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Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth...Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
Deuteronomy 34:1-12
This the land which I swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob...I have let you see it with your eyes, but you shall not cross over there. Then Moses, servant of the Lord, died.
Today is all Saints Sunday and we are entering into an unusual three days. Last week I attend a couple days of retreat with pastors from around Chicago. At the close of a retreat we heard a message from, Pastor Edward Foley who pointed out that today marks the start of a sort of unholy but consequential Triduum.
Usually, in church if we happen to recognize the word “Triduum” we think of Holy Week and the great three days from Maundy Thursday to Easter morn. Well, today, as the first Sunday in November, we celebrate the feast of All Saints Day. But this year, it just so happens that today is November 1st, the actual day of All Saints. Tomorrow, November 2nd is then All Souls day. We Lutherans often roll All Saints up with All Souls but if we were getting real churchy and real technical, we could say today, November 1 is All Saints today, tomorrow, Nov. 2 is All Souls day, and then, we it makes a most unusual Triduum, is that Tues Nov.3 is--as Foley calls it--“that great civic feast day,” Election Tuesday.
These three days together mark a turn from remembering our dead—and what was to considering the world that is, and then imagining the world that could be.
So first remembering: And for this, I start us in the letter of Hebrews from the Bible:
Faith is the assurance of things hoped for,
the conviction of things not seen.
…By faith Abraham stayed in a time in the land he had been promised…By faith Moses was hidden by his parents for three months after his birth, because they saw that the child was beautiful, and they were not afraid of the king’s edict…By faith Moses, when he was grown up, he refused to be called a son of Pharaoh’s daughter,... By faith he left Egypt unafraid of the king’s anger…By faith the people passed through the Red Sea as if it were dry land…By faith the walls of Jericho fell after they had been encircled for seven days…
By faith [the ancestors] conquered kingdoms,
administered justice…
shut the mouths of lions,
quenched the power of fire,
escaped the edge of the sword,
were made strong out of weakness, …
Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses…let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us…looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith. (Selected From Hebrews 11:1-12:2)
Today on All Saints, we remember the cloud of witnesses. This living cloud of witnesses or communion of saints stretches across time and memory and space. We remember the ancestors of our faith, the ones mentioned in the letter to Hebrews and the ones of our beloved who we miss. We remember their voices we can still hear, their faces we can still imagine, their laughter which we’d recognize immediately even though we may not have heard it for a long time.
We remember those who tucked us in at night and held our hands. We remember those who’s absence has carved out a sort of hollow ache in us that we stumble into now and then. We, the living lights, the saints in this world, miss them.
We remember the ones who taught us about love. The ones who made us feel like we were precious and belonged. The ones who pulled up another chair when someone was left out. The ones who put another plate at the table. The ones who showed us how to make room. We remember their witness and the love they gave us which lives on in the saints around us today.
Theologian Elizabeth Johnson writes that the living and the dead come together to form “one single community of memory and hope:” Memory for what was and hope for what will be. The ancestors we remember today also lived and loved and held onto God in this same fractured and imperfect world we know today. It’s a world that is not yet what God intends it to be.
In today’s gospel reading, Jesus offers us a glimpse--like the sun breaking through the clouds--of this world God is bringing into being. Jesus had gathered his disciples on a mountainside and a crowd was beginning to come near to listen. These onlookers had an uneasy understanding of power. They knew the sound of the Roman soldiers marching down their roads. They knew what it was to count the coins and worry about how the taxes would be paid or how the children would be fed. They knew who everyone said mattered and who didn’t. And Jesus’ words that day on the mount jolted them and shook them, turned them upside down. They leaned in:
Blessed, Jesus said, are the poor in spirit. Not the people who have everything figured out, not the ones with piles of money, but blessed are those hanging on by a thread, the ones whose light is dim...For they matter to God.
Blessed are those who mourn. Those who have laid their beloved to rest. Those refuse to look away from suffering. Those who feel the grief for what could be deep in their bones. Blessed are those who mourn: those who shudder with the reality of gun violence and poverty and the evilness of war...For they will be comforted
Blessed are those who are meek. Those who just aren’t going to bully their way through life. Those who are disarmed and gentle, who speak truth without humiliating people. The tender and strong ones who are open hearted and steady...For they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice—those who lose sleep over the cruelty of the world and rise up determined to do something about it...For they will be filled.
Blessed are the peacemakers – not the ones who think peace is a nice idea, but those who make it. The ones who turn towards conflicts with grace and curiosity, the ones who listen when they’d rather yell...For they will be called children of God
The saints before us held onto these promises—sometimes fervently, sometimes falteringly.
Moses and Zipporah, the ancestors of our faith, our grandparents and siblings and leaders, they didn’t see the realization of everything they hoped for. Moses didn’t make it to the promised land. He stood on the mountain and looked out across the land he would never set foot on.
But they loved. They took care of the people and world around them. They trusted promises that were still unfulfilled. In Hebrews, we hear that “though they were commended for their faith, they did not receive what was promised.”
The hopes and tenacity of the ancestors resonate today around us. They settle into us. Their faith and witness call us to take up this incomplete work of peacemaking, generosity of heart, and gracious love. God’s faithfulness held them, holds us, and will hold those who come after us. They pass us their love.
The ballot box is a place where “memory meets hope.” Some of us have already voted. Some of us will Tuesday.
And when we do, we carry with us
the faces of our neighbors,
the people on our news screens.
We carry the children growing up among us
The people who’s names we’ll never know,
The air they’ll breathe,
the trees that will shade them.
We carry our responsibility for each other
our longing for a different world,
and we carry this inherited hope
that all of this really can be born.
Come Wednesday morning, there will still be people who are hungry and need to eat. There will still be people grieving who need someone’s presence beside them. There will still be conflicts that need peacemakers and we will roll up our sleeves and go on: loving and listening and standing beside one another and working to make peace. We will go on practicing being human together. For the Holy Spirit is still breathing life into us, drawing us toward a future we may never see. It’s one that she is already calling into being.
