SUNDAY AFTER ALL SAINTS (YEAR B)

November 7, 2021

Saint Uriel’s, Sea Girt, NJ

Wisdom of Solomon 3:1-9

Psalm 24

Revelation 21:1-6

John 11:32-44

A few years back, when the Episcopal Church adopted the Revised Common Lectionary, we got a whole new set of readings for the Feast of All Saints. The readings that we’ve just heard, appointed for Year B in the three-year cycle, take what might be called—to use a big word—an eschatological approach to the Communion of Saints.

Now, what does that mean? Well, eschatology is the branch of theology dealing with the Last Things, or what some of our Protestant brothers and sisters call the “End Times.” So, an eschatological approach simply looks at the Communion of Saints from the viewpoint not of what is, now, but of what is coming, what awaits us in the future. In different ways, today’s readings focus our attention on the Saints of God from this future perspective.

The reading from the Wisdom of Solomon is more usually associated with All Souls Day and funerals than with All Saints Day. But notice how it describes both what is and what is to come. First, it uses the present tense: “The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God … [and] they are at peace.” 

But then it shifts to the future tense: “Having been disciplined a little, they will receive great good … In the time of their visitation they will shine forth, and will run like sparks through the stubble.” The English biblical scholar N. T. Wright suggests that these verses express the Jewish hope in a future resurrection of the dead. Despite their sufferings in this life, the souls of the righteous rest in peace now, safe in God’s hands. But on the Day of Resurrection they’ll be reunited with their bodies and rise in glory. The Christian Church inherited this hope of a future general resurrection, of which Christ’s own resurrection is both the pledge and first fruits.

Psalm 24 asks: “Who can ascend the hill of the Lord? And who can stand in his holy place?” The hill spoken of is Mount Zion in Jerusalem, and the holy place is the Temple of Solomon. The answer is: “those who have clean hands and a pure heart.” But then, again, the psalm shifts to the future tense: “They shall receive a blessing from the Lord and a just reward from the God of their salvation.”

The reading from Revelation transposes this hope from an earthly to a heavenly Jerusalem. Saint John records: “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth … And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God.” The vision is not of what is now but of what is to come. In this new Jerusalem, “[God] will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away.”

Then, in the Gospel, we have Saint John’s wonderful account of the raising of Lazarus. Some of the Early Church Fathers point out that Jesus summons Lazarus from the tomb with the same divine voice that created heaven and earth in the beginning. Just as God gave life to humanity with the words, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness,” so Jesus gives new life with the words, “Lazarus, come out!” This command anticipates in turn the future day, when, as Saint Paul writes in his First Letter to the Thessalonians, “the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first; then we who are alive, who are left, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so we shall always be with the Lord.”

Today’s readings thus give us a kaleidoscope of beautiful images of the Communion of Saints as the future reality that awaits us in Christ. The Saints of God are not only those figures from the past whom we commemorate on their feast days in the liturgical calendar, nor only those in heaven who watch over and pray for us now. The promise is that if we remain faithful to our baptismal vows—and don’t turn away from our calling—then we also shall be numbered among those who shine forth and run like sparks among the stubble, who ascend the hill of the Lord and stand in God’s holy place, who inhabit the new Jerusalem where God wipes away every tear, and who hear the Lord’s voice commanding us to come forth from our tombs.

One further detail from the Gospel reading merits comment. When Lazarus emerges from his tomb, he’s still wrapped in bandages with a cloth covering his face. So, Jesus commands those standing by, “Unbind him, and let him go.” (Notice the contrast with the Lord’s own Resurrection, where he needs no such help and simply sheds the grave clothes on his own.)

Here again, some of the Early Church Fathers see the unbinding of Lazarus as a symbolic anticipation of the Church’s ministry of binding and loosing. In Saint Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus says first to Peter and later to the disciples: “Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”  The parallel saying in John’s Gospel is that of the Risen Lord to the disciples in the Upper Room: “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

By this interpretation, Lazarus’s graveclothes represent the sins of humanity, and the unbinding of Lazarus represents the Church’s ministry of reconciliation. While only the Lord’s own voice can raise us from the dead, he delegates to his Church the authority to forgive sins in his Name, exercised through the priestly ministry handed down through the generations from the apostles by prayer and the laying-on-of-hands. 

More broadly, our Lord’s command, “Unbind him, and let him go,” reassures us that we’re not expected to achieve the perfection of sainthood alone, by our own efforts, which would be impossible in any case. We’re all in this together. We all have a part to play in helping one another along the road to our heavenly destination. And we joyfully fulfill that role as we keep on meeting together as a parish community, Sunday by Sunday and during the week, for all our activities of worship, fellowship, education, and mission.