This coming Saturday is an often overlooked – and bittersweet – holiday known as All Saints Day. Many congregations will celebrate it a day late, on Sunday, with, among other things, a role call of those who have left this earth over the previous year. It is bitter because it calls attention to our grief in losing loved ones. However, our Lord Jesus through Saint Paul provides us with this sweet aftertaste: “We do not want you to be uniformed sisters and brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. … For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord.” (1 Thessalonians 4.13-18)
If one’s hope is found only in humans and/or human institutions (including the visible church), one’s life will always be filled with the bitterness of disappointment and death. This is a simple, yet difficult fact. It is the result of fallen people living in a fallen world.
While there certainly are different levels of disappointment (we get over a stubbed toe much easier than the death of a loved one), the truth is that every person we ever meet will in some manner disappoint us … and eventually die. And the individuals we get to know the best, will disappoint us the most! This is also true of ourselves … whom we probably know better than anyone else (and if you refuse to admit that you disappoint yourself multiple times daily, you are living in an artificial world that is waiting to come crashing down upon you). So allow me to remind you of this bitter reality: some day you, too, are going to die!
So much for the bitter reality of life in this world … and how All Saints Day reminds us of it … for this same holiday takes us immediately to the sweet message of Easter: “Christ is Risen!” The bitter and the sweet are brought together as Paul writes, “If the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied. But Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. … The last enemy to be destroyed is death.” (1 Corinthians 15.16-26)
The death and resurrection we experience in our baptism creates this hope-filled reality in our hearts, as Paul further writes, “All of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death. We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.” (Romans 6.3-5)
However, we live in a world where the bitter message of disappointment is being amplified and repeated at what feels like unprecedented levels. You feel it, and so do I. I am disappointed in our government and in many of the people of our country. I am disappointed in our church body and many people in it. I am disappointed by the words, actions, and attitudes of many people in my life … and (wow!?) way too often in my own words, actions, and attitude. This hurts! And if my hope is found in any of these locations (including myself), then I am going to find myself sliding down the slippery slope of bitterness with so many others … and cancelling one person after another out of my life (and often feeling justified for getting rid of these wretched people).
I pray that all who are tumbling down this slope come to the same realization as did St. Paul, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 7.24-25) … as my thoughts repeatedly return to this 18th century hymn written by Edward Mote: “My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness; No merit of my own I claim but wholly lean on Jesus’ name. When darkness veils His lovely face, I rest on His unchanging grace; In every high and stormy gale my anchor holds within the veil. His oath, His covenant and blood support me in the raging flood; When every earthly prop gives way, He then is all my hope and stay. On Christ the solid rock I stand; All other ground is sinking sand.” (LSB 575)
Or, for a more contemporary rendering of the same message, we can turn to the 2001 song by Stuart Townend “In Christ alone, my hope is found He is my light, my strength, my song. This Cornerstone, this solid ground firm through the fiercest drought and storm. What heights of love. What depths of peace, when fears are stilled, when striving cease. My Comforter, my All in All here in the love of Christ I stand.”
Bittersweet is not only our celebration of All Saints Day but also the story of our lives in this world. And the saddest part of this message is that, while the bitterness is a guaranteed fact in all of our lives, some – even among the baptized – choose to walk away from the sweet Gospel hope Jesus offers. As St. Paul also writes, “I am, astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel – not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.” (Galatians 1.6-7)
Disappoints abound – in our county … in our church … in individuals … in ourselves – and the taste is extremely bitter (Is this the second consecutive week I have written about death?!). So let’s close with a sweet Gospel blessing through that same saint’s pen: “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen” (Galatians 1.3-5)
Bitter-Sweet
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