Sermon delivered on All Saints Sunday, November 3, 2013, at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Columbus, OH.

If you would like to hear the audio podcast of this sermon, usually somewhat different from the text below, click here.

Lectionary texts: Daniel 7.1-3, 15-18; Psalm 149.1-9; Ephesians 1.11-23; Luke 6.20-31.

In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Do you believe that God is really sovereign, i.e., that God is really in control of things in this world? I mean, look around you. Yet another shooting this past week. More turmoil in the mideast. The threat of militant Islam is ever present. The enemies of the cross with their aggressive agendas seem to continue to trample on God’s values and people on every front.  Closer to home, many of us are dealing with health and personal issues that are enough to weigh anyone down and even break them. Everywhere we look, evil seems to go unchecked.

We see it not only in our personal lives but also in today’s lessons. The prophet Daniel is writing while in captivity, having been deported by the Babylonians. The psalmist cries out for justice against those who oppress God’s people, even as he praises God for God’s goodness. Jesus reminds his followers that there are those out there who laugh at God’s people and take delight in oppressing them, just like the Babylonians and others mocked God’s people Israel as Judah was carried off naked and bound into captivity, and just like many mock us today as being outdated, bigoted, and narrow-minded. With all of this evil in the world and in our own personal lives, how could anyone in his/her right mind really think God is in control?

Today is All-Saints’ Sunday, where we celebrate the communion of saints, both those saints who are alive and in Christ as part of his body, the Church (the Church Militant), and those saints who have died in Christ and are enjoying their rest in the presence of their Lord as they await the resurrection of the dead and the culmination of God’s promise to sweep away evil, sin, and death and usher in his promised new creation (the Church Triumphant). We normally focus on the Church Triumphant on All Saints’ Sunday, but our readings today speak primarily to us as the Church Militant, and so I want us to look briefly at what our lessons have to say to us because they remind us without equivocation that God really is sovereign and in control, despite the persistence of evil and the impression that this gives to the contrary.

Daniel’s visions in our OT lesson speak to this very issue. As with other apocalyptic writings in Scripture, we must remember that the writer is speaking to us primarily in symbols. The four beasts that come out of the sea remind us that evil is chaos and antithetical toward the good and orderly purposes of God’s creation (cf. 1 Corinthians 14.33). The beasts with their kings will have their day and oppress God’s people because they hate God and his purposes. But the beasts’ days are numbered. They will not have the last laugh as Jesus reminded his disciples in our gospel lesson today. God is in charge and God will defeat the dark forces of chaos and evil, even when everything around God’s people screams at them otherwise. And it is precisely at this point that we must remember that Daniel was in exile in Babylon when he wrote these words. If anyone had reason to believe that God wasn’t in control of things, it was Daniel.

We have to take this promise on faith, of course, and because we don’t have the benefit of 20-20 hindsight this is very difficult for us to do. We want to know why God allows evil to continue to exist. If God is all-powerful, why doesn’t God just wave his hand and rid his creation of it? Of course, we cannot answer these questions because we are finite and our knowledge is incomplete. As God reminds us consistently through his prophets, God’s ways are beyond our understanding (cf. Isaiah 40.27-28; 55.6-11). This, of course, irritates those of us who deem ourselves to be quite intelligent. “What do you mean I cannot understand your ways, God?” we huff in our pride. Our huffiness notwithstanding, this does not change the truth of the matter. And if we think about it, would it really matter if we did understand why God allows evil to persist, at least for a season? Think it through by analogy. What if we smoked three packs of cigarettes a day for most of our life and then contracted lung cancer? We know why we got the evil of lung cancer but does that change anything? We still have it. We will still likely suffer and die from it. What does our knowledge change about our situation?

And of course if we are really honest with ourselves, we must acknowledge if God used the sledgehammer approach to rid his good creation of evil, we would all be swept away because Evil R Us™. Many of us find this notion equally offensive and get huffy over it as well. “What do you mean? I’m not evil. I don’t murder or steal or cheat on my spouse like others do.” But the truth is that none of us is sinless. None of us is perfectly holy as God calls us to be. We all miss the mark in God’s eyes. We all have committed evil at some point in our lives because we all have sinned and our sin is a conduit for evil to exist and flourish in God’s world. That’s why God had to become human and die for us so that we would be holy in his sight and be able to live in his direct presence forever.

