“Glory to God, whose power working in us -- can do infinitely more than we could ask or imagine. In the Name of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. AMEN.
May you have a Holy All Saints Day (Today) and Happy All Souls day (Tomorrow). These are Holy Feast Days in the church. Many cultures celebrate their ancestors, those faithful who have gone before. The Mexicans celebrate “El Dia de Los Muertos” the day of the dead. They build altars to memorialize and reconnect with their loved ones. We normally would have a table set up in the back with a bunch of Pictures of Our Saints on it. We can not do that today, but I hope you bring a picture of your Saint or Saints to the Adult Discussion after worship today. In our baptismal vows on page 304 of the BCP we profess “that we believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, and the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.” The communion of saints…. WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?
The communion of saints refers to believers in the past, believers in the present, and believers yet to come sharing the common salvation story of our Lord Jesus Christ. Those who have passed from this world into the presence of Christ at the death of their body will have the same salvation that we have. We have a connection with all those who have gone before us and all those who will come after us. We all -- have this in common --- we have been forgiven by His death and saved by His life.[1] At this time in our journey together, I find this to be very, very comforting.
All Saint’s Day is principle feast day that gets overlooked in the church as it gets paired with the stewardship drives – pledge cards and the such – and I get a head ache thinking about all the math our Financial Committee will have to do to prepare next year’s budget. Typically we only think of saints from long ago that are dead and that did very extraordinary things. But we are all called to be saints. The saints of God. Kim’s Mom thought I was a saint for a while. (You can meet them in school, or in lanes, or at sea, in church, or in trains, or in shops, or at tea; for the saints of God are just folk like me, and I mean to be one too). The life of a saint is neither glamorous nor degrading there are moments when we clearly know how -- we make a difference in someone's life. We sometimes have no idea when we make those impacts. Think about a time in your life when someone did something saintly.
Sainthood’s big dynamic is hidden and with small acts – like reading to a kid who has trouble reading, helping to pay a person’s tuition at Augusta University, or helping out a neighbor who is kicked out of her apartment because of a fire, or just sitting with someone who is sad, or lonely, or depressed – you know what I mean. Our baptism makes us all the saints of God. What saints did was not hard and they didn't hoard their sainthood!
“By all your saints still striving, for all your saints at rest, your holy Name, O Jesus, for evermore be blessed.”[2]
How do you become a Saint? One way is to live your life explicitly following the teachings of Jesus. Today, we heard part of the sermon on the mount called the Beatitudes. These are a collection of principles of Jesus Christ which emphasizes his moral teachings. The focus on the Sermon on the Mount is how to live a life pleasing to God and the characteristics of a disciple. How we live with the of the Kingdom of God in mind.
The term “Beatitudes” means those with supreme blessedness, the saintly ones, the happy ones, the victorious ones. Pastor John K. Jenkins Sr., First Baptist Church of Glenarden suggests that it should be ---"the attitude to be” instead of the Beatitudes. The “Be-Attitudes” it is the mindset we should have.
We know people can have attitude but there is a difference between having the attitude and being the attitude. For example, he explains you can do giving, but that doesn’t mean you will be giving. These are the attitudes that we should be. Have you ever meet anyone with an attitude? You know what I mean someone who has that look on their face, they are rolling their eyes, and the body languages speaks it all? Have you ever met anyone like that? They have a “tude.” If you have never met anyone with that kind of attitude, chances are pretty good that you are the one with the attitude.
Jesus gives us 8 blessings, 8 mindsets, 8 attitudes that we should have. I am going to cover the first couple then your homework is the rest.
“When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him.” Jesus saw the crowds but he did not go to them, the disciples came to him. Jesus goes up to another level and the disciples come up to him. There is a difference with people who want the kindom of God, they are willing to climb higher and higher. Jesus did not go to the crowds. Those who wanted to learn his way came to him. And he begins to teach them and give them the right attitudes to have.
