For All the Saints
Luke 6:20-31
Nov. 4, 2007
Last Sunday we remembered the Reformation, so it’s good and right to recall this morning that Reformation understanding of the saints: we are all the saints of the church.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t often think of myself in such terms, nor do I often feel very saintly. Oh, sure, last Sunday afternoon as the crockpot warmed the chili I’d made for the CALL group while I folded laundry and got a snack ready for my children – all, let’s underscore, while Cheryl was flying back from five days in Reno – sure, at that point I felt pretty darn saintly!
But in any grander sense? Not so much.
Sure, folded laundry and actual cooked food while Cheryl is on the road is something of a miracle; but it probably wouldn’t qualify me for the Roman Catholic understanding of sainthood – even if that chili was mighty tasty.
So what is the sense of sainthood by which we might understand ourselves as among that number?
If you’re looking for a how-to manual to sainthood, you could do far worse than consider the passage this morning from Luke’s gospel. This is Luke’s version of the Beatitudes, and here Jesus describes the blessed life – a life sanctified such that those who lead it might consider themselves among the saints.
What invitation might we hear in these words?
“Blessed are you who are poor …”
We spend so much of our lives scrambling precisely in order to avoid being poor, yet Jesus tells us that we will find blessing precisely in our poverty. Matthew’s version reads, “blessed are the poor in spirit,” and many find in that a softening of Jesus’ message. Either way, this blessing is a challenge to us. If we hear in it a comment on our relationship to the material, we may hear both a reminder not to allow our lives to be so cluttered with stuff and the striving after stuff that we miss Christ in our midst – especially as he comes to us in the face of the poor. If we hear in it a comment on our spiritual lives, we may hear an invitation to, in the words of the Hassidic rabbis, to hold in one hand the message, “I am dust and to dust I shall return,” while holding in the other hand, at the same time, the message, “for me the universe was created.”
In other words, to be poor in spirit means holding lightly to our selves – knowing that we carry within us a spark of the divine while knowing at the same time that we are finite, mortal creatures we dwell here but a short while in the midst of a wondrous creation that we did not make. Such humble spirit demands that we recognize in every other creature the same condition, and, as such, calls us to treat every other with the dignity and respect due to one for whom the universe was created.
We recognize this common humanity, this common creaturely condition, when our bodies want – for food, for drink, for care and caress. Thus we are blessed when we hunger for in our hunger we come to know ourselves.
What other invitation to blessing might we hear in these words?
“Blessed are you who hunger …”
In knowing ourselves – our authentic selves – we can open ourselves to the presence of God in our midst. When we know ourselves as created beings we are open to the creator. In such openness we will be filled.
Of course, it is one thing to wax poetic about being creatures crafted in the image of a loving God, about being those for whom the universe was created, about holding lightly to life. It is another thing altogether to face head on the reality of a creation that groans under the weight of so much suffering and brokenness. It is another thing altogether to walk upright into the “vale of tears,” and to find blessing even in our weeping.
The question, as posed by Mary Lou Kownacki of Pax Christi – the Roman Catholic peace fellowship – is this: “The poor in spirit – those who recognize the sacredness of life – and they who mourn – those who realize the violence under which so many live – face a dilemma: How do we restore dignity, how do we bring wholeness to those denied basic human rights? How do we bring forth that day ‘when every tear shall be wiped away and death shall be no more, neither shall there be crying nor pain anymore’?”
So surely there is challenge in the blessing of those who mourn, but, again, what invitation might we hear in these words?
“Blessed are those who mourn …”
No matter how we may spiritualize or romanticize these words of blessing, no matter how many pretty words we choose to put around them, Jesus clearly understood the stark challenge they implied, for he closed his litany of blessings with this:
“Blessed are you when people hate you, exclude you and defame you on my account.”
To find blessing in receiving love is easy. To find it in receiving hate is another thing altogether.
In the same essay I quoted earlier, Sister Kownacki writes this:
“Suffering love first attracted me to nonviolence. In the early '60s—before Vatican II and renewal—I can remember watching the evening news, staring transfixed at the blacks who sat at segregated lunch counters and refused to move until they were served, while angry whites poured ketchup on their heads, smeared mustard through their hair and eyes, and pelted them with racial slurs.
“I heard the word "nonviolence" and wondered how people could absorb such hatred without striking back. Then I read an account in the Catholic Worker newspaper where a black man was quoted as saying: "I will let them kick me and kick me until they have kicked all the hatred out of themselves and into my own body, where I will transform it into love."
“That unidentified black man let me see the cross of Jesus anew. No longer was it possible to see the death of Jesus as a mere historical event, a dogma of faith to adhere to but never connect to real life. No, the disarmed figure on the cross was an invitation to me to break the cycle of violence, to be an instrument of continuing redemption through suffering love.”
The beatitudes – whether Luke’s version or Matthews – are Jesus invitation to us to make of our lives instruments of God’s grace and mercy, God’s love and justice. They are an invitation to us to live into our fullest identity as children of God who carry within us a memory and spark of the divine presence. They are a calling and a guide, an invitation in the fullest sense, to live as though we truly are to be numbered among all the saints.
