Sermon Prepared for Messiah Lutheran Church

8:30 traditional service – 11/4/01

by Gregory S. Kaurin

Associate Pastor for Spiritual Care and Development

 

Texts: Ephesians 1:15-19, Revelation 7:9-14; Psalm 149

 

The Sermon: Who Is This Host?

 

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Who is this host?  We are this host.  …We are …and countless others with us, across nations and centuries.  And we must live like there will be more after us.

 

I need you to have two things ready this morning for this message.  First, you will need your red pew Bible, or one to share.  Second, you will need your green Lutheran Book of Worship.  Have those two things ready.

 

First, I’m going to add one more scripture lesson for you to look at this All Saints Sunday.  In your red pew Bibles, look in the New Testament section toward the end of the Bible, p. 239.

 

This is the seventh chapter of the Revelation of St. John, after he has written prophetic letters to the churches of the world, and after he has seen frightening and wonderful creatures, and heard promises and warnings.  Chapter 7 beginning with verse10:  Here are a people, dressed in white.  It’s a huge crowd, not just a mere 144,000, but a countless throng.  The angelic choirs join them, and together they sing: “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on his 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!” 

It goes on from there in verses 13-14.  An elder asks John, “Who is this host?” 

John answers, “You know better than I would.”

 

OK, put that aside and look at Hymn #314, in our green LBW hymnal.  It is based on that passage, “Who Is This Host Arrayed in White?”  I want you to mark that hymn and meditate on it during the distribution of Holy Communion.

Now, turn to hymn #559.  (There are too many great hymns to sing on All Saints Sunday.)  “Oh for a Thousand Tongues to Sing”: let’s join in singing the last verse.  While we do, I want you to hear singing with us the countless host we just talked about, and the angelic choir:

 

To God all glory praise and love

Be now and ever given;

By saints below and saints above,

The church in earth and heaven.

 

“By saints below and saints above,” that’s all saints, including us.  We are saints.  How, what makes us saints?  Listen, it’s not about personal holiness.  It’s not about graceful, uncomplaining, head-held-high piety. 

Read carefully.  In John’s Revelation, the Bible says the saints in heaven will be the ones who come through something called the “ordeal,” the ones who’ve washed in the blood of the Lamb.  In other words, they are the ones who’ve been made clean by Christ’s sacrifice.  That is each of us…even now.  We are saints and sinners—sinners who are forgiven saints—and forgiven saints who sin again.  By the promise of baptism and refreshed in communion, we are always a part of this vast, countless host.

 

That answers the "Who?" of “Who is this host?”  Now, let me ask “What?”  What are we, and what are we supposed to be doing about it?

First, what are we?  What is this host?  This is not your “Bed & Breakfast” kind of host (though sometimes that is how we “hosts” are supposed to act).  When you call a group of people a “host,” like “all the host of heaven,” it usually suggests an army.  It’s a battle image, people united by cause and mission, and wielding something like weapons and tools and armor for that mission.

What is this host?  It is the generations of Christians and Jews of the Biblical promise, passing it on, living for it, dying for it, preaching, prophesying, serving, loudly, quietly, joyfully, tearfully, patiently and wildly.  More than a thousand tongues, this host is billions of people for 1000’s of years, all of them receiving and handing on a message …and a mission.  The mission is to hand on the message.  That is how you and I were able to hear the same promise of salvation fulfilled in Christ, so that we could wash ourselves clean in his sacrifice, and swallow his feast of forgiveness.

What are we?  We are a part of the heavenly and earthly host.  It’s not just “good news”—our knees should be knocking!  This is a huge legacy of sacrifice, and it’s all placed on our shoulders!

 

What are we supposed to do about it?  We have been given their mission.  We are supposed to pass on their message.  And we are to deliver it like a two-edge sword.  This is an incredibly powerful sword that we rarely understand.

Our psalm lesson sang bold praises about it.  Psalm 149 sang to us, “Let the faithful exult in glory: let them sing for joy on their couches.  Let the high praises of God be in their throats, a two-edged sword in their hands.”

In the Bible, we learn that this sword is the Sword of Truth, God’s Word.  It is Jesus’ tongue.  It is his word of gospel that somehow invites, judges, destroys evil and saves people, …all at the very same time.

It may be placed in our hands and throats, but it remains Christ’s sword, and it truly is two-edged: it cuts both ways.

 

I have a few favorite science fiction and fantasy novels.  (I rarely ever get any ideas for sermons directly from these books; they’re kind of the junk food in my reading diet.)  Ever since the late 70’s, I’ve been reading novels by Terry Brooks, who lives here in the Northwest.  I especially enjoy all the Shannara series that began with his first book: The Sword of Shannara. 

It’s an adventure, Good verses Evil, and it circles around this powerful weapon called the Sword of Shannara.  The mystery of the sword is what makes it powerful.  It isn’t used in battle like a normal sword, so how does it destroy evil?  It does it simply by revealing the truth.

Little Shea Ohmsford is the unlikely hero of the novel.  He draws the sword from its scabbard for the first time, near the end of the first book.  With the sword held in his hands, he begins to see it’s power, and how it cuts both ways…

 

The images cleared with frightening sharpness, and abruptly [Shea Ohmsford] saw another side to himself, a side he had never been able to recognize—or perhaps had simply refused to accept.  It revealed itself in an endless line of events… Here was an accounting of every hurt he had caused to others, every petty jeaulosy he had felt, his deep-seated prejudices, his deliberate half-truths, his self-pity, his fears—all that was dark and hidden within himself…

The images went on endlessly.  Shea Ohmsford recoiled in horror from what he was seeing.  He could not accept it.  He could never accept it!

…But he had to accept it.  It was the truth.

…Truth?  Shea opened his eyes again to stare at the Sword of Shannara, gleaming whitely from blade to handle…

Abruptly, he realized that he knew the secret of the Sword.  The Sword of Shannara possessed the power to reveal Truth—to force the man [in its presence] to recognize the truth about himself.[1]

 

Later in the story, we learn how this sword of truth destroys the evil ones.  In its presence, they realize their absolute hideousness and wrongness.  When they are forced to see behind their huge lies, pretended righteousness, wrath and self-pity, they cannot survive their own despair and hatefulness.  In the presence of the sword of truth, you either fall in despair, or are saved by forgiveness—including self-forgiveness.

 

In Christianity, the sword is not such an obvious weapon that we wield, but it works the same way.  The sword is the gospel message, and it really does cut in all directions.  It hurts us and it saves us at the same time.

To get at this, I need to put aside the sword and battle image of the host—and return to the “Bed & Breakfast” host image, the host that gathers around the Feast.  Consider this question, “Who is invited to this feast?”  Who does the gospel message invite to this table?  …Everyone.

Is there anyone who is not worthy for the feast?  I recently read one Lutheran theologian who said, “Yes.”  Yes, there are people who make themselves unworthy of the altar, and God’s heavenly banquet.  The ones who want or try to exclude other people make themselves unworthy.  We become unworthy whenever we try to qualify God’s grace.  Christ demands that it be open to all.  That is his gospel. 

Think about this, why was Jesus so hard on the Pharisees and religious leaders?  “Hypocrites,” he called them, “liars, snakes” and such. 

Jesus told parables about older brothers and Pharisees who thought themselves special and justified because they kept their noses clean.  They were obeying all reasonable rules and laws, but they looked down their clean noses at others.  And as soon as they did, they committed a great sin against God.  What can be worse than trying to block anyone from God’s salvation and forgiveness?

We must always remember that no one—no matter how long we’ve been a Christian, no matter how good we’ve been—no one of us has ever, ever, earned a place at this table.  The only reason that we have a place here, among all the other saints and sinners, is because we were invited.  That is the only reason.

Think of the different groups of people that Christians have tried to exclude these past two thousand years because of their background, their sinfulness, their denomination, their sexuality, lifestyles, oddness, ugliness, mental status.  Whatever, it’s all been used.  And now look at whom Jesus invited and with whom he feasted: unclean tax collectors, Samaritans, lepers, prostitutes, smelly fishermen, thieves, and scoundrels!

There will be people in God’s kingdom that, if we knew who they were, we would be shouting out, “No fair, God!  Don’t you remember what they did, and how they lived their lives?  Think about how good I was, how hard I worked, and all the sacrifices I made for you.  …Please, don’t place me at the same table…as them.”

That is how the word of gospel cuts into us.  The gospel can be hard for us to hear because it forces us to remain humbled by it.  We must confront the truth of our own unworthiness, enough to admit that this gospel invitation must be a gift; there is no way that I could have earned it.  It had to be given to me! 

More than that, you and I don’t get to make the rules for others.  We don’t get to draw up the guest list.  If we did, as much as we would try to draw the line to include us, we would always end up excluding ourselves.  God sees, and sees through, masks that we don’t even know we have.

 

Who is this host?  It is we, you and I, and billions of others.  Our sword of truth shows that no one worthy, …but everyone is invited.  That is our message.  That is our mission.

We can honor all those who have gone before us best, by making sure that this is at least one place that the gospel will be heard, and making sure that each of our homes and lives proclaims this message loud and clear, and unqualified: “Not by works, lest anyone should boast, …but by grace alone.”

 

Grace alone.  Amen.

 

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