But I digress and don’t want to pull us off the main issue here. God is sovereign and really in control of his world, and that takes faith on our part. What our readings help to remind us, both explicitly and implicitly, is that the existence of evil did not take God by surprise. Neither then should evil’s existence take us by surprise. The real issue for us is this: Do we know God and the story of God’s plan of salvation well enough to have the faith to believe that God really is in charge, especially in the face of empirical evidence that screams at us to believe otherwise?

Paul certainly believed that God is sovereignly in control as evidenced by what he wrote in our epistle lesson. Like Daniel, Paul acknowledges that we currently live in an evil age, in the wilderness of evil, sin, and death, so to speak. But just as God rescued his people Israel from their slavery in Egypt and delivered them to the promised land, so God has rescued us from evil, sin, and death by conquering them in and through the cross of Christ and raising Jesus from the dead. And just as God delivered his people Israel to the promised land, so God intends to deliver his people in Jesus the Messiah (that would be us) and bring us to a world free of evil, sin, and death—the promised new creation. One day God will flood the whole cosmos with his healing and creative love and power, just as God did in the beginning, transforming his world and us into a new creation with the dimensions of heaven and earth fused together and Jesus at the center of it all. This is the inheritance of which Paul speaks and it is God’s free gift to those who believe in Jesus. When the new creation comes, there will be no doubt in anyone’s mind that God is sovereign and firmly in control of his creation. This is the hope of both the Church Militant (us) and the Church Triumphant (the saints who have died in Christ).

But the new creation hasn’t arrived yet. We are still wandering in the wilderness. What to do? Here both Jesus and Paul have wisdom for us to ponder thoroughly and regularly. Paul reminds us that we do not wander in the wilderness alone. Like the pillars of fire and cloud that symbolized God’s presence with his people as he led them through the wilderness, so we have the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives to heal and transform us into the very image of Jesus our Lord so that we have the heart and mindset that Jesus described in our gospel lesson. You know. That loving your enemies thingy and wishing the best for all people, especially our enemies, in the same way that we wish for all the best for ourselves. We don’t have the ability to do that on our own. We can only become really and truly human with the help of the Spirit.

And as Paul reminds us, the Spirit helps us to live our lives with power, even in this present evil age so that we are not overwhelmed and overcome by the evil that sometimes afflicts us. Ephesians is partly a letter about power and we shouldn’t be afraid to embrace God’s power if we truly want to live as faithful Christians. “But,” you protest, “I don’t have that kind of power in my life on a daily basis. I am frequently overwhelmed when evil afflicts me. My joy is tied to my circumstances, not the presence of the Spirit in my life.”

In response, Paul would tell likely us that he doesn’t assume we automatically tap into the Spirit’s power when we become a Christian. We have to do the things necessary to cultivate his presence in our lives and we can start by praying Paul’s prayer in our epistle lesson regularly. Paul and the other NT writers believed this power was available to all Christians because of God’s power displayed in Jesus’ resurrection (you can’t find a mightier act of power than to raise someone from the dead, thereby conquering death forever) and in Jesus’ exaltation as Lord and ruler of God’s universe. King Jesus is on his throne in heaven (God’s space) and is present to his people in and through the Spirit. This power is ours for the asking and if we do not seriously ask for it and seek it through prayer, study, worship, fellowship, and service to others in Jesus’ name, we should not be surprised if we never receive it in our lives so that we could not only endure evil, but transcend it (cf. Matthew 7.7-12).

Receiving God’s power is necessary because God calls us to be his kingdom workers in the way Jesus describes in our gospel lesson. The kingdom comes on earth as in heaven first and foremost by the power of God. But God also calls his people and vests us with the awesome privilege and responsibility of working for the coming kingdom. God calls us to this work because that is what he originally created humans for—to be his wise, image-bearing stewards over his world. This is what we will be doing when heaven and earth are finally joined together in a mighty act of new creation so that the earth is filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea (Isaiah 11.9; Habakkuk 2.14). We don’t and can’t do this without the Spirit’s presence and when we experience God’s power in us, Paul reminds us that this is also the downpayment on the promise that the new creation is coming. This is our call and task as the Church Militant—to be healed and transformed by the power of the Spirit into the very image of Jesus to do the work God calls each of us and collectively to do. Is this your hope and desire? If so, the Spirit who lives in you will surely remind you of your inheritance and encourage you to embrace his power so that you can live your life in service, love, and faithfulness to the glory of the Lord who loves you and has claimed you from all eternity. That’s a promise worthy of all the saints, and it also means, of course, that you have Good News, now and for all eternity.

In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.