All Saints Day

Summary

On All Saint’s day we remember those who have gone before us, some recently, and some who passed away years ago.  We remember them because, well they were important to us, they are the memorable people of our lives. As I write these words I remember my Grandma, whom I lost seven years ago, but whom I still miss.  Her words and her ways live on in my life and influence my words and deeds.

My memories are also filled with those families with whom I have walked the road of sorrow and grief, this past year, and the loved ones they miss.

Death and the loss of a loved one is so many things. It is definitely painful, but it can be peace filled, it can send one into depression or fill one with love, but whatever it is, death is surely momentous, for it is the time that we are forced to say our earthly, goodbyes.

Thinking upon death this week as I thought about All Saints Sunday, my thoughts turned to all of the saints we’ve lost in two of the recent senseless and deathly tragedies.  The shootings of the concert goers in Las Vegas last month, and this week’s vehicular attack in New York were both terror attacks upon innocent people.  Those killed had lives of hope and promise stretched before them.  Their lives full of hope and promise simply ended, because a man acted out his hate and hopelessness in their lives.  Their deaths make me want to scream “Why?”

These two acts of terror killings are senseless, they are simply senseless.  They are deaths that are so illogical, so irrational that they are hard to comprehend.  And yet in a way they point to exactly what’s wrong with our world.

These two tragedies happened because the two perpetrators had stopped caring about other people, and were solely focused upon themselves, and their own hates, and prejudices, and deaths.

Our world is ultimately all about self-preservation.  It is all very rational to us, we want to live and so we do all that we can to make sure we keep on living. Survival is the human’s primal and ultimate instinct.  Where this starts to go wrong though, is that this instinct is naturally carried into much of humanity’s thought, emotion and action.  This is where the instinct to look out for ‘Number One’ comes into being.  Our rational to survive gets carried into our rational to thrive, even if that means doing it at someone else’s expense, even this we can still often rationally explain away selfish and boorish behavior.  Yet this instinct that we sometimes explain as, “survival of the fittest” can and does disappear into the dark depths of human thought and behavior, coming to light in terrible and irrational actions such as these murders.  Too easily our instinct for self-preservation spirals out of control into an instinct for destruction.

And so it is, on a day like today when we remember those who have lost that race for self-preservation, especially those unique and wonderful individuals whom we hold dear in our hearts, that Jesus’ irrational teachings from today’s gospel become so profound and somehow logical.

The words of Jesus’ beatitudes and his teaching of love for one’s enemies, speak directly against the human rational of self-preservation.  These words, which can make so little sense to us, and practically none to the world, I now realize are the exact answer to the senselessness of humanity and especially the world’s darkness.

Listen to his words in today’s language.

“God will bless you people who are poor.

His kingdom belongs to you.

God will bless you hungry people.

You will have plenty to eat.

God will bless you people who are crying.

You will laugh!”

And later, he says.

“Love your enemies, and be good to everyone who hates you.  Ask God to bless anyone who curses you, and pray for everyone who is cruel to you.  If someone slaps you on one cheek, don’t stop that person from slapping you on the other cheek…”

And Jesus goes on, and on speaking words that are irrational to most and seem even to be the rantings of a madman to some.  What is Jesus saying, when he is calling all of those on the bottom of the world’s hierarchy blessed?  And, what’s he saying when he calls those on the top to woe?

And what about this mad talk of loving your enemy and being kind to those who hate you?  Why would we want to even attempt to love, be kind, pray for or bless those who treat us horribly, and might even hope for our demise?

Well, when using the world’s reasoning and values we wouldn’t want to, rather we would seek the opposite, but you see, the world’s priorities are different than God’s.  What the world sees as irrational, makes all the sense in the world to Jesus.  For he is not approaching life from the standpoint of self-preservation, he proved that point to us very fully, when he died upon the cross.  No, rather Jesus approaches humanity with the values of God’s kingdom.  Jesus wants the best for the ‘other’ person, rather than for himself.  You see.  As he says later in the gospel, “Treat others just as you want to be treated.”

Or to quote the latter half of the greatest commandment, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

You see Jesus came to save…everyone if possible.  The only way to do that though, is to put your own life, your own self, your own…everything on the line for the other guy.  It seems odd, but Jesus showed us that it works when he did this very thing for you and me.  Jesus laid it all out there, everything, so that we could have it all, so that  we could have his kingdom.  Jesus in laying it all out there, has given us our salvation, our new life in his love.  In his giving, in his death we are given what we ultimately crave…life!

So it is, that his irrational teachings come to make total rational sense.  If we can strive to love, even if that means loving our bitterest enemy, the spiral of relationship and life points up, to heaven.  As humans we then are living for one another, and our common sharing of love and life can only bring about true community, the community that we Christians call God’s kingdom.  A Kingdom in which we can hope to meet our dearly departed loved ones again, someday.

If we don’t live for each other, we then live for ourselves, seeking self-preservation and the spiral of human interaction points down, ultimately to death, for as humans we are simply living for ourselves and relegating everyone else to second place, or worse and thus comes the ultimate death of community and eventually even the individual, the “I” which we have been trying to preserve.

Jesus wants us all, all the saints, to live with him forever in peace and love.  And he wants us to start and try living that way now, for God’s kingdom exists here [pointing to my heart] because Jesus lives here.  You see Jesus’ words are not simply wonderful but outrageous words to ponder upon and sit in awe over.  No, Jesus is calling you, is calling me, to attempt these very actions in our own lives.

We’ve all got people, who we are angry at, hurt by, belittled by or who hate us.  And we’ve all got people who are angry at us, who we’ve hurt, who we’ve belittled or talked about and who we might hate.  Well either way, here’s your chance to make amends, and treat them as you want to be treated.

As we know, we never have any idea how much longer we’ve got, to try and live out God’s love from our lives.  So I encourage you, in fact I dare you to reach out in love and repair a relationship today.  We are all saints in God’s love.

Amen.

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