The Heavenly Banquet - November 1, 2015

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Isaiah 25:6-10a
Revelation 21:1-6a

All Saints' Sunday is a day of mixed emotions. On the one hand we come in deep gratitude for the witness of those who have gone before us. In joy we recognize that they continue to give us their love and support, like those grey outlines of departed people in a Family Circus comic strip. The great parade of the saints over the ages fills us with their strength and love. This was John Wesley's favorite church holiday and it is one of mine too. Thank God for the Church Triumphant as the saints now departed are sometimes called.
On the other hand, reading the honor roll of the saints who have died in the last year resurfaces the deep grief we feel at the losses we have experienced. This year the list includes several for whom death was overdue and one for whom it was premature. All of them have left holes in the lives of those who loved them.

The names on our list today are personal. They are former members of this church, people for whom I have presided at a memorial service, those whose service was held in this church, or your loved ones whom you asked to have remembered. Not on the list and yet also appropriate to remember are the countless people who have died in international and national tragedies this year: victims of mass shootings, including one just feet from where we sit; earthquakes, typhoons, and tornadoes all around the globe. "Why, O God?" we have asked again and again. "Why do such terrible things happen?" Sorrow sometimes fills our lives.
Our text today from Isaiah arises out of a time of deep sorrow. The nation of Judah had been defeated by the Babylonians. Their leaders – priests, teachers, merchants, and the king – had been taken into exile in Babylon. Those left to fend for themselves in Judah had to do so in a land laid waste by war. They too wondered, "Why, O God?"
The people of Judah, both those in exile and those left at home, did not have an All Saints' Day by which they could remember those they had lost. Yet to these people sunk in grief and despair, Isaiah pictured a time of comfort and joy: "On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, . . . And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, . . . Then the Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces."
War had devastated the once prosperous land, leaving them hungry and thirsty. Isaiah pictured a feast of rich food and well aged wines. They would eat their fill. It would be a time of great joy. And God would comfort them in their grief, wiping away their tears like a parent kissing a boo boo, either physical or emotional.
Hundreds of years later the evangelist John was also in exile on the island of Patmos, sent there by the Emperor Domitian. He wrote to Christians facing severe persecution. They too knew sorrow and devastation. John reached back to Isaiah to picture a time when God would make a new heaven and earth where God would wipe every tear from their eyes and death would be no more.
Isaiah and John's words come across the ages to us in our own grief and struggle. They paint for us a picture of heaven, that homeland to which we believe our loved ones have gone and in which Jesus has prepared a place for us. We imagine heaven to be a place of comfort and joy, a place of plenty and hope.
A woman who had been a faithful Christian all her life learned she had terminal cancer and would not live long. She instructed her family and pastor that she wanted to be buried with her Bible in one hand and a fork in the other. "I understand why you'd want the Bible," said her pastor, "but why the fork?" "I've always enjoyed YAMS potlucks and family dinners," she said, "and I'm always happy when they say, 'Save your fork because the best is yet to come.' This has been a good life and I know the best is yet to come."
We anticipate heaven as something even better than what we have known in this life. At the heavenly banquet the loved ones whom we have named today feast and celebrate in joy – and that brings us great comfort. It offers us hope as we anticipate the time when our lives here on earth will also come to an end. We too shall feast at the heavenly banquet.
My husband has often commented that if all anybody knew about his childhood family were pictures, they might think that the Wood family worshiped a dead bird, because so many of those pictures were taken of them just before they ate Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner at which a roasted turkey was the centerpiece. Family feasts are indeed images of plenty and joy.
The picture of the heavenly banquet is not only a someday vision. As Christians our hope for the future impacts the present day reality. The vision of what will be transforms what is now.
All Saints Sunday not only celebrates the Church Triumphant, the saints who have departed from this world. It also celebrates the Church Present. In the New Testament a saint is not just a believer who has died. A saint is anyone who believes in Jesus. Saints are not perfect people. They are everyday Christians who do their best to live out the will of God and who sometimes fall flat on their faces.
Most of the artist Caravaggio's masterpieces were commissioned by the church. One painting of Saint Matthew standing at a desk writing the Gospel was rejected by the patrons. They objected to the saint's dirty feet. I would suggest to you today, however, that saints are indeed those with dirty feet, because saints are those who wade through the dust and mud of real life. We are the saints.
And in the dirt and soil of life God's love transforms us now. Sometimes saints are those with tomato stains on their aprons and gravy spills on their ties, not so much because they have slopped during dinner as that they have been preparing the feast for others.
In these last several months the news has been filled with stories of the Syrian refugees flooding into Europe as they flee war and tragedy in their own land. They have come in such numbers that European nations are overwhelmed. It is a serious problem for which there is no simple solution. I have been touched, however, by the stories of European citizens who have welcomed these refugees by taking food and water out to them in the streets, giving them rides even when doing so is forbidden by the government, and even opening their homes to them. National Public Radio ran a story back in September about a family in Hungary who sheltered a Syrian family in their own home, even moving their six month old baby out of her room into the parent's bedroom to make room for more people. The woman said, "The most important thing she and her husband do is to simply treat people like human beings. Sometimes I have the feeling that it's not only the food or the possibility to use the bathroom or wash their hair. But it's the gesture itself, because the people have received so few human gestures in the past few months."
Over a pot of lentils and a cup of coffee a heavenly banquet has come to earth. All people, Syrian refugees, Hungarian hosts, American reporters, sit at the feast which God has prepared for all.
The heavenly banquet on earth. Now that's what All Saints' Day is all about.