Category Archives: Theology & Culture

Sermon, Theology & Culture

Mary and Joseph of Aleppo

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Matthew 1:18-25

“Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,
and they shall name him Emmanuel,”

which means, “God is with us.” When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife, but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son; and he named him Jesus. (Read the whole passage)

The 4th Sunday of Advent is one that rolls is over to Christmas. While, this year we are in the unusual circumstance that there will be a full week between Advent 4 and Christmas Day. Next year for example, the 4th Sunday of Advent is Christmas Eve morning!

Advent then is a long as it can be with 28 days this year. And with still a week to go before Christmas, we get to sit with the story that we alway hear on the 4th Sunday a little longer than usual. The last Sunday in Advent is always the chance to hear the story of Mary’s pregnancy, and Mary and Joseph’s response to this life-changing news.

The announcement of Mary’s pregnancy by the messenger angels is always a turn from the preceding weeks of Advent, from the warnings about the end of time, from John the Baptist preaching in the wilderness and then questioning the legitimacy of the Messiah from prison. It is also movement within our Advent theme of light in the darkness, taking us from a the grand size of God’s plan to bring the Messiah into the world, into the cosmos, to come like a thief in the night, to straighten out the crooked paths, to cure the sick and raise the dead… Advent 4 is movement way from those big things, to the small space of Mary’s body, to the intimate relationship of Mary and Joseph’s engagement.

The story of Mary’s conception is a familiar one, although the version we hear today is less familiar. Rather than the Luke birth story, the beloved one we hear each Christmas that begins “in those days a decree went out from emperor Caesar Augustus that the whole world should be registered”, we hear Matthew’s version. Brief and to the point. There are no angels who appear to Mary today, but instead to Joseph. There is no visit to Mary’s cousin Elizabeth, but just a dream and a command to faithfulness.

And if you caught it at it the end, Jesus is born in Matthew’s version of the story. No shepherds or angels. No stable or manger, no pondering of Mary. No animals or drummer boy, although those aren’t in Luke’s version either. Matthew just gives us what we need to know and then picks up the expanded story with the magi, which we hear at Epiphany.

This doesn’t really sound like the story that we know, or that the carols sing about or that the made-for-TV-movies tell. It is a version of a familiar story told in an unfamiliar way. It opens our eyes anew to something we thought we knew well.

In our final advent weeks, our eyes have been opened anew to the dark places of the world. The theme of light in the darkness has reminded us that seeing the dark places is the first step in seeing the light.

One dark place more than others has been revealed to us this week. As the war in Syria intensifies, we bore witness in the news this week to the siege of Aleppo. The hundreds of thousands of civilians caught in the middle have been telling their stories on social media, even giving their final goodbyes with bombs exploding in the background. Human rights organizations and NGOs have called upon the warring factions and the global community to action. And even after ceasefires are called, they are promptly broken. It is a complex and messy conflict between factions where there are no clear good guys or bad guys. Where both sides are using civilians and civilians casualties as negotiating chips.

Now after years of civil war in Syria, reports of violent conflict, millions of refugees flowing into surrounding nations and then into Europe, the rise of the Islamic State and now the indiscriminate bombings and summary execution of civilians, Syria has become the great humanitarian tragedy of the 21st century.

So what does the darkest place in our time have to do with an unmarried couple receiving news of an unexpected pregnancy 2000 years ago.

Well the world of Joseph and Mary was not that different than ours. And no, not our Canadian countryside where we imagine the holy family showing up in a homeless shelter or soup kitchen on Christmas Eve. Rather, Nazareth where Joseph decides to remains faithful to Mary despite her pregnancy is only 593 kilometres from Aleppo. The distance between here and Regina, or even closer than the distance to Minneapolis.

And like the trapped citizens of Aleppo, Mary and Joseph were ruled by a ruthless despot in King Herod, a puppet installed by virtue of his birth, much like Bashir Al Assad.  Their home had been invaded by a foreign empire in Rome, much like occupying Russians. Their world was one drawn regularly into conflict as religious zealots tried again and again to spur violent uprisings in order to overthrow the the ruling powers, much like the rebels. All too often these uprisings only result in needless civilian death. Mary and Joseph almost certainly knew what it was like to exist between violently conflicting forces, never knowing when the chaos might erupt around them.

