All Saints Day: Spoiler Alert

Revelation 7: 9—17

If you like to read movie reviews, then you probably know what a Spoiler Alert is about. A spoiler alert is when a reviewer reveals a film’s crucial plot point, probably a twist ending, in their review, and if you read it before you see the movie, it would spoil the element of surprise for you. Thus, the reviewer notifies the reader with a Spoiler Alert, giving the reader the chance to stop reading before they spoil it for themselves. Or, you can keep reading if you can’t wait to find out how the story ends.
As we consider God’s Word to us on this Festival of All Saints, then, I need to issue this Spoiler Alert. Today, Holy Scripture is going to reveal how your story ends. It will tell how the story ends for everyone who has been cleansed by the blood of the Lamb, Jesus Christ. I don’t know about you, but I think I’ve read every Spoiler Alert I’ve ever seen, and I would recommend we definitely go ahead and read this one, too. It is not there for us to ignore. It is there to encourage us. It is there to inspire confidence in us. So let’s take a look at the final scene of our story—our story made real through Jesus, our Lord.
The great vision of John we know as Revelation is filled with bizarre imagery, Hebraic number symbolism and repeated references to the Old Testament. It certainly must be the most controversial book in the Bible. For such reasons, many Christians want to leave the book of Revelation alone. They’d rather not read the Spoiler Alert, because it all sounds too weird and scary. But we dare not shut the door on this book. Believe it or not, there are scenes of astounding beauty to be found in Revelation. Our First Reading for this All Saints’ Day is one of them. It is a vision of the saints in triumph—a picture of heaven itself. Like the hymn we began with, it asks us to behold a host arrayed in white—a crowd of people so big that it is uncountable. The people in this vision are wearing white robes and are holding palm branches in their hands. They are Christian people who have been Oxycleaned in the blood of the Lamb, Jesus Christ. They are wearing the robe of holiness that was draped over them at their baptism. And they are holding palm branches in hand—that gesture of praise happened on earth, too, remember? Back then it was welcoming the Savior to his holy city—the city where his mission would be completed; here in Revelation the saints are welcoming Jesus home. And this is their shout of praise: We are saved by our God who sits on the throne and by the Lamb!” Here’s the Spoiler Alert! Because Jesus became fully human, lived His Law perfectly and then gave His life as a perfect offering, you will be one of those white-robed worshippers. The book of Revelation sends the clear message: be faithful unto death, and this is what you have to look forward to: you will see Jesus in person, the Lamb of God who took away the sins of the world. You will worship Him with the entire number of believers from all time and place. You will serve the Lord in perfect happiness. You will want for nothing and will lack nothing. Well, that’s not entirely true. You will lack sorrow. You will lack grief. You will lack pain and suffering. You will lack sadness, disappointment, worry and fear. Those things you will lack. Those things will be lost forever as you look at the face of your Savior Jesus, the Shepherd and the Lamb, the Alpha and Omega, Your King and your brother. It will finally be Him. Jesus. He’s bringing you there. He put the white clothes—or is the right clothes on you. He put the song of faith in your heart. He will bring you over the canyon of death on the bridge of his cross into a scene just like this great celebration in Revelation.
That’s the Spoiler Alert. This is how your story ends, but as you can see, it’s really not an ending at all. Knowing that this is God’s promise to you ought to totally change the way your life gets lived. But does it?
All too often, I’m afraid that we are so distracted by life in this world that we don’t give much thought to life with Christ that never ends. The cares and concerns that trouble us get right up in our faces, so that we can’t see past them. The idea of heaven is pleasant, but distant. It isn’t until we come face to face with death that these promises start to really break through to us.
It might also be that, for as much time as we’ve spent in church, we’re still not all that clear about how you end up in heaven. We sit here observing an All Saint’s Day, but we wear the “saint” title awkwardly, if we claim it at all. It is time to change that. You need to realize that yes, indeed, you are one of God’s saints. Why? Because that’s what God says you are.
That’s what he calls those whom he has chosen and adopted in Baptism and washed clean in the blood of the Lamb. The apostle Paul also does it on numerous occasions. He calls the members of the congregations he wrote to “saints”-- which was kind of strange, considering he was usually writing to them to tell them to get their act together. But that’s the tension in which we live. We know we don’t deserve to be called saints. We don’t deserve to be called children of God. We know that when it comes to being holy, well, that’s a joke, right? We know that if a judge and jury were ever to sift through the evidence of our lives, they would be able to come up with incident after incident that would disqualify us from saintly status.
Despite our ideas and doubts about sainthood, God looks at Jesus’ cross and empty tomb, then looks at us and because of what Jesus did, he names us saints. So that’s what we must be. Just as he calls ordinary bread and wine his own body and blood; just as he calls a bit of water with his name “a washing of rebirth and renewal,” if God calls us saints, we’re saints, through Jesus Christ our Lord. If God can name the day day and night, night, then He can call us saints through the shed blood and risen life of Jesus. Are you going to tell God he’s wrong? That he’s made a mistake? “Not me, Lord, no, I’m not a saint.” God hears that and says, “Hey, listen, being a saint is not up to you! Because of what my Son did, I can and will say to you that in my eyes, you are a saint. You are someone for whom my Son was rejected and beaten and killed. Being called a saint isn’t an achievement; it’s a gift. Receive it and wear your white robe well.
Take this good news to heart: God considers you a saint, because the death and resurrection of his Son Jesus has been applied to you. Despite everything the devil and the world will throw at you in this life, you have heard and believed the Spoiler Alert that promises final and absolute victory in Jesus Christ! We are saved by our God who sits on the throne and by the Lamb. May God, in His grace, work through you and me to add more and more souls to that heavenly crowd of saints; in Jesus’ name. Amen.