All Saints Day

Matthew 5:1-12

Today is All Saints Day.  A wonderful festival and one of my favorite holidays in the church year.  It is a day of great Hope.  Hope for the future, hope for the past, hope for those we love in all times and places.  It is a day that connects us deeply to our baptismal promises and to the hope we have as children of God and to the whole communion of saints, all baptized Christians of every time and place.

We have spent some time this fall remembering a number of big Saints specifically St Francis and St Luke as we looked to their lives as examples of faithful living.  Today, we continue in that theme but today we get to commemorate all of the Saints and so especially we get to remember what I like to call the small saints.  Non-canonized saints, the saints of our lives, the blessed and holy ordinary people who have shaped our lives and taught us the ways of faith.  Parents and Grandparents, Aunts and Uncles, spouses, children, pastors, teachers, Sunday school teachers, friends and neighbors who have brought us along the way.

Last year, we remembered and shared stories of these saints of our lives.  I still have the cards you wrote, they give me such joy.  Because it is from these blessed saints that we draw our hope for the future.  It is on their shoulders that we stand, and trail they blazed that we follow.   And so this year, we are going to think about where these saints are leading us.

Now, we heard today from Gospel of Matthew the ever popular and ever challenging beatitudes.  And we have talked here before about this word ‘blessed’ really means.  About how the Hebrew biblical idea of Ashar what Jesus calls ‘Blessed’ is quite different from our modern conception.  To be Blessed here means quite literally to follow the right path.  It’s not really about being happy, or rich, successful in the ways we today might think.  Instead it is closer to being righteous, following the ways of God, that makes you blessed.

Which helps make these sayings in the Beatitudes make a lot more sense.  These things, being poor, meek, hungry for justice, merciful, or pure of heart, while they may not make you happy or successful in the modern sense, do lay out a clear path toward following what Jesus calls the greatest commandment which we heard last week, to love your neighbor as yourself.  Most fundamentally, to be blessed is to care, is to love, with real deep and costly love.  We mourn because we have taken the risk to deeply love those who we eventually lose.  And it is the same with the others, we are willing to hunger and thirst for righteousness, to be merciful and peacemakers and even risk being persecuted because we love and care for our neighbors.

This is that right path we are called to.  A path is challenging, murky and hard to follow.  And so, we will always need help and others to guide us on our way.  And so today is a day more than any other to look to the communion of saints for guidance.  Both saints of our past large and small who have lead us by their example and the still living saints that surround us now, our fellow co-workers in Christ, here in this congregation and in the other congregations in our diocese, our church leaders, and all those we see doing the work we seek to do, providing ideas, inspiration and guidance.

Lets be honest.  This is a dangerous time.  For our community, for our country, for all of humanity.  Yet this is also an abundant time.  A time with great potential and hope.  A time when simple kindness, care and unfailing love can really make a difference if only because it now feels so rare and precious.  This is a moment when we have real unique opportunities to walk the blessed path of righteousness and care.  We have the opportunity to find hope in striving for a truly blessed future. A future where walk this path together that Jesus and the saints have laid out for us.

Last year I had you think of and then tell a story about a saint.  This year I want you to tell a story about your vision for our blessed future.  What’s your hope?  What is one thing you dream of in our congregation, in the community, in your life?  What is one thing you want to do?

First, think about it quietly for a minute.  Because apparently introverts exist and have different needs than loud people.  Write it down on your little card.  And then when you are ready find a neighbor and share your dream. 

Then when we are all done, we are going to gather with the saints, renew our baptismal vows and refill our font with the blessings of the whole church.  And then I invite you to come light a candle.  Remember the saints that have brought you this far, and offer up your hope as a prayer for the world.  As a light shining in the darkness to illumine the world.

May we all strive to become truly blessed this season as we follow the saints in light.