Bless. Offer. Pray. Give. Do.: Sermon for the Feast of All Saints, (tr.) 21st Sunday After Pentecost

Many of us, when we think of the Beatitudes, first think of Matthew’s version, the one we will hear next year on the Feast of All Saints. Matthew’s version is given from a mountain, and his is sometimes more difficult to understands. For instance, he starts off “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” When I was a kid, I always wondered what being poor in spirit means, and those puzzling words often drew my attention away from the rest of the reading as I kept turning over that add phrase in my head. 

Luke’s version of the beatitudes is much more straightforward—and it is not directed outwardly at “them.” In Luke, Jesus’s first statement is personal: “Blessed are YOU who are poor, for YOURS is the kingdom of God.” Not “THOSE” but “YOU.” What Jesus is doing by speaking directly to us with blessings is this: to remind us that God is alongside us, especially the poor, hungry, or those in need of relief. When Jesus pronounces his “woes” in this reading, it can be uncomfortable to many of us who are NOT poor, the same was that last week’s gospel can make us uncomfortable when we realize that we are all prone to being judgmental and thinking ourselves superior from those on the margins. 

Yet when you set Jesus’s blessings and woes side by side in the Lucan version of the Beatitudes, you understand too that what is especially outrageous is those who hoard wealth in the face of the poverty of those on the borderlines of their lives, filling themselves full in the face of those who are hungry, and laughing at the weeping of those undergoing trauma and tragedy. Actually it doesn’t even require laughing. Indifference is just as bad. And we see too much of that at work in the world around us. The Beatitudes call on us to renounce that indifference, and instead claim kinship with those on the margins, just as the saints of the world still do in ways small and great to this day. 

Professor Richard Swanson points out that the word in Greek translated here as “poor” (for that is the language of the New Testament as we have received it) is ptochoi. He then muses upon another word, a Greek verb, that begins with “pt:” ptuo, which means “I am spitting,” which shouldn’t surprise anyone who grew up watching cartoons—that probably still is literally the sound of spitting in our head: ptooey. 

What if we understood Jesus’s first words here, then, as “Blessed are you who are spit upon, for yours is the kingdom of God?” How would that change our understanding of the beatitudes? And let’s face it: in this upside down world in which we live, if we TRULY express Christian values in the face of the idolatry of the individual that falsely has aligned itself with American Christianity, the risk of being spit upon is not negligible. 

As we celebrate the Feast of All Saints and the Feast of All Souls today, we remember people who, in ways small and great, were willing to be spit upon, to go against the logic and the dominant culture around them, in order to testify to the God Jesus came to bring to flesh and bone before our eyes: the God who always takes interest in those who are humble in spirit, and yet filled with awe and wonder at the glory of this God-infused creation of which we are a part. And saints are those who see with the eyes of Jesus the belovedness of everyone, regardless of any other condition. Those people who are saints, even when not perfect. 

I know it’s hard for us—it’s certainly hard for me. When Luke combines blessings with woes, it brings us up short. Because if we believe that those who are spit upon are blessed, we also have to understand the spiritual peril in being those who spit upon others—especially the poor and the hungry and those borne down by weeping, pain, trauma. Those who dream up new ways to treat supplicants with contempt rather than mercy, like the San Francisco cathedral I read about a few years ago who, when they were frustrated with the homeless who were sleeping in some of their sheltered doorways, used an overhead sprinkler system to spray them with water several times during the night. Maybe they were afraid there wasn't enough to go around, I don't know.

I do know that our culture is predicated upon scarcity, and over and over again we hear a drumbeat warning us that we don’t have enough. That idea of scarcity makes everyone else a competitor in a mad scramble for power and wealth. It’s a culture based on fear. And that is the reason why there are 366 reminders throughout scripture not to be afraid—one for every day of the year, and then another just because, in case we need it. But that’s not the culture of the Beatitudes. 

The culture of the Beaitudes is the culture of the kingdom of God—one where we don’t sit on fluffy cloud playing harps in the hereafter, but instead joyously set about doing the work to prepare the fields of the kingdom by sowing love and reconciliation. The culture of the Beatitudes is the culture of the Saints we celebrate today. As a matter of fact, the word for saint is right in there. “Beati”—is the beginning of the word “beatify” which means to recognize someone as a saint. And the entire point of this day is to remember that saints are NOT born, they are made. 

As we sing in one of my favorite songs for this feast, "I Sing A Song of the Saints of God." The third verse is a vivid reminder that there are saints all around us: 

They lived not only in ages past; 
there are hundreds of thousands still;
the world is bright with the joyous saints
who love to do Jesus’ will.
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.

How do we go about being blessed and being a blessing to others, like those saints? There at the end of our gospel passage today, if you listen, are the verbs for living a Beatitude-shaped life. Take a look and mark them out: 
Listen.
Love.
Do good.
Bless.
Pray.
Offer.
Give.
Do. 

 “I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. Do to others as you would have them do to you.” 

Listen. Love. Do good. Bless. Pray. Offer. Give. Do. 

In the Beatitudes, Jesus calls us to one-ness with each other. Jesus calls us to renounce calculations of giving based on fear, calculations of giving to each other that in the end don’t cost us too much, whether that’s in money or attention or time. Instead, we are called to expand our circle of well-being to include everyone, to have the kind of love for each other that sees that peace can only exist where we all support each other. That love can only exist where generosity and empathy rule.

That’s the kind of life real saints embody for us. 

They listen. 
They love. 
They do good, even in—ESPECIALLY in—the face of evils big and mundane, no matter the cost.
They bless, where others laugh in spite and malice. They pray, where others shrug, and in praying, they take responsibility for change. 
They offer, where others take.
They give, where others turn away.
They DO, embodying the Christ-shaped life.

That’s the kind of love that lives on even after our death, as we remember our loved one who are gone from us but not forgotten. What makes them live on in us is their love, their companionship, their support. All the other stuff is just chaff that blows away in the wind.

The Beatitudes encompass the greatest lesson in the lives of the saints, and that lesson is this: no matter what we have or don’t have, whether wealthy or poor, whether sinner or saint, we cannot depend upon our own resources to be blessed and to be a blessing to others. It doesn’t work that way. The key to being blessed is to acknowledge our reliance upon God, whether we are deserving or not in our own minds, that doesn’t matter. To know that God’s grace and mercy are not only necessary, but also real and present in our lives. That changes our perspective from fear to fullness, which is what the beatitudes are all about.

The gift of the Beatitude-shaped life is the gift of acknowledging our own need for others, our own need for God. To be standing in the need of mercy and receive it is to be blessed. To be standing with others helping you stand when you can’t go on is to be blessed. As Pastor David Lose notes, “For what is the promise of mercy to those who are not weak, forgiveness to those who have not sinned, grace to those who do not need it, or life to those not dead? It is at best meaningless and more likely downright offensive.”

Hear again our Savior’s words: Listen. Love. Do good. Bless, Pray. Offer. Give. Do. This is the way of being a saint of God, and we mean to be one, too. 

Amen.

Preached at the 505 on November 2, and at 8:00 and 10:30 on November 3, 2019, at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville.

Readings:
Daniel 7:1-3,15-18Psalm 149Ephesians 1:11-23Luke 6:20-31

Citations:
1) Richard Swanson, Commentary on Luke 6:20-31, November 3, 2013, at Working Preacher.
2) David Lose, "Losers," October 28, 2013, at Dear Working Preacher.