All Saints 2025

 Welcome to All Saints Day, saints of Trinity, a day when we remember the direction of God through Jesus’ sermon on the plain.  Today Jesus does something he often does, he comes down.  He comes down the mountain to a level place and speaks to the crowds and his disciples. Many other times Jesus comes down.  He comes down from heaven when he is born in Bethlehem.  He stoops down to wash the disciples’ feet at the last supper.  And after he is transfigured on the mountain and Peter suggests staying up there, he insists on going down to serve the people in need who are waiting for help from them.  

Today Jesus comes down from the mountain to bless people.  That this sermon is in a flat place is significant.  In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus’ sermon is on the mount(ain) because Matthew is always drawing parallels between Jesus and Moses.  Moses went up the mountain to meet God and receive the 10 commandments.  Jesus goes up the mountain to give his first sermon, his mission statement about what he is all about.  But not for Luke.  Jesus’ sermon on the plain fits for Luke who wrote about Mary singing of the reversal in God’s Kingdom of the lowly being lifted up and the mighty being brought down.  It fits with Luke the physician who knows that people who are sick and hurting are not going to be climbing any mountains to hear Jesus speak.  For Jesus’ message to be accessible, he has to give it in a flat place, where everyone can hear.  

Jesus speaks a word of blessing for just the people who are gathered notice from all of these various places, all brought to a level place.  These are people whose calendar was not full.  They are people who had room for Jesus teaching and God’s love.  These are people who are grieving, hungry, hurting, and in need.  They have been mocked, cheated, and forgotten, but still they have hope to go looking for something, and the something they encounter is God come down, Jesus, teaching, loving, blessing.  

As a physician, Luke has seen people in these conditions mentioned in the Beatitudes.  He’s treated children for malnutrition.  He’s met with the grieving person with no appetite.  He has sat with the dying, the blind, and people who can’t take care of their own needs.  But Luke hasn’t found hopelessness there, he’s found blessing.  He’s found God’s presence there, an openness by people in need to listen for God’s voice, hope in something more, community responding to needs and coming together, new life in the midst of pain.  Luke and Jesus want us to know that these troubled states can also be places of transformation, hope, and blessing.  To be hungry, mocked, and grieving are not states to be avoided, but opportunities for connection, to increase our compassion, so many possibilities for joining God in the Holy Work of transforming the world.

Matthew conveniently skips the woes, but Luke dives right in. Now matter how full or happy we are, that all can change in an instant.  They are not permanent states that we can maintain forever.  Money, health, and to be spoken well of are not states to be worshipped.  So even the woeful will have a chance to be blessed.

We do a lot of blessing at church.  Recently we blessed the animals.  We bless baby kits and windows–we will bless the stained glass window next week and dedicate it to God’s service.  We bless each other at the end of church each week.  We bless meals and backpacks and marriages.  And we bless people who are dying.  Many times I get the privilege of being at a bedside and offering a blessing, marking the cross on the forehead of a dying person, God bless you and Keep you, God’s face shine on you and be gracious to you, God look upon you with favor and give you peace.  This cross on the forehead is a reminder of baptism, you are claimed by God forever in baptism, you are part of God’s family, you come from God and are going to God, you are blessed by God.  There is a bigger story than any grief or hunger.  Even in death we are blessed.  Here is another opportunity to come together as community and help each other.  Here is a chance to tell a person what they have meant to you and will continue to mean to you.  Here is a chance to give thanks to God for friendship, for family, for love, for grace.  

A blessing might seem small in a world full of so much coldness and ignorance, but it is significant to see and honor one another and to acknowledge God bringing hope and new life.  When we move toward those who are dying or in pain, we are following the one who never avoided pain or death, we are following the one coming down from heaven, coming down from the mountain, kneeling down to wash feet, and going out to all who are dying, grieving, hungry and in need.  And when we are dying or in pain, we are not alone.  Jesus is with us and our community is with us.

Dear saints of Trinity, it has been a heavy time of grief for us this year.  Since Audrey died in May, we’ve done 9 funerals in our community, a pace of two a month.  And that’s not even counting the losses in your own lives separate from Trinity and all the losses from the past.  Then there is heaviness and grief from loved ones with dementia or anticipatory grief from those we expect to lose in the near future.  Such losses tend to snowball and grief from one gets rolled into grief for another.  So we come to a day like All Saints.  We’re celebrating and we’re mourning and we’re feeling the heaviness of it all even as we are hopeful.

These saints are the people we sat beside and sang with and worked with and were in circle with.  These are people we cried with, who saw us in our blessings and our woes, at our best and at our worst and are the body of Christ with.  These are people we prayed with.  In their dying, we drew the cross on their brow and assured them they belong to God.  We acknowledged they have been a blessing to us that we will never forget.  God came down to them in their lives and where Jesus is they will also be.  And Jesus even went down into the grave, into the depths to bring together all who have died.  Jesus goes all those places defying every woe, going into all the places of shame and hurt and blesses us with forgiveness and new life.  Death does not have the last word.  Blessing and love never end.

Jesus comes into this world to make saints, even in hard times like the ones were living in.  We get to participate in the blessing.  Jesus is teaching us to come down and bless.  So we give our coats our baby kits our food our love our time our money and our possessions to be a blessing.  We bless by refusing to return violence, by turning the other cheek, by praying for our enemies.  Trinity can be a place where those who are poor, hungry, weeping and excluded can experience the reality of the Beatitudes.  Jesus, in coming down, the apostle Paul says, allows us to do far more than we could ask or imagine.  Jesus gives us the power to also come down and bless.