Saints
Revelation 7:9-17
Matthew 5:1-12
When I was a kid, I lived a block away from a golf course. I can’t tell you how many thousands of times I walked or rode my bike past the chain link fence that separated me from this foreign world.
Once in the late fall, the place seemed empty, and some friends and I hopped the fence to get a closer look at it. A man came along in a golf cart, a man I recognized as a member of our church choir. He called the police on us, so we got out fast.
I never really understood what was going on beyond that fence. I didn’t understand the sport of golf, or why this beautiful green space right in the middle of my neighborhood was a forbidden land. Never understood why what looked like a huge, beautiful park was off-limits to me and to everyone I knew.
Not until high school did I realize just how exclusive that place was. This was the Minneapolis Golf Club. Although our neighborhood was at least 1/3 Jewish, they did not allow Jews. They did not allow blacks. They did not allow people of my family’s economic status; in fact it’s almost certain that no one in the neighborhood surrounding the golf course was a member.
It was an exclusive club only for the very elite of society.
When we talk about the saints, it often seems we are talking about something like the Minneapolis Golf Club. Or maybe like a Hall of Fame. Look at the common definitions of a saint and you get stuff like: persons who have achieved a high level of holiness, who live an exemplary life of virtuous behavior.
Pious persons who have achieved the utmost levels of purity and wisdom.
Out of the billions of Christians who have ever lived in the world, there are barely 10,000 who have achieved official status as saints. Becoming a saint with a capital S is an exhausting process that requires, first of all, that you die, followed by lengthy research into your life, and a complex procedure that can take many years, even centuries. One of the requirements is evidence of at least two miracles connected with this person.
I mean, this is one exclusive club.
Claiming membership in this club is not something we would even think about doing. We’re all looking into this club from the other side of a chain link fence. How many times do we qualify some positive statement about our character or behavior by saying, “Well, I’m no saint but--”
How many times do we disqualify some other person from this elite status, a person who appears have some virtuous qualities superior to his peers, by saying, “You know, he’s not exactly a saint, either.”
One basis for regarding the saints as an exclusive club is the Scripture section that precedes our reading from Revelation today. Chapter 7 opens with a vision of angels holding back the winds of destruction. One of them cries, “Do not damage the earth or the sea or the trees, until we have marked the servants of our God with a seal on their foreheads.”
And I heard the number of those who were sealed, 144,000 people.”
Okay, that’s a large number. But given all the people who have ever lived and all those who have proclaimed the Christian faith, it’s also a tiny number. That’s all the people who will be officially sealed and marked as the servants of God?
That is one exclusive club; it must be reserved for the elite of the Christian faith. The platinum club of Christianity. The Christian Hall of Fame. The saints.
There are religious groups that take that number very seriously. They preach that there is a hierarchy in heaven, with a limited number of VIP seats available, 144,000 to be exact. Some of them even advocate open competition among their members for those 144,000 seats.
The problem with Revelation is, it is filled with such dramatic images and striking picture language that we can get in deep trouble when we take isolated parts and try to use them as marching orders.
Craig Koester, who knows more about the book of Revelation than anyone else I have met, points out a literary device that is used repeatedly in this book, including chapter seven.
John, the writer of Revelation, often hears something impressive; but when he turns to look, what he sees is far more impressive than what he heard—in fact, it is surprisingly and stunningly so.
In chapter 5, John is comforted by an angel who says, “Do not weep. See, the lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David has conquered.”
That’s what he hears.
But when he turns to look, this is what he sees: “Then I saw between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders a Lamb standing as if it had been slaughtered.”
He hears about a Lion, but when he looks, he sees a Lamb. He hears that victory comes about through a mighty and fierce creature, by strength of force. That is what the Israelites had been expecting all these centuries—a Messiah that would come in power and physically overpower the enemy.
But when he looks, he sees a lamb. It is a Lamb who has conquered—a lamb that was slaughtered. He sees that, unexpectedly, it is the loving sacrifice of Jesus Christ that has changed the world and overcome death and despair.
We see the same thing happening in chapter 7. What does John hear? “I heard the number of those who were sealed, 144,000 people.”
Pretty impressive crowd of people.
But when he turns to look, what does he see? Verse 9: “I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands.”
Who are the people dressed in white robes? In the imagery of Revelation, white-robed people are the saints.
