Scripture can be found here…
I grew up with a very particular definition of a “saint.” Saints were people who were so extraordinarily good, they were lifted up by the church for special notice. Joan of Arc, who saw visions that she was called to lead an army. Anthony of Padua who… well, all I really knew about him was that he supposedly could help you find lost objects… which would be great! I was given little books of the lives of the saints and was terrified by some of the ends they met. Really, many terrible NC-17 things happened to them. But the culture of saints as special role models was strong, and I was into it.
Then I became a Presbyterian, and something miraculous happened. I learned that we are the saints. I started noticing where that word, saint, appeared in the New Testament, and I realized it is always used to refer to people who had joined the company of Jesus-followers, all those who were populating the newly forming church. They were the saints. We are the saints.
The New Testament Greek word we translate as “saint” means, “holy ones,” so, that’s a conundrum. That sounds a lot like the original definition of “saint” I grew up with. But here’s the catch: guess what “holy” actually means? For most of my life I understood it to mean extraordinarily good, better, best. But scripturally speaking, in both Testaments, holy means “set apart.” God choses a covenant people. It doesn’t really speak to excellence of virtue or moral character. Rather, it means people identified as part of this particular group. And we’re back to—Church people, Jesus people. Us.
The two passages we’re reading this morning seem to walk on each side of that divide, the two definitions of saint. The passage from the Book of Wisdom speaks of the righteous—that beautiful opening verse that makes your breath catch in your throat, and gives your heart a squeeze. “The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God,” such a profoundly moving statement. The passage goes on to chide those of us who grieve when are left behind, when our loved ones die—
In the eyes of the foolish they seemed to have died,
and their departure was thought to be a disaster,
and their going from us to be their destruction;
but they are at peace. ~Wisdom 3:2-3
They are at peace. They are in God’s hand. It’s a perfect funeral homily. It is sweet consolation when our hearts are feeling battered by loss.
But then, we come the Revelation to John, the last book in the Christian bible. This book has been a source of consternation to its readers almost from the beginning. When the canon of scripture was being assembled, Revelation was the source of controversy that lasted centuries, millennia, really. Should it even be included with the gospels, and the letters of Paul? It seems to have been accepted by one council, rejected by the next, and rejected and then reclaimed by certain churches. Along with the Letter of James, it is on a list of books rejected by Martin Luther, who called it, “neither apostolic nor prophetic.” Ultimately Revelation was accepted by most Christian churches, even though it’s devilishly hard to understand.
Then, in the 1830’s, an Anglo-Irish clergyman in the Church of Ireland became widely known for a new, unprecedented interpretation of the book. He claimed it described, not events of the past, but events of the future. John Nelson Darby cobbled together bits and pieces of scripture to come up with his claims, the most famous of which is the idea of pre-tribulation rapture, which some have called “beam me up” theology. In the 1990’s and early 2000’s, two men weaponized Darby’s claims with a series of novels that depicted the end times as they imagined they would unfold. (For the record, the Presbyterian Church has officially repudiated the “Left Behind” theology as dangerously un-biblical.)
According to Jesus, “… about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father” ~ Matt. 24:36
In other words, beware of those who claim to know the furniture of heaven and the temperature of hell.
Modern biblical scholars, respecting the context of the book, believe Revelation is a poetic description of the struggles of the early church under persecution by the Roman Empire. They see it as a warning to those churches to be steadfast in clinging to the gospel. They also see it as a book of consolation for those churches, promising that, eventually, God will triumph.
In the penultimate chapter of Revelation, according to the One on the throne: whether we have been good—or not—doesn’t seem to factor into the calculus at all. The revelation simply describes the state of humanity in the presence of God, who comes to be with us and stays for good:
“See, the home of God is among mortals.
God will dwell with them;
they will be God’s peoples,
and God will be with them;
God will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away.” ~Revelation 21:3b-4
This is an extraordinary promise from God, Godself. The “skene” of God is among mortals—that’s another Greek word, which is translated “home” here, “tabernacle” in the King James Version. But the word really means “tent.” God, this passage assures us, has pitched a tent in our midst, and, like Ruth’s promise to Naomi, God promises us, “Wherever you go, I will go.”
That means that there is nowhere we can go, where God is not. God is with us in our days of greatest joy and in our nights of deepest shock and sorrow. God is with us when life is easy-breezy, and when life just feels too hard. God was with us, and God is with us, and God will be with us, not because we are good, but because God is good. God is with us.
Thanks be to God. Amen.