All Saints’ Day, 2024
Texts: Revelation 7:9-14; Matthew 5:1-12
Title: What Does a Saint Look Like?
+ INI +
What does a saint look like?
A saint looks like a grandma, who sits back there, who loves to sew, and who crochets afghans for her grandkids and great-grandkids and anyone she knows who has a baby coming into their family.
What does a saint look like?
A saint looks like a man who sits up here, who loves music from country music to good Lutheran hymns. And he’s always on the lookout around the church for lightbulbs that need to be changed.
What does a saint look like?
A saint looks like a man who sits over there, who has a knack for the mechanical and fixes everyone else’s car before his own. He sets up a railroad in his yard and operates steam engines for kids (and some adults) to ride.
What does a saint look like?
A saint looks like a baker who sits up here and was up at the crack of dawn every day to bake bread and goodies for everyone in town, a man who loves to fix old watches and clocks.
What does a saint look like?
A saint looks like a grandfather who sits in the front pew every week to hear God’s Word and to sing, who takes great pains to make it up these steps to that spot at the altar rail, where he receives the body and blood of Christ and remembers His baptism with the sign of the cross.
What does a saint look like?
What does Jesus say? What do the blessed ones look like?
They are the poor and the sad, the hungry and the humble. They are those who prize peace and purity above all.
They aren’t respected and revered. They aren’t honored and rewarded.
Instead, they are ridiculed, they are left out, they are even hurt and killed for Jesus’ sake.
You would think it would be the opposite. You would think that the saints are those who have good and easy lives as a reward for their faithfulness. Instead, they suffer like the rest of us, sometimes even more.
What does a saint look like?
A saint looks like Jesus.
Jesus, who was rejected by His own people, even His own family.
Jesus, who was betrayed by one of His closest friends and abandoned by the rest.
Jesus, who was beaten, humiliated, and nailed to a tree.
Jesus, who bled and died in the darkness.
Jesus, the most saintly, holy man of all.
What does a saint look like?
Look at the cross.
What does a saint look like?
He looks like a man who could be mistaken for a gardener, but you know Him when He speaks your name.
He looks like a man who walks and talks with you as your heart burns within you, a stranger who is recognized in the breaking of the bread.
He looks like a man who appears in a locked room, speaking words of peace, breathing the holy breath, a pointing to the holes in His hands, His feet, and His side.
What does a saint look like?
He looks like a man ascending into heaven, covered by the clouds, returning to the right hand of God Himself to reign and rule over all things.
What does a saint look like?
He looks like Jesus.
What does a saint look like?
Saints wear white robes and hold palm branches in their hands.
Saints are surrounded by angels and join with them and all creation in singing praise to the one who sits on the throne and to the Lamb.
Saints are gathered by streams of living water, sheltered by the presence of God, shepherded by the Lamb, with their tear-stained faces wiped clean by His nail-scarred hands.
How did they get there?
Saints are not there by their own works or merit.
Saints are not there by their own good deeds.
Saints are there because they have been washed in the blood of the Lamb, made pure, made holy by His great sacrifice.
Saints are there because saints are here.
Saints are here at the font, wearing their white robe, washed in the blood of the lamb, receiving the Holy Spirit, given a new birth as a child of God.
Saints are here in the pews, with ears opened to the holy word of God, which bears that same Holy Spirit, forgiven by holy absolution, and with mouths open, singing holy songs, praying holy prayers that flow from these holy scriptures.
Saints are here at the altar, eating and drinking the holy body and blood of their holy Lord Jesus Christ in the holy supper, the communion of the saints, becoming one with the one holy, Christian, and apostolic church.
Saints are out there, too, sent to bear the holiness of God into an unholy, evil world. Sent out to bear the same abuse that Jesus did, and yet to do some good in the lives of their friends, family, and community.
And saints are brought back here, even at death. There at the door, they are robed in white once more, brought to the font once last time with the resurrection candle burning brightly.
And then the saints are buried out there in the holy ground of the cemetery, surrounded by their fellow saints, to await the great holying that their holy Lord will bring with His return.
What does a saint look like?
A saint looks like an ordinary person doing extraordinary things as the Holy Spirit bears fruit in their life.
A saint looks meek and humble, suffering and dying for Jesus’ sake.
A saint looks perfectly pure and holy, because of Jesus’ death and resurrection.
What does a saint look like?
A saint looks like Jesus.
+ INI +