If Mary and Joseph were to be found today, we might imagine it would be in a barn on the prairies, or a back alley in New York, or sleepy neighbourhood in Sweden or an apartment block in Beijing. But perhaps today, Mary and Joseph are in Aleppo (Jesus was born hardly a stone’s throw away after all). The unborn Christ child would be dodging bombs and bullets in a war zone.

But it isn’t just the physical location, it is location within the human condition. If we listened to the Christmas carols and made-or-TV-movies, Mary and Joseph would exist in sentiment and nostalgia. They would be characters that we play in pageants or that we put up in nativity scenes. They wouldn’t be real, they would be nice ideas or warm fuzzy feelings.

Except Mary and Joseph aren’t characters in a pageant. They are the real people chosen by the God of light who shows up in dark places. Mary is a real pregnant woman, with expanding body, morning sickness and cankles. Joseph is a real fiancé whose beloved wife-to-be is pregnant with another’s child. The holy couple are real parents simply trying to survive in an unbelievably dangerous world.

But most importantly, the promised child, the light that is placed in Mary’s womb, is a real baby, kicking and turning, readying mother and father for the reality that they will soon be responsible for a life other than their own, in a world where life is disregarded like piece of garbage.

And this is all God’s point.

This is all God’s work, to send a real baby, born to real parents, in a dark and very real place in the world…in order to be our real Messiah. Because our real sins need real saving.

Only a real Messiah can bring light to our real condition, to the sin and death of the dark places around us. While the nostalgia of carols and movies, of nativity scenes and pageants, sometimes help us to tell the story, they are not what our Advent waiting needs. They are not the version of Messiah we need.

God sends a real Messiah because our real wars and real violence and real disregard for each other needs real light. God comes into the darkest places because our detachment and avoidance of the dark places needs to be revealed. God comes into real bodies, born to real parents because this is how we all enter into the world, because the danger of life is the real risk of death. The Messiah comes in order to join with creation in the starkest, realest ways there are. To be born like we are born, to live like we live, to die like we die. All that so we can rise like Messiah’s rises.

Our dark world is not much different than the one of Mary and Joseph. We need the light as much as ever. And so that is why hear the story of God’s coming again today, and we hear it anew.

God is coming not only to a surprised couple in Nazareth, but God is coming into this world, here and now.

Coming to a prairie barn, far away from places that matter.

God is coming to the back alleys in New York.

God is coming to the sleepy suburbs of Sweden.

God is coming to apartment blocks in Beijing.

And God is coming to civilians hiding out in Aleppo.

God is coming to bring light to our dark world, Messiah is on the way to show us that war, and violence and suffering do not define us. Messiah is coming to save us from sin and death.

Today, we are about to roll over from Advent into Christ, and yet there is still a week of Advent darkness and waiting left to do. And in the darkness of our world, of places like Aleppo or closer to home, especially when things seem darker than ever… Messiah is coming with the light.

 

Theology & Culture

What President Trump could mean for Mainline Christianity

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Since that fateful early morning announcement on 11/9 that Donald Trump had been elected president, I have felt like we have been living in the opening scenes of one of those movies. You know, the ones where oblivious and unassuming people are living in a world that is about to be completely changed for the worse, but no one believes it. You know, a disaster movie.

And in the days since the election, news continues flooding out with so many scandals relating to the Trump transition (he isn’t even in office yet) it is hard to know what to focus on, from Trump’s White Supremacist Chief Strategist, to an unhinged National Security Advisor, to global uncertainty, to Obama having to deal with a flood of concerned world leaders, to Trump’s ties to Russian interference in the election, to Trump’s insane list of conflicts of interests, to Trump’s inexcusable treatment of the press, to even suggestions of vote rigging (he did say it was rigged!). And let’s not forget his pre-election scandals like the misogynist Trump Tapes and Trump University law suits.

It is surreal to say the least.

With this hurricane of insanity around us, I keep coming back to the question of what this means for the church, specifically for mainline Christianity. For the portion of Evangelicals that elected trump, I actually think this was the final step in turning White Evangelicalism into a nationalist political movement. While many evangelicals may still be believers, Evangelicalism can no longer claim to follow the Triune God of the Bible.

American Evangelicalism is no longer Christian by any meaningful measure. 

