After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count,
from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing
before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches
in their hands. They cried out in a loud voice, saying,
“Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne and to the
Lamb!”
And all the angels stood around the throne and around the elders and the
four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and
worshiped God, singing,
“Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom
and thanksgiving and honor
and power and might
be to our God forever and ever! Amen.”
Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, “Who are these, robed in
white, and where have they come from?” I said to him, “Sir, you are the one
who knows.” Then he said to me, “These are they who have come out of
the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the
blood of the Lamb.
For this reason they are before the throne of God
and worship him day and night within his temple,
and the one who is seated on the throne will shelter them.
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.”
One: This is the word of the Lord
All: Thanks be to God
Sermon: “Every Nation, Every Tribe, Every Tongue: One Table”
On this All Saints’ Day, we bring more than ourselves into worship. We
bring memories. We bring names. We bring the sound of a familiar laugh,
the warmth of a hand, the wisdom of someone who knew how to steady us.
Some of those memories make us smile. Some still catch in our throats.
Often, they do both.
And into this gathering of remembering, Revelation offers us a vision: a
great multitude that no one can count, from every nation, every tribe, every
people, and every language, standing before God and before Christ.
What a picture. Not a lonely soul trying to find a way through eternity. Not a
small circle of people who all look alike or speak alike. A multitude.
A gathering so wide that counting gives way to wonder.
Revelation can be a difficult book. Its images are vivid, sometimes
unsettling. But here, the invitation is not to decode a timetable or predict the
end of the world. It is to see our lives through the promise of God. To
imagine that suffering does not have the last word. To trust that the future
belongs not to fear, but to love.
Notice that these people have not avoided hardship. They have come
through a great ordeal. Their song does not erase what they have endured.
Their hope is not built on pretending that everything was easy.
That matters, because we know something about ordeals. We know
hospital corridors, unanswered questions, difficult goodbyes. We know the
strange experience of reaching for the telephone before remembering that
the person we want to call is no longer there.
God does not ask us to deny any of that. Instead, the vision promises that
God will shelter the people. They will hunger no more. They will thirst no
more. The Lamb will shepherd them toward living water. And God will wipe
away every tear.
Every tear. Not only the tears we manage to explain. Not only the tears we
allow others to see. The quiet tears, the angry tears, the tears that arrive
years after a loss. The tears we are to stubborn or afraid to let fall for fear
of judgment of embarrassment. But God knows and God draws near
enough to wipe them away even hen we don’t le them fall.
This is a vision of hope despite the struggles, not a vision that dismisses
them. We do not have to choose between being honest about grief and
being faithful to God. We can carry our sorrow into the presence of the One
who promises to hold us.
This is also where we begin to understand the communion of saints. When
Christians speak those words, we are not describing a collection of perfect
people. Saints are not people who never struggled, never doubted, or
never made mistakes. They are people held by God’s grace, whose lives
become places where love can shine.
We have known such people. Someone who made room at the table.
Someone who brought soup without needing to be asked. Someone who
stood up for a neighbour. Someone who taught a child to pray, or showed
us that prayer can take the shape of practical kindness.
Their lives were not flawless. Neither are ours. But through them,
something of God’s goodness reached us. And that goodness has not
simply disappeared.
The communion of saints is larger than the congregation we can see here
today. It embraces those who worship beside us and those who have gone
before us and those who can’t bear to be here. It reaches beyond our own
family stories to generations whose names we will never know. We belong
to a fellowship we did not create and cannot measure, a fellowship held
together in Christ.
Christian faith asks us to believe in eternal life. To call ourselves Christians
is to place our hope in the risen Christ: to trust that death is real, but that
death is not ultimate. God’s love does not come to a stop at the edge of a
grave.
That does not mean we must feel certain every moment. Belief is not an
examination we pass by having no questions. Sometimes faith is a strong
song. Sometimes it is a whisper: “God, I want to trust you. Help me.” There
is room for that whisper here.
But the promise toward which we turn is clear: this earthly life is just the
beginning. It is precious, deeply meaningful, and worthy of our care. Yet it is
not the whole story. We are made for a life in God that is more spacious
than the years we can count.
We do not know every detail of what lies beyond death. Revelation gives us
images, not a travel guide. But it shows us the character of the One who
holds that future: a God who shelters, a Shepherd who guides, a love that
tends every wound.
So, we entrust those who have gone before us to that love. We remember
them with gratitude. We let ourselves miss them. And we dare to hope that
what God has begun in them, and in us, is not abandoned, but carried
toward fullness.
And who belongs within the reach of this hope? Listen again: every nation,
every tribe, every people, every tongue.
Everyone means EVERYONE. The vision stretches our imagination toward
every person, not merely the people we find familiar, agreeable, or easy to
love. No nationality is outside God’s concern. No language makes a prayer
less worthy of being heard. No human boundary can tell God where love
must stop.
The multitude is united, but its differences have not been erased. John can
still speak of nations, peoples, and languages. Unity in God is not
sameness. It is belonging without the demand that everyone become a
copy of us.
That is good news for the person who wonders whether there is room for
them. And sometimes that person is us. We do not always feel like beloved
children of God. We may feel inadequate, exhausted, overlooked, or
ashamed. We may think that other people have faith figured out while we
are barely holding on.
But “feeling” unloved does not mean we are unloved. Feeling far from God
does not mean God has let us go. We are beloved children of God before
we can explain it, before we can earn anything, before we can get
everything right. Our belonging rests in God’s grace, not in our ability to feel
worthy of it. And the grace that holds us reaches outward.
I hear in this vision a hope as wide as creation: nothing can overcome God’s desire to redeem all
creation. Not our divisions. Not our failures of imagination. Not even death
can make the risen Christ surrender the work of love.
We cannot explain exactly how God will bring that redemption to fullness.
But we can refuse to make God’s mercy smaller than the vision we have
been given.
Today, we come to one table. Our communion meal is a small, tangible sign
of that great gathering. We come with different histories, different
questions, different griefs. Yet the invitation is shared. The bread is shared.
The grace is shared. The table is open to EVERYONE.
We do not need to pretend that the table removes the ache of an empty
chair. But here we remember that the communion of saints is held in Christ,
not broken by the limits of what we can see. Those who have gone before
us belong to God. We belong to God. And we receive strength to live that
belonging now: to feed hungry people, welcome strangers, make peace,
and sit beside someone who weeps.
So, as we prepare to come to the table, I invite you to consider your own
understanding of God’s vision and what is yet to come. How wide is the
future you imagine? Who is gathered there? Is there someone you have
quietly left outside the circle? What might change if you trusted that you,
too, are deeply beloved?
Hold the names of those who have gone before you with tenderness. Hold
your questions without fear. And let this promise open your heart: every
nation, every tribe, every tongue. One people held in love. One table of
grace. This life is the beginning; God is not finished with us yet. May it be
so.
Amen.
