Last night was Halloween – All Hallows’ Eve, to give it its full name – and this year because All Saints Day is actually on the 1st of November instead of just the nearest Sunday, the connection between Halloween and All Saints is clear. The scary bits of Halloween are to do with the dead. We can’t help but be fascinated by death and by scaring ourselves with thoughts of what might be on the other side.

You know how children’s cartoons, when they want to show heaven, always have people dressed in white nighties floating around on white clouds. The idea seems to be that the afterlife will be a very dull and colourless business, each of us on our own personal cloud with a harp. No wonder we don’t think it’s something to look forward to, even if we do dismiss the ghouls and ghosties of Halloween parties from our minds.

But of course this whole idea has nothing to do with the Christian hope. If you want to see what awaits us, you need to look around the church today. Because that is what our service is: a snapshot of the worship that takes place in the presence of God, now and always, that one day we will be fully part of.

I was delighted to learn from John Hawes that All Saints’ Day is not celebrated at St Mary’s in the usual white or gold vestments. Percy Dearmer in his Parson’s Handbook lays down the rule that it should be “mixed colours” today. What fun! And how appropriate for a day that emphasises the glory that awaits us.

Let’s notice some things about what we see around us. First of all, worshipping in church involves a lot of people, not just me on my own cloud. Being a Christian is about being in relationship. And not just being a Christian, but being human. There is no such thing as a person in isolation. We exist as persons through our relationships with one another and with God. God is Father only because the Son is his mirror, reflecting divine love back to him. We are made in God’s image and our calling is to reflect that love too. We are not saved alone but as a part of communion of Christ’s body.

Another we notice is that we are pretty solid. No ghosts present that I am aware of! All the notions of disembodied spirits come from Greek and other pagan sources. Christianity celebrates the material creation that God freely chose to make, including us. God promises that we will be resurrected, not that our souls will be extracted from our useless bodies. So the new creation at the end of time will involve us being even more real than we are now, because our bodies will be incorruptible. In our brief span on this earth we may be tempted to resort to Botox and plastic surgery, but in the new creation there will be no need for such things because we will no longer be the victims of time.

A third thing to notice is that we are all different. That is why I am so delighted about the colours today. Nothing in heaven will be bland or neutral or uniform. The whole universe isn’t big enough to express God’s infinite variety. One day we will see new colours and hear new notes of music that our earthbound brains aren’t capable of imagining! And we will, each of us, reflect God’s glory in a unique and unrepeatable way, so each of us will be necessary to the whole.

Another thing we see in church is that we are gathered around Christ and oriented towards God. That is why we have a human need to dress up the people at the front and place a president at the heart of the assembly, to imprint on our mind’s eye the picture of Christ and his people united in worship. We raise our eyes to the east, to the utter beyond where God dwells in glory with the saints who have gone before us. The book of Revelation tells us that God will dwell with us; we will be his peoples, and God himself will be with us. Beauty in church, whether in music or architecture or vestments, really does matter because it gives us our foretaste of the future that awaits us.

The Orthodox theologian John Zizioulas says that “the Church lives in history, but its true identity is to be found in the future…The resurrection of Christ and Pentecost makes the Church and its worship the presence of the future.”

So when we look around church on this All Saints Day, the future is made present. Time is a truly fascinating concept. We know it is part of creation and therefore it has no existence apart from the created universe. With God the eternal is always now. The past event of Christ’s resurrection also comes to us from the future and gives us life in this present moment. It’s enough to make your head spin!

This is the point of the gospel story of the raising of Lazarus. It’s not just another miracle of healing or a demonstration of Jesus’ divine power, but a picture of the future streaming into the present through the act of God. Jesus said to Martha, ‘Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?’ What does this mean? It is a foretaste of the new creation, when God’s glory will be revealed. When Jesus cries with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!”, it is not just the tomb he is emerging from. Lazarus has stepped back into the present from the future when God’s purposes will be fulfilled. His raising is a sign that we too shall be raised.

The raising through the call of Jesus to a man in the tomb is also very important. Lazarus rises to a new life as the disciple of Jesus because he has heard himself being called out of the darkness of death. So this story is also a sign that our eternal life begins in the moment when we are called by name to rise to new life with Jesus. That moment, of course, occurs at our baptism.

When we are baptized, we join the assembly of the saints, past, present and future. Those who have gone before us, whom we see no longer, surround us with their prayers. Some of those in our own generation are bodily present here in St Mary’s, but many millions more are worshipping at the same time as us out of sight around the globe. And to the countless numbers who will come after us, we are the “early Christians” whose faith will be handed on to them.

All Saints’ Day is a good day to remember that our time is just a blink of the eye in the history of salvation. The past and the future are just as present to God as this fleeting moment that is gone as soon as we name it. We seem to be growing aware of the future as never before, now that the crisis of the planet’s survival is our daily concern. We have been so busy up till now claiming our human rights that we have overlooked the rights of people who will be living in the 22nd century.

But on this great festival we join with them, those yet unborn, as we join with those who have run their race – Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David and the prophets as well as all the saints of Christian history – and in a glimpse of what the new creation will be like we sing around God’s throne, Holy, holy, holy Lord!

In our two minutes’ silence today, let’s remember those who have gone before us and give thanks for them. Let’s imagine those who will come after and resolve to leave a healthy planet for them to enjoy. And let’s remember all those who worship with us today and pledge ourselves to live in love and fellowship with them as a microcosm, here in Primrose Hill, of the heavenly city where our baptism makes us true citizens.