Year A, All Saints Day Revelation 7:9-17
At my first church, I served with a rector who was (and is) your classic southern gentlemen. If you were to write a book about a priest and you needed a picture, it would be his picture you would use. He was always perfectly put together and very specific about how things were done. There is a part in our funeral liturgy called the committal. It’s when you lower the casket or ashes into the ground. Then the officiant says: we commit his body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust….There are directions in the prayer book that say: while earth is cast upon the coffin, the Celebrant says these words. It’s one of the more poignant and meaningful parts of the service.
The rector at my first church had
a silver vial with a screw-on cap. There
was sand inside that he would sprinkle over the casket or urn in the sign of
the cross. When I went on to become a
rector I asked the altar guild of my new church where their silver container
for sand was. I have since learned that
it’s called an “earth vial.” They told
me they had never heard of such a thing.
I asked my good friend who was also a priest if she used an earth vial and
she said, “Why in the world would you want that? You have to use dirt and get your hands a
little dirty.” So that is what I did and
I prefer that method very much.
When I looked up the name of this
thing, the description said, “Almy's Earth Vial provides a dignified way to cast the first measure of
earth at burial ceremonies.” What I
have learned over the course of my ministry is that there is very little
dignity in death or the illness that leads to death. Grief doesn’t feel dignified either.
It’s
not just death that is messy…it’s life as well. The Bible is a bit messy and
that is one of the things that I appreciate about it. Like many Episcopalians or people in mainline
denominations (that would include Lutherans, Presbyterians, Methodists, etc) I
am not really comfortable with the Book of Revelation, unless I can take a few
verses here, a few verses there and cut out all the weird stuff. There is a lot
of weird stuff in the Book of Revelation.
One of the first funerals I preached was for my grandmother and I really
wanted to use this very reading as she had suffered a lot at the end of her
life. I loved this line at the end: “They will hunger no more and thirst no more;
the sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat; for the Lamb at the
center of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs
of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.” I
talked to my boss about it and he said, “No problem, just take out the lamb
parts.” That is what I did.
But
as I read the text from Revelation this time around, I kept coming back to the
lamb. When you see artistic renderings
of this lamb, the lamb looks glorious.
It’s always snow white…maybe even radiantly glowing. There might be a blood stain somewhere, but
it looks like it was just a small little wound, nothing to worry about. However, if you go back two chapters in the
Book of Revelation, the lamb is described as “standing as if it had been slaughtered.”[1]
Now, I didn’t have strength to look
up what an actual lamb that was slaughtered would look like, but I am guessing
it’s not a pretty sight. Some of you
might be wondering why there is a lamb there at all, which is a good question.
The lamb symbolizes Jesus who was sacrificed on the cross. In the Gospel of John, Jesus is referred to
as the Lamb of God and we have memorialized this by buying chocolate lambs at
Easter. Of course we also have chocolate
crosses…it’s just what we do—we take disturbing images and we dip them in chocolate.
We
don’t know exactly what this scene from Revelation depicts. There is a lot of mystery and some think they
have found the formula to define exactly what is happening. But for now, let’s assume that it’s an image
of the life to come—a time when people of every nation, from all tribes, and
peoples and languages, worship and rejoice together. It’s a time when all will have what we need
and no one person will be deprived. At
the center of all this glory and joy is a lamb that has been slaughtered. It seems out of place. I would much rather
have a shiny, happy Jesus with a few very subtle scars that we can easily
ignore. But no…the lamb that has been
slaughtered is the center of it all.
Some
people have interpreted this as meaning that we need to put all our faith and
hope in the blood the lamb; that will make us pure and holy. But that’s not what I see. What I see is an afterlife that doesn’t
worship the suffering, but acknowledges the suffering and doesn’t shy away from
grief or tears. The last line… “God will wipe away every tear from their
eyes.” That means there are still tears.
But there is also a God who is so close, that God will catch those tears
before they drop to the ground.
We
have had a lot of wonderful people from our parish die this year. And I know many of you are carrying
extraordinary grief, a grief that cannot be easily packed away. Later we will
read the names of those who have died who are connected to the parish. And I am sure there are some names we don’t
know, names that are missing, names of people we buried years ago. The grief is still there. It never goes away. It just changes shape. And then there are smaller deaths, it could
be an estrangement from a family member, someone in our life whose suffering we
can’t assuage and it’s a little death every time we imagine them in pain. There
is the loss of jobs, of dreams, of health, of a country that doesn’t look the
way we had hoped it would look. So many
little deaths…
Today,
on this day, we don’t shy away from the losses and the grief. We worship a
crucified God, but we also worship a resurrected God whose life, death and
resurrection gives us hope, not just for the next life, but this life as
well. In the Episcopal faith, we don’t
just consider saints as the very good people, or even good people who have
died. Paul’s letters referred to all
Christians as saints…that’s all of you, even those who are still struggling
with what you believe. You might not be
on board with everything that I am saying, and that is ok. But I hope you will
believe me in this, the church isn’t meant to be a museum for the holiest of
saints, it’s a place of healing, restoration, and transformation…for all of
us.
[1] The
focus on the slaughtered lamb came from a Working Preacher Podcast: https://www.workingpreacher.org/podcasts/1110-all-saints-day-november-1-2026
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