All Saints Sunday, 11/01/2015

Sermon on Matthew 5:1-12, by Patrick Rooney

It was with a great deal of trepidation that I approached my first family reunion of the Goodwin family. Still fairly new in our marriage, Sally had told me that such family gatherings were expected but that they could be a lot of fun. Coming from a broken home at the end of the war in England, however, I had experienced nothing quite like this and I wasn’t even sure what Sally’s definition of fun really was! I imagined it to be more like a bunch of piranhas waiting to pounce on me. But I survived that first encounter and since then we have had many other gatherings, times when we have simply come together for the sake of it, times when we have shared both the good and the bad, times when we have gathered in great joy as we have celebrated our weddings and births and times of great sorrow as we have grieved our deaths. Over the years of our marriage I have come to appreciate and understand the importance and even the beauty of such family gatherings.

Which is one reason why I like being a part of the Church! Here in this part of the Church, this congregation, we form a family, a family of faithful believers that gathers each and every Sunday and on some special days, for a reunion, a time when we come together to celebrate the joys and the sorrows of our lives together, a time when we come to the remember those members of the family who cannot be with us this year, a time to recall why it is important for us to be here. And there is joy to celebrate on those days when we bring a child to the font to be baptized, to make him or her part of God’s family and of our family here in this congregation. And there is sadness as we remember those once familiar faces who once walked among us but now rest in Christ until the day of resurrection. That is why we this day we remember (insert names of the faithful departed). We remember them because they were faithful members of the family who touched and helped us and helped form our lives and our congregation over the years. These saints have now died and gone to that greater community where, with Christ and His saints, they live forever in His kingdom.

Yet becoming a saint in this kingdom of God does not mean that you have to be a part of those whose names we remember on this All Saints Sunday. There is a special place of remembrance set aside today for those who were faithful, those who have gone before us, those who made it possible for many of us to come to know Christ and His Church. But even as we remember their lives of witness and faithfulness, we need only look around us this morning to see the many other saints who are still among us and who continue to live within this family of faith. Look around you at your brothers and sisters, your parents and your children, your relatives and friends and see how it is that they live out their lives as saints among us. Of course none of them, none of us, is perfect. This sainthood is not perfection or a sort of impossible to achieve holiness. Rather this sainthood is seen when lives are lived in saintly service, sharing love and compassion with each other, in good times and in bad, offering peace and friendship and fellowship to each other; living out a witness to faithful stewardship through the sharing of benevolence; living lives anchored in faith and reinforced by devoted obedience to Christ and His Church. When you sing in the choir or read the lessons or tend the nursery or teach in Sunday school, you are living in saintly service. When you usher or greet, clean or sweep, cook or weed, count offerings or fold newsletters, you join that great host of witnesses whose lives and living, whose service and giving, state clearly and boldly their commitment to Christ, His Church and this community of faith. For we are the saints of God’s family, a great band of saints, no matter how impossible that may seem, no matter how hard it is to hear, no matter how astonishing it is to believe, because that is what God has made us through our baptisms…His saints!

Becoming a saint is not something we can do for ourselves, of course. It is not an honor that we can achieve, nor a reward we can earn. Rather it is the work of God which has accomplished, through grace, in word and water and the power of the Holy Spirit when we were baptized. That is why we often choose this day to baptize our children…so that they might come to the font and receive the word and water and the power of the Spirit which will make him or her a child of God, a saint in His Kingdom and a member of this family of faith. And having been granted this gracious and free gift from God, that child will now be called to a life of saintly service which will continue in this or some other community of faith until that day when they too will join with all those other saints who have gone before them into the heavenly kingdom.

But living the life of a saint, even within the life of a community, is still not easy and Jesus knew that full well. So for His disciples He left words which we heard today, words which speak of how we are to live lives of saintly service here on this earth until we come to that point where we will live lives of saintly worship in the eternal kingdom of God. These Beatitudes serve as our guidelines as we live out our lives in faithfulness, proclaiming the blessedness which comes as a result of God’s benevolence to those of His family. Now if we are honest, none of us would willingly take up these guidelines for sainthood. I have been poor in body and spirit before and I don’t particularly want to go back there again. I have mourned the death of family and friends and it is not something that I particularly look forward to doing again. And on top of that I am not very good at meekness, believing that sometimes force needs to be met with force. And while righteousness sounds nice, it doesn’t feed the hungry of the world; and mercy, well that’s hard to show toward those who deal in murder, drug dealing and all sorts of other mayhem on the streets around us.

But we, my sisters and brothers, we already know that in baptism we are made children of God and, as such, we are gathered into a community to do together what many of us would not choose to do alone. We are a community and, as a community, we are called to be peacemakers together; we are called to be the righteous together; we are called to be one together, to become poor in spirit together, to be merciful together. This is the way of life which is called for in the whole community. It will never be easy to live this way…living as we always do simultaneously as saint and sinner. But with the faith of all those who have gone before us serving as an example, we can move forward in sure and certain confidence that we live in the promise of God given to us at baptism and so answer His call to become loving and merciful, righteous and peaceful. And having lived such lives of saintly service here on earth, may it be the fulfillment of our promised hope to one day join with that great throng of saints who have gone before us and to sing praises with them forever around the throne of God.

And so it is my prayer for all of us gathered here at this family reunion, that by the grace of God we will live out these Beatitudes so that in time we, in spite of our sinful human nature, might become faithful saints of God and part of that great community of faithful witnesses which will live with God in His eternal kingdom forever and ever. Amen

The Rev. Patrick Rooney
Dillsburg, Pa 17019
E-Mail: pastorrooney@gmail.com

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