Dennis Tuuri

Return this morning to Hebrews 12 verses 22-24 for the sermon scripture. Hebrews 12:22-24. We’ll actually read through verse 29. Hebrews 12 starting at verse 22. “But ye are come to Mount Zion and under the city of the living God, to the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaketh better things than that of Abel.

See that you refuse not him that speaketh, for if they escape not, who refused him that spake on earth, Much more shall not we escape, if we turn away from him that speaketh from heaven, whose voice then shook the earth. But now he hath promised, saying, Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven. And this word, yet once more, signifyth the removing of those things that are shaken as of things that are made, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain.

Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear. For our God is a consuming fire.”

Hey, heat. The younger children may be dismissed at this time to go to their Sabbath schools if their parents desire that.

We did last week. We want to use this time while the parents are going downstairs to just review a bit to bring you up to date with where we’re at this morning. We are continuing and finishing up a sermon that I prepared for last week, but which I didn’t finish last week.

We talked about the communion with saints in heaven. We’re going through a series of sermons on our worship service. And we’re talking now about the second half of formal worship, communion. And communion is the time when the church historically has chosen to focus upon the communion that we have, not just with each other in the room in which we sit at the Lord’s table, but also communion with saints in heaven, other saints on earth, and as we saw last week, the angelic myriads of myriads as well.

Hebrews 12:22-24 teaches us about this communion we have with saints in heaven. But before we got to that last week, we talked about the future reality of the communion that we’ll have with the saints and friends and relatives that we know who have died in the Lord. In the future should bring us great comfort. We talked a little bit from 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18. There are many other scriptures we’ll get to hopefully in this next year sometime to talk about the many biblical evidences that we will recognize people in heaven, will have fellowship with the people there that we have fellowship here with as well.

Then we talked about the present reality of communion with the saints in heaven from Hebrews 12:22-24. And we talked about that reality in Sabbath festivities, how it should bring joy to the worshipper. And we talked about various evidences from the text and from other portions of scripture that there is the concept of worship being talked about here. We said that the word “to come” that “we are come” under Mount Zion.

That word is used several times in the book of Hebrews to talk about approaching God in worship or in prayer to the throne room of God as it were and coming before his presence that way, which is true of course in formal worship, and that’s one evidence. We talked about the fact that we are brought into a sphere of worship to Mount Zion, to Jerusalem, the residence of God, brought into God’s presence as it were in a special way, indicating special worship.

We also talked about the fact that there are festivities spoken of here. Remember we talked last week about the word panagy and believe it or not, I came across that word this week in my studies, having it being a new word to me—it being a basically an English transliteration of the Greek word that’s translated here to the general assembly in verse 23. Remember we said that word, festivity, panagy, is the—as I said—English transliteration of the of the Greek word. Only place used in scripture is here and in the Greek of the day it referred to a festival, a getting together not for doing business but getting together to rejoice, to sing praises, to sing somebody’s lords, to give thanks in terms of somebody or something. In my studies this week, I’ll be quoting later from Gregory from the 3rd century church. He was a student of Origen, and he wrote a thing called his panagy to Origen—his tribute to Origen, as it were, his teacher—at the end of his period of study with Origen. And so it’s a festival sort of a thing. And so when we read here “in the general assembly,” you may not ever understood what that means. And what it means is that the context of all this—that we come to the angels and the saints who are in heaven now—in festival array, in Sabbath festivities, is certainly one of the indications of the word being used here.

And we talked about the communion we have with angels and with the church militant here on earth. And again, that’s not a reconstruction term. That’s a historic term. The church militant refers to the body of believers who are on earth. The church triumphant are those who have gone to their permanent state of rest, resounding the praises of God around his throne room in heaven.

And so the church militant—we’re going to talk more about that next week. We have communion with the church on earth, the extended household of God over the face of the earth. And it’s very important that we spend a week talking about that. And then we have fellowship with the church triumphant in heaven.

In verse 23, it says that we’ve come to the spirit of just men made perfect. And earlier in Hebrews in chapter 11, we read about saints of the old covenant being referred to as righteous. At the end of Hebrews 11, it says that they were made perfect with us. And so that’s definitely a reference to the Old Testament saints that are described in Hebrews 11. And of course, by way of application, to all those who have died in the Lord, they’ve been made perfect in terms of their ascent to heaven with the coming of the new covenant.

