Blessed Are You...

What should I speak about today?     All Saints Day… the day to remember those who are no longer with us.      To remember those we still love and miss;     to acknowledge the loss of life,    to acknowledge the empty part of us that remains still with the ones we love.                                               

It is right to do this.   Especially in a culture that does not do “death” well.   We have trouble talking about death well, we have trouble mourning well, we have trouble expressing our grief well.     

So many of us have lost someone we love in these last few years.       Do I speak about loss – about the importance of memories,  and how even when the shadow of death passes over us, we still must go on –     about a God of Life in the midst of death? 

But in spite of all this, we must live, and live well, knowing that our moments together are a blessing!

And yet, the words   “Blessed are you…”   have asserted themselves over and over in my consciousness over these last few days.   I’ve woken up with these words in my mind.                                                      “Blessed are you..."     Like a song stuck in my head   haven’t been able to shake it all week.      It was on the front of the bulletin for this morning– “Blessed are you…”       And there it was on the back as well  – “Blessed are you…”    

Sounds a lot like Moses standing on the top of the valley between the Promised Land – on one side;    the land flowing with milk and honey, the land symbolizing promise, and hope, and a New Life!  

And the desert on the other side;  symbolizing struggle, and hardship, effort, days of toil for survival in an unforgiving world.  

And Moses says – “Choose this day!”   Choose Blessing or choose curse!    Choose Life or choose death!

On this side is Life!  Where you have been heading all these years… is towards Life!

On this side is death!   Where you have come from… where you were living all these years… is death!

I wonder… why would Moses have needed  to ask them to choose?    Wouldn’t we assume they all wanted Life?    Couldn’t we have assumed they would all be in total agreement that crossing the mountain into the Promised Land was a thing they were all aspiring to for decades already?          

 And yet Moses asked them to choose.   Was he being dramatic?     Aren’t all good prophets dramatic anyway? 

He stood there, just a little bit above the plain, on a rise, in the hot, dusty terrain outside town.    He talked like a prophet    saying, in part:                                             

“Blessed are you… you who are poor.     The Kingdom of God is yours!     Blessed are you… who hunger.     You will be satisfied!    Blessed are you when they hate you, and insult you, and reject you on account of the Son of  Man!      Rejoice!         Rejoice… because your reward is great in heaven!     Their ancestors did the same thing to the prophets!”       

And as a true prophet… he dropped the hammer too!   

“But to you who are rich… you who have money – locked away – safe…while others have nothing…    I say… you have received your comfort already!                                                                                                                       

To you who are well satisfied with food… full… who throw away food because you have too much… while others have little or nothing…        I say to you…   you will be hungry!                                                   

To you who laugh now… who’s lives are full of joy, with no worries about tomorrow…  to you who think little of how others are living…      to you I say… you will mourn and weep!   To you who others respect and adore… those of you that are admired by others…    to you I say, their ancestors did the same thing to the false prophets!”

Pretty dramatic!!    Again, prophets are like that!   Dramatic.   But in those words… what did you hear?   Comfort?   Were you being lifted up, acknowledged, held in the hands of the divine?   Like a homeless person who’s spent what’s felt like a life-time being invisible to any world other than their own.      Blessed are you – I see you!    Blessed are you!

Or were you feeling criticized?  Condemned?    Found out?   Pointed at with a finger of accusation!    “To you.. I say this…!”    Jesus sounds different; there’s an edge to his words.   There’s an insulting sharpness.

 I have to imagine the people hearing him speak were putting themselves in categories – trying to see where they fit    in what he was saying:   

Are we poor?      More and more are losing jobs, losing pay, losing hours.   The poor are getting poorer, the Middle Class is shrinking by the year.      And yet compared to the worlds average pay-wage…   the pay of us Middle Class Americans is above the top 10 % of income earners in the world.          

But that’s sort of misleading in a way, isn’t it… yes we have access to more modern medicine for sure, but it’s more expensive to access than the worlds average medical care.   And we certainly have more bills to pay than the average world laborer;   our housing is more expensive, we have car payments, insurance payments, and all the rest.    

Are we poor?    We may have all the material possessions we can possibly imagine; we pay top dollar for the latest I-phone.  Black Friday – that new great American tradition – would be considered an obscenity by some in the world.    Christmas means less and less about Christ and more and more about an orgy of materialism, filling our houses with more things - things that in 12 months we’ll have forgotten about.   

