All Saints Sunday

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Today’s gospel text comes from the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, a sermon Jesus preached to the crowds who had begun following him after he had begun showing up in their neighborhoods and towns and healing people. He had traveled all around Galilee, where Nazareth was, and he was known there and even farther north and east, throughout Syria.

Sometimes we turn these verses, known as the Beatitudes, into a set of rewards that say, “IF you will do this, THEN you will be blessed.

As if God’s love for us is transactional.

As if God’s blessing depends on us. 

But thankfully God’s love and grace for us is not dependent on us. As Luther tells us in his Small Catechism in the explanation of the first article of the creed, God provides for us and protects us “out of pure, fatherly and divine goodness and mercy, without any merit or worthiness” of ours![i]

So why does Jesus say these things if it isn’t to put a carrot out in front of folks, to encourage us to be better people? 

Remember Scripture is always revealing who God is and what God is doing. God is the actor, not us. So when we hear Jesus’ words, we want to ask, “What do his statements reveal about who God is and about God’s character?”

On this All Saints Day verse 4 stands out:

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

Today we particularly remember those whom we have loved who have died during the last year. And certainly we hope ritual and remembrance bring comfort to those who grieve and mourn, and we trust that God is with you today and every day.

But Jesus isn’t saying “Oh, lucky you, here’s your reward for your suffering.” Loss and death are not blessings, and in the depths of new grief, especially, I don’t think anyone feels “blessed”.

Instead Jesus is saying, “God sees you are hurting and the same God who created you and loves you, will comfort you, wipe away your tears and sit with you in your grief.”

This is the God who is portrayed in the beatitudes, one who sees and honors those who are suffering.

It is in words like the ones Jesus preaches today that Scripture is so clearly a living Word that we hear differently in different seasons of our lives. It is not a historical document chiseled in granite, but a Word that God speaks that we may hear and know who God is, and who we are as God’s people.

In Jesus’ words, we are reassured that God does not simply leave us in a deep pit and say, “there, there.”

But, sits with us in the midst of ugly tears and sleeplessness, in the too-quiet house or at the desk where a stack of papers waits for our attention.

Later in his sermon, Jesus says, “Blessed are those who are merciful because they shall receive mercy.” And while the word here is “merciful”, I heard it today as “full of mercy.”

I believe God’s comfort is mercy itself. One definition of mercy is “kindness or help given to people who are in a very bad or desperate situation.”[ii]

A distant and impersonal God who sets the world in motion and then leaves wouldn’t draw near to us in grief.

A God who wants to play “gotcha” and punish us when we make mistakes wouldn’t be there to wipe away our tears.

Instead, we know this loving God whose mercy, compassion and steadfastness is revealed to us first in the cross.

When sin and brokenness bring us to the foot of the cross, aware that we cannot live and be who God created us to be on our own, God doesn’t leave us there either. God forgives us and gives us new life.

I think Jesus is saying to all of us, who are full of God’s mercy for us, that whatever fills us up are the things that the world will see overflowing from us. When we are full of God’s mercy, we will be merciful to others.

Psalm 57 isn’t a psalm that’s assigned in the lectionary so we don’t usually hear it in worship, but in its first verse, it names why God’s mercy is so important to us all. It says:

Be merciful to me, O God, be merciful, for I have taken refuge in you; in the shadow of your wings will I take refuge until this time of trouble has gone by. (57:1) 

The psalmist often calls upon God to be the God that Scripture has already revealed. The God we call upon is the same merciful God who saved Noah from the flood and Isaac from death; the same God who parted the Red Sea so the Israelites could escape from Pharaoh; the same God who spared Nineveh from destruction. 

And, in God’s mercy, God provides us with refuge, a place apart from the time of trouble, or the destroying storms. God shelters us, like a mothering hen gathers her brood under her wings (Matt. 23:37)

The psalmist tells us God does not leave us alone to wait out the storms. Living in the shadow of God means God is always nearby. God remains with us and promises us that “the worst thing is not the last thing.”

That is the resurrection promise: that evil and death will not win; in Christ, God’s love for us and the world wins, and we are freed from our fears and transformed.

The Beatitudes aren’t a system of rewards, and we have confidence in God’s love and mercy for us. As we are sent into the world this week, I wonder where we can notice what God is doing, and, with God’s help, how we can participate? How can we let the things of God overflow from us? How can we extend God’s mercy to others? How can we provide refuge and safe shelter to others? How can we accompany others so that they do not have to be alone?

Let us pray…

Good and Gracious God,
Thank you for your love and mercy, and for making us all your saints in your kingdom.
We give thanks especially for those who have gone before us and showed us how to live faithfully here on earth.
By your Holy Spirit, continue to fill us with the things of God that our words and actions would reflect who we are as Your people.
We pray in your Holy Name.
Amen.

[i] Martin Luther. “Explanation of the First Article of the Apostles Creed.” Small Catechism.

[ii] Karoline Lewis. "A Merciful Advent." Luther Seminary. https://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=4225