And then we talked about all this—of course, this great picture of Sabbath festivities and the songs. Some of the songs we’ve already sung this morning hopefully brought those images back to your mind. Of Hebrews 12:22-24, that when we come together in holy worship we should think of ourselves as worshiping God along with the angels, with the saints who have departed, with the other saints on earth as well, all together in the body of Christ as we approach God in his throne room to give him Lord’s day worship.

And so the basis for all this, of course, is the fact that we’ve come to the savior in verse 24. We’ve come to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant and to the blood of sprinkling that speaketh better things than that of Abel—better worship in the new as opposed to the old covenant times.

Now, we’re going to talk now about the present reality in life girds us for victory. This has application not just to Sabbath day worship services. Before we get to the application to life, though, I want to spend a couple of minutes talking about the Sursum Corda. And those of you who have read some of the material we’ve been circulating around for the last couple of years and know by now when we talk about the Sursum Corda, that’s a Latin term.

It was used in the historic church for—and has still been used for 2,000 years—usually at the transition point from the first half of the service, the preaching side of it, into the communion side. As you go to the communion side, the officiant would say “lift up your hearts” or “Sursum Corda” in Latin, which translates to “lift up your hearts” or “up with your hearts” or “up with your minds.” And then the people would respond, “It is right and fitting that we lift them up” or “We lift them up to God.”

Something like that. And this is a particular concern for us because we have had a speaker in the past sponsored by our church who has written material on this particular subject and has left us all a little bit baffled over what it means—the ascent to heaven. It’s even been described as saying that when you’re in worship service and you look outside the windows and you see earth, don’t let that fool you. We’re really in heaven in convocative worship. And that sounds a little funny. And I want us to spend a little bit of time looking at what the historic church understood by the Sursum Corda and also what the Reformers understood by the Sursum Corda—”lift up your hearts”—because it’s very pertinent to our subject in terms of applying all this in terms of worship and then to our lives as well.

Okay. And I’m going to be doing lots of quotes here. I’ll apologize for that upfront, but I think it’s very important you get information from the original source documents of some of the church fathers on this subject.

Now, Calvin is one of the people that is quoted in “Days of Vengeance,” for instance, as advocating this literal ascent into heaven. Calvin is quoted as saying—let’s—I’ll read this entire quote here. This is a quote from St. Germanus, who was a church father in Constantinople in the 8th century. And then we’ll go into a quote by Calvin. Germanus wrote this in his book on the liturgy of the church. Germanus wrote, “The church is an earthly heaven. The souls of Christians are called together to assemble with the prophets, apostles, and hierarchs in order to recline with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob at the mystical banquet of the kingdom of Christ. Thereby having come into the unity of faith and communion of the spirit through the dispensation of the one who died for us and is sitting at the right hand of the father.

We are no longer on earth but standing by the royal throne of God in heaven where Christ is, just as he himself says: ‘Righteous Father, sanctify in your name those whom you gave me so that where I am they may be with me’” according to John 17.

And then Chilton writes: “John Calvin agreed. In order that pious souls may duly apprehend Christ in the supper they must be raised up to heaven and for the same reason it was established of old that before consecration the people should be told in a loud voice to lift up their hearts.”

Now the quotes there from Calvin need to be seen in the context of what he was writing about—very important here. The quotes listed by Calvin saying that we must be lifted up to heaven to worship correctly, looking at Hebrews 12:22-24 as the most clear teaching of our communion and worship with the ascended host, so to speak. The quote from Calvin is in his section of the Institutes where he talks about superstition and idolatry in relationship to the elements of communion. And he’s castigating the Catholic Church for idolatrous action toward the bread, kneeling down to it.

Okay? And I’m going to read you now a quote from Calvin that has contained within it these quotes about raising our hearts to heaven. And you’ll see as I go through this why I’m doing this.

“These things, moreover, incline pious readers to reflect how unsafe it is in things so lofty to wander from God’s simple word to the fantasies of our own brains.”

Now, that’s a very good point. Calvin makes that point many times in his writing, that where God shuts his mouth on a matter, we dare not open ours. And when God makes statements that are somewhat difficult to comprehend, such as what we’re talking about this morning, we want to be very careful not to go beyond the plain teaching of scripture.

