All Saint's Sunday Sermon

Sermon All Saints Sunday

Text: Luke 6:20-31

So, first things first. In our Tuesday evening Bible study we spent more than half of the session talking about Luke’s version of the Beatitudes that we just read. When we were going through it, I had no idea that it was the All Saint’s Sunday Gospel lesson. So, I guess it was just luck on my side that you did all my sermon prep for me.

I don’t know about you all, but I sort of love it when little coincidences like this occur. It allowed me to think of this text outside of the context of All Saint’s Sunday, and then later in connection with it. And it really makes much more sense in the midst of this day.

But first, the text. We hear this text, well, we hear Matthew’s version of this text so often, that it is easy to think that it is a quaint easily understood text. But as the Bible study group found out, it is incredibly complex and deep. And when you look at Luke’s version over Matthew’s version it is an even more complex text. Matthew’s first beatitude reads, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” This differs from Luke’s version, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.” When we look at Matthew we can mess around with it and put ourselves as the poor in spirit rather easily. “we don’t believe as we should, we doubt… “ and so on. But, Luke just lays it out there. Blessed are the poor. No poor in spirit here, it is simply you who are poor. We may say that we are not really, really rich, but for the most part we are not poor. There are those amongst us and in this country who are poor, too many for my thoughts, but we are for the most part a rich nation. It continues with the rest in Luke. We are rich, we are full now, we are often laughing and for the most part people speak well of us. So where does that lead us. It certainly condemns us to the sections of woes.

But, is that really it. Is it simply, rats, were rich and now we cannot do anything about it? No, I don’t think that being rich in this text has anything to do with simply having lots of money. It deals with what we do with that money, what we do with the food available to us, how we laugh, and the reasons why we seek personal gratification. When our focus and priority is our wealth over the needs of the poor, our abundant food and water over the needs of the hungry and thirsty, our laughing at the expense of others, our concern about ourselves over God, then it should be a warning to us. So, even though it is not about simply being rich, it still certainly condemns us.

One member of our study group had the very good insight about this text. To her this text pushes us to work to correct our way of life, and to work to live as Christ commands us. That is how Jesus understands these blessings and woes.

In this text Jesus is talking to the disciples, and it is not a description of how you need to be in order to be a disciple, but what you need to do. These words spoken to the disciples are not qualifications, but are things we are asked to do. We did not look at the second part of our text in the bible study, and often it is left off, but it is vitally important to understand the whole text. The whole text is not about who you are, but what you do. After the blessings and woes in vs. 27 we see the continuation of Jesus’ sermon. To summarize Jesus gives a series of commands: “But I say to you that listen, love, do good, bless, pray, turn the other cheek, give, do to others as you would have them do to you.”

But again for us this is a passage of Law. It condemns us. It leaves us looking for the gospel, for the salvation for us. Because how often do we love our enemies, do good to those who hate us, turn the other cheek or even Do to others as you would have them do to you.

And so we return full circle, no matter how we work and look at these texts, they do nothing but condemn us. We see our failings and we try to work to do what Christ commands us to do, but we fall short. We try to live like saints, but become sinners, disciples but we fall short. We strive to be disciples, we strive to be saints. But, this leads us the wrong way again.

What then of the blessings and woes? I think they are two fold. The first is the simplest, but not necessarily the best. These lines show us where our distractions lay. Instead of working to do to others as you would have them do to you, we sit in our richness and do nothing. We have heard this already, but the second way is our Gospel, our salvation and justification.

As Pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber of the very appropriately named church “House for All - Sinners and Saints” asks, Are these texts about us? Or about God? They are about God. The poor are blessed not because they are poor, but because God is with them. We are blessed because even though we fall short our God forgives us. Woe comes to the rich, because their richness distracts them from God’s call to help the needy. But God continues to push us, and continues to love us. It is certainly important to not that this text is directly after the calling of the twelve disciples. In their calling they do not make themselves disciples, but are chosen. And here is where this All Saint’s Sunday comes in. Luther and we understand that we are sinners, great huge uncontrolled sinners, but we are also saints. We are not saints through what we do, but through the grace of God.

All Saints Sunday is All Saints Sunday not because we remember how great and wonderful those we love were, but because we know that the uncompromising Love and Grace of God made them saints and makes us saints despite our shortcomings.

Despite all of our shortcomings, our God loves us, cares for us, nourishes us, and encourages us. We are given blessing upon blessing beyond our understanding and worthiness. That is Gospel, we are blessed because we are God’s. Blessed are All Saints, for they are God’s.