All Saints’ Day
Dear friends in Christ. As we celebrate All Saints’ Day today, we are celebrating what we confess in the Creed: that the Church is the Communion of saints. The very fact that we celebrate All Saints’ Day is our confession of faith that there is but one holy, Christian, and Apostolic Church—part of it is here on earth, that’s us; and part of it is in heaven—all the Christians who have died in the faith.
What a wonderful, positive confession of faith All Saints’ Day is. All our Christian dead—those who died in faith in Jesus—are not dead and gone. Instead, they live—their souls are alive with Christ in heaven. With us, they await the resurrection of the body on the Last Day. They and we together form the one Church. As we gather together in worship, we Christians, we saints on earth, join our praise together with theirs as together we worship the holy Triune God.
The part of that one Church that is in heaven is called the Church Triumphant. It is made of Christians who have died in the faith and whose souls are now with our Lord in heaven in joy and bliss awaiting the resurrection of the body on the Last Day. They are called Triumphant because by God’s grace and work they triumphed over the devil and all his attempts to despair of the Lord and to destroy their faith and drag them back into slavery to sin, death and hell. They triumphed because the Lord, in grace, by His Holy Spirit working in the word and sacrament, strengthened them in the faith and preserved them in the faith. They are the ones described in today’s Epistle: These are the ones who are coming out of the great tribulation, and washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.
Our earthly life is the great tribulation because during it the devil is seeking to destroy us and our faith. That’s why we have so many trials, conflicts—both spiritual and physical. But what is the Christian doing his/her earthly life during all this? Wash[] their robes and ma[k]e them white in the blood of the Lamb, that is, we keep holding by faith to Christ, to His forgiveness, His righteousness; we keep holding to Christ and His word of promise to bring us safely through this earthly life to Himself in heaven. Because of our struggles in this life against sin and the devil and all his allies and whatever he throws against us, we Christians, the Church, on earth is called the Church Militant. We are constantly struggling and striving against sin and the devil, against our old sinful nature, against the world calling us to give up and live a life of sin, live for self. This earthly life is a spiritual battle/ struggle. But what a glorious encouragement All Saints’ Day is for us! Our eyes are turned heavenward. We see that others have gone on before us in the world and remained faithful to death. We see the Lord showed them grace and mercy and we can trust Him to show us the same grace and mercy and keep us in the faith throughout our earthly life and one day bring us safely to Himself in heaven.
Today’s Gospel is the beginning of our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount. This section is called the “Beatitudes”—coming from the Latin word Beatus meaning “blessed/ happy.” Jesus begins each of the nine Beatitudes with the word: Blessed. This is not just any mere happiness but it is a true deep spiritual joy grounded on who we are in Christ. Each of the Beatitudes is a description of the Christian as we are already in this life! For many centuries the Beatitudes have been used in the Church as the Gospel for All Saints’ Day because they describe the Christians as they are now in this life. Today as we focus on the fourth Beatitude, Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied, we will see that the life of a Christian on earth is marked by that hunger[ing] and thirst[ing] for righteousness and that hunger and thirst will be satisfied both now and eternally.
1. When the saints whose souls are now in heaven lived on this earth they hunger[ed] and thirst[ed] for righteousness. Now we on earth, each of our Lord’s dear Christians, hunger and thirst for righteousness. What does that mean? Well, if you are hungry or thirsty that means you have an urgent/ strong desire—need—for food or drink. You certainly are not hungering and thirsting for more food and drink after your Thanksgiving Day feast. Why not? You’re full. And if you’re like most people you are more than full. To hunger and thirst for righteousness means, then, that we recognize our need for righteousness; it means that we very much feel our lack of righteousness, that we don’t have any. In other words, to hunger and thirst for righteousness means that we recognize and confess that we are sinners.
That’s exactly the same thing the saints in heaven experienced while they were still here on earth—they hunger[ed] and thirst[ed] for righteousness; they recognized and confessed their sin. It’s not that the saints in heaven are there because they are in themselves more righteous than other people. Instead, like you and me, they knew themselves to be sinners, felt that sin accusing them, kept fighting against sin, kept falling prey to sin, to the same sin over and over again—just like you and me today. When the saints who are now in heaven were on earth, they very well knew their lack of righteousness—just like we do. That’s why they hungered and thirsted after righteousness. As Jesus tells us in our text—precisely that hungering and thirsting for righteousness marks/ distinguishes the Christian.
The hungering and thirsting for righteousness that the Christians, the saints on earth, feel is really the longing of the soul for that relationship with God. That we hunger and thirst for righteousness means that we feel our sin and recognize that our sin has destroyed our relationship with God. The very fact that you hunger and thirst for righteousness is a good thing because it means you recognize that the relationship with God has been destroyed; it means you are longing for the Lord but recognize that He is the one true and holy God but that we are sinners, deserving only His wrath and condemnation because of that sin.
