The Feast of All Saints
‘These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation.’
+INJ+
‘God’s time is the best of all times,
In him we live, and move, and are,
As long as it is His will,
In Him we die, and at His appointed time,
And when He wills.’
‘Lord, teach us to consider that we must die, so that we might become wise.
For my savior has entered into his disciple’s midst. So let enemies rage.’
This, Bach wrote, for his cantata composed to be sung on this day, the Feast of All Saints.
All Saints Day is often overshadowed by its own eve, that is, evening the night before; which is to say, it is always overshadowed by Halloween. I do not think a year has ever gone by since my incorrupt union with Sister Sara, that I have not been made to endure at least two weeks of her complaints against the decorating practices of Americans precedent to the celebration of Halloween.
It is enough to say that she hates it. She hates the ghosts, and skeletons, and ugliness; the diseased images and figures; the various and plentiful depictions of poison and decay. What, she asks, does any of this have to do with the Eve of All Saints Day?
To this, I would respond to our dear deaconess, ‘more than one might think.’
For Bach is not wrong when he writes concerning this feast, that it is, above all else, a meditation upon death, and the fact that we all must die, and must die, that we might become wise.
Even in its commercialism, Halloween still shines forth this truth, that if we are to become saints, so to speak, we must first become dead. We must, in a sense, become ghosts, in that our soul must be separated from the flesh by the reaper. We must become skeletons, for our bodies must be sown into the ground. We must be overcome by sickness and disease, that we might no longer trust in the frailty of our mortal frame. We must become ugly, for only in knowing our own ugliness can we begin to behold the beauty of Christ.
Not that the local party store believes itself to be doing the nation a religious service by selling such commercialized morbidity, but God has a way of working even through our nonsense.
For this we must first know: that the very sacrament that makes us into saints, that sets us apart as the people of God, and the brothers of Christ; that very mystery which breathes into us the Holy Spirit and grants the forgiveness of sins, it is nothing but a death, even as it is written, ‘we were buried through baptism into death.’
To become a Christian is nothing else but to die, and Christianity is nothing if not a religion of death, for it knows no saint except one that has already died.
For if we live, what is it in us that lives in us? It is nothing but a mass of sin, and a boil of iniquity. Death was appointed for all who sin, that in death, our sin might at last be put to an end; the harm that we cause to others might be given a termination, lest we live forever, and with it, our evil become eternal.
This sin which speaks and lives and breeds in us, it cannot be reasoned with, it cannot be reformed, it can only be destroyed. It can only be executed; and the Church is just such an executioner.
Before the baptismal font becomes a womb from which we are born, it is a first a gallows, by which we are put to death; and by the Holy Spirit, our life is made into daily practice of dying, or as the theologians once called it, a daily mortification of the flesh.
We must put to death the old man in us. We must drop the hatchet upon the head of Adam. This is Christian piety; this is our reasonable service. For if we are to be a sacrifice, whole and undefiled before the Lord, we, like a sacrifice, must die; and if our life is a living sacrifice, we must be dying as long as we live.
In the Day of the Fall, it was commanded that Adam must surely die. But this sentence must be carried out by Adam, by each man, himself, in whom Adam lives, for by man shall man’s blood be shed.
So, this is what I preach to you, dear Christian, dear baptized child: die. Die now. Die today. Do you still not see the corpses and skeletons and monstrosities in the yards of your neighbors? You indeed now are a corpse and a skeleton, and in your flesh dwells an infinite number of monsters, for sin writhes within you as an infestation of worms; such parasites only die when their host has died. So again I tell you, die, and know that you must die.
You must die, that you might become wise.
For God has nothing to do with the walking dead, those who, dead to sin, yet believe they are still living the good life. No. It is the way of God to create out of nothing. It is the way of God to speak light into darkness. It is the way of God, to lift up not strong, but rather to raise the dead.
Do you not remember Jairus’ daughter? Do you not recall the centurion’s servant? These too had to first die, if they were to be raised from death; and so it is with you. God will have nothing to do with you, unless you first die.
But this, I tell you, is the lesson of baptism, that whosoever dies in Christ, shall also rise in him, that dying a death like his, we might also rise to newness of life. For in Christ, death and life adhere together; they are but one, and this is wisdom, to know that in dying, we begin to live, and in death, we are born.
The Church celebrates its saints on the day of their death, not of their birth, and this is no curiosity, for their first birth is but the beginning of their process of decay; but their first death is the beginning of life eternal. So the birthday of a saint is the day they cease to breath; the day that, like an unborn child, they draw no air, but gain all they need to grow from another.
And another shall indeed give us life, even as He now gives life to all who have passed us, in the past year, and ten years, and ten thousand years. All those who have fallen asleep, and whose bodies even now rest in graves marked with stone. All these now, the Church eternal; to these He gives life, for he is not the God of the dead, but of the living. For though their bodies yet here in time remain beneath the earth, yet already they are clothed in white, an enthroned in heaven, a great and noble army, and a priesthood eternal, and the pain of death shall never again touch them, for they, in Christ, have been made into life.
For to be Christian is nothing else but to live eternally; and Christianity is nothing else but eternal life. For to the Christian, and to the faith, there is no death, but that death which is a birth; there is no death, but that death which is eternal life.
So it is that the Christian is already dead, and yet can never die. No torture can break him, no torment pervert his mind. How could they? You cannot kill what has already died, and you cannot torment that which is already resting in peace.
For this reason, those who have already died in Christ through the waters of the font are wise, for no longer can the foolishness of the world disturb them. Who will they harass? Who will they persecute? As Bach’s cantata concludes, ‘let enemies rage.’
For it is for but a time, and a short one. For all things shall be delivered into the hands of Christ and His saints, those clothed in white, as even now they dwell with Him in the heavenly throne room. Angels now they command on our behalf, calling them down to defend us in our time of need. Prayers they render on our behalf, beseeching the Father to save us, and so He will.
Nothing then, shall stand before us, nothing will raise their arm against the saints, against the Church, against Christ, in His body.
For the high praises of the Lord are in our throats,
And a two-edged sword in our hands.
+INJ+
Preached by Pastor Fields
Sermon Texts: Revelation 7:9-17; Psalm 149; 1 John 3:1-3; Matthew 5:1-12.