Are we poor?   In some ways we are very poor!   Very poor indeed.    In some ways we’ve lost our way.   Poor and lost, surrounded by faces and things and stuff, artifacts of people trying to find their way in a world that makes less and less sense.     

Are we hungry?    Hungry in the physical sense?     I don’t think so.   Most of us don’t want for food.  We’re hungry for real food maybe;  real food not stuffed with additives,  or hormones, or artificial products, or GMO’ed to taste better, or whatever other reasons food is GMO’ed.      Maybe we’re hungry for real relationships of depth.    Maybe we’re hungry for a stronger sense of purpose and meaning.

Do we weep?    Do we have losses?   Do we feel loss?   For sure!     I wonder how many in our culture, in our lives, people we pass in our day, have a sadness, a deep sadness – The sadness of accumulated losses, and hurts and pains, all piled on top of each other with nowhere to go but in.                                                                                   

Or maybe it’s a sadness of lack of meaning or purpose, or lack of someone to care for, or a lack of someone to care for us?      Yes, we weep too.

What do people think of us?   Are we insulted?    Or are we praised?     Who wants to be insulted?    Who wants to be reviled, even if it is because of the Son of Man?  I think to a person in this room, we’d rather be praised than insulted and reviled.        Luckily most of us aren’t put in that position of having to be either praised by the culture… or rejected and hated on account of the Son of Man…   most of us are sort of neutral when it comes to the whole “Son of Man” thing.   Most of us aren’t fully one side or the other.      

I don’t know how I feel about what I’m saying.      Actually I do… Not very good.  I’d much prefer to talk about how God loves us, and we are always God’s children.      I’d prefer to talk about the safe stuff of Lutheran theology. 

I remember once in my prison-ministry life, a male inmate in one of the prisons told me, “Pastor, we need sharpness.   We need to be told how we don’t measure up.    We need to be told God’s prophetic word!”  Something like that.      

And my first thoughts were, “Dude, you’re in prison!   Don’t you already know about how you’re wrong?”    Looking back on it, I wonder if he was trying to say something different, something that didn’t come out so well… something like, “Pastor, help me walk the path of God’s righteousness.   Speak to me words with edges, words I can sharpen myself by.   Help me live a life that needs a decision – tell me words that help me to make a decision.”              

Sometimes we need words we can sharpen ourselves by, words that maybe unmask our poverty, whatever kind of poverty that might be.  That kind of poverty that helps us look for good-honest work.   That kind of work that lets us end a day satisfied that we helped make the world a little better than we left it.

Sometimes we need words that reveal our hunger… our deep hunger for something real, substantial, that hunger that an I-phone just can’t satisfy.    Sometimes we need to be reminded we’re ingesting into our souls the equivalent of what for our bodies would be cotton- candy.  

Sometimes we need words to help us recognize our sorrow.    Sometimes we need to just get it out of us, so it doesn’t remain in us, turning more toxic with each passing year.      

Sometimes we need to hear words that remind us what it feels like to be reviled for the sake of the Son of Man, to help us remember who this Son of Man really is to us after all.

What should I speak about for this morning?    Should I reflect on the comfort Jesus gave to those who struggled in life?    The comfort he’s trying to give us as well?...   We who are lost and alone…   looking for something more, recognizing that our searching for that latest gadget may be a deeper searching for something much longer-lasting, letting us know that we are not alone?   We are not alone!   

Or should I reflect on the hard-edged Jesus who ‘s more insulting than we’d care to recognize to those of us who seem to be more than comfortable in our lives?      The accusatory Jesus – who tells us we’ve forgotten the prophetic plea that has been spoken of through the centuries:    “Whether you want to hear this or not…  You are responsible for the Orphans and the Widows of your day! 

What should I speak about…   All Saints Sunday?      We are Saints…    and we are sinners…     Yes God does love us… and yes – we are God’s children!   

We are Saints and we are sinners.     And yes… we have to always remember who we are.    If we bear the name “Christian” we  are called to walk a path that is not always easy, or comfortable.   

We are Saints and we are sinners.   An awakened mind…  a broken heart…  clear eyes…   will always find God!    God is there, in spite of everything, always and anyway!     

Blessed are you….       Blessed are you…