“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” … and all the rest of Jesus’ “Blessed are” declarations. Such familiar words. Most Christians have heard them a zillion times. In fact, they’re so familiar that they can even be satirized. In the movie The Life of Bryan, the Monty Python crew shout, “Blessed are the Greeks” and “Blessed are the cheesemakers,” knowing their audience will catch the joke.
Although the Beatitudes, these “Blessed are” declarations are so familiar, we might be surprised to hear them today. It’s All Saints Sunday, the day when we thank God for those who’ve gone before us in faith, especially those who’ve been recognized by the church. It’s year A in our three-year cycle of Scripture readings, the year when most of our Gospel readings are from the Gospel according to Matthew. If a Gospel reading for All Saints is required, wouldn’t the parable of the Sheep and the Goats be more appropriate? Or perhaps we could hear about the saintly women who bankrolled Jesus’ ministry and were the first witnesses of his resurrection. Yet, every third year, on All Saints Sunday, we hear this passage from the fifth chapter of Matthew.
If you think about it, this passage is even a surprise in the world of the gospel itself. The very first words in Matthew’s gospel are, “An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David ….” (1:1). Right away, we are set up to expect an encounter with the one who, like his ancestor David, would deliver Israel from Roman oppression. As the story progresses, we see aging King Herod so terrified about the birth of this Jesus that he orders the massacre of all boys in Jerusalem under the age of two. Then, as Jesus, as an adult, is poised to begin his ministry, along comes the fiery John the Baptist proclaiming of him, “I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire” (3:11). After hearing all this, we are sure we will meet the Jesus who will be a cross between David and Elijah, who will oust the Romans, and who will bring down God’s wrath on all the sinful.
So when Jesus makes his first public address – up on a mountain no less, like his forebear Moses – what do we hear? We hear that you’re blessed if you admit that you’re dependent on God, even for your very life. You’re blessed if you lament the current state of the world and long for the day when you can live in God’s realm. You’re blessed when you actively, hungrily and thirstily, pursue justice. You’re blessed when you engage in mission, in concrete acts of mercy and charity. You’re blessed when no one but God has a claim on you, and when you can do God’s work with gladness and singleness of heart. You’re blessed when you actively pursue peace. You’re blessed when you stand in the shoes of the prophets and speak out against hatred, war, and injustice, even though you know that speaking truth to power will bring down on you the wrath of the rulers of this world. You’re blessed if you’re prepared to suffer Jesus’ fate of execution as a common criminal. You’re blessed if you can hold fast to God’s promise, that God’s realm will become real, and that all of us will be part of that great community worshipping God eternally.
Jesus’ first followers must surely have gasped, hearing these words. They were expecting a conquering king. Was this the way of life to which God’s anointed one, their savior, was calling them? Do we too gasp when we hear Jesus’ declarations? Do we even hear them? Isn’t it much more exciting to worship superheroes? Don’t the leaders of victorious armies, even Super Bowl heroes, command more of our attention than a messiah who calls us to depend on God, engage in service to others, and actively work for peace and justice?
My brothers and sisters, God’s ways are always different from our ways. God always astounds us. God always does the unexpected. Eight centuries before Jesus, the prophet Isaiah warned his followers that, “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (55:9). Jesus’ proclamation of the good life went against everything that his followers expected. And yet, throughout the centuries, a few have caught that vision, and have followed Jesus into unexpected places.
Today, on All Saints Sunday we remember especially those who gained public recognition for being willing to follow Jesus’ vision, to let God overturn all theirs and others’ expectations for their lives. The Episcopal Church, in its wonderful volume Holy Women, Holy Men, offers an entire year’s worth of such followers of Jesus. Some were officially recognized by the undivided church, and some have been added to our calendar since the Reformation. If you’ve ever come to a Tuesday evening Eucharist, you’ve helped us remember these extraordinary individuals.
And what a surprising and wonderful “cloud of witnesses” these holy women and holy men are! Take, for example, Benedict of Nursia, who in the chaos of the sixth century, when the Roman Empire had all but fallen apart, brought together a group of monks and wrote a rule for their common life. His rule, emphasizing work, prayer, and study, endures to this day. Read it sometime with Joan Chittister’s commentary. It will surprise and inspire you. How about Francis and Clare of Assisi? In twelfth-century Italy, they turned their backs on their families’ wealth to found communities dedicated to serving the poor. In sixteenth-century Spain, Teresa of Avila also abandoned her wealthy family to found communities dedicated to contemplative prayer. Closer to our own time, William Wilberforce heard Jesus’ call to defy his contemporaries’ expectations and vigorously worked for the abolition of the English slave trade.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, Vida Dutton Scudder joined the Episcopal Church after hearing Philips Brooks preach in Boston. She too heard Jesus’ call, to risk her position as a faculty member at Wellesley College by supporting striking textile workers in 1912. For the rest of her life, she continued to pursue both justice for workers and world peace. Or how about an Albanian nun named Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu? When she began teaching wealthy girls at a school in the foothills of India, few would have predicted that Mother Teresa, as she came to be known, would spend her life on the streets of Calcutta, found numerous orders dedicated to care of the poor and dying, and be awarded the Nobel peace prize. Dietrich Bonhoeffer? Born into a secular family in Germany, he followed Jesus’ call, becoming a Lutheran pastor, theologian, anti-Nazi dissident, and founding member of the Confessing Church. In April 1945, at the age of thirty-nine, Bonhoeffer followed his master and was hanged by the Nazis.
The cloud of witnesses to God’s power and grace also includes many who are not on our calendar. Msgr. William O’Brien, a Catholic parish priest in New York City, became painfully aware of how the “war on drugs” was failing the addicts in his parish. Against all the prevailing wisdom of the day, he founded Daytop Village in 1963, one of the first and most successful drug and alcohol treatment programs in the U.S.
And then there are those who could not be considered “saints” by any stretch of the imagination and yet were able to become instruments of God’s grace. Bryan Stevenson tells the story of his first visit to death row.1 He was visiting a convicted murderer. He began by apologizing to the man for being only a student. Continuing to apologize, he told the prisoner that, because no lawyer had yet been appointed for him, he would not be executed any time in the next year. Astonished, Stevenson heard the prisoner say, “Thank you, man. I mean, really, thank you!” Now the prisoner knew that he could arrange a visit for his wife and children without fear that he would have an execution date before they could get there. Then Stevenson and the prisoner began talking. Their lives were remarkably similar, and they ended up talking for three hours. When the guard finally signaled an end to the conversation, the prisoner asked Stevenson to come back and see him again. As Stevenson struggled to say something appropriate, the prisoner smiled. Then he astonished Stevenson. He closed his eyes, tilted his head back, and, with a strong baritone, began to sing, “Lord, lift me up and let me stand,/ By faith on heaven’s tableland;/ A higher plane than I have found,/ Lord, plant my feet on higher ground.” It was an old hymn that Stevenson had sung growing up, and the prisoner continued to sing it as he was led away. Contrary to all Stevenson’s expectations, the prisoner had shown him generosity and compassion. Stevenson never forgot the man or the hymn.
And so, my friends, on this day of remembrance, on this morning when we remember those whose lives are known to many, and this evening when we remember those whose lives are known only to us, whom we loved and see no longer, we give thanks to God for surrounding us with a great cloud of witnesses. With that multitude that no man can number, we give thanks to the God of surprises, who works God’s transforming power in all our lives. Even now, God’s transforming power is at work in us, and we too can trust that we will join the saints in feasting at the heavenly banquet.
1. The High Road,” New York Times Magazine, October 26, 2014, 74.
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