John heard that the company of saints is an elite group; that only a relatively chosen few are selected for membership. But when he turns and looks at this company of saints, he sees a multitude that no one could count.
Revelation tells us that God is always exceeding our expectations. The truth of living with God is always far better than we ever imagine it could be.
The question John asks, then, is the same one that comes to our minds: Who are all these, robed in white, and where have they come from? Which leads to the question, How did all these people in this vast, uncountable multitude become saints?
The answer to the first question, who are they, is: These are they who have come out of the great ordeal.
The answer to the second question, how did they become saints, is: they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.
The saints are those who survived the great ordeal because of the Lamb.
Alright, we know who the Lamb is. That is Jesus. What, then was the great ordeal?
The answer appears to lie in Matthew 5, the section of the Sermon on the Mount known as The Beatitudes.
Jesus describes in some detail the great ordeals that the saints have to go through:
The ordeal of being beaten down and robbed of the joy of life; of being poor in spirit.
The ordeal of suffering terrible loss and heartache; of being those who mourn.
The ordeal of getting shoved aside by the selfish, the aggressive, the power-hungry.
The ordeal of living through injustice and oppression.
The ordeal of being hurt or wronged.
The ordeal of working for peace in a cynical world that seems to know only the power of might makes right.
The ordeal of being criticized and hated and mocked for standing up for what is right.
The great ordeal is the human condition known as sin, and all the meanness and destructiveness, and bitterness, and misery that it brings into the world and into our lives.
Who are the saints, and why are their numbers so great in Revelation, to the point of being uncountable?
The saints are us.
The numbers of the saints are so great because of two truths:
1) everyone goes through the great ordeal. Who among us is not going through the great ordeal? Who among us lives carefree in a world completely untouched by sin?
2) Jesus offers a way out to everyone caught in the great ordeal.
In describing the great ordeal, Jesus tells us that we are blessed.
Blessed are you
when you are beaten down by life,
when you are so depressed you can hardly get up in the morning,
Blessed are you
when you are so lost you don’t know where to turn,
when your heart is so broken you don’t know how it will ever be healed,
when you are so frustrated by the evils and injustices of society that you are at the point of despair,
when you find yourself betrayed by those you trusted,
when you pay a steep price for trying to live as you know God wants you to live.
In those times, Jesus says, you are blessed.
Being blessed does not mean you are lucky to experience these things.
Being blessed means that God is with you.
In those times of greatest pain and sorrow and despair, God blesses us; in those times especially, God is with us. And the promise is that God will carry us through the danger and sorrow caused by a sinful world to the other side where things are different.
Revelation says that this uncountable multitude of saints will hunger no more, and thirst no more; for the Lamb at the center of the throne will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.
That is exactly what Jesus says in Matthew:
The poor of spirit will be touched by the kingdom of heaven.
Those who mourn will find comfort
Those who are shoved aside, who refuse to fight fire with fire, will inherit the beauty of God’s world.
Those starving for justice and righteousness will be filled.
Those who have been wronged and yet answer evil with love, will be showered with the love of God.
Those who work for peace in the face of mocking indifference will find themselves close to the heart of God.
Those who are criticized or hated or attacked or abused for trying to live as God wills will find that it is all worthwhile at the end.
On All Saints Day, we honor those who have already passed through the great ordeal. Those who are now on the other side of the ordeal, for whom the power of sin no longer has any effect, those who hunger no more, thirst no more, and have every tear wiped away from their eyes. It is a tradition that comes out of the Eastern Orthodox Church, which defines saints as those who have died in the faith.
But in the early church, the word saint was not used only in the past tense. In Philippians, Paul closes by saying, “Greet every saint in Christ Jesus. All the saints greet you.” He is talking about everyone in the faith.
We are not those on the outside looking through a chain link fence at the elite of the Christian church known as the saints. All who go into the great ordeal of a sinful world, and accept the outstretched of Jesus to pull them through, are saints.
The communion rail is an open circle. On this side are the saints whom Jesus is saving from the great ordeal and directing into new, joyful life. Facing us from the other side are all the saints who have passed through and are already there.
It’s what we call in our creed the communion of saints. It is a multitude that no one can count.
“Salvation belongs to our God and to the Lamb. Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power be to God forever.”