But for mainline Churches, whose American members may or may not have voted for Trump, but whose leadership did not lineup behind him for a chance at power, Donald Trump may transform us in ways we would never have imagined.

If the Trump administration’s transition to power continues down this rocky and convention defying path, taking the next government deeper into racist behaviour and policy, isolationist attitudes, questionable ethics and attempted censorship complete with Orwellian double speak, we can only imagine what the world will look like after January 20th.

People are already afraid as the incidence of race related attacked and violence increases. Protests have been going on since the election and people are talking about how to survive the new regime. Many political and public leaders are advocating a wait and see approach, but many others simply don’t want to make the same mistake that the appeasement period before World War Two did and are already speaking out.

And so as Churches and communities of faith, where does this leave us?

To imagine how this new world might collide with the church consider this example I have been using for a while now:

Imagine going back to a church in 50s or 60s. If you told the average person in the pew that in 50 years many churches would be shells of their former selves with aging and declining membership, you would be laughed at. Churches were full of young families and programs. Families had 4.2 kids and church attendance was socially required.

But why were they full? Because people were better Christians back then?

Or was it that the world had just come through two world wars and the Great Depression? Was it that society had collectively stood at the brink and glimpsed our collective demise for 5 years straight before the first good news for the allies on D Day? 

Church was a place where hope was found, where grief, anxiety, struggle, pain and fear could be handed over to something bigger than ourselves. Churches proclaimed that there was something more powerful than huge armies marching over nation after nation, than governments who were sending millions of husbands and sons to war, than the threat of oppression and even extinction. 

Churches didn’t have to do anything special other than be communities that proclaimed the Good News as they had been for nearly 2000 years. They were naturally what so many people needed in that world.

Now imagine telling anyone who has regularly been in a pew for the past 15 years that it is possible that our currently declining and aging church may be full and bustling again in a few decades. They will laugh at you.

Well, maybe they would have laughed before November 8th.

But now all the things we thought were important in reversing decline like flashy worship, entertaining sermons, lattes for sale in the lobby, Nickelodeon night for the youth and all the other things we think will “attract” people mean nothing now. 

Churches, especially mainline ones, will need to focus again on the core things that we have always been: 

We will need to be communities of refuge because people will have fewer and fewer safe spaces.

We will need to be communities of resistance in a world that is demanding division, conflict and violence.

We will need to be communities of hope because we cannot just go back to sleep and pretend the government will have our backs while we spend our time mindlessly consuming stuff and entertainment.

We will need to be proclaimers of the gospel.

Of course, God has always called us to be all these things. But lately we have been delinquent in that call because we couldn’t see all that which we needed saving from. The world told us that our only problem was not having enough.

But now the threats and dangers, both external and internal will be obvious. We will now see what it is that we need saving from more clarity.

And we will see how God is using us to proclaim that salvation with more clarity.

And this new world will make what the church has always done subversive to the established order. Just by being the church we will declare that bigotry, hatred and self interest are not virtuous.

Just by doing what we have always done we will be seen as contrarians who believe that forgiveness of sins, life and salvation are given to us freely by God. Things that didn’t seem to mean much when the world’s biggest problem was not having enough stuff. But now are things that will mean everything to people suffering under a kleptocratic regime.

Just by being people of Word and Sacrament, we will birth a reality completely different than the one dictated by power.

A reality grounded in Christ and rooted in defiant hope. 

For a while now, many churches, church leaders and Christians have been wringing our hands over decline, wondering what it might take to get people back. And we foolishly thought it would be trendy programs and music selection.

Now, we are discovering what may actually drive a resurgence in mainline Christianity and what will be truly important for the church to be about.

Are we ready for the kind of world that will finally give us what we have been longing for?

Sermon, Theology & Culture

The world has been forever changed in the past two weeks

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Luke 23:33-43

The people stood by, watching Jesus on the cross; but the leaders scoffed at him, saying, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!” The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine, and saying, “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!” There was also an inscription over him, “This is the King of the Jews.” (Read the whole passage)

So… the world is very different place than it was two weeks ago…

Today, is Chris the King Sunday, the day on which we name and celebrate the fact that Jesus is our King, the one in control over all things, who holds us and all creation in his hands.

