"Saints" Pentecost 22A

 I John 3:1–3

Saint Matthew 5:1–12

Recently a friend and a very fine pastor in the ELCA posted on his Facebook  page this little bit of doggerel: “Thirty days hath September, April, June, and November, all the rest have 31, except any month in 2020 all of which have 5,328.”

This year we’ve dealt with a pandemic, hurricanes, wildfires, murder hornets, political turmoil, economic turmoil, and online church. Parents and teachers struggle to know how to care for their children, pastors struggle to know how to care for their parishioners, and none of us knows completely what the future holds.1

 Tom Hanks proved he was as good a writer as an actor in a collection of short stories called Uncommon Type.  In one of the stories he writes about man who “has a short, stressful relationship with a hyperactive woman: ‘Being Anna’s boyfriend was like training to be a Navy SEAL while working full-time in an Amazon fulfillment center in the Oklahoma Panhandle in tornado season.’”2

That sums up what this year has been like for “those of us who have led worship in empty churches, for those who have faithfully attended church from their living rooms, to those who have kept daily prayers, to those who have lost jobs, freedoms, and loved ones to the pandemic, to all of those who go through”3 the seemingly endless days of 2020.

Jesus comes to people just like you and me with words of comfort and assurance.

As a preacher I can imagine this scene from Jesus’ perspective. I can see the people’s reactions with smiles or tears of recognition as one person after another turns to their neighbours and says: “He’s talking about me!  This man is talking about where I am in my life!”

Up until this dreadful year we may not have seen ourselves in much of what Jesus was saying.  We may have exhibited some of those characteristic at one time or another but if this year has taught us anything it is that everything we value can be ripped away from us by something so small it can only be viewed under a microscope.  Now we know, in the words of the hymn writer, “all the vain things that charm us most” can disappear so fast that we might even feel the need to “tie-one-on” only to discover that all the saloons are closed.

Now, like it or not, we are in that crowd with Jesus hanging on his every word and discovering what he really means.  

The Beatitudes, as we have come to refer to them are not The Be Happy Attitudes as Robert Schuller once called them in the title of a book.  They are not something we can conjure up. They are not a product of our wishful thinking.

The Beatitudes are not a sacred checklist to organize and download into a Google calendar.  The Beatitudes reflect who is honored and exalted in God’s eyes. It is not that being poor in spirit earns the kingdom of heaven or being merciful means that mercy lands on your doorstep.  God’s purposes are to lift up those who are burdened and broken. The Beatitudes are not about trying to “get on the list.” The Beatitudes reflect what God values, not how to curry God’s favour. [Following them] we begin to value what God values. We come to honor what God honors.4

 That is what it means to be a saint.  

We don’t think of ourselves as saints because of all of the baggage associated with the word.  Saints are celebrated with statues and appear in stained glass windows.  We’ll be lucky if our relatives and friends will be willing to pay for an obituary in the Beacon.  

Saints live exemplary lives; ours by comparison are quite ordinary. 

Saints do great heroic deeds; ours may be only only the deeds done in daily living.

Saints are known by their unwavering devotion but sometimes our faith, in the words of another hymn writer, causes us to “tremble, tremble, tremble.”

Yet we had something in common with them and the author of the epistle of John tells us what it is.  “See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!”5 “Think of it!” another paraphrase of this passage virtually shouts, “we really are!”6

All those people we lit candles for this morning they were children of God.  All of those people you will light a candle for later in the chapel, they were children of God.  All of those whom you are closing your eyes for now and remembering, they were children of God.

They followed Christ in this world knowing that death would not be the final word spoken about them.

We follow believing that things will not always be as they are now. We follow believing that we will not always be surrounded by a shadow of a death toll that grows by the day.  We follow knowing that we are children of God and our lives are in God’s hands.  We follow, even amidst the tumult and uncertainty of an upcoming election believing that we  live with one foot in this world and one foot in the kingdom of God.

In the next few day and weeks it might be more emotionally and spiritually healthy for us to lean into the foot that rests in the kingdom of God.  To turn off the television, read a book, rest awhile, shut off all of those talking heads who have both feet firmly planted in the world and do something that reminds ourselves that are are children of God for that is what you are even in what seems to be the longest year of your life.

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1. Charles  Lane Cowen, “Holy! Holy! Holy!,” Modern Metanoia (modernmetanoia.org, October 19, 2020), https://modernmetanoia.org/tag/allsaintsday/.

2. George Will, “Opinion | The Coming Decade of Democratic Dominance,” The Washington Post (WP Company, October 28, 2020), https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-coming-decade-of-democratic-dominance/2020/10/27/538d4cb2-188e-11eb-82db-60b15c874105_story.html.

3. Cowen, loc cit.

4. Sammy G. Alfaro, “Saint Matthew 5:1-13. Commentary 1: Connecting the Reading with Scripture.” Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Teaching 3 (Louisville, KY: Westminister | John Knox Press, 2020): pp. 437-439.

5. 1 John 3:1. (NIV) [NIV=The New International Version]

6. 1 John 3:1. (TLB) [TLB=The Living Bible]