Sermon for November 6, 2022 – All Saints Day
Daniel 7:1-3, 15-18; Psalm 149; Ephesians 1:11-23; Luke 6:20-31
Today is a wonderful day of celebration on so many levels. Today, we can celebrate the fact that our journey with Jesus through Gospel of Luke is coming to an end. In just a few weeks we will transition to a year-long journey through the Gospel of Mark, beginning on the First Sunday of Advent. But, not before we hear a few final stories about Luke’s understanding of mission and discipleship in the upside-down Kingdom of God. Today, we celebrate our Patronal Feast Day, the Feast of All Saints, so we have the opportunity to remember and celebrate all of the saints who have gone before us, especially those saints in our lives whom we still love but see no longer. Today also marks the beginning of our stewardship campaign, Generosity of the Heart, as we enter into a period of reflecting upon our relationships with God and each other in this parish family. Indeed there is much to celebrate, as today is about the past, the present, and the future of who we are as a community of faith living out God’s call on our hearts.
So, it is fitting then that on this All Saints feast day we are once again reminded of the radical inclusiveness of God’s love that is at the heart of Luke’s gospel through his version of the Beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount, or in our case this morning the Blessings and the Woes from the Sermon on the Plain.
In Luke’s Sermon on the Plain Jesus focuses on certain kinds of people who receive his attention throughout his ministry: the poor, the hungry, the crying, and the hated or ostracized.
All of those people, he promises, are “blessed.”
“Blessed” has become a very churchy word with little meaning for most people, especially as it has been appropriated by popular culture and social media…#Blessed. “Happy” is another common word choice we encounter in other translations, but that word has grown too small, too watered down in contemporary usage, I fear. So perhaps it’s best to view this as “unburdened” or “satisfied.”
In our story, Jesus also addresses people who are the opposite of the first groups: the wealthy, the satiated, the laughing, and the acclaimed. To all of these he cries out, “Woe!”
In this context, “woe” functions as a sharp rhetorical contrast to “blessed,” yet the Greek word does not mean “cursed” or “unhappy,” and certainly not “damned.” More like the English word yikes, it is more of an attention-getter and emotion-setter than a clear characterization or pronouncement. This is Luke’s rhetorical device to grab the reader’s attention; to convey the urgency in Jesus’ message of the Kingdom of God.
Jesus therefore promises relief to some groups; to those people who travel rough roads through life. And to others, to folks who find existence rather enjoyable or easy, he cries, “Look out!” These are not meant to induce fear, but to prod everyone into a moment self-reflection; to take a moment and ask those questions that ought to be asked: What am I doing? What is motivating me to do this? Am I doing this for myself? Could I be doing something differently? It is a subtle, but open invitation to change and reorient ourselves.
The passage’s rhetoric of binaries and reversals needs to be taken seriously. While these certainly point towards a future moment in time, they are also meant for the present. If the reign of God “is among you” already, even now, then the blessed and woe statements signal something for people to experience in the present.
Jesus sees the world through glasses that distort the conventional values everyone else sees. His spectacles turn everything upside-down, just as Mary’s prophetic vision does in the very first chapter of the gospel. Things operate differently in the reign of God, as we have seen time and again through Jesus’ parables and interactions with others. Just when we expect something to happen, God surprises us with the opposite, inverting our social expectations.
Jesus’ work and message actively benefit the disadvantaged, not the privileged. He brings satisfaction and belonging to those who suffer from poverty, which includes more than the people who lack money, but also the powerless and the disenfranchised. His ministry feeds the hungry, through which it lays a foundation for the hospitality and meal-sharing that are hallmarks of the community he creates. The people who cry, who live in perpetual loss and grief and who have lost hope, will not be forgotten, but will experience joy. Exclusion and persecution prove to be no match for those who share in Jesus’ prophetic, liberating ministry.
As for those to whom he offers woes, Jesus is sending a clear message. Jesus urges his hearers to reassess their lives in light of God’s unfolding reign.
Jesus is doing theology here, not ethics rooted in abstract notions of obligation or decency. He is describing ways of living that conform to God’s commitment to see the poor and unprivileged raised up.
The communion of saints—that intimate unity we share through Christ with one another, including those who have finished their race—creates a community, a new social reality. Jesus’ sermon describes that community as odd. Its values do not match life experience, in terms of who typically experiences happiness and how. Jesus calls the church to more than acting differently or seeing the world differently. He calls us, each of us, to a new existence in which God’s generosity, flowing through us, benefits the downtrodden. That generosity creates a culture formed and sustained by the mercy of God. That generosity that flows from our hearts creates a community of love.
Those who have come before us at All Saints understood this and saw how this community helped change and transform their lives. All the saints of this community, who once sat in these very pews gave generously in their time, and their talents, and resources to help realize the Kingdom of God in their present. We are but stewards of that generosity and it is on us to continue to build upon the foundation that has been laid for us. The baton has been passed to us and now we get to carry on the good work that they started. It did not end with them and it will not end with us. It must not end with us. And one day, we will pass that baton on to others who will carry on the mission of God in this place.
Because of their generosity, because of their self-sacrifice we have what we have today. Because of your generosity we will carry on All Saint’s tradition of being a loving, welcoming, community of faith committed to the kind of social justice that is at the heart of Luke’ gospel. Thank you. Thank you to each and everyone one of you. Your offering of yourselves, your time, your talent, and your treasure, no matter how big or small, help to make the kingdom of God a reality in our time. Your offerings allow us to help create reversals, not only in the lives of the people who gather here and found there place here, but to also attempt to reverse the injustices we see in the wider community.
In two weeks time, you will be invited to come forward and lay down our offerings, our pledges of time, talent, and treasure on the altar of God. And we make these offerings from the generosity of our hearts in deep gratitude for all that God has blessed us with. At All Saints, we consider the mission of God to be the utmost priority, and your generous support of this parish family reflects this priority in your lives.
The road ahead will not be easy. We are not yet in the promised land of milk and honey. We still have some journey ahead of us. We will face challenges. The Holy Spirit will lead us in the most unexpected directions because “It’s dangerous business…going out your door. You step into the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there is no telling where you might be swept off to.” But the true joy is that we will walk this road, face these challenges, and confront the unexpected together, as a community bound together by our love for each other and our love for God. Amen.
