Lectionary Commentaries for November 3, 2024
All Saints Sunday (Year B)

Our passage this week forms the climax of a lengthy narrative in John 11. In this passage, Jesus famously delays his arrival to help his friends Martha, Mary, and Lazarus. His delay not only allows Lazarus to die from his illness (11:17), but it also confuses Jesus’ disciples, who think this is their last trip into a dangerous Judea where they will meet a glorious death with their teacher (11:7–16). Even when Jesus finally comes to Bethany, he at first stays some distance from Mary and Martha’s home and Lazarus’s tomb (11:20, 29). 

Having already spoken with Martha in 11:20–27, Jesus now speaks with Mary, who offers the same grief-stricken words as her sister: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died” (11:32). In the remainder of the passage, Jesus grapples with his own sorrow before calling his friend, Lazarus, from death. John’s Gospel presents this resurrection as the final divisive sign, sparking belief from some and terror from others, thus initiating the plot against Jesus’ own life in 11:45–54. 

Selecting John 11:32–44 for All Saints Sunday, creators of the lectionary seem to have been inspired by the story of a saint’s death alongside the reality of his resurrection. Jesus’ raising of Lazarus fulfills his promise to Martha in 11:25–27. For all the joy that may have resulted from Lazarus’s resurrection, however, the Gospel focuses primarily on the lead-up to this event and the ramifications of Jesus’ delayed arrival. 

Death has already taken Lazarus; why would Jesus bother to show up now? Shouldn’t Martha and Mary be upset that Jesus took so long to get here? Perhaps their repeated words are tinged with anger? And the crowd of fellow Jews who have faithfully come to the aid of this grieving family certainly speak truth both when some say, “Look how he loved him!” and when others respond, “Isn’t the one who opened the eyes of a blind person also able to keep this one from dying?” (11:36–37, my translation). In other words, if he loved Lazarus so much, why on earth didn’t Jesus show up sooner? 

Yet, all the emotions I’ve just described are only implied in our passage; John has left them ambiguous and open to our interpretations. The only person whose emotions are explicitly narrated are those of Jesus. At the sight of Mary and the other Jews weeping (klaiō), Jesus is “deeply moved in the spirit and troubled in himself” (11:33). When he follows Mary’s summons to her brother’s tomb, Jesus cries (11:35). 

Although regularly translated “wept,” the verb here is dakruō, which emphasizes the visible tears coming from Jesus’ eyes and not the sound of weeping that klaiō describes (see also the Septuagint rendering of Ezekiel 27:35; Micah 2:6). Jesus’ tears are a tangible sign of his sorrow, and when he arrives at the tomb, he is “again deeply moved” (11:38). 

We might be surprised at all this emotion from Jesus; after all, doesn’t he already know what he’s about to do? We see here a sympathetic and empathetic Jesus, a human being who mourns for loved ones who have died and along with other loved ones who remain. Even though Lazarus’s death and resurrection would be “on behalf of the glory of God” (11:4), Jesus does not ignore or remain detached from the very real suffering Lazarus endured and the grief his community experiences. Instead, Jesus mourns too.

This tone is significant when we read of the miracle in 11:38–44. Through his tears, Jesus commands those around him, “Take away the stone” (11:39). While Martha is often maligned for her resistance, she is simply stating facts. Her expectation of her brother’s resurrection on the last day rather than this one is completely understandable (11:24). Indeed, in John 6, Jesus promised a resurrection on the “last day” for those who hear his voice (6:39–44, 54)! 

John 11:41–43 records one of only three spoken prayers from Jesus in this Gospel. The prayer, however, brings together themes from previous episodes and points toward future ones. Jesus lifts his eyes, just as he did to observe the hungry crowd gathered around him in 6:5, before offering thanks (6:11). This time, Jesus’ thanksgiving is because he knows his Father always hears him and responds to his prayers, thereby confirming the man’s testimony from 9:31–33 (see also 3:2). 

