"Blessed Balcony Saints" - Pentecost 23A

 

Saint Matthew 5:1-12

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. was an American writer and humorist known for his satirical and darkly humorous novels such as Slaughter-House Five and Breakfast of Champions.

It turns out that he was not only a fine satirist, a keen observer of life in general, but a pretty good theologian.  He wrote once:  If you want to discover the meaning and potential of human life, you might start with Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes. “That one about the meek inheriting the earth,” Vonnegut said, “is the best idea anyone ever had.” He went on to observe:

For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandmentssbe posted in public buildings. And of course that’s Moses, not Jesus. I haven’t heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere.1

Fourth Church’s Dr. John Buchanan, had an answer to that.

The reason is that while they are poetically beautiful, they are radically subversive. They challenge, head on, the values and ethical structures of the world in which we live. You don’t get ahead in this world by being poor in spirit or poor in anything. In fact the defining value of a consumer culture is to not be poor but to earn, buy, accumulate, consume. The meek don’t get anywhere in this world; the aggressive do. Can you imagine a job interview that begins with the applicant saying, “Actually, I’m rather meek”? And peacemakers are not blessed; they are ignored, if they’re not being roughed up by bullies in the employment of the powerful.2

 So we have to remember who Jesus was speaking to. He was not just speaking to the crowds gathered there long ago on the green, green grass, Jesus is talking to us.  He is talking about us as we tried to be merciful, pure in heart, peacemakers.  He is talking about us when, while we may not have been meek exactly, we have tried to be less proud.  He’s talking about us when we have not measured up or have downright failed at being at all these things and proclaiming us blessed, anyway.  

It’s important to understand “this text is not prescriptive, it’s not a list of commands, like ‘Go be meek!’ or ‘Go make peace!’ Jesus simply blesses people.”3

Because it is All Saints Sunday we are drawn to two of the blessings we most need this day: “Blessed are the poor in spirit” and “Blessed are those who mourn.” All the names we will read, all the candles we have lit, all the pictures on display remind us that when someone is lost to us there is, as the title of a book by one of our own Dr. Martin Marty, names A Cry of Absence.

As Dr. Scott Black Johnson observed a couple of weeks ago in a sermon from his pulpit perch at the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York.

Occasionally I hear critics of religion argue that the Christian faith is too happy, clappy, too dog-gone naive to be embraced by anyone who is actually paying attention in this hard, hard world.  Occasionally, if I am on my game I allow that this is true and some of the faithful do gravitate toward fluffy-headed optimism.  But then I point out that rose-coloured glasses are hard to come by when you actually pay attention to the tradition. Almost without exception the Good Book recounts the experiences of individuals and communities whose faith was shaped by turmoil.4

 Listen again to the characteristics that Jesus names.  He’s talking about people who are “at the end of their rope” in their longing to be “just and good.”  He’s talking about  those who feel that they have lost something that is most dear to them.  He’s talking about us at our darkest hours in our darkest days.

The blessedness in the list Jesus gives isn’t something we can conjure up on our own. 

This isn’t, as Robert H. Schuller of all-glass church and possibility thinking fame titled one of his books, The Be-Happy Attitudes.  Get the play on words there?  Beatitudes.  Be-Happy Attitudes. 

This is about Christ inviting us to gather around him this day, to allow him to hold us close, and hear him call us blessed. We can say this because Christ is near us, in everything. 

It is one of the fundamental assertions of our faith that we are not alone, we are surrounded by the presence of the resurrected Christ, who is his life experienced everything we will or ever have experienced.  

He knew what it was like to have to flee from the country of his birth be a refugee in Egypt until the coast was clear.  

He knew what it was like to live in a family of mixed emotions.  Remember how once at a wedding his mother thought he should show off a little of his God-stuff and make more wine for a party that was running low.  Jesus as sommelier!  

Remember too that he also had a family who saw the dangers his preaching and proclamation presented and came to take him home.  There was always that temptation to give up the radical rabbi business, pick up his hammer and saw, and become a carpenter again.