Christ the King is also the last Sunday of the church or liturgical year, kind of like New Year’s Eve. In many ways, Christ the King Sunday stands between two worlds. The world of the past and the world of the future. The world of the past that we are leaving behind began last Advent we began a journey that took us from the announcement of the coming of Messiah, to the birth of Christ in a Manger, to the visit of the magi at Epiphany. We kept on moving into Ash Wednesday and the path of Lent, the path to the cross. We were surprised by an empty tomb on Easter morning, and yet again by the coming of the Holy Spirit in tongues of fire at Pentecost. After that we heard the teachings of Jesus again and anew.  Just a few weeks ago we remembered the reformation and how it shapes who we are, and we remembered loved ones who have died on All Saints Sunday. Along side all of that, we baptized new Christians, we confirmed young adults, we witnessed weddings, we celebrated anniversaries and we grieved at grave sides.

The world of the future begins in much the same way that last year began. We will begin the story of Advent, with waiting for Messiah to come.

And yet, Christ the King is not just a flip of the calendar page from one year to the next. Things don’t just continue on in the cycles and patterns of life that we are used to. Christ the King is no ordinary year end. Christ the King also carries with it a view of the end of all things, the big ending that our world is headed towards.

In many ways, the world has been preparing us to glimpse the grand scale of Christ the King. This year our world feels like it is teetering on the edge of chaos, we have seen terror attacks, we have seen mass migrations of people fleeing war and violence. We have seen whole nations grow in discontent, with fear and anxieties rising, with division and strife popping up right on our door steps. We have seen people reject the ruling class in favour of populist leaders and outcomes.

And all of a sudden the part of Christ the King Sunday that harkens to the end of time doesn’t seem so far off. What is coming next for us in our little part of the world and for all peoples of the earth feels uncertain and foggy at best, ominous and terrifying at worst. Our world feels like it is standing in a doorway… we are leaving a way of being that was comfortable and familiar, and we are about to enter a new space, a new more dangerous and unknown world. Christ the King is a doorway of sorts, a space between, neither fully in one space or the other.

And so perhaps oddly or fittingly, we don’t hear a gospel passage that is about the beginning or the end, but a story that is in the middle of Jesus’ story.

Today, we return to the cross.

We turn to a moment when Jesus is named as King, but in the least King-like of circumstances. It is an odd moment from Jesus’ story to choose to remember when we are celebrating Christ as our King. Yes, technically Jesus is talked about as a King, but only in the most mocking and sarcastic way.

(And as an aside: If there is any lesson to those who are our leaders and rulers, it that those who promise great change to devoted legions of followers looking for someone to turn their suffering around, it is that you can be hailed and worshipped as a King on Sunday only to be tried and crucified by the same crowds by Friday).

And so the moment of the cross is not really a Kingly moment, and neither is it the beginning or the end of the story.

But the cross IS a doorway moment.

The cross is moment between two worlds.

A moment where all creation stands between two worlds.

Everything that leads to the cross… from creation, to God’s covenant with the people of Israel, to the birth and ministry of Jesus was all shadowed by the reality of the Garden of Eden. That sin and death had taken hold of humanity and creation, and that no matter how much God had called us and creation to repent and return… we did not.

And so the threshold, the doorway of the cross was that Jesus along with all creation stood between the power of death and the power of the God of life.

And everything that was upside-down about the world was exposed to us. That humanity believed that power comes from the ability to control and to kill. That the one who was our king was who we were putting to death. That we suffered in a world that was more dark than light. The cross exposed all those things to us, while showing us what was to come. That true power is found in love and compassion, in the ability to make alive. That the one we were putting to death is the one who would save us all. That the world was about to be flooded with light that would overcome the darkness.

And this is the moment that we stand at today still.

Christ the King is the same threshold moment of the cross.

Our world feels like is spiralling out of control. Division and conflict seems to have won. Fear and judgement and hate seems to be growing. Terror, violence and war feels nearby and out of control. Our world feels so much different than it did just two weeks ago, just one year ago, just a decade ago.

And yet, precisely at the moment when we feel as though we are about to be swallowed up by all the darkness… Precisely at this doorway moment of Christ the King where we are about to step out of one world into the next…

This is precisely the moment when God will turn our world right side up.

God will turn us around to begin the story of life all over again.

And God will begin quietly in the stories of Advent. In the story of God coming into the world, like a match being lit in a dark room, God will remind us again and again and again that just when the world feels the most lost, the most hopeless, the most dark it can be… that light is being born in the most unexpected places.

