Guest Pastor: Rev. Allen Lunneberg
(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai)
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. With the approach of the closing chapters of the church year, our annual task of proclaiming the entire gospel of salvation today is given a standing ovation by the entire body of Christ. The whole church, throughout the world, of every time and every place, and as we say at the celebration of every Lord’s Supper, with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven.
From Advent, through Christmas, Epiphany, through Lent and the great Holy Week, from Easter, through the ascension of our Lord, and the Feast of Pentecost, and now the long green season, which we now are bringing to a close in the next few weeks. The church has proclaimed everything, from the creation of the world, to that one sacrifice that opens the door of heaven for all forgiven sinners. We enter that door, being born anew through water and the spirit of holy baptism, and that filled with the gift of saving faith by the Holy Spirit through the ministration of the word and sacraments of Christ, the means or instruments of his delivery of God’s grace.
So today, we’re cheered on to the finish line of our hope by the great cloud of witnesses who have gone before us, even mysteriously included those yet to be. So today, the celebration of all saints, the whole number of the souls saved by the redeeming grace of God through the salvation brought about through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, today we ask, are you among that race and that march of faith? Are you included in that number of the triumphant band prepared and ready when the saints go marching in? Certainly numbered in the company of believers are the more famous in the history of the church, God’s working out of his plan of salvation, and today we recall and commemorate the thousands in ordered ranks, as we heard in that first reading, 12,000 times 12, the symbolic 144,000 of the multitude that cannot be numbered. Did you catch that? 144,000 of those that cannot be numbered.
It means all of them. We recall Abraham, who St. Paul calls the father of faith, of all of those who believe. Then follows the list of Isaac and Jacob and the 12 patriarchs of the Old Testament.
And from the 12 tribes came the Messiah, the Savior and Deliverer. And then, from Christ’s fulfillment of the old original promises of salvation, followed the glorious company of the 12 apostles, the new and eternal Israel, then the noble army of martyrs, and all Christians to this day, including many whose names we know and we remember them. So again, the question is, are you included in that number? Can you see yourself in this pilgrimage of faith, this march of the promised land of eternal life, as we approach the promised last day? Today we pause and remember those faithful Christians from the days and the chapters of our lives who have gone before us, a Christian father or mother or our grandparents.
For some of us, remembering a faithful wife or husband or brother or sister whom the Lord has taken to his own good timing. Maybe even, Lord have mercy, a departed son or daughter. Now there’s the growing list of Christian friends, colleagues, maybe a teacher or a pastor.
The note of sadness sounds as we contemplate the mystery of how the Lord delivers us from sin and death, even through death. For even death, that last enemy, has been transformed for us by God’s grace to become but his healing and deliverance. From scripture, as the scripture says, he who has died has been freed from sin.
In fact, until then, we who believe that we have already died with Christ in the new birth of holy baptism, the baptized, are to consider ourselves now already dead to sin, but alive to God. Now you are numbered among the baptized faithful, a member of the ranks of all saints. So it is that we truly join the eternal song of heaven with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven as we gather around this altar again today and receive the benefits of that one and only sacrifice sufficient to take away our sin and restore us to true eternal life as we faithfully eat and drink, receiving our Lord’s true body and blood.
Also here it is that we draw nearer to our departed loved ones in a more real way than even just occasionally going and visiting the grave at the cemetery. For they are with the Lord and here the Lord is with us in a most intimate way in that grand fellowship of all believers, the mystical body of Christ, all saints. The death that delivers us is the death of Jesus Christ, the Lord, for only his death had the power to be that one sacrifice sufficient to absorb the totality of God’s righteous wrath against the sin of the whole world, which includes yours.
For only in Christ has God’s law been perfectly fulfilled on your behalf. Only in Christ have all the promises of deliverance and salvation been completed. Only in Christ and by faith in him have you been crucified with him and given a new birth to be called a child of God.
And so we say with St. Paul, I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. In the life I now live, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.
Years ago, I set out some name tags on All Saints Day for the members of the congregation to pick up. They were to sign their name on it and wear it so that it said, St. Alan. I wrote the word Saint on all of them.
St. Carl, St. Alice, and so on. One person, however, refused to wear that name tag. They admitted and confessed to me that they just didn’t feel worthy to be called, much less to call themselves a saint.
And yet it is by faith in Christ, even as we still struggle with sin, that we are called to see ourselves included in that number. It is faith in God’s work and word for us in Christ. God’s view of his baptized children through his rose-colored glasses, through the blood of Christ, shed for you.
So though our march of faith continues amid the struggles, the tragedies, the setbacks of life in this fallen world, still, ours is the sure and certain faith in Christ that we can already see that blessed hope when our last march, at last, the march shall end. And we will be welcomed and known as those coming out of the great tribulation. For all the saints who from their labors rest, thy name, O Jesus, be forever blessed.
Now add your name, for our Lord has promised you, saying, he who conquers will be clothed in white garments, and I will never blot his name out of the book of life. I will confess your name before my Father and before his angels in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen. And the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you always, amen.
(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai)
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