Calvin goes on to say: “But the things said above ought to free us from every misgiving in this matter. For in order that pious souls may duly apprehend Christ in the supper, they must be raised up to heaven. But if the function of the sacrament is to help the otherwise weak mind of man, so that it may rise up to look upon the height of spiritual mysteries, then those who are halted at the outward sign wander from the right way of seeking Christ.

What then? Shall we deny that this is superstitious worship when men prostrate themselves before bread to worship Christ there? Doubtless the Council of Nicaea meant to forestall this evil when it forbade us to fix our humble attention upon the symbols set before us.”

Council of Nicaea said you can’t gaze upon the bread of communion. The reason it said that was because they didn’t want people entering into idolatry. God gives us bread, but if our thoughts stop at the bread instead of what it signifies to us, we become idolatrous.

Calvin goes on: “For this same reason, in other words, to avoid the idolatry of stopping at a literal representation of something that is an intellectual concept or has ethical ramifications for who we are. For this same reason, it was established of old that before consecration, the people should be told in a loud voice to lift up their hearts. Scripture itself also not only carefully recounts to us the ascension of Christ, by which he withdrew from the presence of his body from our sight and company to shake us from all carnal thinking of him, but also whenever it recalls him, bids our minds be raised up and seek him in heaven, seated at the right hand of the father. Colossians 3:1 and 2.

According to this rule, we ought rather to have adored him spiritually in heavenly glory than to have devised some dangerous kind of adoration replete with a carnal and crass conception of God.”

Now, what Calvin is saying is that the “lift up your heart” does not mean time to push top four button on the elevator—here we go. He doesn’t mean that. He means it is developing a heavenly perspective of our worship and of our communion with Jesus and with the saints.

Now, this is the teaching of the historic Orthodox Church for 2,000 years. This is what the church fathers taught. And I’ll quote now from them in this regard as well.

Cyprian, church father Cyprian, said: “Moreover, when we stand praying, beloved brethren, we ought to be watchful and earnest with our whole heart intent on our prayer. Let all carnal and worldly thoughts pass away. For the soul at that time think of anything—I’m excuse me—let worldly thoughts pass away, nor let the soul at that time think on anything but the object only of its prayer.

For this reason also the priest by way of preface before his prayer prepares the minds of the brethren by saying ‘lift up your hearts,’ that so upon the people’s response ‘we lift them up unto the Lord,’ he may be reminded that he himself ought to think of nothing but the Lord. Let the breast be closed against the adversary and be open to God alone, nor let it suffer God’s enemy to approach to it at the time of prayer. For frequently he steals upon us and penetrates within and by crafty deceit calls away our prayers from God, that we may have one thing in our heart and another in our voice.”

Cyprian says the purpose of the Sursum Corda is that our prayers—in our prayers we may be devoted and wholeheartedly thinking of God in heaven, not that we can ascend and be with him in a physical location.

Augustine, writing on this subject, says: “Thinking we believe, thinking we speak, thinking we do whatever we do, but in respect of what concerns the way of piety and the true worship of God, we are not sufficient to think anything of our as of ourselves, but our sufficiency is of God. For our heart and our thoughts are not in our own power.”

Hence, the same Ambrose, who says this, also says: “But who is so blessed as in his heart always is to rise upwards. And how can this be done without divine help? Assuredly by no means. Finally, he says the same scripture affirms above.” And he quotes now from Psalm 84:5, the Latin Vulgate translation. “But Psalm 84:5 says, ‘Blessed is the man whose self is of thee, O Lord, ascent is in our hearts.’ Ascent, rising up.

Assuredly, Ambrose was not only enabled to say this by reading in the holy writings, but of such a man as without doubt believed, he felt it also in his own heart. Therefore, as is said in the sacraments of believers, that we should lift up our hearts to the Lord is God’s gift. For which gift they to whom this is said are admonished by the priests after the word to give thanks to our Lord God himself. And they answer that it is meet and right to do so. For since our heart is not in our own power, but is lifted up by the divine help, so that it ascends and takes cognizance of those things which are above, where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God, and not those things that are upon the earth, to whom are thanks to be given for so great a gift as this, unless to our Lord God, who does this, who in so great kindness has chosen us by delivering us from the abyss of this world, and has predestined us before the foundation of the world.”

