Luke 6:20-31

20Then [Jesus] looked up at his disciples and said:

 “Blessed are you who are poor,

  for yours is the kingdom of God. (Read the whole passage)

Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the Kingdom of God.

Words that begin one of Jesus’ most famous sermons. Famous because we are not quiet sure what to do with them. The beatitudes or blessings and woes describe a grand reversal of the normal order to the world, and depending on how you see yourself, they are very hope filled words or very scary words.

Either way, the Beatitudes stick in our mind not because they describe the world as we know, but rather a world so very different than our own. And so very different from the world of the first hearers of the sermon, the one who Jesus was looking towards as he preached these words.

The people of 1st century Israel would have heard them as the same kind of radical reversal of the order of things that we do. Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the Kingdom of God. And to be sure, these are not the spiritualized versions of Matthew’s gospel, these are not “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” Luke’s Blessings are for those who do not not have enough to live on, a roof over their heads, enough clean clothes to wear. And Jesus goes on from there. Blessed are the hungry, the weeping, the hated.

It is the specific nature of the beatitudes that are the point. But not to say how it is we can be blessed, rather to undo and deconstruct the normal ways that we define blessing. It is almost as if Jesus is saying to his audience that anything that they can imagine being a curse is instead a blessing, and anything they they imagine a blessing is in fact a curse.

And once all the categories that we normally live by are undone, we might wonder, what is left? How does Jesus mean for us to understand a world where blessings are curses and curses and blessings?

And today in particular, we wonder what does all of this blessings and woes talk have to do with All Saints and remembering those who have gone before us in faith.

All Saints goes back to the early centuries of Christianity. Within a few generations of the first followers of Jesus, the Church had begun to remember and pray for those who had gone before in faith. Those who were the first witnesses of Christ. Those who were early leaders and faithful followers of the fledgling Christian community. The faithful who had passed on their faith in Jesus to successive generations.

The most important Saints received their own feast days or commemorations. The feast of Saints Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, Saint John the Baptist, St. James, St. Micheal and all Angels. And that list of saints and figures of the faith that we remember on particular days has grown to include Martin Luther and his wife Katie, Martin Luther King Jr and Mother Theresa. Yet, for the myriad of saints who don’t get their own commemoration, and for all the faithful witnesses to the faith in our lives who have gone before us, we have the Feast of All Saints.

And as Lutherans who boldly claim the title of Sinner and Saint, as a way of reminding ourselves of God’s mighty deeds of salvation done for us, “All the Saints” is an expansive and inclusive list. We remember all those who have gone before us, and in particular we remember those loved ones who have died and especially those who have died over the course of the past year.

So along with a remembrance of the Saints, All Saints brings with it a sense of grief and loss. Today, we bring the individual experiences of grief that we usually bear alone, to this community and this gathering for worship. And we recognize that even as the ones we grieve may be different and varied, we all carry grief and loss with us in some way. Whether we are grieving a spouse, or family member or friend. Or grieving the loss of a relationship, community, or vocation. Or simply change in general. Grief infiltrates our lives in so many ways… and today we are reminded that we are not grieving alone.

And if there is anything that grief does to us, it turns our lives upside down. All of a sudden the things that were blessings: love and companionship, relationships and community, become curses and woes… the loves that filed our lives before become the things that hurt the most.

Kind of the way Jesus flips things around and calls curses blessings and blessings curses in the beatitudes.

The beatitudes that show us a world order that we don’t know yet that we understand deep down. We understand that they are the way the world *should* be.

The beatitudes show us the way that the Kingdom of God is.

The Kingdom that is breaking into our world.

The Kingdom where God makes all things right and new.

The Kingdom that is far more open and welcoming than we can imagine.

The Kingdom that is for those who are poor and hungry and weeping and hated.

The Kingdom that is for those rich and full and laughing and well liked.

The Kingdom that we glimpse today on the feast of All Saints.

All Saints is not an only about ritualizing our memory and grief, about giving meaning to the hurts and pains that we experience in life as we lose so much.

All Saints gives us also a glimpse of that Kingdom, a glimpse of the end of time, a vision of God’s Kingdom breaking into and transforming the orders of this world, making us all and all things new. The promise of All Saints is not just a memory of the Saints, but a joining with the saints of all times and all places. A moment where the veil between heaven and earth becomes thin enough to see that the Kingdom of God is nearer than we know.

All Saints points us to the coming end of the liturgical year and also points us to the end of time and all things. All Saints points us to the grand upending of our world that is coming, and to establishment of God’s Kingdom on earth… To the Kingdom that is already coming into focus now, but not fully here yet.

And so as Jesus declares blessings and woes on All Saints, he does so to expand our vision of Kingdom. To know that we are not alone, not alone in our grief but joined together in it, with all the blessings and curses that we bear.

And Jesus declares that this upside down version of the world that we don’t quite understand is in fact, the Kingdom of All Saints – to which we belong.