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Praise, mercy, and peace of God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Dear fellow saints in Christ, you who have been baptized and believe in our Lord Jesus, the text for this morning comes from the Gospel reading of our Lord’s lips, the Sermon on the Mount. You may be seated.
There is a fad that is growing in America, and especially in the states that border Mexico, and that is the Day of the Dead. The Day of the Dead. This is not a day of the dead. This is the day of the living that we are celebrating. The day of those who are now in heaven, who have received the reward of eternal life, who wear the white robes and wave the victorious palm branches to show that they are victorious, not for their sake. They’re in heaven, but for your sake.
All Saints’ Day is for your sake, not theirs. All Saints’ Day is about what you have to endure now, not them. They’re in glory. That which they experience in this life is over. That which they suffered, that which they endured for the sake of truth, for the sake of their faith, has been rewarded. But for you and me, it still is a struggle, isn’t it? We daily practice the faith of a baptized child of God, and it is a daily struggle. We come to see ourselves for what we really are, and we hear what God tells us has been done for us in Christ Jesus, and that’s a struggle, isn’t it? To reconcile what we think with what we believe on a daily basis. It is a struggle.
The only people who don’t struggle with this are the ones we read about who are in glory now. They don’t struggle anymore. They’re at peace. They’re in joy. They’re in bliss. John’s revelation says, “Behold, those who have died in the faith now live.” That is what we are celebrating: life eternal. And the mystery is that you have life eternal now. They have life eternal now. Yet your life and my life differ from theirs because we still live in this world. And we still have sin clinging to us so closely in our flesh. And we still have to face ourselves every single day, living by God’s grace and by God’s declaration of who we are in Christ Jesus.
But we both are the same. God declares us both the same: His children. John in the epistle reading says, “We are God’s children now.” Not someday when we finally are in heaven. We are God’s children now. And what we will be, though, has not appeared. We get glimpses of it in Scripture, as we have this morning in the book of Revelation—glimpses of what we’ll be when we enter into heaven. But until then, we see one another. And we see ourselves. We see our sin. We see our sin. And we see our Savior. And that, dear brothers, is a struggle. Because not everybody in this world, contrary to any romantic point of view, not everyone in this world, in fact most, do not understand what you and I are clinging to in these Scripture texts. Most of the world does not believe that which you will close your eyes in when you die. Most of the world does not believe this. We should not be surprised.
John, in his book of the epistles, says, “The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him.” If it didn’t know him and receive him and embrace him and laud him, it will not receive you, embrace you, and laud you. You are at odds with the world. You are not a part of the world. You live in the world as I live in the world, but we do not belong to the world. In fact, your struggle and mine is living in this world and not belonging to this world. That’s your struggle and mine. That’s what All Saints is really about.
You and I who live this faith out daily, having eternal life now, but waiting for its fullness at our death. Because every day, we see how much we are in need. How we have nothing in ourselves. As the people that gathered around the throne in the book of Revelation said, “Salvation belongs to God and to the Lamb who sits upon the throne.” They did not gather around the throne saying, “We are good people, that is why salvation belongs to us.”
Your and my struggle is either dealing with a hyperinflated view of ourself or in dealing with a despondent view of ourself. Either one. It’s the struggle of living out our faith in this life, isn’t it? That’s what All Saints is for you, to encourage you in this struggle in which we find ourselves every day—to encourage you that this which we cling to is not a fairy tale, but real, and that the people whom you have seen die, whom each one of you have seen their faces, you have looked upon them in that casket. You have been at that graveside for you to say, “This is not the final statement. This is but merely a passageway through which we, I, you will travel. And we, I, you shall be in heaven with them.”
It still hurts to drive away from that cemetery. It’s still lonely to see their clothes in the closet and have to take care of them. To smell their smells, to see pictures, to experience wonderful family gatherings without them. That’s what All Saints is for: you who live now and live eternally now. You are God’s children now, the text says. And All Saints is for you now.
When Jesus began this great sermon on the mount, which begins with these words, this first section that we’re going to look at this morning is often called the Beatitudes. The Beatitudes. The Beatitudes is Latin for blessed because each one of those lines begins with blessed. The problem is that Beatitudes can stick in your head as an attitude you must conjure up within you in order to be blessed. That’s malarkey. God is telling you in this text this morning what he has done for you so that you have coming out of your mouth the same words as your loved ones have coming out of their mouth right now: “Salvation belongs to our God and to the Lamb who sits upon the throne.”
