Click here for today’s service.

Interested in tithing online? Click here.

Sermon text:

For all Saints Day, I thought we’d have a bit of participation from the saints during the sermon. Are you ready? Raise your hand if you call  that sweet fizzy drink “soda”. Raise your hand if you call it “pop”. Raise your hand if you say “PEE-can”. Raise your hand if you say “pick-
AHN”. Raise your hand if you say “Kahr-ml”. Raise your hand if you say “caramel”. Raise your hand if you say “Wash”. Raise your hand if you say “WaRSH”. Raise your hand if you drive an American car. Raise your hand if you drive a foreign car. Raise your hand if you fill your gas tank when it gets down to a quarter tank. Raise your hand if you fill it up when the light is on and
you make it to the pump only because objects in motion tend to stay in motion. Raise your
hand if you’re a twin. Raise your hand if you’re not a twin. Raise your hand if you tend not to
raise your hand in church.

Thanks for playing along. I did this as a quick reminder that there is literally no limit to
the number of ways you could slice and dice a population. You can categorize people according
to place of origin: African-American, German-American, Italian-American, Mexican-American.
You can carve things up according to language: English, Spanish, Creole, and whatever weird
tongue they use in New Jersey. You can slice things up according to sex, according to sexual
orientation, according to income, education level, color, music preferences, political leanings,
health concerns, age, geographical location, rural or urban, union or non-union, white collar or
blue collar, theist or atheist, religious or non-religious, tall or short, healthy or unhealthy,
employed or unemployed. There is no end to the divisions that could be made.

And today, it seems that people are more interested than ever in making these divisions
and making something of them. One buzz term that’s been going around for quite a while now
is “identity politics” which is “a tendency for people of a particular religion, race, social
background, etc., to form exclusive political alliances, moving away from traditional broad-
based party politics.” In other words, it’s a reaction against a tendency to over-generalize, to
lump huge numbers of people into huge generic groups, to assume that all those people are
basically the same and all these people are basically the same.
Identity politics brings up issues that most people don’t even recognize as issues. In
other words, identity politics has struck on this idea that there are certain life experiences,
certain cultural features, certain concerns that unite people and divide them from other
people. Today, politicians get raked over the coals for not recognizing these differences, for not

appreciating the genuine problems and concerns that certain parts of the population
experience. People want to be heard. They want to have a voice. They don’t want to be
ignored, or forgotten. They don’t want their struggles, their problems, their identity swallowed
up by the masses. They don’t want to be lost in the crowd.
And so the crowd separates into smaller crowds. And those crowds into yet smaller
crowds. I’m of this political persuasion. I’m a Midwesterner. I’m white. I’m black. I’m an
idealist. I’m down-to-earth and practical. I’m optimistic. I’m realistic. I care about preserving
the traditions. I care about trying new things to reach the lost. I like contemporary hymns. I like
old hymns. I like really old hymns. I’m not much of a music guy at all! Yes we can slice and dice
and cut populations any number of ways. We distinguish and we divide and we separate from
neighbors, from friends, even from family. We cut and we cut the bonds until there’s just one
left . . . just me . . . just myself.

Why do we do that? I think there are two reasons. And the first is pretty obvious. We’re
arrogant. To the very core of who we are, each one of us finds ways to look down on everyone
else around us. We think ourselves smarter, better looking, more reasonable, nicer, kinder,
more reliable, more talented, and even humbler than others. We are arrogant.
But I think there’s a second reason for it too, and it goes back to the idea of identity. It’s
true. We do think we’re better (at least in some ways) than the other. But we also fear the
other. In the other person, I meet someone whom I can never fully understand, who can always
surprise me. In the other person, I meet someone whose experience of reality I can never fully
inhabit, whose eyes I can never fully share, whose brain waves will only occasionally intersect
with my own. In the other person, I find my limit, the gap I can never cross.
This other person has a voice too, apparently, one that does not always agree with my
own. And what if that person’s voice ends up being more powerful than mine? He could be a
threat to my desires. She could be a threat to my rights. They could be a threat to my
aspirations. What if that person’s voice ends up drowning mine out? What if that person
prevents me from being me, the truly unique, individual me?! We love to separate ourselves, to
make ourselves distinct from others . . . and maybe not without good cause! We don’t want to
get swallowed by the crowd – to lose who we are.

And then we have our reading from Revelation. A multitude, a crowd that no one could
number. They’re processing, marching together. And all of them . . . every single one of them . .
. is wearing a white robe. All division is history. All separation exterminated. And controversy . .
. it’s not even a distant memory. It’s all gone. And the saints go marching in . . . in time . . . not a
single one out of step . . . wearing the same clothes . . . waving the same branches . . . in time . .
. not a single one out of rhythm . . . singing the same song . . . in time . . . not a single missed

syllable . . . not a single one of them has “warshed” the robes . . . they’ve all only “washed”
them. Doesn’t that sound . . . absolutely awful!!! And yet that is exactly what we’d get if our
arrogance won the day. That’s exactly what we’d get if our fear of the other, of what’s different
from us, prevailed in the end.
But that’s not at all the vision of Revelation. It’s not a uniform, homogenous crowd that
signals the death of individuality. It’s not a mind-numbed, robotic march of machine made,
mass produced, carbon copy humanoids. Not at all! Listen again: “After this I looked, and
behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and
peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white
robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, 'Salvation belongs to
our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!'"
I have often heard it said (I’ve even preached this way) that Pentecost is the undoing of
Babel. And it’s easy to see why people would say that. The arrogance of those people, the
desire to become gods themselves had disastrous consequences. God came down to see their
magnificent building, their tower they’d hoped would scratch the underside of heaven’s floor.
God came down and confused their languages. They couldn’t understand one another. They
used different words. They had different terms. And so they divided themselves into groups
according to how they spoke, according to how they saw the world.
But at Pentecost, when people from all over the world are gathered together, the Holy
Spirit overcomes the language barrier! The apostles are preaching that God raised Jesus from
the dead and everyone hears, everyone understands. But everyone understands in his own
language! The languages formed at Babel don’t disappear at Pentecost. And they don’t
disappear at the return of Christ! No, what’s awaiting us in the second coming is not a reboot.
It’s not the destruction of languages or dialects or cultures. It’s not the erasing of those
peculiarities, those traits and characteristics that make us who we are, that make you the
individual that you are.
No, here, God shows John a much grander thing than that. God will take all languages,
all those different tongues that began at Babel, and He will tune them to His glory, because not
even all the dialects of all peoples and of all times together are sufficient to voice His praise.
God will take all the cultures, all the customs, all the personalities, all the talents, all the skills,
all the gifts, all instruments of all His people . . . and He will tune them to His praise. He tunes
them so that they are able to do what they were always meant to do . . . to glorify Him . . . to
praise His holy name.
Back in the 1700’s, there was an English poet named Christopher Smart. He was an odd
duck to say the least. But he penned one poem that has lodged itself in my brain ever since I

first heard it. It’s part of a series of poems called Jubilate Agno, Rejoice In the Lamb. In these
poems, Smart looks in the most unexpected of places and finds doxology, finds the praise of
God. Just listen to this one: “For I will consider my cat Jeoffry. For he is the servant of the Living
God, duly and daily serving him. For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he
worships in his way. For this is done by wreathing his body seven times round with elegant
quickness. For he knows that God is his Saviour. For God has bless’d him in the variety of his
movements. For there is nothing sweeter than his peace when at rest. For I am possessed of a
cat, surpassing in beauty, from whom I take occasion to bless Almighty God.”
Brothers and sisters, saints, when Jesus comes back, when the world and all creation
hangs ripe and low, when the fullness of time has come, God “will unite all things in him, things
in heaven and things on earth”. And then, on that day, among all the saints of God from all
tribes and languages and nations and colors, among Gabriel and the angels, Michael and the
archangels, among the beasts of field and birds of the air, you will find your place before the
throne of God – voice and personality, gifts and talents tuned to His praise and the praise of the
Lamb whose blood set us free to be the people of God. Your fear of the other extinguished for
we will all rejoice in one another as manifestations of God’s boundless glory.
So brothers and sisters, let us bear witness now – among us in this congregation, and in
your family – let us bear witness to that day in our love of and celebration of brothers and
sisters who don’t look like us, think like us, talk like us. Let our words and our deeds foreshadow
that great crowd, that great multitude to come in which your identity is not lost, but tuned in
harmony with all creation to the glory of God – tuned to sing that ancient and ever new song:
“Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb! Amen! Blessing and
glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and
ever! Amen.”