Solemnity of All Saints

 Lectionary: 667

After this I had a vision of a great multitude,
which no one could count,
from every nation, race, people, and tongue.
They stood before the throne and before the Lamb,
wearing white robes and holding palm branches in their hands.
They cried out in a loud voice:

    “Salvation comes from our God, who is seated on the throne,
    and from the Lamb.”

 

As Saint Luke tells the story, it came as something of a shock to the disciples of Jesus that his gospel was so attractive to gentiles. Jesus might have touched upon the subject but he had spoken publicly only in Jewish villages and cities, and only to Jewish gatherings. When he wanted time away, he sometimes withdrew to gentile territory where he was mostly unknown and unrecognized.

But they could not ignore the non-Jews who were asking about the Lord and then wanting to be baptized. Eventually they would realize that “a great multitude, which no one could count, from every nation, race, people, and tongue” would enter the Church.

Clearly, this new direction for the Church was coming from the Holy Spirit. They had no doubt this was the very spirit that had guided Jesus throughout his life, from his conception of the Virgin Mary to his Ascension into Heaven. Jesus was always the obedient Son of the Father and ready to be guided by the Spirit.

So if the Holy Spirit was gathering gentiles to the Lord, the disciples had little choice but to welcome then with grateful joy. They had to set aside whatever prejudice they had learned from their Jewish forebears. If they had maintained some hostile or suspicious attitudes before they met Jesus, they had to forget them now as gentiles invaded the church with their strange foods, languages, and customs. And they found ample suggestions in their Hebrew Scriptures that God had planned this unexpected development all along.

 

Clearly this cloud of witnesses, this communion of the saints, cannot be restricted to any race or nationality. As the incident of Pentecost showed, the Word of God should be announced in every language on earth including ASL and HTML. It could not exclude any gender or gender preference; it must flood prairies and  penetrate prisons. It welcomes the least intelligent and the most brilliant. Nor should anyone be surprised that their bitterest enemies love the Lord. 

With the current epidemic of polarization sweeping millions into opposing camps who are unwilling to listen and unable to compromise, we pray that God's word might gather us into the Communion of the Saints, and that we might be found worthy to take our place among the martyrs. No one unwilling to die defenselessly at the hands of enemies should protest their righteousness. Rather we will confess "I am not worthy that you should come under my roof" and then invite our opponents to do so.