself. If they had, there would have been neither gospel nor Church. Jesus, and Jesus alone, is the canon of faith.

Why am I saying all this? Because when we preach on a passage such as this and let the Moabite prophesy go unanswered we allow people to make up their own mind. People like the idea of religious violence, scapegoating, and repeating ancient habits of violence in judgement because we naturally multiply the sin of Cain. We must, perhaps only in a few words, answer the Moabite question for it is the answer needed when it comes to our modern day fears and enemies (pretend and real).

This is indeed a passage about how God will bring all people, all the faithful departed, together. How God will make all the sinners saints by the handiwork of God's cross. This is a prophesy that speaks of hope for all people. A hope of sitting at table in this world with Jesus - as both giver and guest. And...sitting at table with God and all people at the coming of the reign of God who shall govern such that even the lion and lamb shall lay down together. 

All Saints A November 1, 2023

Prayer

Almighty God, you have knit together your elect in one communion and fellowship in the mystical body of your Son Christ our Lord: Give us grace so to follow your blessed saints in all virtuous and godly living, that we may come to those ineffable joys that you have prepared for those who truly love you; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.

Great is the multitude, God of all holiness, countless the throng you have assembled from the rich diversity of all earth's children.  With your church in glory, your church in this generation lifts up our hands in prayer, our hearts in thanksgiving and praise.  Pattern our lives on the blessedness Jesus taught, and gather us with all the saints into your kigndom's harvest, that we may stand with them and, clothed in glory, join our voices to their hymn of thanksgiving and praise.  We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and riegns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever. Amen.

From Prayers for Sunday and Seasons, Year A, Peter J. Scagnelli, LTP, 1992. 

Some Thoughts on Matthew 23:1-12

"What would it mean if we honored those whom God honors? What would happen if we stopped playing all of our culture's games for status and power and privilege? What would it cost us if we lived more deeply into justice, and mercy, and humility?"

Dylan's Lectionary Blog, Epiphany 4, 2005. Biblical Scholar Sarah Dylan Breuer looks at readings for the coming Sunday in the lectionary of the Episcopal Church.


Jesus saved for last the ones who side with heaven even when any fool can see it's the losing side and all you get for your pains is pain. Looking into the faces of his listeners, he speaks to them directly for the first time. "Blessed are you," he says.

You can see them looking back at him. They're not what you'd call a high-class crowd—peasants and fisherfolk for the most part, on the shabby side, not all that bright. It doesn't look as if there's a hero among them. They have their jaws set. Their brows are furrowed with concentration.

"Beatitudes," Frederick Buechner, Beyond Words.

Oremus Online NRSV Gospel Text


This week most congregations will be celebrating All Saint's Day.  Yet, as we do so, we attempt to weave a major Feast of the Church into the Scripture from Matthew.

I want to step back and take a look at Matthew first, then see how we might allow the scripture to speak to our Feast.

As we look at Jesus’ ministry, it is important to see that there is a framework at work in Matthew.
In the first chapters of the Gospel of Matthew, we see that the individuals who come in contact with Jesus do not have to do anything. Jesus is not teaching about discipleship. He is not charging them to reform the religion of the time -- he is simply giving of himself.

Jesus is intentionally offering himself to those around him. The people in the first chapters of Matthew and in the Sermon on the Mount receive Jesus; this is the primary interaction taking place between those following and the Messiah himself.

Jesus is giving of himself to others.

The Sermon On the Mount begins in Chapter 4.25, and the introduction runs through 5.1. We are given the scenery: the mountain beyond the Jordan (previous verse). This continues to develop an Exodus typology, the foundation of Matthew’s interpretive themes in these early chapters. It follows clearly when one thinks of the passages leading up to this moment: the flight from Egypt, baptism and now the Sermon on the Mount. In Matthew’s Gospel, the first five chapters parallel the Exodus story. So, Jesus now arrives at the mountain where the law was given.

The structure of the following verses is beautiful and I offer them here so you can see how they play themselves out in a literary fashion (5.3-5.10).

5.3 Inclusive Voice: Theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.

5.10 Inclusive Voice: Theirs is the kingdom of heaven

5.4 Divine Passive Voice: They shall be comforted

5.9 Divine Passive Voice: They shall be called sons of God

5.5 Future Active Voice with Object: They shall inherit the earth

5.8 Future Middle Voice with Object: They shall see God

5.6 Divine Passive Voice: They shall be satisfied

5.7 Divine Passive Voice: They shall have mercy
Matthew uses these formulas and structures throughout the Gospel.

Scholars tell us that the classical Greek translation illustrates the pains that Matthew took as he rewrote Luke’s and Q’s Beatitudes to create the parallels we see. Matthew also writes so carefully that when he is finished, there are exactly 36 words in each section of the Beatitudes (5.3-5.6 and 5.7-510). This, combined with the parallels, highlights the two sections that must have been meaningful to the church at Antioch (comprised of those who have fled persecution).