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
Happy are those who are poor in spirit. Blessed are those who are in need of the Holy Spirit. Blessed are those who know what they are hungry for. Can you imagine your life without Jesus? What would that look like? We need Jesus. We cannot function without God in our life. With each of these “Be-Attitudes,” Jesus makes a promise. Happy are those who recognized that they need God, those who cannot go without God, theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” Mourning it the loss of something dear and close. It could be a person or it could be a job ect. Blessed are those who cry, experiencing grief. We are taught in our society from a very early age that we are not to show emotion. When you have grief don’t cry. Well I am here to tell you that I do. I cry. Crying is very healthy. When I mourn, I cry. When it is not healthy is when you cannot do anything but cry. You have to go on. Get up everyday and do your daily things. Yes you will grieve but you have to continue with your life. AND many of us don’t know how to deal with people who are grieving. We always say the wrong thing. Sometimes the best thing is just to be present and don’t talk. “He is in a better place now.” I know he’s in a better place, that doesn’t make me feel any better! I am not with him. Stop Talking. Do not say anything. Another way to look at mourning is that our hearts hurt the same way that God’s heart hurts.
When we can feel like God feels, the promise is that we will be invited to be close to God, blessed ar those who mourn like God mourns, “for they will be comforted.”[3] I challenge you to go through the rest of these Be-Attitudes – these mindsets and set your mind to them. We gather in this space week after week to ask the questions and tell the story over and over again…the story of God’s love of us…the story of Salvation….the story of those who went before us who make it possible for us to be here, worshiping the King of Glory.
And whether “here” is a 1,000 year old Cathedral in England or a 61 year old American church in Augusta Georgia or a Church Plant in a gymnasium in Grovestown, or on ZOOM, the story is the same. We are part of the Story of Salvation…even on those days when our throats are too dry to ask a question and our brains are too exhausted to remember the Story. We are part of it even when our eyes are swollen from tears and our heads are too frail to look up. We are part of the endless story of Salvation even if we can’t always remember the answer to the question, “Who is the King of Glory.”
We celebrate this day, this All Saints’ Sunday that we are part of a long long line of saints on whose shoulders we ride…saints known and unknown…famous saints … and lesser known saints like my grandmother or your favorite Sunday school teacher….and all those who have nurtured our faith even if we never knew their names.
And we join those known and unknown saints because it is bearing witness to the faith that is the work to which we are all called. Everyone one of us, no matter what any of us do for a paycheck no matter how old we are. And it is that which we celebrate today. The joy, the burden, the frustration, the responsibility, the thrill of bearing witness. That is what we celebrate. That is the Feast of All Saints, and that is what makes us….ALL….SAINTS.
This isn’t a feast day to commemorate some plastic other worldly perfection. The biographies of the saints, …... Bearing witness to the story of Salvation, being a saint of God, doesn’t exempt us or those who went before us from human frailty and sin. Thanks be to God, because otherwise this might be the feast day of “that one person who was annoyingly perfect their whole life” instead of the feast of All Saints, all of us with all our imperfections.
From the moment we are raised up dripping from the waters of baptism we are adopted into the household of God, and declared to be something better than perfect. We are made children, children of the Living God, and declared to be saints, grafted into the long line of those who went before us, who bore witness to the Story of Salvation.
And no matter who gets elected, it will not change who we are or how we are to “BE” with each other. “We are grafted into the very heart of God, the very heart of the king of Glory. That is your identity and my identity no matter what else surrounds us… stock market upheaval, political division, illness or even death…..we are saints of God, called to tell the story of Salvation, called to bear witness, now, and always.”[4] Don’t forget who you are and whose you are. AMEN.
[1] http://www.gotquestions.org/communion-of-the-saints.html. Accessed October 30, 2015. [2] The Hymnal 1982 p. 232. [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWQmul2QKOU&list=TLPQMDExMTIwMjBJHJ1ACGe2mA&index=1 Accessed October 31, 2020. [4] Sermon, The Rev. Rhoda S. Montgomery, D. Min., Preached at St. Thomas Episcopal Church, November 4, 2012.
Proper 26 All Saints Day Year A Matthew 5:1-12
The Rev. James T. Said Bearing Witness November 1, 2020
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