Jesus’ prayer isn’t for himself, nor is it a sort of magical incantation needed for Lazarus to be raised. It is testimony so that the crowd might believe he was sent by God into the world (11:42). Jesus offers a similar explanation in 12:27–30 when he refuses to resist his own coming death. Rather than giving a “loud cry” while hanging on a cross, Jesus’ cry calls Lazarus forth from the tomb and commands his release (11:43–44; see also Matthew 27:46, 50; Mark 15:37; Luke 23:46). Jesus’ emotions in John 11 anticipate his being troubled before his betrayal and death (12:27; 13:21), as well as his disciples’ being troubled about his departure (14:1, 27). But in John’s Gospel, Jesus appears more impacted by the death of his friend and the suffering of his loved ones than by his own impending Passion (see also 18:9). 

In John 11:32–44, Jesus acknowledges and enters into the grief that comes when loved ones die. He does not rebuke anyone; rather, he feels with them and joins in the mourning even as he knows Lazarus will soon live again. John’s good news isn’t just that Jesus will call forth loved ones from the tomb; it’s also that Jesus sees and participates in our grief and receives our cries after his delayed arrival. He hears the confusion of gathered crowds who wonder at both his love and his apparent abandonment of those who love him. 

Rather than rushing us to resurrection, forcing us to joy without seeing and experiencing the pain of real grief, Jesus cries with us beside the tomb and offers prayers on our behalf, reminding us that he remains the one God sent to give us life that overcomes death. 

The art of preaching biblical poems might helpfully involve being captivated by an image that shapes the imagination.¹ In Isaiah 25:6–9, the mountain feast dominates the poem’s vision. It has the capacity to “figure the mind”² with an expectation of divine power, goodness, generosity, and abundance. Its vision merits consideration in how we embrace the future in the context of the feast of All Saints.

The mountain feast is attention-grabbing. Perhaps in our contemporary world of fast food and cheap produce,³ we do not hear the promise of a mountain feast to which “all peoples” are invited quite so potently as the poem’s announcement expresses it. Famine and scarcity are part of the world of the Bible, a world in which food security was clearly more tenuous than we commonly perceive it to be.

Patriarchs and matriarchs migrate in the context of famine (for example, Genesis 12:10; 26:1). The land of promise is repeatedly a place “flowing with milk and honey” (for example, Exodus 3:8; Leviticus 20:24; Deuteronomy 6:3). Warfare decimates food supply, and hunger is an image of suffering (for example, Deuteronomy 28:48; Lamentations 2:12). The biblical world knows the miracle of “seedtime and harvest” (Genesis 8:22), and it embraces the reality that food arrives on our plates “by the sweat of [our] face” (Genesis 3:19).

A pair of lines carries the intensity of the feast image in their pattern and their sound. Here, heavily alliterated sound emphatically announces the divinely given banquet and underscores its expansiveness. The first line of the pair employs repetitive m and š sounds in “a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines.” The second line of the pair expands the sound by repeating and augmenting each of the words the first line had paired with “feast” and employing further repetitive sound patterning in the phrase translated “of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear.”

The vision is one of overwhelming abundance, of the richest and finest fare “made” by the Lord “on this mountain” (verse 6).

The location “on this mountain” reappears in verse 7, linking the location of the feast “for all peoples” with the location where the Lord will consume destruction and death. All the activity at this point in the poem is the Lord’s. The peoples are presented with food in this vision, but instead of focusing on their eating, the poem’s vision moves on to another who “eats” something quite different.

The Lord consumes not food but elements of mourning, culminating in the swallowing of death itself. Each of verses 7 and 8 begins with the verb billaʿ (“swallow”), frequently translated “destroy” in verse 7 (for example, New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition, New International Version, Jewish Publication Society). It carries connotations of total obliteration (for example, Numbers 16). In Isaiah’s mountain-feast image, the repetitive use of “swallow” links the rich feast with the obliteration of deathliness.

The poetics of this poem drive home the exhaustiveness of what God eradicates from human experience. Between the lines that announce that the Lord will swallow “on this mountain” (verse 7) and that “he will swallow up death” (verse 8), a neatly matched line pair drives home the images of “shroud” and “covering that is spread” with repeated and redoubled forms carrying emphasis in their alliteration.

