All Saints
Year B
Isaiah 25:6-9
Revelation 21:1-6a
John 11:32-44
Today we remember former saints and sinners, known only now as saints, who from this congregation, have died and have been lifted to heaven. We also lift up today, all the loved saints that have passed in previous years, with their names written upon the walls of this church. Some of you may have caught what might be an assumption on my part.
I did say and I intentionally said, died and have been lifted to heaven. This is more than an assumption. It is something greater than assuming that those who believe, will be in heaven. It is a trust, in a promise by God, though our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ. In other words, I have faith that those believers who have died before us, now live with God in heaven.
In the Bible study on Friday, we had conversation around when someone actually goes to heaven. We are told that there will be, not that there is, but will be a new earth and a new heaven, Revelation 21:1. This is a question that I had as well, at least at one point. When is the new heaven and earth? When will we be in heaven? It really started to consume me and I worried about how long I may lay in the ground, waiting for the resurrection. Was it a year, two and or two thousand or more years? Just how long would it take?
For some this may not be an issue for others it is. Our Lutheran theology teaches us that God lives in the past, present and future. God does not live singularly in any linear time but lives outside of time. Time has no real meaning for God. Where as we live in a linear time. We can know what has happened in the past and what is happening in the present. We might be able to predict, which is different from God who knows, what might happen in the future. Where God knows what is happening in the future.
When we die, how long then do we wait? We wait until Jesus comes back and there is a new heaven and a new earth, how ever long that is. However, that being said, we by faith believe we will be in heaven with God, raised into new bodies. Therefore, what may be thousands of years will seem as a blink of any eye because we no longer will exist in this linear time but in God’s realm, outside of time.
Have faith, that the loved ones who have passed this last year. That the loved ones who have passed in previous years, reside in heaven with the Father and Son, it is now for them and it is our, future for us.
There is something else that I wanted to share from the Bible study as well. As we were reading Revelation, I was excited at hearing of the new heaven and new earth. Not all were as excited as I was. Oh don’t get me wrong, I like how things are going, mostly. I trust in that promise of life in death and how much better, how fantastic it will be in the world, in the heaven, to come.
As Christians, we can have hope for something better. The better, we may see glimpses of, as heaven begins to break through to the here and now. It is the glimpses and the hope in the promise of new bodies, and everlasting life in heaven that brings on my excitement for end times. We are an eschatology
people. Which is nothing more than a fancy name for we are a people of ends times. End times deals with death, judgment, heaven and hell.
End times, is the beginnings of new life, new earth and new heaven. There is nothing scary about that and there should not be. God has made a promise to us in Jesus. God is always true. God never breaks God’s promises. God can be trusted to keep what God says God will do in the Son, The Christ, Word, Life and Light to the world.
16 “For God so loved the world that [God] gave [God’s] only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.
17 “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. 18 Those who believe in him are not condemned;[1]
Today, when we read the litany for the saints, remember there is hope in the promise of God, which is faith, and there is NO qualifier of how much faith. Have faith my sisters and brothers, our loved ones are and will be in heaven and we too shall see them when we go to heaven.
Amen
[1] The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989), Jn 3:16–18.