That’s why I’m here. That’s why you are here. He’s the one who did it. So it’s not about what you must do. It’s not about what you have to accomplish. It’s about what’s been accomplished for you. It’s about what has been done for you. As they were read, you can go back over them again. The very first blessed is present tense: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is,” present tense, “the kingdom of heaven.”
Then Jesus shifts and goes to a future tense: “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be.” Blessed are those who meet; they shall be, and so forth. And then at the very end, he makes it present tense again. And it’s interesting. When you look at the word blessed, every time you see it in that text, it applies to you. It is as if Jesus is saying, “You who are blessed… You who are my child, as John, my servant, wrote about you; you who are blessed and are my baptized child, you are poor in spirit. You shall inherit, and you will, and you have inherited, the kingdom of heaven now.”
You and I can look at him and go, “There’s a lot of times my pride comes crying out, and my family go, ‘Wow, you’re a little proud and pompous,’ and you’re right, Lord, I am.” How can I be poor in spirit? It is God who has crushed you. That is why you keep coming back to him because he draws you back to be sustained in that renewal. Then Jesus goes with that future tense because he’s trying to say, “You who are a child of God now, this is what you have now and this is what you have to look forward to. Nothing changes except you die. That’s it. You have it now and you have it to look forward to. The only thing different is you finally are rid of the very thing that you struggle with, your sinful flesh.
The kind of flesh that gets cancer. The kind of flesh that gets diabetes. The kind of flesh that does struggle and is addicted and has all kinds of other heinous things. That flesh that you and I struggle with, that’s the only thing that changes between what we have, what we are now, and what we shall be. And isn’t it interesting how Jesus does this? The first eight blessings are all third person. Blessed are they. Blessed are they. Declarative truths. Wanting you to believe. Wanting you to trust in what God has done for you. What God is doing now in you. And what God will accomplish and give to you at the final day.
But it’s the very last blessed that is second person. “You.” For he wants you to wrestle with this. “Blessed are you when people revile you, when people persecute you, when people utter all kinds of false things about you because of my name. Great is your reward in heaven.” This is what you and I live as believers now. We live in a world that reviles us and our viewpoint.
The benefit of living in Austin is it’s not insulated, is it? Our point of view is very easily seen as counter to the society in which we live. Living in little town Arkansas or little town Missouri or little town Michigan or little town Wisconsin, it’s somewhat insulated, not nearly like this town. We’re blessed to live in this town because we’re seeing very clearly how at odds this faith that you and I will die in is with the society in which we live. And yet God’s miracle is that he can still produce faith in those people’s lives through you. Through the message that you bring.
You know, it’s interesting. We want to see glory here and now. Who doesn’t? We want to see the spectacular accomplishment of God’s power here and now among us. Who doesn’t? There are two places that look completely opposite from one another. And at these two places does Jesus reign in the same magnificent and glorious manner with all power and honor to him. We have one in our reading this morning. As they gather around the throne, is Jesus the Lamb glorified and proclaimed and praised? And he reigns, doesn’t he?
Do you know the other place that he reigns, which doesn’t look like it? There on that bronze cross. He reigned as much on that cross as a dead and dying person as he does in the text where he is in glory. Because he’s God! He is not going to be thwarted by what we see. He is telling you, if I reign there and I’m reigning there, then you reign here and now, even though it doesn’t look like it. Even though you are not recognized as being one of the world. Even though your children continually ask you, “Why do we got to be different, mom and dad? Why do we have to be so other than? Why is it?”
God be praised for faithful parents who spoke this to you, and you speak it to them, because that’s who you are. You’re God’s child, God’s baptized child, God’s child that reigns as his beloved right here and now, even though the world doesn’t recognize you, and what we will be has not yet appeared. But John adds that last statement, doesn’t he? We reign because we will see him as he is. We will see him as he is, just as the people in that text and John himself who saw it saw Jesus as he is.
So you and I, because of the prophet Job’s proclamation, with our own eyes we shall see him. Yea, we shall see him and not another. How my heart yearns within me for that day. That is what you and I have now. But it doesn’t look like it. It doesn’t look like it at all. So truly blessed are you. When people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil on account of his name, for your reward is great in heaven; you shall be comforted. You shall be comforted.
You are comforted right here and now because the word of God has worked upon your heart and you are reminded of what God has done for you and how God has presented this and given this to you. You have it now. You are comforted now. Though you will go out, just like I will go out, and we’ll have good days and bad days from our perspective, but we know what we will be because we know what we are: blessed, redeemed, saved by the one who was rejected by the world. And that’s a gift.
In the name of Jesus, Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds on Christ Jesus to life everlasting. Amen.
