This familiar passage is one of the more attractive ones in Revelation. Lately we have been reading from Revelation at Morning Prayer and we seem to have had a run of those rather disturbing passages about the trumpets and the beasts which send shudders up my spine (as I guess they were meant to do) which become food for religious crazies of one sort or another. However the passage we heard today is not one of those and is happily associated with All Saints. There we hear of heaven and of those who worship before the throne of God and of the Lamb. “And I heard of the number of those who were sealed, 144,000.” For years that exact figure bothered me partly because the Jehovah's Witnesses who came to our door made a lot of it and treated it as the limit of the elect. I was never quick enough or knew my Bible well enough to contradict them. But what at first seemed terribly exclusive and un-Anglican and a delight to the Calvinistic mind with its doctrine of predestination, turned out to be no such thing.

The exact number of 144,000 is symbolic in itself: it is a thousandfold expansion of the square of the number of the tribes of Israel. It reminds one of Jesus' use of the expression “seventy times seven”. It is symbolic of completeness. But that number is not the end of the matter. It refers to those who come from “every tribe of Israel”, that is from Jewish origins. The passage continues to describe the ingathering of Gentile Christians which is beyond counting. “ And I looked and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages.”

It is that wonderfully inclusive vision that I am reminded of sometimes at Grand Central Terminal. And that great company drawn from both Jewish and Gentile backgrounds is described as worshiping before the Throne of God and the Lamb with all the angels, archangels and the whole company of heaven in endless praise. It is with that worship of heaven that we join each time me make eucharist together: “therefore with angels and archangels and the whole company of heaven we laud and magnify thy glorious name; evermore praising thee and saying: Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts.”

One of the rationales for our gathering each Sunday in worship is to get a little glimpse of heaven: to join with all God's saints and with the angels and archangels in the ongoing worship of heaven. To echo Bishop Roskam's sermon at our recent Foundation Festival the eucharist is a “thin” place where heaven and earth are momentarily united. The passage continues to describe the great multitude, those “robed in white with palm branches in their hands.” In answer to the elder's question the answer is given, “these are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” In other words these are they who have been baptized into the death and resurrection of Jesus; many of whom have suffered mightily in the persecutions of the Christians which were occurring when the Revelation was written. We identify them with all God's saints, those people from every generation who have lived the life of the Beatitudes we heard in today's gospel. They are those whose names we know, the great and the famous as it were, and as the first lesson reminded us the many whose names are long forgotten and known only to God.

And just pausing there I would emphasize the importance of developing our own saints: those whose lives have touched our own for good and for God; those who by their example, by their help, their love and encouragement, have enabled us to know life more fully. And then the passage from Revelation continues with words of great assurance: that “God will shelter them; they will hunger and thirst no more; the sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat; for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.” This passage is of great comfort to us for whom sometimes the sufferings of this life can seem cruel and capricious. We have all seen good people suffer and have wondered why this is so. While not providing easy answer to that question this passage does give us assurance that in the life to come the healing, compassionate and sheltering love of God is at work for those who love him.

And what about All Souls which gets sort of tacked on at the end of our All Saints' mass? The distinction between All Saints and All Souls raises several theological questions and can cause confusion. One of the cardinal parishes of this city is advertizing an All Saints' Evensong today at which one of the popular requiems will be sung. Now that really is confusing. Because one group that does not need a requiem sung for them are the saints who have already made it to heaven! But more to the point All Souls is an extension of the All Saints' vision of God's inclusive love to embrace all those who have died whose future we entrust to God's great love and mercy.

I would have to admit I find the separation of Saints and Souls rather too arbitrary for my liking. For me our future in God is caught up in the mystery of God's great love which we know in Jesus. There I see a generous inclusiveness which will overcome all that separates and divides in the end. It is that vision which St Paul speaks of in Colossians: “through Jesus God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of the Cross.” I firmly believe that the ultimate consequence of God's saving activity is that the whole of humankind, the whole of creation will find its unity in God. And it is to that vision of the unity of all things that the church witnesses by its own life.

For what we proclaim today in these twin commemorations of All Saints and All Souls is the interconnectedness of all God's people with the saints of every age (the Communion of Saints) and of the living with the departed. We who keep the faith today; we who labor on day by day; we who carry burdens or for whom life is tough; we who struggle to keep up with life or work; we who sometimes get doubtful, and cynical or depressed; for us these commemorations remind us that we are not alone. Rather we are surrounded “by a great cloud of witnesses”; by the love and prayers of those who have gone before us; by the assurance of the gospel of Jesus that he intercedes for us before the throne of the Father; that our God is one of love and compassion and does care for us like a shepherd his flock.