The point is this. The church fathers—Cyprian, Augustine—the Reformers by Calvin’s quote, I could quote many other sources—believed that the Sursum Corda, the lifting up of our hearts, is to a heavenly perspective. It is not to be understood in a literal ascent. It is to a heavenly perspective.

In fact, the liturgies of the early church said, “Lift up your minds.” Cortex can be translated not “heart” in terms of our heart, but our minds as well, indicating our thoughts. And then the response of the people in some of the ancient liturgies is translated “our thoughts are to God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, to the glorious God of power.”

And so, the idea of the Sursum Corda and the ascent that we’ve been talking about for this last week and today about our communion with the saints in heaven is to reckon these things so in our minds and in our hearts. It does not mean some sort of literal ascent into the heavenlies. It is a perspective that’s being spoken of.

Germanus, who Chilton quotes here as saying we must be lifted up to sit at the banquet table with these men, while he does indeed address the throne room of heavenly worship in the quote we read, Germanus in the 8th century in Constantinople also says this. He said: “The church is an earthly heaven in which the supercelestial God dwells and walks about.” Revelation 3:20: “Jesus says that if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come into him and dine with him.”

And so you have pictures in the scriptures, and the church fathers acknowledged that we are not necessarily going up. God is coming down. God comes down to make us a boat of the people. Later we’re going to talk about the implications of Revelation 21. When the heavenly Jerusalem does what? Lift everybody up to it? No, it descends to earth. And so the physical relationship here of up and down is not the primary consideration in the Sursum Corda.

The Sursum Corda is a call to have a heavenly perspective on our worship, on our communion with God, and then in terms of that, in the rest of our lives as well. It is to have the mind that prays the Lord’s prayer and says “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” We get a heavenly perspective to do what we need to do on earth. That’s what it’s all about.

This heavenly perspective, then, is not to be restricted just to formal worship, but instead is to be a life filled with that perspective that changes who we are.

Now, we’ve been talking about worship for some weeks now. I believe it’s been 22 weeks if I’m not mistaken. And to think that what we’ve been talking about is just what happens on Sunday is, I is really almost idolatrous in terms of what the word of God says—to restrict what God tells us about in terms of how to worship him correctly on Sunday to Sunday alone, and to fail to see the implications for the rest of our life, is to restrict the kingdom and the word of God to the institutional church, which is idolatry—placing the church in the place of the kingdom of God and his power.

We’ve talked a lot about this, and if you go back to the sermon notes that I’ve prepared for you, every one of them tried to show you how to make application what we do on Sunday into the rest of the week. The call to worship is where we started. Every morning this morning you got a call. You got a wakeup call. You had an alarm. You set your mental alarm. Whatever it was, God woke you up and it was a call to worship him.

Tomorrow you’ll get up. You’ll have a time to get up out of your death-like slumber. Certainly the picture there is seen together in scripture to do work for him. And that call is not a call from your alarm clock ultimately or from your wife or whoever it is who wakes you up. It is a call from God to rise up out of bed and to worship him that day in all that you do. Everything is with your hand to do it, you are to worship him.

Worship and service are seen together. Hebrews 12:28, the text we read from earlier, says the purpose of all this is that we might serve God acceptably. And the word “serve” there is translated by other versions as “worship God correctly.” You see, you can’t separate those two—worship and service. Worship is service to God. And what we are doing here, we have an order of service this morning. We have an order of worship. And that order of worship gives us a model, a matrix that affects all of our lives.

And so when you get up tomorrow morning, think about the call to worship. Think about your confession of sin. You have no right to walk in tomorrow into a day of life that God gives you tomorrow. The wages of sin is death. It’s God’s grace that you live tomorrow. It’s God’s grace that prepares a day for you tomorrow filled with things from his hand. Everything comes forth from his hand. We’re to give thanks in all things. We should be prepared to repent before God in the morning to ask forgiveness for our sins and to ask his blessing upon the day and have him help us to keep in the correct frame of mind to thank him for whatever happens that day and we could go right through the antiphal response.