Each of these lines ends with an expansive image: “over all peoples” and “over all nations,” mirroring one another in perfect parallel repetition, with the word “peoples/nations” the only divergence between them. The poem’s development of the swallowing image embraces expansive images of items associated with death, driving home its extension to the whole human race, prior to the culminating announcement “he will swallow up death forever” (verse 8).

The poem turns from announcement of the coming feast, given its assurance in the claim that “the LORD has spoken” (verse 8), to what will “be said” (verse 9). The response ties waiting for God to deliverance. This embrace of God’s deliverance connects waiting to joy. The people do not accomplish their salvation. They wait for it, and they rejoice in it.

Action in this poem is God’s. The feast is one that spreads out good things in abundance and with lavish expansiveness. All peoples are invited. The menu is cosmic. God will “swallow up death” and “wipe away … tears” (verse 8). Feasting becomes an image of utter transformation of all that threatens and diminishes humanity. Tears and disgrace are done away with as the imagery dissolves into expressions of praise.

All Saints invites us to look forward into God’s good future while giving thanks for the faithfulness of God’s servants of the past. Our moment is one characterized by the groaning of creation (Romans 8:19–25). We have seen firsthand the threat to the global food supply through war and climate change. Yet many in our congregations will be among the least directly impacted. We continue to benefit from an unjust global food economy. Scarcity and hunger are disproportionately shared in our world, and this passage’s repeated emphasis on the feast that is for “all peoples” might usefully chasten our over-comfort and ignorance about where our own feasting is furrowed and farmed.⁴

The good news of the coming feast of God’s good future is best appreciated when we hunger for the righting of these wrongs. Its lavish vision has the capacity to awaken in us a longing for God’s world made whole, for the banishment of tears and of hunger. It might invite us to wait, not passively but expectantly, hopefully.

Notes

1. See the comments of Ellen F. Davis, Wondrous Depth: Preaching the Old Testament (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2005), 24.
2. This language is that of Wayne C. Booth, The Company We Keep: An Ethics of Fiction (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 298.
3. See Wendell Berry, “The Pleasures of Eating,” in What I Stand For Is What I Stand On (Milton Keynes: Penguin, 2017), 22–25.
4. For description of such lack of awareness see Berry, “Pleasures of Eating,” 22–23.

Psalm 24 is an entrance liturgy.¹

It is very likely that the liturgy was designed to accompany a procession into the Temple.²  The theme of entrance unifies the poem—it describes humans entering God’s space (“Who shall ascend the hill of the LORD?” verse 3) and God entering human space (“Lift up your heads, O gates! … that the King of glory may come in,” verses 7, 9).

Similarly, the poem describes the contrasting natures of the God who enters into human space and the nature of those humans who are able to meet the advent of this God. Psalm 24 is about the advent of human beings into the presence of God, and the mutual advent of the King of glory into the presence of “those who seek the face of God.”

The psalm bears a three-part structure:

1. Declaration of the Lord as creator of all (verses 1–2)
2. Liturgy of the entrance of humans into God’s sphere (verses 3–6)
3. Liturgy of the entrance of the Lord into the human sphere (verses 7–10)

The ending of the liturgical poem both completes the rhetorical movement of God into the human space and provides a fitting theological bookend to verse 1. The King of Glory of verses 8 and 10 is the same Lord who first established his kingship, creating and founding the world (verse 1).

Creator of All

The opening verses begin the movement of the poem by asserting that the earth belongs to the Lord because it was created by the Lord. The rhetorical point scored is that the earthly sphere, into which the Lord moves in this psalm, is already the Lord’s by virtue of the fact that he created it. The Lord’s coming is not the hostile act of an invader conquering that which properly belongs to another. Rather, the Lord comes precisely as the proper lord of earth.

Entering God’s Space

In the second stanza, the focus of the liturgy zooms in from the universal focus to a focus on the Jerusalem Temple—the intersection between heaven and earth. Who may process from the profane space of the world into the holy space of God’s Temple? The surprise is that the requirements to do so are not ritual—as in much of the rest of the Old Testament and indeed throughout the ancient Near East—but moral.