5.3ff describes the persecuted state of the followers of Jesus

5.7ff describes the ethical qualities of the followers of Jesus that will lead to persecution

This view is taken from the work of Allison and Davies in their hallmark text on Matthew's Gospel, volume 1.

In the Beatitudes offered by Jesus, it is easy to see that these words are blessings, not requirements. The teachings therefore are words of grace.

In the initial teachings of Jesus’ ministry, healing comes before imperative statements, here Jesus preaches that grace comes before requirements and commandments. This is a perennial Christian teaching: one must receive first before service.

The difficulties required of followers of Jesus presuppose God’s mercy and prior saving activity.

The Beatitudes are clear that the kingdom of God brings comfort, a permanent inheritance, true satisfaction and mercy, a vision of God and divine son-ship. This may be Matthew’s most important foundation stone within the salvation story. We are given, through grace, our freedom to follow.

We are like the Israelites and sons and daughters of Abraham, delivered so we may follow and work on behalf of God.

The Beatitudes also are prophetic, as in the passage from Isaiah 61.1. Jesus is clearly the anointed one. Jesus is the fulfilment of the Old Testament prophecy from Isaiah, bringing Good News to those in need. Furthermore, the words of Jesus are the result of the prophecy, so they set him apart from all other teachers.

The beatitudes then are also words which not only promise Grace to the follower, they fulfil the prophetic words of the old message from Isaiah: Jesus was meek (11.29; 21.5), Jesus mourned (26.36-46), Jesus was righteous and fulfilled all righteousness (3.15; 27.4, 19), Jesus showed mercy (9.27; 15.22; 17.15; 20.30-1), Jesus was persecuted and reproached (26-7). The beatitudes are illustrated and brought to life in Jesus’ ministry, they are signs that he stands in a long line of prophets offering comfort to God’s people, and he is also clearly the suffering servant who epitomizes the beatitudes themselves. Origen wrote that Jesus is offering this grace he fulfils and embodies his own words, thereby becoming the model to be imitated.

The Beatitudes are words of proclamation. Are we in a place where we can articulate Jesus’ story and life as a fulfilment of God’s promises to his people? God's promise to me personally?

The Beatitudes are words of mercy. Are we in a place where we can hear Jesus’ words for us? Have we allowed ourselves to be saved before we begin to work on Jesus’ behalf?

The Beatitudes are words of care for the poor. Are we in a place where we can hear Jesus’ special concern for those who are oppressed in the system of life? Are we ready to follow him into the world to deliver his people, imitating the work of Moses and Jesus?

As we reflect on the Feast of All Saints, it is clearer how this passage might speak to the church. We understand the saints of the past (holy and common) and the saints of today, along with the saints of tomorrow, to be those who, in their lives, offer us a vision of this grace, mercy, and vision for God's special friends - the poor.  Who are the ones we look up to from the past?  Who are the ones in our life today?

Can we see the potential of saints yet unknown to us already out in the world working and serving? Can we be open to the next saint who is yet to cross our path and offer us a vision of the kingdom of God?

Excerpt from Holy Women Holy Men

In the New Testament, the word “saints” is used to describe the entire membership of the Christian community, and in the Collect for All Saints’ Day, the word “elect” is used in a similar sense. From very early times, however, the word “saint” came to be applied primarily to persons of heroic sanctity whose deeds were recalled with gratitude by later generations.

Beginning in the tenth century, it became customary to set aside another day—as a sort of extension of All Saints—on which the Church remembered that vast body of the faithful who, though no less members of the company of the redeemed, are unknown in the wider fellowship of the Church. It was also a day for particular remembrance of family members and friends.

Though the observance of the day was abolished at the Reformation because of abuses connected with Masses for the dead, a renewed understanding of its meaning has led to a widespread acceptance of this commemoration among Anglicans and to its inclusion as an optional observance in the calendar of the Episcopal Church.  (page 664)

Some Thoughts on 1 John 3:1-8

"It may be significant that this text is full of indicative verbs, not imperative."

Commentary, 1 John 3:1-7, Brian Peterson, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2012.

"The church's integrity wells up from, and is channeled by, God's calling (3:1b; 3:3). To be a saint is to live in the same love by which God has loved us (3:16-18; 4:7-12)."
Commentary, 1 John 3:1-3 (All Saints A), C. Clifton Black, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2011.

"We get Christian hope confused when we think that our hope is based on now nice we are, or how well we behave, or on some hidden piece of us called 'the soul' that will survive through death and destruction."
Commentary, 1 John 3:1-7, David Bartlett, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2009.

Oremus Online NRSV Epistle Text 

In this letter from the Johannine community, we understand that they take their familial ties with God seriously. They are God's followers and are called the "children of God”. God loves them, and Christ, as Savior of the world, has unleashed that love, and it now claims them. They are God's children.  