We say as the psalms—one thing the psalms are written antipally. Thing is said, thing is repeated by the congregation, and then at the end of that we sing a commitment summarizing the psalm again. Well, that isn’t just what happens on Sunday. You are called to respond to God antiphonally tomorrow at the wakeup call and then at everything else that happens throughout the day too. Everything comes forth from God’s hand for his glory and for your wellbeing if you are called and part of the elect community of Jesus Christ.

And so when something happens—a catastrophe, a great thing, a great blessing, a reward that you get, simple mundane things of life—you have to respond to the universe that God has created and his providence is working out. Our antiphonal response is supposed to be what? It’s supposed to be the word of God back to him. It’s supposed to be acknowledging that he has brought that thing into being.

We could go right through holder of service. We won’t take the time, but probably at the end of this series, we will talk about this—but the point is the same this morning. The communion that we have with saints in heaven, the heavenly worship that we experience on Sunday and think about and manifest itself in a full exterior sense on Sunday through Hebrews 12:22-24—the other verses that talk about it—is a model for our whole lives again.

Colossians 3:1 says, “If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above. For Christ siteth at the right hand of God, set your affection on things above, not on things of the earth. For you are dead, your life is hid with Christ and God.” That doesn’t just apply to Sunday. That talks about your whole life. You are in your whole of life risen with Christ, seated with him at the right hand of God the Father. And you’re to see things from that perspective.

Ephesians 2:6: “He hath raised us up together and made us to sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.”

Revelation 21:3: “And I heard a great voice out of heaven, saying, ‘Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them. They shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them and be their God.’” And again, there to avoid the, you know, the up and down thing. The point is, we’ve been brought together. Heaven and earth have become one, as it were, and we’re to have heaven’s perspective on what happens on earth.

We can’t pray, “Thy will be done on earth as in heaven,” if we don’t know things from a heavenly perspective, which we’re called to do during worship and understanding these things as they’re taught to us in Hebrews 12:22-24. Hebrews 12:22-24 says you’re come to Mount Zion—certainly in the Sabbath festivities, but as a statement of your whole of life as well—that it applies to everything that we are and everything that we do.

It’s interesting that Germanus, again, in his divine liturgy, wrote of this communion we have as it were with the saints in heaven. He went on to say, “Therefore, receiving adoption and becoming coheirs with Christ through his grace and not through works, we have the spirit of the son of God contemplating his power and grace. We then proceed to the Lord’s prayer and the service was the next part of the liturgy so Germanus links this heavenly perspective to the reality of our position in Jesus Christ to then the Lord’s prayer for working our way through life on earth from that heavenly perspective.”

Alexander Schmemann, who is in the Eastern Orthodox Church, talks about this relationship of worship to life in this praying. And again, this is quoting out of David Chilton’s book, “Days of Vengeance.”

“The early Christians realized that in order to become the temple of the Holy Spirit, they must ascend to heaven where Christ has ascended. They realized also that this ascension was the very condition of their mission in the world, of their ministry to the world. For there in heaven, they were immersed in the new life of the kingdom. And when after the liturgy of ascension, they returned into the world, their faces reflected the light, the joy, and peace of kingdom, and they were truly its witnesses. They brought no programs and no theories. But wherever they went, the seeds of the kingdom sprouted. Faith was kindled. Life was transfigured. Things impossible were made possible. They were witnesses. And when they were asked, ‘When shines this light, where is the source of its power?’ They knew what to answer and where to lead men. In church today, we so often find we meet only the same old world, not Christ in his kingdom. We do not realize that we never get anywhere because we never leave any place behind us.”

Now, you could translate that again in this physical sense. But Schmemann went on to say this in his book “For the Bread of the Life of the World.” He said: “Our entrance into the presence of Christ is an entrance into a fourth dimension which allows us to see the ultimate reality of life. It is not an escape from the world; rather it is the arrival at a vantage point from which we can see more deeply into the reality of that world. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

That’s the whole point of the Sursum Corda. And as we said, to restrict it to church worship on Sundays is to restrict the kingdom of God to the institutional church, which is a grave and very dangerous error.

We’ve been doing some of these calls to worship from the pattern that we saw when we first started our series on worship, where God calls somebody out, people fall down as dead before him. He resurrects them—not just to be resurrected but to give them a word which they are then to take into the world. When we come together on Sunday, we come into the throne room of God. He comes to meet us. Whatever it is, the word of God is preached. We receive a command word from him to take into everything we do in life. Not just to structure our worship service. The worship service and the entrance into the fourth dimension that Schmemann talked about—to see the ultimate reality of life in Jesus Christ and the gospel—is to prepare us for works outside the church in the rest of the week.

