Examples of God’s Grace

All Saints’ Sunday is a special day for all of us.  Our All Saints’ Memorial Church dates to the time of its building 144 years ago.  As we celebrate our founding it is important to note that All Saints brings to mind the size and solidarity of God’s people.  The people of God comprise a vast community that spreads beyond the boundaries of race, language, religion, and condition; beyond time and space, and across the divide of death.  In each faithful person the Christian proclamation of hope and promise for eternal life is a concrete reality. 

When we sing praise to the saints and the faithful of every age we praise God who has triumphed through them and whose bountiful grace and mercy we see in their lives.  They are examples of God’s grace.

Today’s gospel reading from Luke provides the basis of Christian ethics.  It is an ethic of God’s grace, and it is about how we are to act in relation to each other and to all the people of God.  Jesus spoke to the disciples and others in the hill country of Galilee about those who are blessed in God’s eyes, and the religious duties of almsgiving, prayer, and fasting. 

“Blessed are you,” said Jesus, and then he matched each blessing with a woe, a statement of anguish or misery.  Luke stressed the need for social change and transformation.  Blessings and woes are the prophetic words intended to bring to pass the things to which they give promise or warning.

“Blessed are you who are poor” reflects God’s vindication of the poor and those in need, and the government authority that had responsibility for them.  In the time of Luke, in first century Palestine, a large class of destitute, unemployed, and landless peasants lived side by side with wealthy farmers, landed proprietors, and rich bankers. 

“Blessed are you who are hungry now” reflects God’s readiness to relieve not only physical, but spiritual, hunger.  Jesus shared meals with the disciples, he ate with sinners and tax collectors, he fed the multitudes; and in his teachings he told the story of someone who gave a great banquet, or he told of bringing a fatted calf and killing it so there could have a feast.  In these events both the spiritual and literal senses of being hungry are held together.

“Blessed are you who weep now” is a beatitude that must be seen against the actual distress of an occupied country.  Its roots are in the prophecy of Isaiah who proclaimed the promise of a new Jerusalem: “To proclaim the year of God’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn.”  The meaning is inclusive and goes beyond individual or personal bereavement.

“Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you.”  This beatitude reflects the suffering the disciples will have to endure.  Those who suffer and are persecuted because of their faithfulness share the kingdom of God.

These four blessings are addressed to people who are poor, hungry, miserable, and who expect to be treated harshly.  The kingdom of heaven is promised to them and it will be their happiness and satisfaction.  Both the physical and the spiritual are included in these promises; and all of them form a revolutionary proclamation.  The gospel has been called an ethic of grace.

How does this relate to us who are Christians in the 21^st century?  When I look around our state and see the vast number of food pantries, soup kitchens, and meal sites that feed thousands of people every week, I am overwhelmed by the level of poverty in Rhode Island.  Last week, writing in the New York Times (October 28, 2016), Nicholas Kristof stated, “What many Americans don’t understand about poverty is that it’s perhaps less about a lack of money than about not seeing any path out…..

“Too many American kids are set up for failure when they are born into what might be called the “broken class,” where violence, mental illness, drugs and sexual abuse infuse childhood.… As a society, we fail them long before they fail us….

“What we lack most is not means but political will.  The main public response to American poverty has been a great big national shrug — and that is why … the public and the media [need to demand] that politicians address the issue…. Struggling, despairing people sometimes compound their misfortune by self-medicating or engaging in irresponsible, self-destructive behavior..… Child poverty is an open sore on the American body politic.  It is a moral failing for our nation that one-fifth of our children live in poverty.”

The gospel ethic of grace is to “love your enemies, to do good, and to lend expecting nothing in return.... Be merciful, even as God is merciful.”  “Do to others as you would have them do to you.”  “Blessed are you” who live in this way.

The beatitudes and woes provide us with the real meaning of sainthood.  The saints are those who possess and demonstrate the love and grace of God.  We celebrate the great women and men of the Bible and all through the centuries as examples of God’s grace.  They lived and continue to live this ethic of grace because they feed the hungry, clothe the naked, build houses for the homeless, free those in prison and those who are oppressed, comfort the broken-hearted, and work for justice and peace.  As members of All Saints Memorial Church, blessed are you in everything you do by living this ethic of grace. You are also numbered among the saints.  Amen.