Eternal Kingdom

Graphic by remixchurchmedia

Lections: All Saints Sunday (Hallowmas), AD 2026 A

Homily:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for you know his sins are great.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

What makes a saint? “Saint” comes from sanctus, sanctus means holy, and holy means set apart, for some purpose or some person. It isn’t about sinlessness, flawlessness, moral perfection or purity. Rather, it has to do with distinction, with belonging. What sets us apart? To whom do we belong? That’s what makes us saints.

And the answer, I hope, should be obvious to even the youngest amongst us. Jesus sets us apart, claims us for His own, claims us as His saints. It’s only because of His promise that we have the audacity to call ourselves His Church, to call ourselves Christians.

The purpose of the Church is to make us into Christ—not just to act like Him, mind you, not just to worship Him, but literally to become Him, mystically, miraculously. We are called out, from every continent, caste, and creed, filled with His Spirit in our Baptism, made into His Body at the Eucharist, empowered by His Word when rightly preached.

In the biblical narrative, a living soul requires flesh and blood and breath. So when we are given His Breath at the Font, when we receive His Body and Blood at the Altar—when we then have the Name of Christ, the Breath of Christ, the Body and the Blood of Christ—what does that make us? Who does that make us? It makes us Christ, together. For when we are one in Christ, then we are one with God. This is the great mystery and wonder of the Church. This is what the Sacraments are for.

It’s not that I alone am Jesus, I alone must bear His Cross. But all of us together share His mission, share His purpose, share His promise. All of us together share His life—not as individuals but as a community, as an ἐκκλησία, as the “assembly of those called forth.” The Church is set apart, given life, made one, in order that we might now be Jesus for a world in need of Him. And that is honor great enough to raise the head of the lowest beggar, and responsibility heavy enough to bow the shoulders of any emperor.

When we do our job—when we are Christ for the world—then the world will often treat us just as it treated Him. He warned us of this when He told us that we must pick up our cross and follow. To be Christ for the world, we must love the world. And to love the world, we must be vulnerable; we must give of ourselves for the good of others. And that hurts. Love hurts. But that’s how you know that it’s real.

The early Church rejoiced in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. She hailed Him as He ascended into Heaven. She went forth in the power of His Spirit and His Word at Pentecost. Never once did she raise the sword. Never once did she cast the stone. But she met with resistance. The first to die was Stephen, and in Christ he led the way. Stephen died unjustly for his faith, and for his ministry amongst those most in need. His death mirrored Jesus’ own, such that people saw Christ, in his life and in his death.

And so the Church rejoiced to be persecuted, not for her sins, but for doing the right thing, for being Jesus for the world. It wasn’t masochism, but finding meaning in our suffering, finding purpose in it. Christ was not too good to bleed, so neither are we as His Body. The Church soon celebrated the martyrs of her faith—literally, the faithful witnesses—as having run the race, having fought the good fight, having been found worthy of the laurels of her King. Death for them was not the end, but the opened tomb up unto life eternal.

“For if we have been united with Him in a death like His,” St Paul wrote, “we shall certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like His.” There are far, far betting things ahead, than any we leave behind. That’s what All Saints Sunday is really all about: celebrating Christians as the Body of Christ, still serving, still healing, still preaching and teaching, still living, dying, and rising, for the salvation of this world.

In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus’ ministry begins with the Beatitudes, a series of eight blessings which together turn our whole world upside-down. “Blessed are the meek,” He said, “the merciful, the mourning, and malnourished. Blessed are the poor, the pure, the peacemakers, and the persecuted. Blessed are you, when people revile you falsely on My account, for great is your reward in Heaven.”

This was a shot across the bow to the hierarchies of power upholding the Roman Empire: a Gospel of liberation to the oppressed, and a damning Word of Law to their oppressors. But it isn’t just a wishlist, a way that we must strive to be. Christ is describing, indeed revealing, what He already knows to be true: that in the eyes of God, the lowest of the low are exalted, and the highest of the high brought down to earth.

A revelation of the past, a guide to the present, a promise for the future—the Beatitudes are all of these and none of them at once. For they unveil unto us the Kingdom of Heaven, and that Kingdom exists outside of time, beyond the limits of now and of then. In this, the Beatitudes are thoroughly apocalyptic, otherworldly: a reality already and not yet. There all time collapses into eternity. There all generations, all aeons, the living and the dead, gather as one at the Wedding Feast of the Lamb.

Such are the Endtimes, not in the sense of termination, of ceasing to be, but in that this has been Creation’s quest and goal from the very beginning, the culmination of our existence. There in the Kingdom of Heaven we see the white-robed martyrs washed in the Blood of the Lamb, the Blood of our Baptismal covenant. There we see our ancestors, our descendants, our separated brethren, united as one in the Body of Christ: all of space and time suffused within the light and love of God.

It’s all one: Sacraments and saints, Baptisms and beheadings, past and present, Heaven and earth, life and death and resurrection, gathered into one in Jesus Christ. And we are given a foretaste of this feast to come, of this eternal reality, here in the Eucharist, in the Body and Blood of our Lord. The Sacrament is eternity breaking into time. Here around this Table are gathered every Christian who ever was and who ever will be: the generations of love who made you, and all of those whom you shall make. We all Commune at one eternal Table, one eternal Altar, regardless of where or of when.

And so you see that we can never truly be alone, nor can we lose the ones whom we have loved; for Christ has broken death’s back, and opened the Kingdom of Heaven to all. We are all saints, in that we are set apart, to be Jesus for this world. And we are set apart in order that the whole world might be gathered into Him.

Taste the Kingdom, then go be it for everyone else.

In the Name of the Father of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Pertinent Links

RDG Stout

Blog: https://rdgstout.blogspot.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RDGStout/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsqiJiPAwfNS-nVhYeXkfOA

X: https://twitter.com/RDGStout

St Peter’s Lutheran

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Website: https://www.stpetersnymills.org/

Donation: https://secure.myvanco.com/L-Z9EG/home

Nidaros Lutheran

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YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@nidaroschurch6026