Unsung Saints [All Saints' Day - Matthew 5:1-12]

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson

Matthew 5:1-12

 

Unsung Saints

 

This has been a hard year, really hard.  Death, division, and discrimination have dominated the news cycle and more than a few dinner table discussions.  Arguments and anxiety are as ubiquitous as the screens on which they are featured.  The world has never been smaller and we have perhaps never felt more isolated.      

 

And I recognize that is a strange thing to say on All Saints’ Day: that we are isolated.  Strange, because we stand today in the midst of this immense Communion of Saints, connected to a great mystical fellowship of holy ancestors.  We dine with them around this holy table; we pray with them; we feel their presence as we rehearse the very liturgical language they spoke while on this earth.  We stand haunted by this beautiful, holy mystery: soaked in the heavenly love of generations of saints.

 

And yet, even as we feel so connected to those whom we have never met, to the long dead of ages past, so many of us feel disconnected now from even our own family members.  We commune with the unseen even as partisan divides carve fault lines through our families and our friendships.  I am watching this happen in my own family; and I know my family is not only one being rent asunder.  Much of my facebook feed is scorched earth or the heartbreak that follows.  It is hard to see, hard to live.  I have to believe, because so many are mourning the mounting losses, that Jesus is right in today’s Gospel and that mourning can be transformed, that tears will be wiped away.  Blessed are those who mourn…

 

But it is this Christian promise of transformation that gives me enough hope to lead these little ones to the font today.  I have to believe that the water therein, possessed as it is by the Spirit of God, can wash away some of the pain, some of the weight, some of the brokenness of this world they have inherited.  They give us hope because they are the ones who will help build the future of God’s dreams.  And so we walk them to the water, to this magical doorway.  And we stand with them in this liminal space – acutely aware of the ways in which eternity kisses our earthly existence.  And we are reminded that together we inhabit a small part of a cosmic story – one as ancient as Creation and as endless as God.  We feel the faithful past at our backs and the hopeful future before our faces; they are fathomless but they are not strangers. 

 

Today, on this Feast of All Saints’, we catch a glimpse of eternity.  As the leaves fall and the holy dead surround us, we watch resurrection take place, new life come forth.  The work of heaven is happening here on earth, in our midst.  And in a subtle way, as we touch the primal mystery and dance before the Spirit that breathed life into all things, the tremendous chaos of our times feels less significant.  Because something far more important, more consequential, is happening: these little ones are entering into the household of God today through same old, watery threshold that saints have crossed.  And they do so with our support: our bold declaration that the work of God will continue to transform this world…into something better, something more like heaven.

 

We read the Beatitudes from the Gospel of Matthew on All Saints’ Day because they represent for us the traits we see in those commemorated in the Church calendar.  They are saintly traits.  But it is good to remember that Jesus did not give this speech to holy women and holy men.  His original audience was a not a collection of the commemorated.  This talk was not delivered to the hosts of heaven, from some golden pulpit.  Jesus was standing on sand and stone; his feet touched the same dust that blows through this world still today; he spoke these blessed words to normal folks, to people just desperate enough to believe that God had something more in mind, to people like us. 

 

I suspect you are aware that this Tuesday is Election Day.  I encourage you, of course, to vote on Tuesday, if you haven’t already, to cast your vote for the future you want for the world, to vote for those candidates you believe will help make our city, state, and nation more compassionate and more just.  But salvation is not on the ballot.  The perfect slate will not heal our divisions or make the Kingdom come.  No matter what happens on Tuesday, we will still have work to do on Wednesday. 

 

And we can do it.  We can build a better world – a kinder, more beautiful world.  With God’s help, we can make this world a little more like Heaven.  Christ is calling us to live the values of the Kingdom of God here on earth, to embody his goodness and grace, to defiantly meet the forces of hatred and bigotry with the stunningly strength of love.  We don’t need to be celebrated or sainted to change the world.  We just have to be willing. 

 

Jesus is calling us to be ministers of reconciliation in a fractured nation.  He is calling us to be peacemakers in a world fraught with conflict.  He is calling us to be merciful in a ruthless age.  He is calling us to believe in hope when all hope seems lost.  Jesus is calling us to transform this world with love.  Jesus is calling us to be the unsung saints of this age.

 

You might never find your way into the Church calendar, but Jesus believes in you.  You might question the choice, but God has chosen you.  You don’t have to wear a halo or statuesquely stand in the middle of a fountain to help make this a better world.  Jesus isn’t asking you to have all the answers.  He is simply asking you to open heart to the possibility that love does.