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: Year B
PLACE: St. John’s Parish
DATE: Nov. 2, 1997

TEXT: Matthew 5:1-12 - The Beatitudes of Jesus from The Sermon on the Mount.

Blessed are the poor in spirit . . . Blessed are those who mourn . . . Blessed are those who hunger and thrist for righteousness. . .


ISSUE: The Beatitudes of Jesus, which are a small but significant part of the Sermon on the Mount, tell who and what God honors, and dramatically reveals how the honor or blessedness of God is so different from most cultures of the world. While the passage is often viewed as pious in nature as we direct it to our understanding of All Saints’ Day, it was addressed to originally to the poor, dispossessed, and disenfranchised people. As written in the Hymn 293, “for the saints of God are just jolk like me,” the Beatitudes actually cut through ostentatious piety and reveal an honest truth as to what true honor and piety are and to whom the apply.
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The Beatitudes of Jesus as they are written in Matthew’s account of the Gospel are in credibly engaging. They reall challenge the imagination. I’ve been intrigued by them since I was a child with a little child’s book called “The Eight Beatitudes of Jesus” to this very day. Of course, the Beatitudes are part of a whole section of Matthew, Chapter 5-7, which is called The Sermon on the Mount. Luke’s account of the gospel also has an abbreviated form of the sermon and the Beatitudes in latter part of chapter 6. In these accounts Jesus gathers his disciples takes them away from the mainstream of life to give them his teachings. For some people they may be little more than pious platitudes. But to consider the Beatitudes and to embrace the Sermon on the Mount is to have to struggle with things that seem to be paradoxical and inconsistent with the way the world is and how we envision the world.
In the early part of the great Sermon on the Mount, Jesus talks about blessedness. He gathers his friends around him, and sits down to teach, which rabbi’s did in those days. He tells them such things that are intriguing. He tells them that there is blessedness in being poor. He tells them that there is blessedness in mourning. There is blessedness in hungering and thirsting. What’s more he tells them there is blessedness in being persecuted and slandered. Blessedness in Jesus’ time meant honor. It was a society whose main objective in life was to gain honor and to be honorable. How could being poor, grieving, hungering and thirsting give them honor? Poor people weren’t just people without money. Poor people were the lame, blind, deaf, widows without sons, people who had lost inheritances through devious means. They were the looked-down-upon. They had no honor, power, place, prestige. How could they be blessed? Many of these disciples and folk who followed Jesus up to the hillside to hear these sayings were the poor and the disenfranchised. How could they believe that they could ever gain blessedness and honor when their lives thought of as cursed. they saw themsleves in this very way of cursedness. They were at the opposite end of being blessed or honorable. Even in our thining in the modern world, we don’t think of poverty, grief, struggle, and persecution as being a way of being blessed.
In other parts of the Sermon on the Mount, which are not read today, but you are likely to be familiar with some of them, Jesus posed very striking opposites which challenged these people in terms of what they considered honorable and valuable. (If you are not familiar read over Matthew 5-7 when you get home today in the Bible. You’ll find some really fascinating stuff.) Honor was maintained by and large by keeping the rule of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. If someone was gracious to you, you were expected to repay the favor, because that was honorable. At the same time if you were treated badly, to maintain your honor, you were to hold your ground and repay insult with insult, or take an eye for an eye. Yet, Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, teaches that you are to love your enemies and pray for persecutors. “If someone slaps you on the right cheek, turn and offer him your left. If a man wants to sue you for your shirt, let him have your coat as well. If a man in authority makes you go one mile, go with him two.” Statements such as these challenged the very foundations of the culture of the period. I think maybe they still do. Even today, people will say that these are nice sayings, but they won’t work in the real world.
In Jesus’ time there was an honorable expectation of piety. People were expected to give and this was often done with a flourish of tossing coins into a noisy trumpet in public places. Honor was established and acknowledged by public pious acts of fasting and prayer in public places with ashed covered faces. Jesus denounced and apparently hated or at least distrusted ostentatious piety. He tells his people do their praying and giving quietly, without notice and never appear to fast. (He didn’t say don’ fast, but not to appear in public to fast.) For many people this display gave them honor and status in the community, and Jesus seems to take the fun out of it. People like acknowledgement and reward.
