All Saints' Day

May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)

SEASON: ALL SAINTS' DAY
PROPER: C
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: November 1, 1998

TEXT: Matthew 5:1-12 - THE BEATITUDES OF JESUS
"When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. Then he began to speak, and taught them saying 'Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.'"

ISSUE: Jesus collects his disciples around him to teach and instruct them as his disciples. He lays out for them what genuine and true honor really is in the eyes of God the Father. God honors the poor and those who mourn; they are the blessed in contrast to whole the world and the culture so often honors. The Beatitudes are not another list of commandments, but give a deeper insight into what Jesus' spiritual ministry was about, what it means to be a disciple of Christ, and a saint in his kingdom. Into this spirituality may we all and especially the children we baptize today be immersed, like so many of the saints of God.

See also Epiphany 4A, Jan. 28,1996
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The beautiful passage of Scripture for All Saints' Day taken from Matthew's account of the Gospel is truly the scriptures poetry. We refer to the passage as The Beatitudes of Jesus, or the Blessedness of Jesus. They seem to reveal the mysticism of Jesus:
Blessed are the poor in spirit . . .
Blessed are they that mourn . . .
Blessed are the meek . . .
Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness ...
What is peculiar to this passage is that Jesus gathers his dixciples around him on a mountain. The Beatitudes are a part of what we call The Sermon on the Mount. Being on the mountain top is indicative of something special happening. Many of profound spiritual events occur on mountain tops. Moses receives the Ten Commandments on a mountain. Elijah the prophet calls down fire upon his drenched sacrifice on Mt. Carmel. Jesus is transfigure before Peter, James, and John on a mountain. The crucifixion takes place on Mt. Calvary. Here in the story today, Jesus goes to a mountain, and gathers his new select disciples around him, and begins to train them, if you will, in what true Blessedness is. He sits which was the common teaching position of the time.
In this instance when Jesus says, "Blessed are the poor, . . . those who mourn, . . . the merciful, . . . the pure in heart, and so on" the word blessed some times translated as "Happy" or "congratulations" more accurately means "honored." In his training session with his disciples, Jesus is teaching what true honor means in the sight of God. In his time a man's honor was more important than anything else. Men sought honorable positions in the community. Sometimes honor came simply through the family you were born into. If you were challenged or offended in anyway, you had to avenge any insults. It was expected. You might kill to preserve your honor. You achieved honor through gift giving, and you needed always to return favors. You defended your family honor at all costs. The religious, powerful, and the some of the Pharisees and religious types were considered those with the most honor.
On the other had there were many who had little or no honor, by virtue of birth, or occupation. Prostitutes had no honor. Innkeepers, shepherds, actors, tanners, were all shameful. To lose status, property, inheritance through bad luck, or injustice was to be shamed. To be among the outcasts, the sick, the deaf and blind, was to be without honor. To be a widow without an adult son was to be without honor or status.
What Jesus is teaching his disciples is a whole new reversal of thinking. Jesus teaches that in the eyes of God: Blessed and honorable are the poor. Blessed and honorable are those who mourn, who are the sick, the dying, the lost, the lame, the blind, the lepers. Blessed and honorable are the outcasts and the widows who mourn the loss of everything precious. These are the very ones that God honors and blesses. Jesus is giving a new honor code awhole new way of approaching life through the eyes of God. It is not the hot-shots, those who are politically and socially correct, it is not those who are good at taking revenge, it is not those of pure race, and those of pure stock, and those who inherit honor and power as the world sees it that are the honorable. It is the the poor, those who mourn, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.
Look at the overall ministry of Jesus as he lives out what he teaches. He is the healer of the sick and the oppressed. He is the one who honors and holds up the widows in his parables. He is the one who receives the lepers. He is the one who calls the children to come to him. He is the one who gathers the multitude of 5,000 hungry people and gives them an incredible feast again on a grassy hillside.
In his warnings agains the Teachers of the Law, and the Pharasees, the honorable types of Jesus' time, he condmened them: "You lock the door to the Kingdom of heaven in people's faces, but you yourselves don't go in, nor do you allow in those who are trying to enter!" (Matt.23:13)
