Category: Sermons

Has there been a highpoint in your life these past twelve months? Can you recall any unexpected blessings that came your way? Or was this year marked by personal sorrow and sadness? Whatever has happened in your life this past year, God has continued to bless you with life, grace and mercy, and wants you to experience that “the mercies of the Lord are new every morning (Lamentations 3:22).” It’s also helpful to remember that our “bad days” have no more hours in them than our “good days”.

Today we thank God for every Christian near and dear to us who has died in the Christian Faith. We’re grateful for the blessings brought to us through their prayers while they were still alive, and also for the love we received from them. God has given us two gifts to help us cope with the loss of our loved ones. He has given us our memories of them, and He has given us our sure and certain hope of life with them in heaven forever. God’s Word says “The memory of the righteous is a blessing (Proverbs 10:7).” We honour our deceased family members and friends by thanking God for them. God’s Word comforts us with these words from Scripture, “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His faithful ones (Psalm 111:15).”

As sad as it may be that they’re no longer with us, it would be sadder still if we had never known them and they had not enriched our lives with their presence and love. Good memories can prolong the blessings we feel. With our memory we can bring to mind things we didn’t notice at the time, and yet realise that the best is still to come, a time for which our faith is preparing us, even today.

Death isn’t God’s final word to you about your deceased loved ones. The last Book of the Bible tells us, “Blessed are the dead who from now on die in the Lord (Revelation 14:13).”  “To bless” those who have died may sound strange to modern ears. Our modern world prefers to think of blessedness in terms of this life only. It cannot see how death can be a blessing to someone. But for everyone who “believes in the sure and certain hope of the resurrection of the dead into life everlasting”, it’s so very different.

For all of us who do, death marks the start of the greatest chapter of our lives. Death doesn’t end our relationships with those who have died in the Faith; rather it raises our relationship with them to a higher level. The Christian Faith we share together transforms the parting of Christians into “the communion of saints”, for in the communion of saints, we have in Christ a link with them that transcends death. Our fellowship with the saints in glory gives us a deeper meaning to our worship in the name of Jesus. We worship God together with all those who worship Him around the throne of God in heaven.

Our Christian community is much larger than all those Christians who are alive on this earth now. In today’s second reading, St. Paul gives us a vision of the Church on this earth and the Church triumphant in heaven, inseparably bound together. Just as a bridegroom is complete with his bride, so Christ feels complete with the members of His Body, His dearly loved Church. Here, as St Paul often does in his letters to churches, Paul addresses the Christians in Ephesus with the title of “saints”.

It is significant that in the Apostles’ Creed, immediately after we confess our faith in the communion of saints, we confess our faith in the forgiveness of sins. Saints are all those Christians who treasure and embrace the forgiveness Jesus Christ has won for them at Easter. Every Christian who clings to Christ as his or her only source of hope, despite the pain and suffering they’ve experienced, is a saint in God’s eyes. We could also refer to this particular Sunday in the Church Year as a Festival of Forgiven Sinners. While many of the saints mentioned in our Bibles performed heroic acts of faith, others could easily identify with the prayer of the tax collector in the temple when he prayed, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”

“Saints” are not those who achieve holiness by doing good works, but all those who receive Christ’s own holiness through faith. Wherever there is faith active in love, there is a saint at work. God has chosen some rather odd characters to carry out His mission in our world, because all kinds of Christians matter to Him. His Son Jesus loved the Church, the community of believers, so much that He gave His life for it. St. Paul presents the continued existence of Christ’s Church on earth as proof of the power of our Lord’s resurrection.

Our risen Redeemer is alive and active both within and outside of His Church in unexpected places. Each Sunday Service is a celebration of Easter. Easter is both the promise and the guarantee of your own resurrection. St. Paul uses amazing words to tell you of the far-reaching effects of Easter when he says, “God has made us alive together with Christ … and raised us up with Christ and seated us with Christ in the heavenly places (Ephesians 2:6).” Already now, in Holy Communion, we experience “a foretaste of the feast to come”. When we confess that Jesus is risen from the dead, our faith isn’t in a far away event, but rather in an event that transcends time and space, that reaches out to include us. In a mysterious way, our life as our Lord’s saints is already a life beyond death, hidden under this life. St. Paul says to us, “For you have died, and your life is hid with Christ in God (Colossians 3:3).”

The Church is an extension of Christ’s body. We experience even now the countless blessings of His life, death and resurrection. This means we will seek to love each member of His Church just as He loves each one of us. St. Paul bursts into jubilant thanksgiving when he hears of the faith of the Ephesian Church and their love for one another. One of the joys of being a member of Christ’s Church is an awareness that we belong together with all Christians, of every time and place, and can enjoy a feeling of being “at home” when travelling, sharing the same hymns and songs, praying the same prayers and listening to the same Bible readings we have here.

In our celebration of the Lord’s Supper, Jesus joins us with the whole communion of saints, here and beyond time and space. “But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven (Hebrews 12:22-23a).” The words of our Holy Communion liturgy, “therefore with angels and archangels and with all the company of heaven, we adore and magnify your glorious name”, reinforce this message.

You may, therefore, more properly remember your deceased loved ones at the Lord’s Table than at the cemetery. That’s why receiving Holy Communion is such a wonderful experience. In Holy Communion you not only have communion with Christ Jesus and with those who receive Holy Communion with you, but also with those who have died in the Faith. They surround you and support you invisibly, just as all the other Christians do who worship God together with you. They witness your worship and rejoice over it, even as the angels rejoice over one sinner who repents. “Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels over one sinner who repents (Luke 15:10).”

All of the changes of this life prepare us for the greatest change of all, from this life to the life of the world to come. “For I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope (Jeremiah 29:11).”

Remember, the best is still to come. Amen.