Light that comes not from Kings or Presidents, not in bold and brash and loud and overwhelming ways.

But light birthed to teenage mothers and old carpenters, in stables and forgotten places.

Christ the King is a doorway to that world. To a world where the light is being born. Christ our King is the one who comes to us as the light of our dark world, who comes to us again and again each Advent… each time we think the darkness is about to win.

Today, God is pulling us through the threshold, through the doorway found on the cross. Christ the King Sunday is how we end one year and begin another. But Christ our King is the one in whom our God meets us on a cross, in a stable, in the dark of the world.

And today, God takes from cross to empty tomb, from stable to lavish feast around the throne, from darkness into light, from death into life.

See, the world is very different place than it was few weeks ago… because today is the doorway into God’s world.

Amen

Theology & Culture

The first President my kids will remember and the one they won’t 

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My son is only about 6 months older than Donald Trump’s two year campaign for the Oval Office. My daughter a couple weeks older than Trump’s nomination at the Republican National Convention.

For the past few weeks I had been dreaming of how different the world of my children would be. Even as Canadian, the American President is an important symbol of power and authority. The first president I remember was Bill Clinton – a white man. My memory is like every other person who had a memory of a president – white men.

But for the past 8 years, a new generation now will remember a person of colour as their first president. And then my son and daughter had the promise of remembering a woman as president.

That promise is gone for now.

I can only hope that things change by 2020, that the outcome to this election is the blip in the trend and the last eight years did signify true change.

And with the ugliness of this past election cycle bombarding the entire world, I can only pray that Americans of all political stripes will repent of the division that brought them to where they are.

I pray that those politicians and other leaders who left significant portions of the population to fall further and further behind as only a few benefitted from unregulated markets and globalization will see that this greedy behaviour is pushing the world into deep crisis that we haven’t seen since the first half of the 20th century.

I pray that those who feel left behind cease using the poor and marginalized – immigrants, Muslims, uppity women and more – as the targets of their frustrations, fears and anxieties. That they will realize that this fear is creating a reality where violence and bigotry is acceptable public discourse.

There are a million reasons and ways the world is so different today than it was before the election. But I am determined to let my children know, whether a woman or another person of colour or LGBTQ person is elected to the presidency or even to be Prime Minister here in Canada or not, that power and authority is not just for white men. I am determined to help them see a world where gender, race, sexual orientation or religion are nothing but side notes in a person’s fitness for presidency.

If this election taught us anything, it is that there is a lot of work to do. And the problems we face are complex and difficult. But my children teach me everyday that the work is worth doing in order to create a world that I want for them. 

So let’s meet back here in 2020, and tell the story of a president I hope will be the one my children first remember.

Sermon, Theology & Culture

The Beatitudes According to Trump

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Luke 6:20-31

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)

We find ourselves coming near the end of church year. All Saints Sunday is a herald of the closing year and the coming of Advent. In only two weeks, comes Christ the King Sunday, the final Sunday of this church cycle. And so in this regard, All Saints takes us to places of beginnings and ends, birth and old age, life and death.

In the past two weeks, we have already marked the occasion of All Saints as we laid to rest members of our community. And today, we will broaden the occasion. We will remember both with joy and grief, those saints who have gone before us, those loved ones who have died. But it is not just the saints whom we have buried in the ground, but also those whom we have drowned in the waters of baptism this past year that we remember and pray for as well.

Saints, so to speak, can be a fairly broad category. The Church of Rome, has compiled their list of saints under strictly maintained standards. Other protestant churches often avoid saint talk all together. Lutherans have a favourite phrase to identify ourselves: ‘ Sinner and Saint’.

All these different definitions of who and what saints are, muddy our understanding of what a saint is. But probably we could agree that a saint is someone holy, or in other words a blessed person. And blessings is what Jesus is talking about today.

For All Saints Sunday, we hear Jesus’ famous Sermon on the Plain. It is a sermon that is well known and often quoted. Blessings and Woes. And these are not the heavenly minded blessings of Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount which reads: Blessed are the poor in spirit.  Luke is concrete and direct. Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the Kingdom of God. These are concrete blessings that have to do with rich and poor, hungry and filled, laughing and weeping, hate and respect. And more specifically, they have to do with you… and me, and us… they are not about some abstract group of people.