Now the Sursum Corda, then, and the communion with saints in heaven is a preparation for all of life, not just for Sunday. And it is a preparation for victory. Hebrews 12:23-24, the context of that is Hebrews 11 and 12. And in Hebrews 11:12 we have this model I’ve given you on your outlines there: a look back, a look up, and then a look forward.

What am I talking about? Well, Hebrews 11:12 is a good Bible for this. In Hebrews 11, we have what some people have called the hall of saints or whatever it is. We have a whole list here of old covenant saints and what their lives were like as a picture of the past. We’re called to look back to what they were. And then in chapter 12 of Hebrews in verse one, it says, “Wherefore, seeing that we are compassed about with so great a number of witnesses,” and so you have this same concept as later on in the chapter—that we have come into the communion of saints. Was just men made perfect. With these guys, we look back at who they were, at their lives, what they did, how they persevered in life.

We look up and realize that we’re with them now in worship before Almighty God. And what’s the point of that? In Hebrews 12:1 and 2, it says then that we are then supposed to—having realized we encountered the great cloud of witnesses—”let us lay aside every weight and the sin which does so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus.”

See, it’s preparation for going forward, for working, for going into the rest of the week. You have this kind of perspective. The saints of the past, we’re one with those saints now in our worship. We remember that. We look up. We recognize then it is preparation for victory as we run the race that’s set before us. Recognizing that they’ve run the race. They look upon us now as witnesses. Look back, look up, and look forward.

Now, it just so happens that God in his providence has brought us to this particular part of the series on worship at the time of the year when people remember All Saints Day and Reformation Day. And we want to talk a little bit about All Saints Day.

Now sometimes we get a little confused. Just so you’ll know, All Saints Day is November 1st according to the Western Church’s liturgical calendar. All Souls Day is November 2nd. The Catholic Church separates All Saints Day and All Souls Day. All Saints Day is remembering the saints who are dead and in heaven perfected. All Souls Day remembers the souls who haven’t made it to heaven yet but who are in purgatory. Okay.

So we don’t celebrate All Souls today because purgatory is not a biblical doctrine. It is the very antithesis of justification by faith. We go to heaven not on the basis of our own works and working ourselves out and our sins out in purgatory. We go to heaven on the basis of Christ’s imputed righteousness, his life, not our own life. Okay?

We do in Reformed churches—and the Episcopal Church particularly—has commemorated All Saints Day. I want to give you a little historical background to this. All Saints Day originally began apparently about the 4th century and was originally restricted to remembering of the martyrs, much the way that Hebrews 11 gives us that picture.

And then early in the 7th century, Emperor Phocas of Rome gave the Roman Pantheon, a temple that was originally a pagan temple of course, to Pope Boniface IV, who then had it transformed into a church. Now the Pantheon had originally been built by Marcus Agrippa to commemorate Augustus’s victory at Actium in 27 BC. And just suffice it to say that Augustus was the great antichrist, as it were, of that time. I mean, in the sense that all salvation was to be seen in the Roman Empire through Augustus and him alone. It was like the great counterfeit to what Jesus was to, to who Jesus really was.

And so the Pantheon was built in commemoration to that. It was a totally godless place of Greek gods, etc. The Pantheon, but it was given in the early 7th century to Emperor Phocas or Pope Boniface, who had it made into a church.

Legend has it then—not for sure, we don’t know this for sure—that then 28 wagon loads of relics were taken to the new church, which was then dedicated on March 13th, 610 in honor of the martyrs whose relics were there. And the term “All Saints” probably came from that period of time because then the pope said that as it was all gods before in Rome, now it would be all saints we remember at that church and in terms of its installation or its commemoration on March 13, 610.

And so it was really originally in March. Gregory IV, who lived from—who reigned rather—from 827 to 844, transferred All Saints Day to November 1st and extended it to include all saints and not just martyrs. And that’s the origins of it today.

All Saints Day is a look back again, like Hebrews 11 is. It’s a look up, rather, realizing that people had communion with the saints in heaven according to Hebrews 12:22-24, and the church has always seen it as preparation then for life and for victory and for living out that victory in Jesus Christ.

