"All Shall Be Well"

On November 1, the church observes the feast of All Saints', and we observe this major day in the life of the church on this Sunday closest to November 1. We remember, in the words of Hebrews and Ecclesiasticus, that "great cloud of witnesses" that has gone before us, "our ancestors in their generations" who no longer share this life with us, but who have gone on to a fuller, richer, more complete, and everlasting life as saints with God.

This whole issue of saints, of those who enjoy everlasting life with God, begs the question, "Who's in and who's out?" This is a question that goes to the heart of Christian theology and is, not surprisingly, the most common question put to me by students. Sometimes the question is implied in a positive statement along these lines: "My friend says if a person does not accept Jesus Christ as their personal savior they'll go to hell and I just don't believe that can be right." The accompanying unspoken question is "It can't, can it?"

The unease about these questions I think has to do with our post-Enlightenment empirical minds, minds that demand positive proof for any assertion. And since there can be no proof in this life that meets the standards of science, we just have to live with uncertainty.

Uncertainty is part of who we are, and we are never more mindful of the uncertainty in our lives than when we confront the prospect of our lives ending. Although we hate to think of it, except for a few persons, even the circumstances surrounding our deaths are not able to be predicted with any certainty as to how and when. This was the powerful, jarring lesson of September 11, 2001. This was the lesson last year of death by sniper fire in a suburban mall or by gas in a Moscow theater. It has ever been thus. Think of the families of the millions of Europeans in the 16th century who were suddenly and inexplicably carried off by the black plague that killed a third of the entire population in less than three years.

In the midst of uncertainty we look for answers, something reliable, something that can help us know deep inside us how things will turn out, if not in the short run, at least for eternity. The Bible has been a place where many have looked for answers to the ultimate question of what will become of us after this life. And the Bible is a good place to look for those answers. The problem, however, is that different people have come up with different answers, even when they have looked at the same scripture passage.

This is nowhere more true than in the case of the last book of the Bible - The Revelation to John, also called The Apocalypse. This book has a long and checkered history of being used as an historical book that can help us predict the end time. Book stores are currently doing a booming trade in a series of frighteningly silly novels - the "Left Behind" series - that are based on the purported predictions in Revelation. Many cults throughout history have used Revelation in this way to predict actual dates when the end time would come and their adherents have all slunk off in embarrassment when life went on as usual the day after the predicted end.

Another way Revelation has been used is in times of persecution when the take-away message has been, "Hold on, be faithful. Jesus is coming soon and if you are faithful, you will be saved." This has been a line taken by the mainline churches and is in current vogue in the aftermath of September 11. The problem here - at least for me - is that I just can't seem to find that message very clearly in Revelation when I consider what else the book says.

What I do find in Revelation is a book of dreams - bizarre dreams - in which the weak always win in the end. In order to grasp what is really going on you have to tap into the dream, to let go of the intellectual and suspend the rational. Indeed, it is my opinion that trying to make rational sense of dream material like this has resulted in the flaky lessons some people have drawn from Revelation. You just can't force fit rational explanations to dreams; instead you have to let go of the rational and get in touch with the emotional and visceral message of Revelation.

What happens when we do this? Specifically, what happens when we apply this way of reading Revelation to tonight's passage? And how does all that relate to the theme of All Saints' Day?

There is in Revelation a constant juxtaposition of seeing and hearing. For example, in tonight's passage, John hears of the 144,000 elect, but he actually sees with his own eyes "a great multitude that no one could count." There is something of a tentative, "iffy" quality in what John hears about as opposed to a more definite quality in what he sees. There is something less definite in the 144,000 who are sealed as opposed to relative certainty about the vast numbers of the unsealed who also are brought victorious before the throne. I see in this dreamy passage a weak message of people being excluded which is overshadowed - eclipsed, really - by a much stronger message of radical inclusiveness that is consistent with the way we experience Jesus in the gospels.

The people in this multitude that John sees - who, let us remember, are from every nation, tribe, and language - are all holding palm branches in their hands. Palm branches are a symbol of victory and triumph. "For the Lord takes pleasure in his people and adorns the poor with victory" says the psalmist in tonight's psalm (149:4). And in the gospel story of the beatitudes, Jesus does not speak to just a few select followers, but to a vast crowd of people. Again, we have a dreamy picture of no one being left out, not even those who have never heard of Jesus. As one of our ads in The Daily Princetonian says, "Nobody gets hosed!"

What else can we discern in this bizarre dream that John has? I think there is an echo here of the gospel message of God's preference - I use that word deliberately: preference - God's preference for the poor, the weak, the sick, and the suffering. There is an echo of the way that God throughout the Bible is faithful to those who in their hearts turn to God, and this faithfulness shows itself in compassion and love, as of a mother or father who will never abandon a beloved child. There is an enduring sense in Revelation that God will sustain us and help us even in the midst of death and destruction.

We sense this radical inclusiveness most dramatically in the almost poetical closing verses of tonight's passage from Revelation that promises that all tears will be wiped away and there will be no more weeping or sighing, and that promises that those who stand before God will be sheltered from the harshness of sun and heat.

As we read these final verses we especially need to tap into the sense of what is being communicated. We do well to observe, as one commentator says:

Whether they realized it or not!

For, as Jesus says in Matthew 7:21, "Not everyone who says to me 'Lord, Lord' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my father in heaven."

So as we think about All Saints Day and about who gets to be a saint, we can be joyful and optimistic. While I believe it is theoretically possible to fail the course of life, I also believe God is an easy grader! And that's because God loves us and cares for us in a manner that in our limited understanding of the ways of God we cannot imagine or grasp. Our Communion Hymn asserts that there are saints all around us and that we can be one too.

The optimistic words of the 14th century English mystic Dame Julian of Norwich - who had some very bizarre dreams of her own - which I repeated over and over to my daughter one year ago tonight as she passed from this life to the next seem especially fitting on All Saints' Day. We do well to remember her words in relation not only to the lives of loved ones who have gone before us, but our own lives as well: "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well."

Thanks be to God!