All Saints¡¦ Day

1^st November 2009 9:00am Sung Eucharist

Preacher: The Dean

Readings: Isaiah 25:6-9, Revelation 21:1-6a, John 11:32-44

All Saints

In the past, saints were popular. Their statues filled churches and it seems that people prayed to them even more than to God. There was a patron saints for medical profession, artists, educationists, fishermen and firemen etc.

There are stories about a surgeon who prayed in front of the altar ; ¡¥Lord, please pray to St. Luke to help me find out in whose abdominal cavity I left my scalpel. ¡¥

The saints were thought to be intermediaries, who had the task of softening the impact with a God who was considered too great and remote, difficult to approach and somewhat unconcerned about our problems.

Nowadays the tendency to ask a saint to intercede with God is declining. We now deal with the Lord, as children with their parents. The saints are now seen less as intermediaries and more as brothers and sisters, loved and praised, who pray with us to the Father together.

At the beginning of the service, we sing the ¡¥Gloria¡¦ in which we proclaim ¡¥God you alone are the holy one.¡¦ Holiness is a state in which there is no imperfection or weakness. Only God is really holy. He is the only one truly above all that is worldly. We, however, can approach him and share in his holiness. All disciples of Christ are on the road that will bring them closer to the holiness of God.

St. John the Evangelist, writer of the Revelation, as mentioned in today¡¦s Epistle, ¡¥And I saw the holy city¡K See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his people, and God himself will be with them.¡¦

Yes, all disciples are holy whether they are already with Christ in heaven or are still here on earth, so today ¡V the Feast of All Saints ¡V is the feast of the whole Christian family. It asks us to take stock of the gift the Father has given us : we have become members of the divine family through Christ, and we have received his Spirit, his holiness.

As such, holiness is not a state that we can achieve by our own efforts, it¡¦s not the fruit of heroism, it is a downright gift from God. He is the only one who can make us saints.

The vision of St. John, the writer of Revelation is that : ¡¥The home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his people. God himself will be with them. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more.¡¦

The Epistle reading this morning invites us to lift up our eyes and contemplate the state of holiness the Father has prepared for us.

And yet, how much sorrow, bitterness and struggle we must put up with in this life! When we see the suffering of so many innocent people victims of violence and injustice, of betrayal and deceit, we try to understand why they have to suffer but we cannot.

The Book of Revelation has four chapters on this distressing problem. They are from Chapter five to eight. It tells of a book being kept in heaven where Angel records all sufferings and tears of everyone. The book tells us too why so many absurd things happen. But this book is closed and sealed with seven seals that nobody can break open. Is all this destined to remain a mystery forever? Must we weep and bear with such a state of affairs? Can we ever find a meaning for all that befalls us?

The seer of the book of Revelation tells us to stop crying. According to the epistle reading of today, God himself will be with us. He will wipe every tear from our eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more.

If we read Chapter 7 of the Book of Revelation, we read that an angel comes from the East holding the seal of the living God and puts the seal on the forehead of the servants of the Lord. Their number is one hundred and forty four thousand. This is a symbolic number and is the product of 12 x 12 x 1000 and it signifies the whole Christian community.

These are not the privileged; they are not spared the tests and toils of this life. They are, however, in a special category; they belong to God, and know his thoughts. They look at the things of this world through his eyes. Trials neither upset them, nor discourage them, nor frighten them. They look on disease and pain and betrayal not as defeats, but as steps towards growth and coming of age. Death is not the final mockery, it is a birth. Therefore, they can see the final success of the plan and work of God, instead of the matters about reward and punishment.

According to Revelation, we have another vision of a great multitude, that no one can count, from every nation, race, people and tongue. They all stand in front of the throne of Jesus the Lamb of God, they all wear white robes and hold palm branches in their hands. The write robes symbolise joy and innocence, the palm branches are a sign of victory.

Who are they? They are members of the community of saints in heaven. They are the ones who survived the time of great distress and have given up their lives like the Lamb of God. The world considered them fools and losers, but in the eyes of God they are winners. God himself will be with them. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more.

Jesus the Lamb of God is now walking in front of all those who shared his option for love.

The passage was written to urge persecuted Christians to persevere : what they are going through now, is what Jesus, the Lamb of God, went through before them. If they follow him like sheep behind their shepherd, they will also share his triumph.

The Book of Revelation gives us a glimpse of heaven and of our final destiny. We receive a gleam of light from heaven that throws light on the questions deep down inside our hearts : where do I come from, where do I go, what is the significance of joy and sorrow, life and death? What happens after death?

This vision of heaven gives meaning to our existence ; we are not wandering aimlessly on earth. The light from heaven helps us to see that our life is a multiplicity of entries and exists, guided not by a blind destiny but by the love of a Father.

We leave our mother¡¦s womb and entre the world, we leave our infancy and entre adolescence; adolescence is followed by youth, the youth by adulthood and so to old age. Then the time eventually comes for us to leave this world which we had perhaps begun to like and we are not willing to leave; we would like to stay here always.

We can never quench our thirst for life. We detect in it everywhere the signs of death ; disease, ignorance, injustice, fraility, fatigue, pain, betrayal. This cannot be the ultimate state, the ultimate world because evil has left its mark all over it. We need space where we can move around free from all forms of death.

The Gospel reading today tells us a very touching story ¡V Jesus raises Lazarus to life. If Jesus can raise Lazarus to life, and he also raise from the death, we should not be afraid. Jesus will hold us by the hand and will lead us safely from this world into our new life.

The divine plan of God for us is that he calls each of us to share his holiness and make us all his saints. The home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his people.

Brothers and sister, on this day when we celebrate the Feast of all saints, let us not only give thank to God for the good examples done by all saints in the history, but also let us be saints, then we are sure that the home of God among us. He will dwell with us and we will be his people ¡V the saints.