"You give to God one tenth even of the seasong herbs, such as mint, dill, and cumin, but you neglect to obey the eally important teachings of the Law, such as justice and mercy and honesty. These you should practice without neglecting the others." (Matt. 23:23)
Instead of being pure in heart, "On the outside you appear good to everybody, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and sins." (Matt. 23:27)
Jesus' encounter with his disciples in this training program on the mountain is his challenge to the ways of the world. Honorableness was often hypocritical, stagnant, and empty. The honorableness of God is to love the poor, to mourn with those who mourn, to hunger and thirst for justice, to be merciful instead of vengeful, to not merely love peace but to enter into the process of peacemaking. These are the things of God. In Jesus' time for so many people it was unthinkable that God honored the poor, the mournful, and the outcasts. But Jesus is conveying a startling and renewing spirituality. He is training his selected disciples in a profound reclamation of what it means to be truly honorable in the sight of God. Indeed they could well expect to face persecution, reviling, insults. Certainly Jesus did during his life time and culminating on the cross. Yet god would be with them and they would know God's honor not man's.
In our own world today, the code of honor is unlike that of the first century mediterranean world. Shame and honor are no longer the issues they may have been, or are in other cultures different from our own. In fact, ours is a culture that has no shame. In our world there are, what Marcus Borg a professor of religion and culture refers to in his book, "Jesus A New Vision" 1996, the major American values that have little or nothing to do with Christianity. They are affluence, achievement, appearances, individualism, competition, power, and consumption. I would have to add another primary value to be aggressiveness. Our present world, and our nation particularly, is infatuated with being the most powerful and keeping it that way. We value those who are great achievers, and who can gather the most stuff, or toys. These are the ones seen as the winners. The more we can consume, the more fulfilled we seem to be. We will fight for what we haven't got, please note the violence in our streets and in our world. We value our individualism and what we cherish as our own personal way of thinking and doing to the exclusion of the needs of the community.
To this kind of a world Jesus words are a challenge: Honorable are the poor, those that mourn, those that are hungry seeking what is right and just for all. Blessed are those who seek God, and who act out of mercy and compassion as opposed to consumption and greed. The Beatitudes of Jesus are not another list of commandments. They are a basic spirituality. Essentially there is nothing wrong with being achieving in our fields, or even affluent for that matter. Occasional competion is invigorating, I would suppose. Nothing wrong with asserting our God given indidualism, our talents and abilities. But to have no basic spirituality, nor inner sense of Godliness is to act our values in a destructive and dangerous way, which is the cause of so much alienation, hostility, hatred, suspicion, and violence in our world.
Jesus takes the disciples aside from the world and what it declares to be honorable and valuable, and he injects what God sees as honorable, the spirituality of compassion, mercy, hungering for right for all, and seeking to be in union with Godliness, and recognizing full well that Godliness is not without its enemies in the world, and those who are indifferent to true Godliness.
Today we are celebrating two closely related things. We celebrate around the world and throughout Christendom the Feast of All the Saints. We remember that the saints were not merely outstandingly religious figures who end up in stained glass. The saints were people with weakness as well as strengths. Like all of us with our sins and virtures we celebrate being the people of God who are called to be the channels of his grace in the world. At the same time we are celebrating the fact that we are making three new saints in the children that we baptize today. Symbolically we are drowning them, encouraging them to die to the ways of the world and raising them up as new born Christians, people of God in the likeness of Christ. They are being immersed into the Christ's spirituality that they may appreciate what genuine honor and blessedness is. They are to understand that all who are poor, all who are in mourning and suffering, all who struggle and hunger for righteousness and justice. All who want to be compassionate. These are the one's that God honors. In their own poverty, uncertaintly, and anxiety, God will love them. God will love them in their desire to be compassionate people. Parents, and this congregation must continually immerse our children in this faith so that they may not be overcome by and only know the cruel aggressiveness, the rank individualism, the discompassionate competitive, consumptive affluence of the world. Help them to know Jesus, to know and love God. In showing them the way we all shall be renewed in true sainthood and blessedness.