THE SUNDAY AFTER ALL SAINTS DAY
Ecclesiasticus 44:1-10, 13-14
Revelation 7:2-4, 9-17
Matthew 5: 1-12
(Year B)
In the Monty Python satire
“The Life of Brian”, in a parody on the Sermon on the Mount, when Brian says, “Blessed are the peacemakers”, a man not
paying much attention and unable to hear because of all the squabbling going on
around him, turns to the guy next to him and says, “Whad’ee say?” Obviously irritated, the man, replies, “He said blessed are the cheese makers’!”
Thus proving that what we hear can make all the difference in the world.
Today, in a world where
everyone seems to hear a different voice we gather to celebrate the Feast of
All Saints. When we hear the word saint we usually think of a
rigid kind of person; a person of immeasurable perfection. But the truth
is when it comes to the saints there are no undented halos. Some have even said
that a saint is a dead sinner who just never got caught, or a person of keen
religious insight BECAUSE of his experience as a sinner.
When I went on a clergy
pilgrimage to
On this Sunday after All
Saints’ Day we are always presented with the Beatitudes. We know Jesus said“Blessed are the peacemakers”, not the
“cheese makers”, but are we really hearing
what he is saying? The danger is
that we will hear the Beatitudes as nice little platitudes you can needle point
and hang from the living room wall, as opposed to the jarring truth they bring
to us about the
That’s why they begin with “Blessed are the poor in spirit”. They
remind us that God is always at work tearing down those things that have made
us feel self-sufficient, drawing us toward the experience of nothingness of
which the saints write. We would prefer that Jesus had given a sermon on the
power of positive thinking or dreaming the impossible; as some preachers hold
up as the gospel these days. Instead he draws us into an unfamiliar world; a
world of struggle where questions often torment us, leaving us to ask, is it
God who leads us into these desert places? Is it God who forces us to look at
all that is false in our lives and make a choice? The saints say yes. They tell
us that is why they wrote so many pages describing the dark night of the soul;
so that we would not be taken by surprise.
No doubt the saints of every generation
have known the pain of searching for God and finding only darkness and silence.
The saints of past days who knew persecution must have known it well. The Book
of Revelation was written when the Christians of Asia Minor were being
persecuted by Roman officials for their refusal to worship the emperors. Some
gentile Christians confronting persecution and possible death became martyrs. Others
weakened and left the faith. In the crisis the writer of the Book of Revelation
declared there are only ever two alternatives; the worship of God or the
worship of Caesar. The word tribulation means “grinding”. It is derived from
the Latin word “tribulum”, which was a threshing sledge for beating the stems
and husks of grain. The author of Revelation speaks of all God’s own who had
come through the great tribulation. They all had one thing in common. They were
threats to the powers that be. They include Stephen stoned to death, Peter and
Andrew crucified. They include Dietrich Bonhoeffer as he stepped up to the Nazi
gallows. They include Oscar Romero, as the Eucharistic wine mixed with his own
blood as he was shot while celebrating Mass.
They are the ones who have,
like Jesus, given their lives for love of those whom Jesus called the little
ones; the innocents whose names, as Ecclesiasticus says, are not remembered. I
think of a little Palestinian boy so frightened by fighting all around him,
crying in his father’s arms as they crouched down against a concrete wall in
that land we call Holy. The moment when bullets silenced his tears and his
fears, shown on the National news a few years ago, is seared into my being. The
world has always known great tribulations, like those sifted through the teeth
of the Nazi Régime and others like them. But we all know tribulations that are
more private and sometimes even more wounding, because we feel we cannot share
them with anyone.
The discomfort of our journey
comes in those moments when it seems our only companion is the voice Jesus
struggled with in the wilderness; the voice that said “You’ve saved others…now who’s going to save you?” But is it
possible we should be thankful for the tempter’s voice, the pain of difficult
situations, the questions that keep us awake at night? It is possible if we
consider that it is through those voices that God labors to birth something new
and holy inside of us; if we but allow that to happen. This transformation is
not just for us, but for those around us as well, so that they might know that
in their own struggles God is there, laboring to bring light out of darkness,
life out of death.
The
majority of saints lead lives just as ordinary and as frustrating as any of us. They do not have days set aside on the liturgical
calendar. They have not experienced searing visions or led history-altering
crusades. They have not moved any mountains. They are simply ordinary people
toiling in the dailiness of life who are open to God’s hand moving them,
pushing them, comforting them, in the struggles we know all too well. In short
a saint is someone God uses to show others the light of God’s presence close
by.
Sadly we do not always
recognize them when they are near to us. Joan of Arc was burned at the stake at
the behest of church officials. The writings of Thomas Aquinas came under
suspicion during his lifetime. Ignatius Loyola was jailed during the Spanish
Inquisition over complaints about his ideas on prayer. The list is endless.
Yesterday, something
beautiful happened in this church of ours so worn down by strife and division.
It invested a new Presiding Bishop. On the eve of her investiture, Bishop
Katharine, an oceanographer, told how when whales come to the breeding ground
singing one song, they go away singing a new and different song because they’ve
listened and heard what each other sang.
At the end of the very
lengthy service leaflet for the Investiture of the new Presiding Bishop the
words of the retired Roman Catholic Archbishop of
“The bishop belongs to all. Let no one be scandalized
if I frequent those who are considered unworthy or sinful. Who is not a sinner?
Letn o one be alarmed if I am seen with compromised and dangerous people, on
the left or the right. Let no one bind me to a group. My door, my heart, must
be open to everyone, absolutely everyone.”
Earlier I said the one thing
the saints had in common was that they threatened the powers that be. That is
true, but they had something more important in common than even that. They
heard the words of Jesus and trusted in them; his words about God’s extravagant
love and radical mercy. That’s why ultimately, like cream rising to the top,
the saints always become quite obvious.
Henri Nouwen once said, “We will be judged on opportunities we were
given to love and passed up.”
In that same vane Philippe
Vernier wrote:
“Do not wait for great strength before setting out,
for immobility will weaken you further. Do not wait to see clearly before
starting: one has to walk toward the light. When you take that first step,
accomplish that tiny little act, the necessity of which may only be apparent to
you, you will be astonished to feel that the effort, rather than exhausting
your strength, has doubled it and that you already see more clearly what you
have to do next.”
If the saints declare
anything at all they declare that they trusted the Lord enough to hear him and
take him at his word. They trusted him enough to know that beneath his words of
peace and mercy, love and compassion, beat the heart of the living God – the
God who calls us to be saints.
AMEN
The Rev. Virginia L. Bennett,
D.Min.
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church