James Luther Mays notes, “The adjectives ‘clean’ and ‘pure’ do not belong to the Old Testament vocabulary of ritual purification; they are ethical terms.”³  The requirements that the people not “take up my life falsely” and not swear deceitfully should be understood in light of this theological understanding and in light of the Decalogue prohibition against taking up the name of the Lord falsely. Cleanliness and purity are not for one’s own sake, but for that of the neighbor.

If the first half of this second stanza (verses 3–4) is about law (what is required of humans when entering into God’s presence), the second half (verses 5–6) is about promise (what is bestowed on humans when entering into God’s presence).

If entering into God’s sphere requires one to leave something at the altar, as it were, one also leaves the altar with something sacred: a blessing from the Lord. The connection between what is left and what one leaves God’s altar with is reinforced by the Hebrew verb “take up” or “lift,” which is used in both halves of the second stanza. One does not “take up my life falsely,” and when one leaves, one will take a blessing from the Lord. Thus, there is a promise to balance the law. And like the law, the blessing is bestowed not for the sake of the individual per se, but for the sake of the neighbor.

The Coming of the King of Glory

The second stanza describes the coming of mortals into God’s space, while the final stanza heralds the coming of the King of Glory into the human space. The psalm’s key word “lift” now appears four more times in stanza three (verses 7 and 9). Ancient gates had no parts that moved up and down—this is not a metaphor for the raising of a portcullis to allow entrance. Rather, the metaphor refers to the lifting of one’s head to acknowledge the entrance of one who is greater, more important, more gracious than the self. To lift one’s head at God’s entrance is to acknowledge God as God.

This reverent and faithful attitude, metaphorically commanded of the Temple gates, is the proper stance of all life toward the Lord. It is the confession that is required when the Lord enters human space to acknowledge the Lord as king. As with all confessions of faith, to confess one truth is to deny competing claims. To confess the Lord as king is to deny all other claims to sovereignty. To confess the Lord as king means that I am not the ruler of my own life.

But again the psalm asks, “Who is the king of glory?” The Lord, strong and mighty. But according to the New Testament, the strength and might of this king are unlike those of any earthly king. This King—who from eternity had the power, authority, even sovereignty—gave it up. Rather than kill, he chose to be killed. “You who were once estranged and hostile in mind … he has now reconciled in the body of his flesh through death” (Colossians 1:21).

And in his death, moreover, death has already reached out to grasp the world so that we need not die in the same way. “We have been buried with him by baptism into death … we have been united with him in a death like his, and we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his” (Romans 6:4). Who is the king of glory? Jesus Christ—who did not count sovereignty or equality with God a thing to be exploited, but emptied himself into a manger, being born in human likeness, in human form.

Notes

1. Commentary previously published on this website November 1, 2009.
2. Some material in this essay is taken from Nancy DeClaisse-Walford, Rolf Jacobson, and Beth LaNeel Tanner, The Book of Psalms, NICOT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmanns, 2015).
3. DeClaisse-Walford, Jacobson, and Tanner, Psalms, 121.

“See, I am making all things new” (Revelation 21:5).¹

As we enter Revelation 21 everything has changed. With John we see both a new heaven and a new earth. A holy city descends from heaven, resplendent with gold, jewels, and divine light. After chapters of trauma and conflict on a cosmic scale, after Death and Hades finally meet their end, everything has become new.

Ironically, this dramatic newness draws from ancient wells. It pulls from Isaiah 65:17, which also proclaims new heavens and a new earth, an order so completely transformed that “former things” are forgotten (see Isaiah 43:18–19; 66:22). When I hear this passage from Revelation, I think back to Paul, who declares a renewal that has already been accomplished in Christ. Appropriating Isaiah’s language, Paul declares old things passed away. “See, everything has become new!” (2 Corinthians 5:17). In announcing the dissolution of the old order and the arrival of the new, Revelation reasserts very old promises.

