Everybody loves the Beatitudes of Jesus. The word tug at our heart strings and urge us to try harder to do better. But that is not what the Beatitudes are about. Indeed, there is a real sadness inherent in the Beatitudes. The Lord is telling us that we will never win in this world. We will always be the poor in spirit, those who grieve and mourn, the meek, the hungry and thirsty, the merciful, the pure in heart and those who make peace instead of fighting to win. Who wants to be those people? Do you? I doubt it. We would rather be the self-confident who make things happen, who live life on our terms and die only when we decide it is time, the power players of the world no one challenges, the satisfied who get what they want, the people who know how to have a good time, and the people who don’t have to make peace because they always win. Isn’t that what you want? I do.
There has to be something wrong with you if you love the Beatitudes. For they admit that the Christian life is not easy, that it is filled with suffering, that we are subject to persecution and threat, and that in the end the world will always be in the hands of somebody else who does not like us. All of the troubles mentioned in the Beatitudes are present troubles and all of the promises the Beatitudes promise are somewhere in the future and not now. Only fools can love the Beatitudes or delight in seeing themselves in Jesus’ words. Well, not only fools. Maybe also those who believe that the life to come is better than this life. Maybe also those who believe in the voice of the Good Shepherd who protects His sheep from the predators and will deliver them to the heavenly pasture. Maybe also those who believe the kingdom of God is worth more than the kingdoms of this world.
Today we gather to remember the saints who went before us with the sign of faith and now rest from their labors. Some of them were big names but most of them were nobodies. They were the anonymous saints whom the world is glad to forget but God rejoices to remember. They were a suffering people who endured the troubles and trials of this mortal life. Some of them died before their time as the world would put it and others died too late, after age, infirmity, and frailty had robbed them of their lives and memories. They were lambs of the Lord’s own flock, sinners of His own redeeming, who put their trust not in the glory of the world but the glory they saw not with their eyes but with their faith. They did not win anything on earth but pain, sorrow, and death but they received a heavenly reward of peace, joy, and life. And we hope to follow them in life and in death.
The devil gloats on All Saints Day because he thinks he won. He thinks he can convince you that eternity is too long a wait and you better grab something for yourself now while you can. He thinks you will choose the broad boulevard of getting your best life now rather than the narrow path of delayed glory. He thinks the sufferings of this life will cause you will ditch the God of the cross for the good-times god who tells you give into your every whim and never look back.
You see, the old Adam resists drowning. The heart resists circumcision. The mind resists correction and rebuke and rules. It is not simply the devil who is tempting you but the old Adam in you who loves all that glitters. This is the suffering that shapes this mortal life – between what is and what is becoming by God’s design. But you are not alone. The Spirit is at work in you contending for the faith. The Good Shepherd is still putting Himself between you and the wolves who seek your destruction. The Father still wills that you be saved, that you endure the now in order to receive eternally such good things that you cannot even imagine. What we wait for, what encourages us amid trouble and trial, and what will take away the memory of all the hurts, pain, suffering, and loss of this life. Blessedness.
You and I await nothing less than the voice of our Lord who finishes the Beatitudes with the final blessed. Come, you blessed of my Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you. The Church of Christ has always been a suffering church, a church militant church, a church whose glory is hidden for now and waiting to be revealed on the day of our Lord. The saints who went before us were just like us. We are all sheep living among wolves, destined for defeat and death until the Lord took our place in suffering, scorning the shame of the cross for the sake of the shameful whom He would redeem with His own blood. That is until the Lord went willingly into the death we fight to resist so that we might go freely into the future we did not even know we had.
Everybody loves Beatitudes as sentiment but in order to love the Beatitudes as real life you must be born of baptismal water, called by the Spirit through the voice of the Word, and fed and nourished at the Table of His flesh for the life of the world and His blood that cleanses us from all our sin. We are blessed already even in the midst of suffering, even bearing our crosses, even with the disdain of the world, and even with the daily struggle to believe and endure. We are blessed because Christ is ours and we are His. Because His death paid for our sin and His life previews our own glorious flesh and blood. Because the fruits of His redeeming work He freely and gladly bestows as gift even though we deserve none of it.
All Saints is not the day we gather to tell the stories of our victories but of Christ’s victory. It is not the day we recall a perfect people but a perfect Savior. It is not the day we regale ourselves with the stories of how good we have it now but how good it will be, not with how good we have been but how good God is. It is not the day we reminisce with memories the lives of those who are gone but recall the promise that gives to the dead a future beyond the grave.
You are blessed not because your life is good or easy or successful. You are blessed because Christ has suffered for your every sin and died the death that was yours to die and rose to bestow upon you the life the grave cannot end. You are blessed not because you had a past worth living or a present life so good you don’t want to give it up. You are blessed because you have a future, guaranteed by Him whom death could not contain, and a life that will not end and will never disappoint you. This is why today we name the names of the dead who die in the Lord and this is why we rejoice someday our names will be named. The blessed, the redeemed of the Lord, whose names are written in the Book of Life. In the Holy Name of Jesus. Amen.
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