The Big Why: All Saints

Matthew 5:1-12

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.

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

“Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

“Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

“Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

The crowds are beginning to form and follow Jesus. Right before this sermon on the hill, he announced (quite publicly) that the kingdom of heaven is near. He named the thin space between this world and the next. And now he’s telling them what it looks like when God’s will is in their midst. 

The crowds keep gathering because Jesus embodies a new movement for the sake of this kingdom — to reveal, disturb, comfort and mend — to confuse the whole order of things on earth so that glimpses of heaven are possible here in this life — not just later on, at the end of days.

And when he talks about the kingdom of heaven, he does not perform it like a magician, or high on a stage as a one man show. Jesus uses language that invites the crowds to participate and calls their help necessary. Because God has a habit for wanting to do this with people, so the kingdom comes in our real lives and relationships. 

How strange it must have been, to hear that God is interested in the ordinary details of being human, that the kingdom can be revealed in our plain old presence, that our joys and sorrows and very existence matter so much to God.

Perhaps this is the good news that gets lost in the shuffle of every generation — we get busy and lost performing faith or disguising our truest selves — and we forget that God calls us very good, that God is still stirring up routes for blessing to flow through us. 

The crowds keep forming because we are hungry for this news, famished for a greater dignity, community and purpose that can startle the empires and systems we build on our own.

The crowds are forming because they already belong to this vision of heaven — whether they like it or not, whether they know it or not — they are being claimed by God’s love made flesh, becoming a body that spans nations and generations, to move everything God has made closer to heaven.

Perhaps you have heard this sermon on the mount, these blessings for the least and the last, and pulled up a chair to listen, trying to imagine a mystical world, ours flipped on its head the way God sees and desires — putting the ones God sees and centers at the head of the table. 

It’s how I usually hear this passage, as an inactive but attentive listener, an audience member who is eager to see what a different order will look like when God is finished — while also feeling a little nervous about change and loss. 

I suppose I’ve often assumed that God is the official blesser in this poem, the main agent of blessing, the one who decides how the rewards fall and whether we’ll be able to see them in this life or have to wait until the next. 

Today, I invite you to notice with me how many of these blessings are declared in a passive voice: 

Those who mourn will be comforted.
Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness will be filled.
Those who are merciful will be shown mercy.
Those who make peace will be called children of God.

It does not say that God is the one who must fulfill these blessings — only that the kingdom of God is a relationship in which these things happen and can be seen. 

Jesus sets the blessing free and shows us the way, reorienting all of us toward the hidden and humble, the discounted and small, the scrappy and persecuted, the earnest and passionate. But who will fulfill these blessings? Well, that is left wide open and ringing in our ears. 

Maybe the passive voice is showing us a way in — not only for our intellect or ideals, but for our breath and bodies, our feet that have followed and crowded Jesus this far — it invites our proximity to those God is announcing central to this movement. 

Because blessing is not a destination or a merit. It is a movement that recognizes and rejoices in God’s goodness up close, a story that holds you close, even while it keeps expanding to include everyone else.

This sermon on the hill and this holy day set aside for All the Saints, is an invitation to push back on how small and isolated our worlds have become this year. It has the power to pull us out of our passive waiting back into the magnificent blessing that is still on the move.

The Holy Communion: All the Saints
Imagine a big table in the shape of a square.

1. Members of our own communities and cultures. Here and now.

• This congregation. Our friends and loved ones. 
• Our neighbors and those for whom we pray. 
• Those we miss gathering next to at this table and in daily life.

2. Members of other communities and cultures. Here and now.

• Those who are physically far away or unknown to us.
• Friends who practice their faith in other traditions or denominations.
• The global church, the variety of worship across land and language.

3. Ancestors and loved ones who have gone before us.

• Martyrs and Saints.
• Biblical characters and personal heroes.
• Ancestors we could never meet.
• Those whose life and death have shaped our own experience.
• Those we have loved and mourned in this life.

4. Descendants who have yet to be born. 

• Offspring and future generations.
• The ones who make us ancestors.

This is the table, too big to set inside any temple or cathedral on earth. This is where we practice belonging to God and to each other, so that, when we find thin spaces in the world, we recognize them for what they are: connections between the sides of this sacred table:

The sound of a COVID patient’s ventilator.
George Floyd using his last breaths to call out for his mother.
Loving someone across two realities with dementia.
Holding a newborn baby close, wondering where they’ve been.
Talking about this day with a friend who calls it, The Day of the Dead or All Souls, and recognizing what you have in common. 
Caring for the earth, inspired by the wellbeing of future generations.

These are tastes. Glimpses. Moments in which our mortality seems to drift by the Throne Room long enough to hear the angels singing.

So come to the table today. This is one way we can practice remembering that the body is really big. And the story is really big. And the blessing is really big. It cannot wait until the afterlife to reveal what’s possible — and neither can we. 

May the thin spaces find you today. Remember the souls who formed and loved you. Honor the dead and say their names. And disarm the grave with your active participation in the Jesus movement, its power both ancient and new, as a blessing that flows through this world and the next.