The epistle reading for instance for All Saints Day in the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer—I’m sorry, the gospel reading is the Beatitudes. The epistle reading is from Revelation where it talks about the worship in heaven. The gospel reading then were the Beatitudes because the idea was the whole purpose of understanding our communion in heaven with God and the saints was to prepare us so we could live out the Beatitudes in our life forward into victory.

I’ve got a couple of quotes here from people who wrote on this. The Venerable Bede, writing in the 8th century of All Saints Day, said the following:

“Today dearly beloved, on one solemn day of rejoicing we celebrate the feast of all the saints in heaven. In their communion heaven exalts. In their patronage earth rejoices. In their strength holy church is crowned with glory. Their testimony becomes more glorious with honor in proportion to the intensity of their agony. As the battle waged fiercer, the greater was the glory which came to those who fought. The more terrible their tortures, the more illustrious the triumph of their martyrdoms. The greater their torments, the greater their rewards.

As our holy mother, the Catholic Church, now spread far and wide throughout the whole world, has been taught by Christ Jesus her head, not to fear shame or the cross or death, but to become stronger and stronger, not by resisting, but by enduring. So has she breathed into who were children, welded by the cruel prison into a glorious band, a triumphant spirit equal to her own and its fire and its courage to carry on in the conflict.”

Now, I read that to show you that the idea of All Saints Day was what we’re talking about in terms of the preparation for life. They realized their communion with those saints. Those saints then were seen as remembering that and realizing that they’re a crown of witnesses about us was an inducement to run the race and to proceed on into victory.

The picture is one of triumph for the church, not of defeat for the church.

Another person that wrote another All Saints sermon that I’m going to read a quote from was written—well, let’s see—we’re not sure who it was written by. It is attributed to Gregory Thaumaturgus, the man who I mentioned earlier lived in the 3rd century. In 231 he became a student of Origen. He wrote a panagy to Origen, sort of a class speech as it were I think is the idea there. His last name translates into “Wonderworker.”

After spending eight years studying under Origen, Gregory Thaumaturgus became bishop of his own native town of Neo-Caesarea. It is said—and the history and we don’t know this for sure, but it’s said—that when he went to Neo-Caesarea and became bishop there, there were only 17 Christians in this largely populated area. And after his death, by the time of his death, some 30 years later, only 17 pagans were left who hadn’t been converted to the faith.

So Gregory was a strong bishop in terms of gospel, in terms of preaching and evangelizing and then showing the implications of all that to life. He—this is attributed to him, but it’s second century. We don’t know for sure it was his sermon. But I’d like to give you a sense of how the early church understood this look back, up, and then forward.

Gregory wrote the following:

“In this wise, the martyrs show their power, leaping with joy in the presence of death, laughing at the sword, making sport of the path of princes, grasping at death as the product of deathlessness, making victory their own by their fall through the body, taking their leap to heaven, suffering their members to be scattered abroad in order that they might behold that they might hold their souls and bursting the bars of life that they might open the gates of heaven.

And if anyone believes not that death is abolished, that Hades is trodden underfoot, that the chains thereof are broken, that the tyrant is bound, let him look on the martyrs despising themselves in the presence of death and taking up the jubilant strain of the victory of Christ. Oh the marvel. Since the hour when Christ despoiled Hades, men have danced in triumph over death.

Oh death, where is thy sting? Oh grave, where is thy victory? Hades and the devil have been despoiled and stripped of their ancient armor and cast out of their peculiar power. And even as Goliath had his head cut off with his own sword, so also is the devil, who has been the father of death, put to rout through death. And he finds that the self-same thing which he was wont to use as the ready weapon of his deceit has become the mighty instrument of his own destruction.

Yay, if we may so speak, casting his hook at the Godhead and seizing the wanted enjoyment of the baited pleasure, he is himself manifestly caught while he deems himself the captor and discovers that in place of the man, he has touched the God. By reason thereof do the martyrs leap upon the head of the dragon, and despise every species of torment.

For since the second Adam has brought up the first Adam out of the deeps of Hades, as Jonah was delivered out of the whale, and has set forth him who was deceived as a citizen of heaven, to the shame of the deceiver, the gates of Hades have been shut, and the gates of heaven has been opened, so as to offer an unimpeded entrance to those who rise hither in faith.