Nov. 4, 2007
Last Sunday we remembered the Reformation, so it’s good and right to recall this morning that Reformation understanding of the saints: we are all the saints of the church.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t often think of myself in such terms, nor do I often feel very saintly. Oh, sure, last Sunday afternoon as the crockpot warmed the chili I’d made for the CALL group while I folded laundry and got a snack ready for my children – all, let’s underscore, while Cheryl was flying back from five days in Reno – sure, at that point I felt pretty darn saintly!
But in any grander sense? Not so much.
Sure, folded laundry and actual cooked food while Cheryl is on the road is something of a miracle; but it probably wouldn’t qualify me for the Roman Catholic understanding of sainthood – even if that chili was mighty tasty.
So what is the sense of sainthood by which we might understand ourselves as among that number?
If you’re looking for a how-to manual to sainthood, you could do far worse than consider the passage this morning from Luke’s gospel. This is Luke’s version of the Beatitudes, and here Jesus describes the blessed life – a life sanctified such that those who lead it might consider themselves among the saints.
What invitation might we hear in these words?
“Blessed are you who are poor …”
We spend so much of our lives scrambling precisely in order to avoid being poor, yet Jesus tells us that we will find blessing precisely in our poverty. Matthew’s version reads, “blessed are the poor in spirit,” and many find in that a softening of Jesus’ message. Either way, this blessing is a challenge to us. If we hear in it a comment on our relationship to the material, we may hear both a reminder not to allow our lives to be so cluttered with stuff and the striving after stuff that we miss Christ in our midst – especially as he comes to us in the face of the poor. If we hear in it a comment on our spiritual lives, we may hear an invitation to, in the words of the Hassidic rabbis, to hold in one hand the message, “I am dust and to dust I shall return,” while holding in the other hand, at the same time, the message, “for me the universe was created.”
In other words, to be poor in spirit means holding lightly to our selves – knowing that we carry within us a spark of the divine while knowing at the same time that we are finite, mortal creatures we dwell here but a short while in the midst of a wondrous creation that we did not make. Such humble spirit demands that we recognize in every other creature the same condition, and, as such, calls us to treat every other with the dignity and respect due to one for whom the universe was created.
We recognize this common humanity, this common creaturely condition, when our bodies want – for food, for drink, for care and caress. Thus we are blessed when we hunger for in our hunger we come to know ourselves.
What other invitation to blessing might we hear in these words?
“Blessed are you who hunger …”
In knowing ourselves – our authentic selves – we can open ourselves to the presence of God in our midst. When we know ourselves as created beings we are open to the creator. In such openness we will be filled.
Of course, it is one thing to wax poetic about being creatures crafted in the image of a loving God, about being those for whom the universe was created, about holding lightly to life. It is another thing altogether to face head on the reality of a creation that groans under the weight of so much suffering and brokenness. It is another thing altogether to walk upright into the “vale of tears,” and to find blessing even in our weeping.
The question, as posed by Mary Lou Kownacki of Pax Christi – the Roman Catholic peace fellowship – is this: “The poor in spirit – those who recognize the sacredness of life – and they who mourn – those who realize the violence under which so many live – face a dilemma: How do we restore dignity, how do we bring wholeness to those denied basic human rights? How do we bring forth that day ‘when every tear shall be wiped away and death shall be no more, neither shall there be crying nor pain anymore’?”
So surely there is challenge in the blessing of those who mourn, but, again, what invitation might we hear in these words?
“Blessed are those who mourn …”
No matter how we may spiritualize or romanticize these words of blessing, no matter how many pretty words we choose to put around them, Jesus clearly understood the stark challenge they implied, for he closed his litany of blessings with this:
“Blessed are you when people hate you, exclude you and defame you on my account.”
To find blessing in receiving love is easy. To find it in receiving hate is another thing altogether.
In the same essay I quoted earlier, Sister Kownacki writes this:
“Suffering love first attracted me to nonviolence. In the early '60s—before Vatican II and renewal—I can remember watching the evening news, staring transfixed at the blacks who sat at segregated lunch counters and refused to move until they were served, while angry whites poured ketchup on their heads, smeared mustard through their hair and eyes, and pelted them with racial slurs.
“I heard the word "nonviolence" and wondered how people could absorb such hatred without striking back. Then I read an account in the Catholic Worker newspaper where a black man was quoted as saying: "I will let them kick me and kick me until they have kicked all the hatred out of themselves and into my own body, where I will transform it into love."
“That unidentified black man let me see the cross of Jesus anew. No longer was it possible to see the death of Jesus as a mere historical event, a dogma of faith to adhere to but never connect to real life. No, the disarmed figure on the cross was an invitation to me to break the cycle of violence, to be an instrument of continuing redemption through suffering love.”
The beatitudes – whether Luke’s version or Matthews – are Jesus invitation to us to make of our lives instruments of God’s grace and mercy, God’s love and justice. They are an invitation to us to live into our fullest identity as children of God who carry within us a memory and spark of the divine presence. They are a calling and a guide, an invitation in the fullest sense, to live as though we truly are to be numbered among all the saints.
posted by David Ensign at
9:02 AM
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