The hunger and thirst for righteousness is humility. It is the simple recognition that we have no righteousness of our own to bring to God. Don’t think that your sins keep you away from God. Yes, your sins/ your lack of righteousness have broken your relationship with God and have separated you from God. But the glorious good news for us—as it was for all the saints now in heaven—is that it does not depend on us and our righteousness that we have a restored and right relationship with God. Instead, He will give us the perfect righteousness for that right relationship with Him—again our text: Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. Yes, we have no righteousness of our own that avails before God; that’s why we hunger and thirst for it. But God doesn’t leave us hungering and thirsting; instead, Jesus says we shall be satisfied.
2. That we feel our sin and long for rescue from that sin and to have a right and proper relationship with God—that is the work of the Holy Spirit in us. Without the work of the Holy Spirit in the law, the person easily thinks that he/she is good enough for heaven and God. With such a person, there is no hunger or thirst for righteousness because “Why? I’m good enough!” But when the Holy Spirit works in the holy Law of God, showing us and convicting us of our sin, and we humbly receive it—then there is that hungering and thirsting for righteousness.
That’s when He has prepared our hearts to welcome and receive the Bible’s proclamation that Jesus is our righteousness. That’s the purpose of Jesus’ coming—to be for us our righteousness before God. Because we are conceived and born in sin, because we daily add to our sin countless times each hour, we have no righteousness before God. And because God is a holy God who must punish sin, there seems to be no hope for us of having that right relationship with God, of entering heaven, of being a saint. But remember—Jesus came to be our righteousness. Jesus is the Righteous One, His is the righteousness we long for.
In a wonderful and glorious sense, Jesus in the Beatitudes is describing Himself: Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. Jesus’ whole purpose in coming to this earth, of Him, the true God, becoming also true man was because He hungered and thirsted for righteousness. He didn’t hunger and thirst for righteousness for Himself because He is God, perfectly righteous and holy. But Jesus hungered and thirsted to bring about righteousness for us, for the entire sinful human race. Remember what Jesus said at the time of His baptism by John, when John was questioning Jesus why Jesus should be baptized; Jesus said [Mt. 3.15]: Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness. What glorious words—Jesus hunger[ed] and thirst[ed] for righteousness, to bring it about for us. Jesus came to fulfill every Law of God—the very law we break day in and day out. Jesus hunger[ed] and thirst[ed] to bring about righteousness for us, the lost condemned sinful human race—and the glorious thing for us? He did! He was satisfied. He not only obeyed God’s holy Law for us but He also took our sin upon Himself and suffered all of God’s wrath and punishment for those sins. He reconciled us sinners to the holy God; He brought about that righteousness that we can now stand before God and enter heaven. Jesus hungered and thirsted for God’s plan of salvation so that it would be carried out in and through Him.
All our longing—our hungering and thirsting—for righteousness would be worthless and futile unless Jesus had longed—hungered and thirsted—to be our righteousness; hungered and thirsted to bring about our salvation.
Because we have no righteousness of our own and Jesus is our righteousness, how we long to hear and in faith to receive His righteousness as our own! As we came at our baptism hunger[ing] and thirst[ing] for righteousness, Christ gave us His forgiveness and righteousness and clothed us/ covered us with His perfect righteousness [Gal. 3.27]. We are now already perfectly satisfied with the perfect righteousness of Christ but each day as we examine our hearts and lives in the mirror of God’s holy Law and see all of our sin and unrighteousness, how then we long for the perfect righteousness of Christ for us. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness—that’s us in confession. And the promise? For they shall be satisfied. In the absolution Christ gives us the forgiveness of sin and His righteousness. In the Blessed Sacrament He gives us that same forgiveness as He gives us that holy, righteous Body cursed for our sin and that holy, precious blood shed for our forgiveness.
What a blessing for us, what a grace of God to us that we, dear Christian, are ones who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Where there is that hunger and thirst, there Christ can come and satisfy/ fulfill that hunger and thirst. On the flip-side, if we lose that hunger and thirst for righteousness, how can Christ bless us/ satisfy us?
That’s why the Christian’s life on earth is one of hunger[ing] and thirst[ing] for righteousness. Even as we are satisfied/ blessed by Christ with the forgiveness of sin and His righteousness, even as we led and empowered by the Holy Spirit and in love for the Lord who forgives us and gives us His righteousness, strive to live a life in accord with the Lord’s will/ a life of righteousness, we still will daily sin and fall far short of the perfect righteousness, and so all during our earthly lives continue to hunger and thirst for righteousness, the perfect righteousness of Christ. First when we are in heaven, like the saints are now, will we be free from sin and perfectly/ eternally satisfied in righteousness. May their blessed condition be an encouragement to us now. INJ Amen.