Revelation’s proclamation of total newness grounds itself in God’s character. First, God has demonstrated God’s own faithfulness toward Israel. This is the dimension Isaiah celebrates: the God who chose and formed Israel as a people will see to Israel’s salvation. Second, for the author of Revelation the “testimony of Jesus” embodies that divine faithfulness by making possible the renewal of all things. In Israel, and specifically through Israel’s Messiah, God has always been working salvation and renewal. Now, Revelation proclaims, is the moment of consummation.

Consummation indeed, for the holy city arrives adorned as if she were a bride being presented to her husband. Many readers will find this metaphor troubling. After all, ancient brides typically enjoyed little agency in the selection of their husbands and would be subject to their men for life.

We are to imagine very young women, usually in their early teens, dressed so as to appeal to husbands just about twice their age. As a bride, the new city appears in stark contrast to the “great city” presented in Revelation 17. The new bride will be dressed simply, modestly, as opposed to Babylon’s precious metals, fine jewelry, and richly dyed garments.

There’s no escaping the patriarchy that determines this image. At the same time, the bride’s modest appearance stands in contrast the opulence—extravagance purchased through the exploitation of millions—that adorns Babylon.

Preachers will know that many congregants scarcely expect a good word from Revelation. For example, some will reject Revelation because they regard it as too world-averse. Our society loves this heaven and this earth. In many ways that’s a good thing.

Our consumerist culture invests ultimate value in enjoying the here-and-now. Revelation’s message that the here-and-now must pass away for a new thing sounds not only silly but even offensive to modern ears. What about the glorious creation we inhabit: Should we not cherish it? What about the many loves we enjoy: Should we abandon them? Does Revelation call us to despise the wondrous world in which God has planted us?

Preachers will also look out for those congregants who expect Revelation to provide pie-in-the-sky salvation, an escape from the troubles and conflicts of this world. According to this view, Revelation destroys the world we inhabit, along with most of the people who dwell in it, in order to deliver holy people to “heaven” with its pearly gates and golden streets. Some Christians actually hope for this outcome. According to the rapture theology so prevalent in some circles, believers will be taken up to heaven before the world descends into chaos.

More common are the Christians who expect the gospel to provide other-worldly salvation without effecting much change in this world. On All Saints Day we are especially mindful that all of us share the hope for life beyond death, including our connection with the saints who have preceded us.

Both sets of hearers, the world-affirmers and the world-escapers, need help hearing this passage. Two features of this passage, often overlooked, provide resources that may renew our imaginations.

First, the new creation features no sea. The sea’s absence may trouble us at first. Almost all of us love water. We take particular pleasure in the ocean. (For Revelation’s readers, “the sea” means the Mediterranean.) But for Revelation, the sea’s absence belongs with the eradication of death, mourning, crying, and pain. As it does in some other Jewish literature of the period, the sea is where evil empires operate. In the great war, Satan takes his stand alongside the sea, and the wicked beast arises out of that very same sea (Revelation 12:18–13:1).

The beast makes war against Jesus’ followers and kills many of them. Moreover, the beast is closely aligned with the great city; after all, Babylon rides upon the beast’s back. When the “great city” is destroyed, those who mourn include especially political rulers (“kings”), merchants, and sailors (18:9–20). The beast-ly empire conducts its military and diplomatic operations on the sea, just as it handles commerce on the sea.

In Revelation, the sea’s absence does not reflect aversion to the world; instead, it’s part of Revelation’s condemnation against an empire that uses war and commerce to oppress ordinary people.

Second, we note that the new city comes down to us from heaven. We do not go up to it. Revelation does not imagine the saints escaping this world for a heavenly reward. On the contrary, the saints inhabit a brand-new world created right where they live. This new world may not have a sea, but it does include a river, “bright as crystal” (Revelation 22:1).

This new world hardly represents an escape from everyone else and their troubles. When Revelation says God has come down to dwell with mortals (21:3), it means it. The loud voice proclaims, “These peoples will be God’s” (21:3, my translation). Drawing again from Isaiah’s vision, Revelation describes “the nations” walking in the light of the new city (21:24) and finding healing therein (22:3; see Isaiah 60:11; Jeremiah 3:17). Revelation envisions a renewal, not an escape.

Notes

1. Commentary previously published on this website for November 1, 2025 (All Saints).