All the Saints

All Saints Sunday is this Sunday.  It’s the Sunday in the church year when we remember the “saints,” our friends and loved ones who’ve died in the past year by ritually saying their names and ringing a bell during worship (by the way, if there is someone you want remembered, please let me know before worship begins).  Two years ago, at about this time, right before the Presidential election my All Saints reflections asked the question: “would the saints—those who’ve gone before us—give us advice on who to vote for?”  What a difference two years makes!  All Saints just happens to be right before Election Day, and those questions don’t go away.  But in the last two years, I’ve done a lot of listening, reading, and thinking about why people have different political views than me.  The worrisome thing about all this is how easily our faith can become entangled with big political issues.

            The Gospel reading for this Sunday are the Beatitudes, a series of counter-cultural statements:  “Blessed are the poor in spirit… the meek… the mourning… the peacemakers… the merciful… etc.” (Matthew 5:1-12).  Too often they get read as a moralistic list of what we are supposed to do or become, or a progressive program describing God’s Kingdom for the poor and oppressed.  But they aren’t conditional statements (if you are meek…), nor are they imperatives (a to-do list).  Jesus says them as statements of fact rooted in a future promise.  When will those promises be fulfilled?  Not this Tuesday.  How are those promises fulfilled?  The Beatitudes are an “Easter” text (the entire New Testament, by the way, is a post-Easter text!).  When?  In God’s time.  How?  Through the power Christ’s resurrection.  The Beatitudes are also a common funeral text because of the future-directed promise.  Every funeral is a celebration of the promise (and comfort) of Easter.  What would our “saints” tell us?  Whatever it would be will be from that place of fulfilment. 

            This election has been fed by urgent rhetoric from all sides, but the rhetoric of the Easter texts this Sunday is rooted in the future promises of resurrection.    Because we have those promises, we are blessed now.  “Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed… when Christ is revealed [in our resurrection], we will be like him, for we will see him as he is” (I John 3:2).

Peace,

Pr. Christian