This week, we come to worship for a very specific reason and that reason relates to what is taking place in our text. Today is All Saint’s Day, the day we remember, but according to our text, the act of memory has a specific task.
Before we come to the Table of the Lord, and as we remember the names and impact of the friends and family whose lights sit before us on this table, we must remember the action taking place in the text. While this work can be hard for us, it came come with tears and hard memories, God calls each of us to SING.
Move 1- they cry out.
Our text begins by conjuring up a scene reminiscent of Jesus’ final entry into Jerusalem. Revelation 7:10 gives the saints of the church, and we who are gathered today in worship, a specific task. A task suited to their call; a task in which no one neglects. Taking palm branches in their hands, and robbed in white, the saints worship God.
And while a superficial reading of our text today could offer a more inclusive conclusion, here, before Lamb of God, the church acts. Not all of creation. Not the rest of humanity. The multitude referred to in verse 9 is the Church; the saints. It is you and I. For whom else would choose to behave as our text indicates, save the members of the Body of Christ who know Jesus and care about him?
And what do the saints in our text do? I verse 10 we read that they cry out to God. As Commentator Tom Tate says:
“There are so many no one can count them all. They have come from everywhere, from every race and tribe, from every language and nation. They are everybody; and they sing! It’s what the Saints do. [It is what we do]. In the midst of whatever is going on around them, believers always sing. Day or night, in desert or oasis, whether in prison or free, during calm or storm, they sing. . . It is not simply what Saints know that matter; it is also what they hear.”[1]
In the act of crying out to God, in the act of singing, we who might be wounded, we hear. We who can testify to the powerful nature of God with us in our prayers, we sing. We are who are strong share through our songs the faithfulness of God with those who feel themselves, weak, separated, alone.
The saints in our text sing. Yet full understanding is kept from the singers. They do not fully know why they sing. They do not insist on having all the information or all complete understanding of what God is doing. The saints, do not have to get their own way in order to sing.
They just sing to God because God is with them. And that is truly all that matter: God is with us. And we sing.
Move 2- the saints
In the act of singing something else takes place. For there is memory in the songs that we sing; a memory of God’s presence.
For example, think of a person in your life who sang to you. . . or sang ‘near you.’ In each of their songs there is a memory about the singer’s life. Something that marks them as faithful, as caring, as God sent. While testimony is primarily done through speaking, the singing that the saints do, the singing that you remember, is a powerful testimony as well.
I once heard a gospel singer say that if you ask God to give you a song in your heart, He will. And that song will stay with you forever. But if you ask God to give you a song, then have to sing that song because it reminds you of the Lord.
I still remember seeing my grandmother sitting at her piano in the front room of her house. I can still see her tiny little frame playing away on that old upright piano. I can hear her singing from her old red hymnal songs to the Lord. Sure, her voice was not as crisp in her old age as it once was, but she sang. She sang kinda rocking back and forth before that piano—it was her form of dancing before God.
You could hear her songs throughout the house. And some of the hymns that hold a special place in my heart, the ones that I sing when I am alone, they were first sang by her in that room… on that piano.
And I know that you have stories such as this also when the saints in your life have cried out to God, as Revelation speaks of, and sang the truth that God is always with you.
For in the act of crying out to the Lord, there is memory. Memory brought to mind and shared with the expectation that you will take those memories, those songs, those instances of crying out to God and add you own verse to the song as you go before other people.
Even if the song right now that you could sing on All Saint’s Day is a sad song. Even if it is a song of loss and brokenness, it is a song to the Lord. A song that the Lord put in your heart. We must sing it.
In our text the memory and the song is an affirmation of God’s power and presence. In verse 12 we read what the saints sing to God in that heavenly assembly: “Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God. . . forever.”
There is clarity in this song no matter what brought the saints back to the Lord. God is not sorta, kinda, present and powerful in these songs and in this display. No, God is all of these things—even in our times and place of loss. God is forever and ever with us.
This is also not an idle song, but it has movement and it has affirmation.
We sing what we know, and we hear the words when we are weak. Because in the act of listening, deep down in that act, there is good news. And there is also another part of our memory.
For on All Saint’s Day, we remember the songs of those whose candles burn before us, and even if the candle burned shorter than we would like, and even when a new candle replaces the one that brought a tear to our eyes in previous years, there is still a memory of how God is at work within His creation.
As the saints, even when your words fail, you must cry out to God. You must sing.
Conclusion
As we prepare to read and hear the names of each person in the life of this church who have entered the church triumphant over the last year, we must each continue to sing their songs, share their stories, cry out to God for God is faithful to us.
That does not make the work of remembering easy. In fact, I think it makes it harder for us.
But as we remember each person, we also prepare ourselves to go to the Table of the Lord where we again remember the work that Jesus does so that we can keep singing and stay close to him as we suffer loss.
DM
