The Blessed Community

Jesus, the Sermon on the Mount, and all of the saints

a Homily for the Feast of All Saints | Text: Matthew 5:1-12

For us, this principal feast we call All Saints is not so much about honoring the dead, but honoring the community: the whole community: past and present and future. For honoring only our former beacons and brightest lights dims our lights here and covers the lights we have yet to discover.

Jesus on the mountain

I’m sure you’ve seen the paintings of Jesus teaching. In them he is usually sitting on a large rock on a hill, surrounded by all of these people, his hand is up, gesturing. We see the faces of his followers in awe and rapt attention. The kind of image many of our teachers here wish they had in the classroom.

The image I am thinking about shows many people on top of this rolling hill, Jesus in the center. This painting certainly conforms to the image we have of the location, of Jesus, and of his followers.

This morning, we go back to an early part of Matthew, at the beginning of Jesus’s teaching, to the sequence we call the Sermon on the Mount. This sermon, only found in Matthew, begins here with the Beatitudes. Blessed are these people.

We skip right to the sermon with this image of the crowded hilltop in our minds, but what if we see what the writer of Matthew actually tells us:

When Jesus saw the crowds,
he went up the mountain;
and after he sat down,
his disciples came to him.

I think the one thing that painting I described gets right is that Jesus is sitting down.

This isn’t a rolling hill, but a mountain. Jesus goes up and his disciples follow him. And he sits, which was the common teaching and preaching posture. It is how the teacher gets down to the students’ level.

But I want us to think about this location before we even get to the sermon itself because this informs how we will begin to think about where Jesus is going with this sermon.

It starts with the mountain.

When Jesus climbs mountains in the text, every time it is to be alone with GOD. It is a place of connection with GOD, inherited from the Hebrew scriptures. Like Moses, Jesus climbs the mountain to commune with GOD. We see this after the feeding of the multitudes and at the transfiguration.

Jesus, like Moses, goes to hear from GOD, to talk with GOD, to learn from GOD. But unlike Moses, who is warned to bring noone with him but Aaron or else they will die, the disciples follow Jesus up the mountain.

There is no consensus among scholars who precisely Jesus is teaching, because the text simply refers to “them”. However, I believe we have often placed Jesus in the wrong setting: this is a mountain, intending us to think of Mt. Sinai, where the people who go looking for GOD will die. So these disciples have followed Jesus to where they aren’t to go. Jesus turns and teaches them about the Kingdom.

It continues with the disciples.

The disciples follow Jesus everywhere. Even to the place they aren’t supposed to go, to do the thing they aren’t supposed to do. But they don’t die. They receive the ultimate teaching of their faith.

I’m sure we can all think of a time in which we stepped out on a limb and did something crazy in faith. This isn’t our roof showing up right when we need it. This is following Jesus to a dangerous place where we might not be safe and we couldn’t be sure of what will happen.

children — Photo Credit: geezaweezer via Compfight cc

Being Blessed

The sermon that they receive, like the setting, is different than we may think it is. Tradition has often encouraged us to read the sermon as too difficult to be taken literally. So we then are led to see it as suggestion. As lists of ways to make our lives better. Or we might say that this is the sure and certain means of our salvation. This, however, is rejecting one slippery slope for another.

We would be better served hearing them anew.

The Beatitudes, with all of its cadence of blessing then inheritance,

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

they speak of people. They say blessed are these people. But the groupings are vague, yet unique. They aren’t the usual ones we hear: the poor, needy, homeless, oppressed. These are different people. At the same time, Jesus doesn’t really direct us to specific people (with names) or types of people, but to our own community in which people of all types are present. We see in our midst people who are poor in spirit and mourn.

“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

We hear about people who can’t do this alone, who need community. And people who are moved to make the community healthy and strong and supportive for all people. People who feel the world around them and know what it is to hurt.

“Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

We hear about people in our community who hear the call of GOD to mercy, rather than retribution. And people who have not been scarred by the evil of the world, but give life and hope to their neighbors and friends and parents.

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

“Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

We hear about people in our community who stand up to evil and seek the reconciliation of the world. People who are abused and suffer for doing the right things. People who struggle because this world of ours punishes the weak and the pure and the strong and the hopeful.

Jesus isn’t giving us rules to live by, but ways of seeing the kingdom and knowing it. That it isn’t exactly the status quo and isn’t what they or we were taught in school.

It is a world in which one’s personal salvation or belief system isn’t the point of the game. It is about building up the community. It is about knowing these people in our community, the sadder and the weaker, that they are already in our community, and that this, all of this, is theirs too.

The Whole Cloud

Today we celebrate all of the saints: those devoted and compassionate people of faith that came before us. It is a generous list of ancestors in our tradition, and occasionally, from another. It is a list that runs through two thousand years of following Jesus and two thousand years of infighting and descent. It is a list that, over the years, has come to include non-Roman Catholics, non-Europeans, women, people of color, and people of all sorts of leadership. A list that is no longer referred to as a list or in the book formerly known as Lesser Feasts and Fasts, but is described as a great cloud.

A cloud. We remember that it is as a cloud that GOD’s presence is maintained with the Children of Israel as they sojourned through the desert.

A cloud that now so often includes those friends and loved ones we have known and loved and see no more.

A cloud that is a whole communion of saints, who have so known the love of GOD that they would know sacrifice in unity. A generous community of the rich and the poor, the strong and the weak. The smart and the ignorant. The healthy and the sick. The abled and disabled. The emotionally stable and the disordered. The secure and the frightened. The hopeful and the pessimistic. The fighter and the lover.

We honor the entire community. And we tear down the pecking order that hides those among us that GOD loves most. We lose our selfish need to be known and we awaken our desire to know others.

Let us honor our saints by truly seeing our community of faith and all of its mighty and humble members. That we might inherit the kingdom, receive mercy, and know GOD. Not because we are successful or have it all figured out. But because when we honor all of us and all who would be with us, even our Samaritans and our Pharisees and our Romans, we will find it. We will find that we have already done our work: creating the Kingdom of heaven right here. And we will all praise GOD.

Drew Downs