All Saints Sunday A2023
Matthew 5:1-9
Every Sunday and most weekdays as I made my way from the church parking lot to my office at Grace Lutheran Church, I would encounter people waiting for programs to start, people waiting to speak with me, people just hanging out and drinking coffee or smoking a cigarette. Nearly everyone would be experiencing homelessness or living in their car, usually unemployed or underemployed, often struggling with addiction or mental health concerns, tired and not just tired but weary of the systems of life that they felt caught in. As I would thread my way through groups of people, I would greet people, of course: Good to see you! How you doing? And the number one answer, the majority of the time, what I came to learn was the standard response: Blessed, pastor. I’m blessed.
Today, Jesus stands on a mount and proclaims the first words of his Sermon on the Mount, to a ragtag group of outsiders and nobodies, to people from all over Israel desperate enough in this life to follow a Galilean peasant through the countryside. Today, Jesus proclaims to these poor, hungry, grieving, tired, humble people: Blessed are you. Or more literally in Greek: Honored are you. To which generations of Christians say: Huh?
Does Jesus mean poor folk are more blessed than wealthy ones? Is Jesus saying oppression in this life is fine because people will be blessed in heaven? Or perhaps the opposite, that we are to work for justice so that those who are humble can be blessed? Is Jesus saying these humble, weary states are more valuable to him than being well fed and happy and successful?
Back when I was 22 years old and working at a shelter for people experiencing homelessness and illness on the west side of Chicago, I regularly got to lead Morning Prayer. Residents of the shelter would gather in the shelter’s small library. I would pass out rhythm instruments, and we would sing and play. I would hand around Bibles, and we would read and study together. And then we would pray. Technically, I led these simple worship services, but the residents were the real, serious pray-ers. We bowed our heads in prayer, and nearly every person would begin their prayer: “Thank you, God, for waking me up this morning, for putting strength in my arms and legs, for giving me sight in my eyes, for straightening my back and setting me on my feet.” The residents of the shelter were blessed.
Years later, I became acquainted with Nina Simone, a black American singer and pianist from the middle of the 20th century maybe best known for her soul and jazz music. When I first heard her song “Ain’t Got No-I Got Life,” I remembered those Morning Prayer services. Let’s listen. After what first sounds like despair, a radical want of material and relational goods, she asks: What have I got? Why am I alive anyway? What have I got that nobody can take away? Her hair, her head, her brains, her mouth, her smile. And she finishes: I’ve got my freedom. I’ve got the life. Nina Simone was blessed.
In our money-and-prestige-obsessed culture, we can hardly take in how someone humble and poor and heartbroken could be blessed. It is so hard for us to imagine how someone who doesn’t know where they will sleep tonight, how someone fleeing from Gaza today, how someone whose daughter or father or partner died last week, it is so hard to imagine how they could be blessed. For those life circumstances are real and gritty. They are not pretty, and not one of us envies the person enduring those circumstances. This may be the key to understanding Jesus’ words. We—all of us—turn away from what is hard, step back from engaging with people who are different, and forget that simply being in relationship with people is the greatest gift we can offer and receive. Yet Jesus sees and values and honors the humblest among us. It’s not that Jesus reserves blessing for only the humble; it’s that he includes in his blessing those who are humble. Jesus’ blessing confounds us because we, as a culture, find little value in those who are poor and hungry, grieving and makers of peace. We are instead interested in those who are successful and powerful, happy and mighty.
When the people of Grace told me: “I’m blessed, pastor. I’m blessed,” they celebrated the generosity of God toward them but also their identity as children of God. They were saying: I’m just as much a child of God as you are, and we are blessed. On this All Saints Sunday, the beatitudes teach us: Blessed are we, the children of God. Blessed are all the children of God. Thanks be to God! Amen.