All Saints Sunday ---- 6 November 2016

Luke 6:20-31

Then he looked up at his disciples and said:
‘Blessed are you who are poor,
   for yours is the kingdom of God. 
²¹ ‘Blessed are you who are hungry now,
   for you will be filled.
‘Blessed are you who weep now,
   for you will laugh.

22 ‘Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you^* on account of the Son of Man. ²³Rejoice on that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets. 
²⁴ ‘But woe to you who are rich,
   for you have received your consolation. 
²⁵ ‘Woe to you who are full now,
   for you will be hungry.
‘Woe to you who are laughing now,
   for you will mourn and weep.

26 ‘Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.

27 ‘But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, ²⁸bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.²⁹If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. ³⁰Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. ³¹Do to others as you would have them do to you.

Then he looked up at his disciples and said:
‘Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. 

·        (As I begin this talk, I have to acknowledge that I owe a debt to the pastor and preacher, Barbara Taylor-Brown and her writings.)

·        On this All Saints Sunday, we have a lot to think about. Lucas has been baptized, washed in the water joined to the Word of grace. Shortly, we will remember a number of people who have passed from our sight over the past years.

·        Two entirely different things, we might say. But we’d be mistaken.

·        Let’s think now; what is it that makes a saint? A holy life? There are those we call ‘saintly’ because of how they’ve lived and there are even those among us who live obviously holy lives. However, being a saint is more than how one acts.

·        Saints are not made by some ritual of the Church. Churches that do such things might recognize a saintly person and celebrate their lives according to a calendar, but the “seal of approval” from a Church body or from any number of Christians gathered together does not make a saint.

·        Saints are not made by their own actions or abilities. All the hard work in the world will not make a saint.

·        Some might even say that saints are made by death. Those who have historically been named as saints generally share one characteristic: they existed in the past.

·        What makes a saint… what make each of US a saint is Baptism, plain and simple. Baptism is God reaching out to us using the forms of water and Word. The reason we most often baptize children is nothing less than a demonstration of God’s gift of grace, unearned and often unlooked for.

·        We have celebrated Baptism and its grace-filled bath today with the baptism of this child. We continue to celebrate Baptism in the remembrance of those who have gone before us. Are they all saints? Soon after we will celebrate and share in the Lord’s Supper. Are we then all saints? By definition… and by Baptism, absolutely!

·        Our Gospel reading was part of the Sermon on the Mount in Luke’s Gospel, the piece we call the Beatitudes. Some people have called the Beatitudes a model of how to be a saint. If it were a matter of our own power and decision, it would serve better as a yard stick of sainthood, something to compare ourselves to and measure our progress. Have I been poor enough? Hungry enough? Sorrowful enough? It could become just another sign of how we might save ourselves. Because of the up-side-down, topsy-turvy nature of the Kingdom of God, Jesus calls the poor,  the hungry, the sorrowful, the hated, and the persecuted (on account of the Son of Man) blessed. This may sound ridiculous to us and those around us particularly in the face of life in the present day with all its problems, confusions, and tensions. But the proclamation of the Kingdom always sounds ridiculous to those who have not encountered it. To us, to all those who believe, the Beatitudes ask us to read between the lines. “You might be poor, and you are loved anyway! You might be hungry, and you are still loved! You may be sorrowful and persecuted and hated, and you are loved despite it all! You are redeemed! You are loved! You are a saint! Then just act like it! You don’t have to make this up; it’s already yours!”

·        Last week we commemorated the Reformation, an act that began 499 years ago and continues today. We celebrated the revelation that salvation and blessedness is not by our work, but is the work of God given to us as a free gift of grace.

·        In that service, we sang the old hymn, “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God”, which includes this last line in its fourth verse: “The Kingdom’s ours forever!” By the grace of God, particularly expressed to us in Baptism, the Kingdom IS ours forever! And it is ours because, as we say in the Lord’s Prayer when we pray it, “for the Kingdom, the power, and the glory are YOURS now and forever.” It is God’s grace that makes saints, saints past on whom we remember today and saints newly made – like Lucas - that we celebrate today. It is God’s grace that has made us saints.

·        So what if we never have a church or a hospital named after us! “The Kingdom’s ours forever!”

‘Blessed are you who are poor,
   for yours is the kingdom of God. 
‘Blessed are you who are hungry now,
   for you will be filled.
‘Blessed are you who weep now,
   for you will laugh.

‘Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice on that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets.