All Saints Sunday , 11/03/2019

Sermon on Luke 6:20-31, by Paula Murray

20 And he lifted up his eyes on 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 shall be satisfied.

“Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh.

22 “Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man! 23 Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so their fathers 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 shall be hungry.

“Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep.

26 “Woe to you, when all people speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets.

27 “But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.29 To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either.30 Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back. 31 And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them. Luke 6:20-31

For many of us this day is overshadowed by sorrow and loss. We bring pictures and memories and yearnings for redos of old conversations and arguments. But there is no going back; the past remains past. So there is more than a bit of the whiff of the grave about what we do this morning. The writing is on the tombstone, and unlike old Ebenezer Scrooge not a one of our beloved dead will have the opportunity to turn back time by a day to “keep Christmas well.” What has been written will not be erased.

Even so, the writing that matters most is not what is found on tombstones but in the Book of Life. Death is real, those obituaries published in the paper or a mortician’s website are not fiction, but what is more real than the words that specify the end of a life is the Word that wraps that life up in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. “I am,” says our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, “the way, the truth, and the life.” (John 14:6) The phrase, “Book of Life,” appears repeatedly throughout Scripture including the book of Revelation although not in the text appointed for today. It means variously the book in which the names of all Israel are written (Exodus 32:33), the book on which our names as believers are recorded unless we sin and do not repent and our names are removed (Revelation 3:5), or where the names of those saved by the grace of God are written from the foundation of time (Phil. 4:3). Here the emphasis is less on our sin and more on God’s grace.

That grace is everything. The grief associated with death is a different sort of grief than that which follows other significant losses, like a divorce or the loss of a job. There are folks out there who equate all significant loss with that of death as though a job or a marriage is on the same footing as life itself. But those other losses can be at least partially recovered by a second marriage or a new job, even if there are still significant differences between past and present circumstances. But no one who has died, apart from Jesus Himself and Lazarus His friend, ever “recovers” to walk the earth after the casket has been lowered into the grave and the tombstone placed. For all that All Hallows Eve was just three nights ago, vampires live only in fiction and ever so briefly at our front doors. The losses associated with death would be permanent and unrecoverable were it not for God’s saving grace through Christ Jesus, our crucified and risen Lord.

It is important, then, for us not to lose sight of the larger picture, the one drawn by God Himself, in the midst of our very real and very personal grief over death’s ravages. You may have heard or read that it is best not to use phrases like, “He’s in a better place now,” or, “God had a plan.” God should never be blamed for a death, and most of us don’t want to hear in the middle of our suffering that our loved one is better off someplace else. We want them still in our daily life now. But at some point, it is the saving grace of God and our shared hope of eternal life that provides the only comfort for our suffering that lasts. There comes a time when even long-time Christians need to hear that life does not end at the grave for those who live and die in Christ Jesus.

This is every bit as much our reality as is death. It is a forest for the trees sort of thing. If the death we grieve is the tree, the grace of God is the forest in which all who believe in Jesus, both living and dead, subsist. Seen and unseen exist within the same divine embrace. We see only our very particular loss. We do not see their greater gain. It is for us to remember and then remind others in turn that what is now will not be our future or the future of our loved ones. There is more to our existence than we can see or know, and in the end, that unseen and unknown reality is more real and more true than what we see now and know now. There will be a time when we are called into God’s immediate presence, and God will wipe away every tear and grief will be no more, for we will all bless the Lamb, all of us together, and our losses will be made whole.

But that redemption of all things lost is for the future, a future revealed in Scripture but dimly by our limitations and present suffering. While we wait for the unveiling of the fullness of our hope, our work is to live, one foot in the kingdom of this earth and the other sliding off it, our eyes on the difficult present but looking to a future restoration, in ways that honor God’s will and His expectations of His people.

God knows his expectations and his will are as honored only in the breach by humanity; we are sinners one and all and all fall short of the glory of God. One of Christianity’s constant temptations to sin is to deny the reality or the importance of the merely mortal or material for the immortal and immaterial. But God enfleshed his Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, sanctifying the mortal and the material world. Both Matthew and Luke gave us a version of the Beatitudes in their Gospels, it is Luke’s version, the Sermon on the Plain, that most locates those blessings and the woes that follow them securely in this mortal and material sphere.

That’s where Jesus begins in the list of blessings and woes (curses) that follow. It is not where he ends. In each case Jesus begins with the present, but points to the future, a future which sees the fulfillment of both blessing and curse. Those who the world curses with poverty, hunger, sorrow, and persecution are even now blessed for God is at work for their restoration, even as Jesus speaks. But those who live only for the blessings of this present day, the rich, the well fed, the happy folk who enjoy a reputation they do not deserve among their similarly blessed neighbors, and not for the coming reconciliation of God’s creation through Jesus Christ will be cursed. They will lose all that they now hold dear.

The woes do not in some way declare the very real joys of the present day evil or unreal. Rather, the problem with those who are now richly endowed with all those material things which bring comfort and more is that, as the next paragraph reveals, they hoard those riches to themselves. They do not look beyond the moment’s comfort to the suffering of their neighbors and to the riches of the kingdom to come.

Those who would follow Jesus are to live as if God’s promised blessings are being fulfilled even now, for they are. Christ is at work in this present day through the Holy Spirit to reconcile creation with the Father. So we are not merely invited to love our enemies and those who hate us but commanded to do so. So, we are to love our enemies and to good things for those who clearly despise us, because even now God is reconciling warring parties. No matter how little we want these things for ourselves, for who does not enjoy a good pity party or hate, we are to return hate with love, abuse with prayer, violence with peace, theft with generosity. And, lest we don’t get the point, Jesus concludes with this universally

known but difficult to follow command, “…as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them.” Do unto others what you would have them do unto you, is the good old version of that last line.

While for many of us this day is overshadowed by sorrow and loss, following Jesus helps us look to future joys. We do not live as those without hope. We may have spent the night before grieving our way through our photo albums or phones for the perfect picture for this morning’s mass, but we know that there will come a day when the picture we see is our Lord’s dear face, and after that the faces of those who we now mourn. In the meantime, we live as if that future is now, for we believe that even now Jesus Christ is at work, renewing, restoring, reconciling creation to her Lord.

Paula Murray

E-Mail: smotly@comcast.net

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