Sermon for All Saints’ Day - Matthew 5:1-12

Good morning friends, and welcome to All Saints’ Day. This is one of the greatest feast days of the church, when we honor the communion of saints, past, present, and yet to come. We give thanks to God for our membership in that communion. Of course, we normally do up All Saints’ in true Christ Church style. We invite the churches of the central convocation to worship with us. The choir sings a stunning requiem. And we have one of our festive receptions that, not boast or anything, we’re sort of known for. We do know how to pull out all the stops for a major feast day. 

Of course, by necessity this year, our celebration is quieter than usual. Perhaps this will help us hear the good news of All Saints’ Day in a different way. The main elements remain, including reading the names of the departed, and honoring saints who have died this past year in particular. As we remember them, we will contemplate the mysteries of heaven as we always do. We will wonder what heaven is like, and how our loved ones are. For this reason, there is always a solemness to All Saints’. But there is also joy, for we are reminded that the saints we miss now enjoy the full blessedness of heaven. 

And speaking of joy, at the 10:30 service this morning, we will have the first baptisms in several months. All Saints’ is a traditional day for baptism. It’s a perfect occasion to welcome brand new Christians into the communion of saints. That sacrament will take place outside in Crease Close today, thanks to a new, portable font made by glass artist Winston Brown. The Close, I think, will be a meaningful setting. We will celebrate new lives in Christ near the final resting place for many Christ Church saints. What a powerful reminder of our mysterious connection to the saints in heaven. And maybe it’s especially fitting for All Saints’ this year. Our lives have been upended in so many difficult ways, but there have also been unexpected blessings. The opportunity to baptize two children in the Close today will be that kind of unexpected blessing. This All Saints’ might be a little quieter than usual, but there is blessedness to be found all the same. All Saints’ has a way of showing us such blessedness. 

Speaking of blessings, if memory serves, it was three years ago that the choir sang John Rutter’s Requiem for all Saints’. Again, not to boast or anything, but it was spectacular. The requiem ends with the movement, Lux Aeterna, with these powerful words: “May light eternal shine upon them, Lord, with thy saints in eternity.” Rutter was once asked if that was a bit too presumptuous, to suggest that everything gets resolved in light and peace at the end. What can we possibly know about eternal light and eternity, someone asked? Rutter responded that eternal light is our fundamental hope, and what Jesus promised. “Rejoice and be glad,” Jesus once said in the sermon on the mount, “for your reward is great in heaven.” Heaven, in other words, is a promise.

How do we get there? The Beatitudes describe a kind of pathway to heaven based on what we go through and what we strive for. Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are those who mourn. Blessed are the peacemakers and the pure in heart. Jesus says they will inherit the kingdom of heaven, receive mercy, be called children of God. There is a sense of some future culmination yet to come. One way to hear these words is that those who follow the way of blessedness in this life, especially in the midst of struggle, will be comforted in the life to come.

However, it seems to me that heaven is not only a future hope but also an earthly one. Blessedness in Hebrew has the sense of being on the right path. Jesus invites us onto a path that points toward heaven, a path full of peace, healing, righteousness, comfort, and mercy. This is especially poignant for a quieter All Saints’ in 2020. All those experiencing worry or grief or struggle now, according to Jesus, are already on the path. In the midst of our struggles, in some mysterious way, just being on the path connects us to heaven. 

If you mourn today or if you weep, take comfort that Jesus has already called you blessed. Take comfort in the knowledge that those whom we have loved and lost have received their promised reward in heaven. Eternal light shines upon them. 

If you are joyful today about new life, or baptism, or unexpected blessings, you, too are blessed. We are reminded today that there is God’s communion that runs through the whole range of human life and death, through all of our sorrows and our joys, too. 

And if, on this unusual All Saints’ Day, you long to see something of heaven, or need the certainty and the comfort of eternal light, or if you need to be reminded of your inclusion in the communion of saints, take Jesus at his word about the path of blessedness. Let your imagination wander the entire path in the Beatitudes. Imagine the peace, and the mercy, and the righteousness to be found there. Imagine stepping more fully onto that path. As you do, you will find yourself on a well-trodden path for all the saints, which leads to that place where light eternal shines.