The thing is, that lately, the version of the blessings and woes that we have been hearing in our world are quiet different than Jesus’. As the US elections looms over the entire world, we all know the version of blessings and woes that one particular candidate seems to be preaching. But just for fun, maybe we could imagine them going something like this:

“The poor are a bunch of losers,
for they deserve to be poor. Get a job! Which I alone can give.

“The hungry, what a bunch of lazy bums,
just get some food, I mean c’mon.

“Sad people, the worst, the worst,
sad poeple haven’t done anything for the world, let me tell you.”

“But rich people, I love rich people,tremendous.
I love just ‘em. I am really rich, by the way.

“And people with lots to eat,We gotta protect people with lots to eat.
We gotta do something for them.

“And happy people, happy people are the best
I will be the greatest president for happy people. No one else will be a better president for happy people”

“Now listen, we are going to make things great again, trust me.”

The beatitudes according to today.

But before we feel too smug because we would never preach this version, this perspective on what it means to be blessed and cursed is one that we all have the capacity to believe. The old sinner within each of, the part of us that carries our fears and anxieties and desire for security and control, that part of us want to hold on to what we have, even if that means those around us go without. The part of us is controlled by fear and anxiety worries that sharing with others who don’t have as much might make us miss out.

And yet, the world’s version of the beatitudes are held up to us like a mirror,  and we start to see how destructive they truly are. We begin to see that a world that operates according to this version is not a world we want to live in.

And so when Jesus offers his version of blessings and curses, it challenges this accepted version of things that exists in our world. It challenges the idea that the rich and happy are blessed, while the poor and persecuted are cursed. So what are we to do Jesus’ version?

Unlike the world’s version of the beatitudes which tell us what should try for – try to be rich and avoid being poor.

Jesus’ beatitudes are not a prescription on how to be blessed. Rather they are descriptive. They are poetic words about life. They are a painting of joy and suffering. They are music that speaks to our hearts and minds. They are reminders of where God is through the blessings and woes of life.

When Jesus talked about blessing, he is naming God’s presence. Jesus is telling where God shows up in life.

We can hear what it means to be blessed in the words that are proclaimed at the end of every service:

The Lord bless you and keep you.
The Lord’s face shine upon you with grace and mercy.
The Lord look upon you with favour and give you peace.

We bless each other to say that God is with us. We pronounce blessings at baptisms, confirmations, weddings, funerals, on normal green Sundays, on Christmas Eve and Easter Morning, at the beginning and end of the day. We bless each other in times of joy and sadness, in times of celebration and grief. Because God goes with us at all these times.

Yet, God does not stop there. God does not simply promise to be with us. God shows us the way through the blessings and woes of life. God, through Jesus, comes down from heaven and into flesh to be blessed by us. To bring us close to the divine. As Jesus preaches blessings and woes, he points to the cross. He points to the cross, as he foreshadows the weeping and mourning and persecution to come. The cross is where Jesus earns our sainthood. Our sainthood is earned in Christ’s death and resurrection.

On the cross, Christ declares us saints. Because to be saints, is not really about being holy as far as God is concerned. It is not about being rich or full or happy. It is not about security and power and control. Because one of the truths about the world’s beatitudes is that the longer and louder they are preached, the more obvious it becomes that no amount of wealth, power and security will actually make us feel blessed enough. And in fact, it becomes clear that we all belong to the cursed group. We all need to be blessed, we all need something, someone bigger than ourselves to bring us real hope and real grace and mercy.

The truth of the Beatitudes is that they are are not about blessings as we usually think of them. To be blessed by God, is to be loved. And it is divine love that we discover on the cross. It is the Crucified God who blesses us and claims us as his own. The poor, the hungry, the weeping, the persecuted… they are blessed because God is with them. God is with us.

The beatitudes of Jesus that we read today are the true hope of All Saints Sunday. As we remember, and as we continue to grieve all those who have died, God blesses us and keeps us. As we struggle with being poor or being rich, with being blessed or being cursed, God shines his face upon us with grace and mercy. As we search for peace in a troubled world, God looks upon us with favour.  And God promises peace that will carry us and all the saints until the end.

Header Image: https://onehundredbillionsuns.com/2016/08/05/the-beatitudes-by-donald-trump/