Pastor John Wright

Of course we know this coming weekend is a festival weekend: “Halloween”; it has been moved from a children’s festival to a young adult festival funding by the alcohol companies. Mexican culture will celebrate the “Day of the Dead.” Saturday for Roman Catholics with direct European ties will be “All Saint’s Day” -- a day when Catholics are supposed to go to Mass.
I don’t know the whole history of this day or its cultural variations. But as a people who must cherish the memories of the “cloud of witnesses” who have gone before us, it is good for us to remember those Christians in whom the form of Christ has particularly shown as models for us to emulate. The saints take away the argument that “the Christian live is not possible” because they show us the depth that God’s grace can reform lives.

Thus on Sunday we will read the “All Saint’s Day” readings from the Book of Common Prayer to direct our worship as we prepare for the Eucharist. I hope that they help us remember all those who have gone before us that our lives presuppose, particularly the ones like Glenn Leadingham whose simple and profound Christian witness God used to reach out to me. We will read two “Epistle” readings before moving to the Gospel.

Revelation 7:9-17

The passage gives a vision into the heavens, a contemporary glimpse into that which has/will happen from the perspective of the heavens. It works in imagery to describe what cannot be described usual language. It is interesting to see how the imagery works in relationship to space and other images in the passage and book.

What does the seer see and what are they doing? What is the basis for the “multitudes” behavior? Why would the seer not realize where they have come? Dispentationalists have often given the term “the great ordeal” or “the great tribulation” to make it a very “specific” time. Look at Revelation 7. It seems to me that “the great ordeal” is time that we live on this earth between the times of Christ’s coming. Why would this time, including our own, be called a “great ordeal”? What have/do Christians experience about this age that makes it a “tribulation”? What does it mean to wash robes white in the blood of the Lamb? How does that imagery relate to the “coming out of the great ordeal”?

What is the result of their coming out of this ordeal? What do they experience “in the heavens”? Peak ahead and read the Gospel reading – how does the imagery here relate to the Beatitudes? Why would those who are gathered still be crying and then wiped away?

1 John 3:1-3

What does this passage presuppose about “we” and “the world”? What do we find out about the love of the Father? How does the “world” not know? Why? What does the passage suggest about the relationship between who “we” are know to who “we” will become? How would it be that “hope” purifies?

Matthew 5:1-12

To my mind this passage represents an epitome, short summary, of the basic teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as preserved for the church. Read each Beatitude and see if one can relate the first clause of the sentence to the last. Why does the passage not give instructions on what to do here, but instead describe the conditions of those who have particular type of experiences cast upon them? How does this form, the declaration of blessings, relate this passage to those given in Revelation and 1 John passage?
Can you share stories where you can see the relationship between those described in Revelation and the “blessed” on this earth as described in the Gospel story? How do these lives give you hope? What does this hope do?

Have a wonderful weekend!