In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus tells his people not to store up treasures on earth. It only grows rusty and moth eaten, and thieves break in and steal it. Don’t be anxious about what you eat, drink, or wear. This kind of thinking flies in the very face of human nature both then and now.
Jesus in this sermon teaches his disciple not to judge others. When you have an honorable way of life that is built on law, how do you escape being judgmental?
All of these things, these ways of being and the teachings of Jesus challenged the thinking and the very foundations of the culture of Jesus’ time. What’s more they dramatically challenge our way. We also have our honor codes and the values we cherish. We believe in the law of the fittest, the best man wins. Being tough and having the biggest bomb has been a part of our American way of life. We are expected to be achievers and to get ahead. We are expected to improve our status in life. We live in a world that values consumerism and consumption. The more people have, the more materialistic, the more prestigious and powerful people are. We value being macho and strong. We value being right. We value being generous our of our affluence and power as a nation. Many people were really on edge this week as the stock market waivered and fluctuated. We really believe and trust that to make it in life we have to be in charge of our lives and self-made men and women. And we see nothing blessed about poverty, mourning, unhappiness, struggling, and persecution. Living on a “high” with all the ramifications of that word seems to be what we like best. For all who are able to accomplish the American Dream receive their sense honor, and are considered by the world to be the honorable.
Yet there is still another dimension. There is another reality. We have heard it said that even in having it all, there can be a temendous sense of emptiness. We can be lonely in a crowd. We can have it all and lose it suddenly. Having the accolades of the world may not really amount to a whole lot if we feel an inner emptiness and dissatisfaction. Suppose through failing health or stock market we lose the stuff that makes us feel good? Are we condemned to some meaningless abyss? Suppose we find out we don’t really know what is right? Are we damned to the world’s eternal condemnation? Human beings do fail. Some marriages disentegrate. Family life can be dysfunctional. Children don’t become or do what parents want or expect of them. Things we cherish do vanish, evaporate, and and change. The honor, the power, the prestige of life is sometimes little more than an illusion. We grow old, weak, we die. Life’s apparent gradeur can result in poverty, mourning, and our feeling persecuted. Where then do we really find a true, genuine, and lasting honor? For Jesus the true and genuine honor was different from the worlds. It was the very opposite of the worlds.
Jesus saw the honor of God as a gift. The poor in spirit who had no merit whatsoever are God’s own. What the world disenfranchises and those separated from worldly grandeur are God’s own. It is in recognizing that living in an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth world only results in the continuation of a vicious cycle and a continually vicious world. Blessed are they who step aside and walk the extra mile and turn the other cheek. If we live continually in a judgmental world, we live in constant threat of condemnation and lack of acceptance. Can we step aside from being harshly judgmental. Stuffing ourselves with self-righteousness can make us unhealthy, unforgiving, and cruel. Yet hungering for justice for all people in the world turns us into honorable servants of God. Being a people who can mourn makes us a people who can feel, and sense, and open to realities of life. God loves and honors us for that way of being. Constantly, persistantly the world tells God’s church that its way will not work: You can’t turn the other cheek, or walk the extra mile; you can’t love your enemies. Blessed and honorable and loved are those who prevail in believing that by the grace of God in our lives and in our being the world can and will be changed. Faithful men and women down through the ages in the face of persecution have carried on the message and the hope of God. Poor people in marches, people re-building houses, people loving the poor continue to proclaim the goodnews of God’s love and hope in the face of opposition and the persecution of pessimism. People tutoring children. People who embrace the way of Christ that challenges the world become immersed into the baptismal blessing of God who honors them.
Who are the saints and what are they made of. The saints are not good people who did good things and died. They are not the pious with halos. They are the faithful; they trust. They are the one who embraced the challenging and the daring way of Christ in the midst of the principalities and powers of the world. They are the ones who see a another reality in a world of phoney illusions. They are the ones who know they need God and through God realize the deeper meaning of life and without even knowing it are the truly blessed.