He knew what it was like to make friends and loose them and, in the case of his beloved buddy Lazaris, to have his spirit groan in despair, until he stared death in the face and brought his friend, still wrapped in his graveclothes, forth from the grave.

He knew it all!  He is with us!  We are not alone.

Furthermore, we are surrounded by all those who have loved us, some of whom are alive and with us, and whose loving presence in our lives is more precious and important than we can say. And we are surrounded by the loving presence of all those who have gone before us, ones we loved and lost, ones who loved us and imprinted us forever with their love.

We are surrounded by all those we loved . . . the great cloud of witnesses. I love that image. This church, surrounded by a cloud of witnesses: those who sat in these pews, and preached from this pulpit, and played the organ, and sang in the choir, and taught the children, and visited the sick, and wrestled with the finances. A cloud of witnesses surrounding us, encouraging, cheering us on to be faithful in our day.

And each one of us is surrounded too by our own cloud of witnesses: our parents, our grandparents, our aunts and uncles, our teachers, mentors, friends near and far who inspired us and loved us enough to expect much of us and prodded us to be all we could be.5

 The late Carlyle Marney, a southern Baptist preacher, called them “balcony ... people who have exerted good and positive and gracious influences in your life. He encouraged his congregation. ‘Walk outside and look up and see who’s up there on your balcony looking down at you,’ he suggested. ‘Wave to them. They are your saints.’”6

The saints closest to us, who blessed us by showing us the love of Jesus who called us blessed, “are the regular ones, the broken and beautiful ones, who walked as faithfully as they could.  Those are the ones Jesus calls us to pay attention to as living, breathing examples of faithful living.”7

Fred Rogers, of television neighbourhood fame, a humble Presbyterian pastor from Pennsylvania, was awarded numerous honorary doctorates and often was also invited on such occasions to be the commencement speaker.  On the fiftieth anniversary of his television program he was invited back to his alma mater, Dartmouth to give the address. At this and on other occasions he concluded by saying he wanted to give the graduates an invisible gift.  Rogers said in his soft, soft, voice.

A gift of a silent minute to think about those who have helped you become who you are today. Some of them may be here right now. Some may be far away. Some ... may even be in Heaven. But wherever they are, if they’ve loved you, and encouraged you, and wanted what was best in life for you, they’re right inside yourself. And I feel that you deserve quiet time, on this special occasion, to devote some thought to them. So, let’s just take a minute, in honor of those that have cared about us all along the way. One silent minute.8

Now you have a minute, one silent minute, to remember and perhaps even wave to your balcony saints who blessed you in this life.  Remember them in now in this one silent minute.

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1.    Kurt Vonnegut, “Cold Turkey,” In These Times, May 10, 2004, https://inthesetimes.com/article/cold-turkey.

2. John M. Buchanan, “Blessed Are You.”  Sermon preached at the Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago. 6 February 2011

3. James  C Howell, “What Can We Say November 1? All Saints Day,” James Howell’s Weekly Preaching Notions, January 1, 2023, https://jameshowellsweeklypreachingnotions.blogspot.com/2019/01/what-can-we-say-november-1-all-saints.html.

4. Scott Black Johnson, “Unbearable.” Sermon preached at the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church of New York. 22 October 2023.

5. John M. Buchanan, “Surrounded.” Sermon preached at the Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago. 6 November 2005.

6. John M. Buchanan, “Lofty People: A Crowded Balcony of Saints,” The Christian Century, November 15, 2003, https://www.christiancentury.org/article/2003-11/lofty-people.

7. Shannon Kershner, “Dislocation and Saints.” Sermon preached at the Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago. 2 November 2014.

8. Fred Rogers, “2002 Commencement Address,” Dartmouth, March 27, 2018, https://home.dartmouth.edu/news/2018/03/revisiting-fred-rogers-2002-commencement-address.