A Great Multitude Which No Man Could Number

The deep blue sea sparkled and the bright sunlight dazzled his eyes as day after endless day John of Ephesus stared out of his makeshift home on the island of Patmos. The government of the Roman emperor Domitian had exiled him here, because, as a forceful leader of a fledgling Christian community, the government considered him a dangerous agitator. Patmos wasn’t exactly a barren rock – there were a Roman garrison and imperial temple here – and a few members of his community had been able to come with John. Like so many of the Hebrew prophets, whose writings he knew so well, John had always been something of a visionary. He had had dreams and visions of God, Jesus, heaven, and even of the end times, when God’s victory would be complete. Now, about sixty years after Jesus’ triumph on the Cross, as John stared out into the sea and sun, he began to collect and organize his visions. As he began to write them down on long scrolls, he also had new visions, and he came to an even deeper understanding of God’s promises and purposes. Sometime after his release from Patmos, in the late ‘90s, he made his scrolls known not only to the Christian community in Ephesus, but also to all the other churches in Asia Minor. The scrolls containing John’s visions came to be known as the Apocalypse of John, or Revelation, from the first word of the very first scroll.

From the very beginning, Revelation was considered a strange book. It was only included in the New Testament canon in 397, and that was despite questions about its character, symbolism, and authorship. In the 16th century, Martin Luther initially considered it to be "neither apostolic nor prophetic," and he said that "Christ is neither taught nor known in it,” though he did retract this view in later life. In the same century, John Calvin considered the book canonical, yet he declined to write a commentary on it. To this day, Revelation is the only New Testament book not read in the Divine Liturgy of the Eastern Orthodox Church, though it is included in Catholic and Protestant liturgies.

Why is Revelation such a strange and difficult book? The first reason may be that it is addressed to people experiencing a socio-political context unfamiliar to most Americans, that of severe oppression and martyrdom. It offers a strong critique of the source of that oppression, i.e., the Roman Empire, and warns people to follow God’s ways instead. “Salvation belongs to our God, who is seated on the throne and to the Lamb, not to Caesar,” shout the multitude. In addition, Revelation contains all sorts of violent, disruptive, and frightening images, and its narrative thread is difficult to follow. Even more than the Gospels, it offers contradictory statements on the nature of God, and on who is saved. What makes it even more suspect is that it depicts one person’s visionary experiences rather than the historical record preserved by those who first interacted with Jesus. No wonder most of us shy away from it!

Yet Revelation has much to offer us. Indeed, some seminarians have spent an entire semester chasing down its Old Testament allusions and fleshing out its many themes. We do have to be careful not to try to apply the book of Revelation to the contemporary church or to current events. With that caveat, this morning I want to pull out just one thread. Many passages and much of the imagery of Revelation seem black and white. Reflecting Christians’ unremitting struggle with the Roman government, which is symbolized by Babylon, the text seems to make it crystal clear, who is the oppressor and who is the victim, who is saved and who is damned. Even so, underneath all those seemingly black and white allusions, Revelation also strongly suggests that the Lamb has triumphed over evil and death, and that, consequently, all will ultimately be saved.

We hear that suggestion clearly in this morning’s passage. In the first eight verses of this chapter, which we did not hear, John has witnessed the salvation of the 144,000, i.e., the representatives of all the twelve tribes of Israel. Now he has turned around, and suddenly he beholds, “a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb….” The vision echoes those of the prophet Isaiah and the message is clear: no longer is salvation available only to God’s initially chosen people, now all people have access to God’s love. As one scholar reminds us, though the imagery and mood of Revelation is often dark and somber, John continues to offer us “the God whose victory does not depend on ours, who loves us when we do not love him or ourselves, who believes in us when we do not believe in him or ourselves, who saves us when we do not believe that we need saving or are worth saving.”1 God’s judgment has been spoken from the Cross, and, ultimately, all people are both judged by the Cross and included in its saving power.

And here’s the even better news: you and I are included in the salvation wrought by God and the Lamb! All of us here, past, present, and yet to come, are included in God’s salvation. Is that an odd proclamation for All Saints Day? The observation of this day began in the ancient church, when martyrs like those whom Revelation mentions were remembered and praised. Gradually, Christians included in that number all whose lives in the faith were especially heroic or exemplary. Many of these heroic Christians are included among the official list of “saints” maintained by the Roman Catholic Church, and many more are included in our Holy Women, Holy Men. However, finally we have come to realize that the “saints” we commemorate today include all baptized Christians. Indeed, this is exactly the way most of our New Testament writings understand who the “saints” are. Paul, for example, regularly refers to the “saints” in the Christian communities to whom he writes.

From Paul’s time right through to ours, the saints, that multitude whom no one could count, include all baptized people. That uncountable multitude includes the members of the Body of Christ in all places, and in all times, past, present, and yet to come. It includes not only Teresa of Avila, the Curé D’Ars, and Mother Ruth. That multitude also includes all the less exemplary Christians, Renaissance popes, Spanish inquisitors, Henry VIII, and all those who grieved God through their vanity, anger, pride, lust, greed or any other sin. When we are honest with ourselves, we know that we too are among the unworthy saints. Even so, worthy or unworthy, no one escapes God’s saving embrace. You can probably all say John 3:16 from memory (“For God so loved the world….”). But the next verse is equally important: “Indeed God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

Every time we liturgically remember one of the more exemplary saints, we pray a collect associated with that person. It’s instructive to look at those collects, for they almost all follow the same pattern. After thanking God for the life and witness of that person, the collects pray that we might follow their good examples and ourselves witness to God’s goodness and love. If today were not All Saints Day and Sunday, we would be privileged to remember William Temple, a former archbishop of Canterbury with a passion for social justice, who died on this day in 1944. Here is the collect for his day, November 6: “O God of light and love, you illumined your Church through the witness of your servant William Temple: Inspire us, we pray, by his teaching and example, that we may rejoice with courage, confidence and faith in the Word made flesh, and may be led to establish that city which has justice for its foundation and love for its law; through Jesus Christ, the light of the world, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.”

As we give thanks for the life of William Temple and all those whom we remember this day, here are our tasks for this day and this week. First, sometime today, take a moment to reflect on who has been an exemplary saint or person in your life in the past, or who is an exemplary saint for you now. Pray for that person and thank God for that person’s witness. Ask God to help you be more like that person. If that person is still alive, call him or her or write a note of thanksgiving. Second, pray that you might be an exemplary saint for someone else. To whom and in what way does your life witness to God’s great love in Christ? Who might be touched by your witness? And, finally, rejoice that, as we welcome four more people into the blessed company of all the saints, we know that we are not only surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, but that we ourselves are a part of that “great multitude which no man could number.” Thanks be to God!

1. M. Eugene Boring, Revelation, Interpretation (Louisville: John Knox, 1989), 228, quoted by Wilfrid J. Harrington, O.P. Revelation, (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1993), 231.