A Great Multitude
Rev. Mark Schaefer
Kay Spiritual Life Center
November 3, 2002 (All Saints Sunday)
Revelation 7:9-17; Matthew 5:1-12
Have you ever experienced being in a really big crowd, and being pushed along in a direction you don’t want to go? It’s this incredibly frustrating experience. Or, maybe you’re trying to get from one side of something to the other, at a concert or at the movies, and the crowd of people is an obstacle for you. You’re surrounded on all sides by people. It can be intimidating. If you’ve ever spent time in midtown Manhattan on a work day, and you’re walking along on the sidewalks choked with people, you can feel the complete disorientation surrounding you. You think, ‘If I don’t know where I’m going, I’m going to end up somewhere I don’t want to be. I’m going to dragged along because there are so many people.’
In spite of how many people are in the crowd, sometimes you can feel really lonely. Sometimes you can feel like you’re on your own in such a large group. It’s disconnecting, because there are people everywhere and you’re being jostled and pushed. I’m sure you’ve had this experience at the airport, or on the Metro. Try going to the Smithsonian Metro station at five o’clock on a summer afternoon, and attempt to get down the escalator ahead of all the tourists. They don’t stand to the right; they don’t know how the whole system works. Being in a crowd with so many people doesn’t necessarily make you feel any more connected. Crowds are tremendous collections of people and yet they can also be isolating and impersonal.
Both of the Bible readings for today are readings for All Saint’s Day. All Saints Day was actually on Friday, but we celebrate it on this Sunday. Both texts have to do with crowds. They use a different words; Revelation talks about a great multitude and in the Matthew text, it says, ‘When he saw the crowd.’ In Greek, it’s the same word. For one reason, poetically, or because translators act out of boredom they don’t always translate the same word the same way all the way through. In one case, it’s a multitude, and another case, it’s a crowd.
Let’s look at how the crowd functions in these two stories. In the Gospel of Mark, which is very similar thematically to Matthew’s Gospel, crowds are everywhere. In fact, crowds are the groups that follow Jesus, crowds are the groups that Jesus teaches to, and crowds are the groups that call for his crucifixion. In other Gospels they’ll say it was this group or another, but in Mark, it’s always crowds. There’s this idea that Jesus’ ministry is involved with crowds. We tend to think of it in Cecile B. DeMille terms: the cast of a thousand extras in all kinds of costumes in the background and Charlton Heston in the foreground. Jesus was there on the Mount and he’s speaking to this crowd; to a multitude. He gives them perhaps one of the most seminal, core pieces of Christian teaching in the Bible: the Sermon on the Mount.
Every time I read it, I cannot help but be amazed by its profound message and its simplicity which upends everything we know in the world. Listen again to some of those words: ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’ That the poor would inherit a kingdom turns reality on its ear. ‘Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth.’ Jesus instructs the crowd in a radical theology which overturns everything they think they know. The Sermon on the Mount challenges everything they know in the world.
In Revelation: ‘After this I looked and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and all peoples and languages standing before the throne robed in white with palm branches in their hands.’ We’ve read about another crowd with palm branches; we know that part of the story. Revelation is giving us a view of the end of history; the end when another great multitude takes a prominent role. We must ask ourselves, what is the connection between these crowds; the crowd that Jesus teaches to and the crowd that John describes in Revelation. Are they just random groups of people? Who are those people?
Today is All Saints Sunday, and this is a day when we look back on the history of the church and all who came before us. We commemorate those who died in the past year and we celebrate the lives of all those who have been in the church. One of the phrases we hear all the time at this time of year is a quote from Hebrews,
Therefore since we are surrounded by so great a crowd of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings too closely. And let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the pioneer and perfector of our faith who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame and has taken his throne at the right hand of God. (Hebrews 12:1-2)
The author of Hebrews is talking about the same thing the church talks about on every All Saint’s Day: the church is not any particular crowd of people. The church is not simply the crowd that Jesus was talking to back then, or that I’m talking to right now, or that are envisioned in robes of white at the end of history with the consummation. The church is all of that. The church looks backward to the very beginning and the church looks forward to the very end. The communion of saints are all those in the church; all of those who have gone before and will come after us.
Saints is a word Protestants don’t always feel comfortable with because we don’t have saints; we haven’t canonized anyone since Martin Luther nailed his Theses to the church door. I’m reasonably certain the Catholics haven’t been canonizing any Protestants since then. We have this idea of saints as old crusty white me–and a couple of women–who wore strange clothing, with the idea that they are people who lived another time in another place. The original word saint had nothing so exalted about it. Paul wrote letters to the saints at various churches. He wasn’t saying anything about their fine moral standards as we say, ‘Oh, that person’s such a saint.’ He meant that by virtue of being a believer they had been consecrated and made holy by God. Saint is from Sanctus and means holy. The communion of saints is the church; the church throughout history, going back and going forward.
Thinking about being lost in crowds, doesn’t necessarily make us any more comfortable because we like to feel that we matter in some way. If we’re thinking, ‘I’m having enough trouble feeling I matter to my congregation or the small group that I’m in, and now we’re going to include everyone who ever lived or died as a Christian, and everyone who ever will? How do I figure into all of that?’ Every year we read the names of those who died in the previous year. There is some sadness. We think, ‘This is a different year than last year, and the year before that.’ At a certain point, how does anyone remember this? How do we know that we’re remembered in such a great multitude?
The thing to remember is that we are a church that is built on remembrance. When we have communion, we do it because Jesus says, ‘Do this in remembrance of me.’ When we celebrate the Eucharist, we are remembering both the Last Supper and almost paradoxically, we’re remembering the great feast at the end of history, when Christ comes in his final victory and we feast at his banquet. We are a church that remembers the past, and remembers the future. We do this not because we thought it might be a good idea, or because it makes us feel better, but because it reflects the love of a God who remembers, a God who loves each and every one of us.
Today the church I belong to performed a piece called the Yizkor Requiem, for a special All Saints Service. The piece of music blended Christian and Jewish prayers of remembrance. Half of it was the requiem mass. We’re familiar with those–like Mozart’s or Bach’s masses. The Hebrew parts were less familiar; the Yizkor; it’s a prayer of memorial in the Jewish tradition. Yizkor simply means, ‘He remembers.’
Sometimes we feel we are adrift in a great crowd; a great crowd of the world, and even a great crowd of the church. If we think that we’re getting lost in the church, it is precisely the opposite. We are found in the church. God is not going to forget us. Even after a thousand generations, when no one alive remembers that we ever existed, God knows we were here. In that great multitude that we hear about in Revelation, at the end when new life is given to all the dead and they are raised to life everlasting, it is not on account of whether we think we’ve done anything memorable or stand out, but is on account of a God of grace, a God of memory, who knows each of us and remembers.