New Testament scholar David Bartlet writes:

...John's Gospel points to a future hope. Sometimes that is a kind of individual future hope: "In my Father's house are many dwelling places... I will come and take you to myself" (John 14:2-3). At other times, there seems to be hope more like what we find in 1 Thessalonians, i.e., hope for a general resurrection at the end of time. "Do not be astonished at this; for the hour is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and will come out -- those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation" (John 5:28-29).

The author reminds the readers that Jesus was not listened to in his own lifetime, and so it is unlikely that his children will be listened to... nevertheless, they are his children now and in the future. There is an understanding that what they experience now is only in part what they will experience once they are unified with God in his kingdom.  They do not know what that will be like, but as his children, they have a sure and certain hope.

So, the author tells the reader live a virtuous life.  Live an ethical life.  Be like God - good and pure.  Now what is important here is that we are not simply talking about a set of words that we interpret through our own lens. We must understand that for John and his readers in the community to be good and pure is to be like God, who loves.  We are to love. Love, love, love, love - Christians this is your call...as the old song goes.  I like how Loader (one of my faves) says it:

It is not about how many morality boxes we can tick to qualify ourselves as righteous or as a child of God. It is about whether love flows. Here, too, it is not about how many acts of love we summon up our energies to perform - ticking the goodness boxes, but how much we open ourselves to receive the love which God gives, which in turn flows through us to others. Love gives birth to love. Later the writer will speak of our loving because we were first of all loved by God (4:19). The author might say today: no amount of doing good deeds and no amount of having impressive spiritual experiences will count for anything if it is not connected to a real change that is relational. It may be cosmetic goodness and religion, but without that love it is nothing much. Paul made much the same point in 1 Corinthians 13.

We are saints and children of God because God makes us so...we are loved. We are the beloved of God.  And our response to this belovedness is to in turn, love others.  This is the chief if not the primary work.  How are we doing with that, I wonder? I wonder how God thinks we are doing with that?

I think rather than pointing a finger at our people and telling them to love more. Giving them new boxes to check and new tasks to fulfil...perhaps we might simply begin by loving them and by telling them that they are loved. Tell them you love them. Tell them they are loved. By all means, please, tell them God loves them. 

Some Thoughts on Revelation 7:9-17

"Led by their Shepherd-Lamb, God’s redeemed people will come through the tribulation into God's new Promised Land.”

Commentary, Revelation 7:9-17 (Easter 4C), Barbara Rossing, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2013.

"So much of the imagery is strange if not, perhaps, even estranging. Yet it is a way of asserting hope for people who faced hopelessness. It is a way of making God central and keeping the vulnerability of God in our vision."
"First Thoughts on Epistle Passages in the Lectionary," Easter 4, William Loader, Murdoch University, Uniting Church in Australia.

Oremus Online NRSV First Text 

All that is needed is faith in God through Jesus Christ that the great abyss has already been traversed and an eternal bridge erected. 

In the New Testament, this is the idea that it is only through God’s work upon the cross – that is the death of Jesus that one enters the reign of God on the last day. Today’s lesson from Revelation describes that day and completes the prophetic words of Jesus.

Our great sightseer into the dream of Revelation sees the many who are saved. When wondering who the people are, he is told, “These are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”

Jesus offers The sign of Jonah that in the last days, the wedding feast will be consummated by his own death. Not by miracles at Cana nor by telling parables or working miracles. No, all who enter, enter by his grace and work on the cross. It is only for us to believe that it is so. No amount of our work or repentance gets us in – only the blood of the lamb.

It is a macabre image rooted deeply in the psyche of the first-century mind. Nevertheless, it is an image that reminds us of our powerlessness in the face of death.

This second vision, though, is one that is to bring us hope. The passage has been paid. All is needed is faith. For those who come to believe and turn over their lives in this world, the next, even in the last moment as they are faced with the reign of God, their way is afforded to them. Even in the Divine Comedy, all is never lost, and hope has the last word. So the clothes are washed in blood that is already spilt.

So, for everyone then comes the promise: “They will hunger no more, and thirst no more; the sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat; for the Lamb at the centre of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

This is comforting apocalyptic imagery for the believer. But there are many who are living in their own personal apocalyptic world today. People who are the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, and many more…the lost, the lame, the least, and the lonely… They face death today. Will there be food on the table and a roof over their heads? For those Christians who have found the depths of Sheol paved for them, then it is their work, in turn, to do some washing in this world. It is for the faithful to make the paths straight, the valleys high, and the mountains low for the poor who in this world have no way out of Sheol. For the faithful, they are to carry their own cross, lay down their own lives, and sacrifice for the other who faces death as a daily companion. In this way, then the promise of relief is not something to be received in death only but may be received by being given in life now.

I believe the Book of Revelation's author was writing about his present time. It may provide hope today as well, and it may even provide a transformation of community life. But we will have to get over the idea of being afraid of death. It is such a trivial thing if we but believe and then act out our belief.