A third time did the devil deride the nature of man with great laughter. And he had his joy over the times of our calamity as his festal days. But the laughter is only three days pleasure while the wailing is eternal. And his great laughter has prepared for him a greater wailing and a greater ceaseless tears and incomparable weeping and a sword in his heart.

This sword did our leader forge against the enemy with fire in the virgin furnace, in such eyes after such fashion as he willed. And he gave it its point by the energy of his invincible divinity, and dipped it in the water of an undefiled baptism, and sharpened it by sufferings without passion in them, and made it bright, rather, by the mystical resurrection. And herewith by himself he put to death the vengeful adversary together with his whole host.

What manner of word, therefore, will express our joy or his misery? For he who was once an archangel is now a devil. He who once lived in heaven is now seen crawling like a serpent upon earth. He who once was jubilant with the cherubim is now shut up in pain in the guard house of swine. And him too in fine shall we put to rout if we mind those things which are contrary to his choice by the grace and kindness of our Lord Jesus Christ to whom be the glory and the power unto the ages of ages. Amen.”

Point is they looked at the martyrs. They looked at the way they persevered in the Christian faith, and they saw that as proof beyond proof—a second witness to the scriptures as it were—that death has been despoiled and that we have the victory and we tread upon the serpent’s head as we walk in obedience to the scriptures.

And so All Saints Day was certainly a look back, but it was also a look up at communion with those saints who live now. And it was preparation for victory into the future as well.

The same basic truth is spelled out in the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer, written by Cranmer. By the way, this is the 500th anniversary of his birth. 1989 is—he was born July 2nd, 1489. In the preface to the celebration of All Saints Day, the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer says:

“For the multitude of your saints, you have surrounded us with a great cloud of witnesses that we might rejoice in their fellowship and run with endurance the race that is set before us and together with them receive the crown of glory that never fades away.”

So, our communion with the saints in heaven is preparation for life, and it is also preparation for victory.

Reformation Day is one more look back that we take today, a look up, and then a look forward. Reformation Day, as you know, was October 31st, which we’ll be celebrating this Tuesday here at our church.

As you may or may not know, it was originally October 31st was a day of great wickedness and evil. The Druids apparently they worship that day Samhain, the Lord of the Dead, whom they paid tribute to on October 31st. As the of their great new year. They taught that on that particular night, the druids taught this, that the souls of the wicked dead inhabited the bodies of the living to be entertained, placated, and appeased. So, these possessed people would then go out to the countryside and do trick-or-treat sort of things. Okay? And that was the druid celebration that we now see happening in our own country. According to Anne Hibbert in her book, “Family Celebrations,” Halloween was not widely celebrated here in America until the late 1800s when a large number of Celtic people immigrated here with that pagan practice—originally of the Celts and the Druids—there in that country.

Now October 31st today though is no longer seen in our church as a day of Halloween in celebration of the Druids and of their Lord of the Dead and the possessed souls of people, etc. October 31st in God’s providence was the night that Martin Luther nailed the 95 Theses on the door of Wittenberg, and so is seen as the beginning point or the quintessential beginning point of the Reformation—is now seen as Reformation Day throughout many of the Reformed churches across the world.

Now I bring this up as again a picture that when we look back we see things, and we see things that God in his providence has brought and changed in terms of the world. We see a pagan holiday Christianized, as it were, by the Reformation, and as a result of that, now we have the possibility to go forward in victory in this country to drive Halloween back by celebrating the great truths of the Reformation on that evening.

I guess I’ve been thinking about this Reformation Night thing in terms of other churches, and it seems like it’s a good indicator of what’s happening in America. Halloween is becoming more and more evil today. I don’t know if you’ve noticed that. You probably have. And as a result, churches want to pull back from it more and more. And those churches that understand that the movement of history is with God and his Christ Jesus know that we don’t just pull back. We replace positively and we capture that day as it were. We capture that celebration and move forward in righteousness on it and we take the offensive. History moves in accordance with God’s decree.

I was reading the preface to Doe’s History of the Reformation yesterday, and he said some very interesting things in there about history which are quite important for us to realize on the day in which we celebrate the gospel—the good news of Jesus Christ.