The Feast of All Saints

Ecclesiasticus, 44:1-10,13-14
Revelation, 7:2-4,9-17
Matthew, 5:1-12

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

I thank you and Fr Andrew for the honor of preaching here this evening. It's infinitely better for my soul's health than sitting at home stewing in front of the television, wringing my hands about the latest campaign outrage, my heart filling with sanctimony. I get annoyed by the way each campaign plays upon the naïveté of people, and I forget my own naïveté, which is this: the shocking dishonesty of the campaign really isn't shocking.

I am not cynical. I love our country. I vote. Politics matters. I am full of hope and admiration for our country. But let's not be dupes. The packaging and selling of candidates works a lot like ordinary television commercials, which are often misleading and often don't appeal to our best instincts. Fundamentally, most television commercials are about conversion - trying to change our hearts and minds. They're offering us salvation - a phony salvation, with seductive images and sounds. These make the product part of something larger: happiness, sophistication, beauty, prosperity - something which we'd like to have as part of our lives. Buy this car, this beer, this hamburger, this piece of clothing, and it will renew your life. It'll help make you what you want to be. In my home, we call that a 'BFL' - a big fat lie. But even though we know it's a big fat lie, when we hear it again and again and again, we become more comfortable with its dishonesty, and it may even begin to have some credibility. In that way, it warps our understanding of reality. It separates us from reality.

While I care about what happens tomorrow, and while I think that it's important, it's not of utmost importance. What happens here tonight, and every day, is of utmost importance. We can mock the conversions offered by television because our faith isn't in the world or in politics, but in Jesus Christ. No one, nothing, can have, and has made, a bigger impact upon our lives.

We had a vestry retreat recently, and our facilitator told us a story from the Rev. Heidi Neumark, a Lutheran pastor in one of the most destitute, violent neighborhoods of the Bronx. She has a parishioner named 'Angie.' Rev. Neumark writes:

The first time I visited, Angie was in her bathrobe, lying on a couch, downed by depression over her childhood when her father would come into her room at night and violate her, depression over wasted years of getting high to numb the pain and doing anything to get by, depression over her HIV status. Angie sent her son, Tiriq, to our summer program a few years ago, just to get him out of the house so she could be uninterrupted on her couch.

On the summer program application form, Angie had noted her interest in baptism for Tiriq, the reason for my visit. We prepared for the baptism and read of God who . . . out of the great love with which he has loved us even when we were dead . . . made us alive together with Christ and raised us up with him. (Ephesians 2:4ff) Bit by bit Angie rose up, coming to worship, to Bible study, to volunteer at our shelter where the homeless people can get food and sleep in warm beds each Wednesday night. She enrolled, along with the adults from around our Synod, in a two year Christian leadership class called Diakonia. Angie, a highly intelligent woman, absorbed it all with growing excitement.

Everyone in the class had to give a presentation on Lutheran theology, telling why they were Lutheran. One night, the students assigned to present were absent, and the pastor teaching the class asked if anyone would be willing to step in. No one was because they didn't have their written papers at hand since it wasn't their turn. Evidently they needed their notes to remind them why they were Lutheran. Except for Angie. Her paper wasn't prepared, but she was. . . .

Angie got a glass of water and set it in front of her. Then she slowly opened a Mary Kay jewelry case and took out a pink pouch which was filled with multicolored pills. She took about ten pills and swallowed them, one by one, in silence. . . . When the last pill was swallowed, Angie stood up. "That's my HIV medication," she said. "I'm Lutheran because the church welcomed me as I am, an HIV positive, recovering addict, and a child of God filled with grace. Taking care of my health is part of my stewardship. Now, by the grace of God, I want to live. I want to live for my son. I want to live for the people still out there on the streets as I was. I want to live because Jesus Christ lives in me and through me. It's not just my body anymore. I'm part of his body, a temple of the Holy Spirit."

Angie rose up to become a pillar and president of our church. Often at night, she went out and ministered to the street people she called her night flock, offering words of hope, praying, sharing scripture. She accompanied some of them to church, knowing that they'd be afraid to enter on their own. She was their door into the sanctuary. And now, Angie has stepped through the doors of Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia where she is studying to be a pastor. ⁽¹⁾

Angie's story is the Good News. It's conversion to reality - a life raised up. It's why sixteen years ago I was baptized. It's why we're here tonight. Jesus is what ultimately matters. Jesus loves us and gives us purpose and challenges us to grow and to mature. We make a great mistake to sentimentalize Angie's story. Insulated by wealth, and by education, and by social position, and by self-satisfaction, and even by church participation, we can think we're above it all, and we can lose focus of what Christ and his Church are all about. The way God reached out and raised up Angie, he offers the same thing to each of us. God transformed Angie because she allowed him to do so, because she took a risk and accepted the challenge. She knows the horror of being lost, and she knows the saints' joy of being found.

For me, the best thing about being a parish priest is seeing Jesus enter someone's life and watching a person be transformed. Our parishes are powerful places because Angie's story is happening in them. And it's not a one time event, but hopefully the continual work of our lifetime. We all should pray and ask, "How has God surprised me recently? How is he changing me now? What's he doing to enlarge my mind and my heart?" And when I talk about God's surprises, I don't mean what's happening 'out there,' in the news, I'm talking about 'in here,' in our ordinary lives. When we have no answers to those questions, then there's not much growth going on, and it's time to talk about it with a priest or another Christian friend.

The Feast of All Saints is about God making saints. We're not here this evening only to celebrate the lives of holy men and women. We're here to thank God for renewing his people, for renewing us. All Saints is not about what human beings have done, but about what God has done, and is doing, in human lives. It's not our goodness; it's God's goodness. Our hope and prayer and reasonable expectation is that God's love which transformed the saints will also conquer in us and transform us. We celebrate what God is doing in us.

The Beatitudes are not merely moral guidelines. Rather, the Beatitudes describe the Kingdom of God; they describe our salvation; they describe how we're being transformed. Blessed are the poor, those who humbly depend upon God and not upon their own effort, those who are faithful, those who trust God, not their ephemeral wealth and ability. Blessed are the mourners, those who love other people and those who have sorrow for their sin and repent. Blessed are the meek, those who like Jesus are gentle, humble, nonviolent, non-manipulative in their relationships. Blessed are those who strive for righteousness, those who strive for goodness, those who passionately seek social justice, those who want God to set things right and are helping him to do so. Blessed are the merciful, those who do acts of compassion and forgiveness for others. Blessed are the pure in heart, those whose purpose in life is only to serve and glorify God, those whose hearts and loyalties are not divided between God and the world. Blessed are the peacemakers, those who turn the other cheek and return good for evil, those who not only live in peace and harmony, but try to reconcile those living in hostility. Blessed are those who are persecuted righteousness' sake, those who suffer for their loyalty to Christ, for their trust in Christ.

Blessedness means having happiness and Godly purpose in our lives; it means living with the fruits of the Spirit: love and joy and peace and patience and goodness and faithfulness and gentleness and self-control. (Gal 5:22-23a) The more our lives look like the Beatitudes, the more we know what life is like in God's presence. The Beatitudes are what we are becoming. Or, as Angie might put it: they're Jesus Christ living in us and through us.

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

1. Heidi Neumark, Breathing Space, Beacon Press (2003).