All Saints Sunday

November 7, 2004

Luke 6: 17-31

Both, And

Rev. Elizabeth Macaulay

Mountain top experiences have the power to change life forever.

You have had them. Times when God and the possibilities of life felt so close that heaven WAS right here on earth. They are treasured moments. People experience the wonder of the mountaintop and cherish them always. For example, the miracle of making life and giving birth, the wonder of feeling the sun in the midst of a garden you have nurtured into a riot of color, a piece of art work or craftsmanship done in such a way that your soul knows its goodness. A relationship in which God touches profoundly through the eyes of your beloved.

During such times, the barrier between the mundane and the holy is so very thin.

In scripture, storytellers set such times of great revelation on mountain tops. Moses received the Ten Commandments on the top of the mountain. The being of Jesus was transfigured and set ablaze before his disciples on the top of a mountain. In Matthew’s gospel, the giving of the foundational teaching we know of as the Sermon on the Mount happened on a mountaintop. When things happen on mountaintops, we who seek wisdom from scripture know that there is something of life changing importance going on.

So why is it that the writer of Luke’s gospel has the Sermon on the Mount teachings given on a plain instead of a place set aside as holy? Why is it that Luke tells of Jesus sharing the wisdom of blessings on the bare and basic ground of every day life? And why is it that Matthew in his telling of the beatitudes, mentions only blessings, and Luke has to go and throw in – as though it isn’t dramatic enough that this teaching takes place not on a mountain top but on the mundane ground of life – why does Luke have Jesus teaching the lessons of troubles as well as blessings?

The writer of Luke’s gospel seems determined for us to know that the teachings of Jesus transcend where they are shared and where they are lived. We are to know that learning the ways of Jesus happens not only during the high of mountaintop experiences. The writer of Luke’s gospel seems to want for us to know that the teachings of Jesus have much to do with the slogging through of life that we encounter day in and day out on the plains of our life.

So I commend to you this reading of the Sermon on the Plain. I will read from a translation of Scripture done by Eugene Peterson, a Presbyterian pastor who was tired of the distance all too often created between the voicing of scripture and the understanding of what that scripture has to do with us – in our every day living of the gospel.

Hear the word of God, people of God. Hear what it is to be human, the blessing and the trouble, the gift and the challenge. Hear what it is to seek the way of Jesus in the living of your days.

(Read text)

One of the profound honors I have as a pastor happens through the process of walking with parishioners and their families into the death process. As clergy, I am invited to be present into mountaintop kinds of experiences – oh so painful to be sure, but the boundary between life here on earth and that which awaits is so very thin. God is powerfully present during such times. After the death occurs, in order to plan a funeral that will capture even a small portion of the life lived, I am able to sit with members of the family and hear stories about the person who has died.

It is high honor, being figuratively welcomed into the family as stories and remembrances are shared.

What I hear is a telling of the blessings and woes of life. The times of loss and heartache, the times when joy comes in the morning. The searchings and the findings and the loving and the struggles.

What makes for the life of a saint? My definition is this: a saint is someone who knows their humanity – their temptations to be self satisfied, distracted, or stuck. A saint owns their warts and turns them over to God in the honesty of prayer and a saint is willing to muck around in things that hurt – in the things that cause tears to flow freely – because they believe that their task, as Eugene Peterson translates it from Jesus’ teaching– is to be true, not popular.

True to themselves, true to their God, true to their calling to live in the way of Jesus.

And, a saint is someone who knows the wisdom of what we call the golden rule – Do to others as you would have them do to you – or as Peterson phrases it, Ask yourself what you want people to do for you, then grab the initiative and do it for them.

We are all called to such a way of living. And the world, as Don Quioxte is known to say, would be much better for this.

Danusha Veronica Goska, in a recent article in The Sun magazine, writes about what she calls political paralysis. The sense somehow that we are too little, too insignifigant to make a difference.

She says this:

“Sometimes we convince ourselves that the unnoticed gestures of “insignifigant” people mean nothing. It’s not enough to recycle our soda cans; we must Stop Global Warming Now. Since we can’t Stop Global Warming Now, we may as well not recycle our soda cans. It’s not enough to be our best selves; we have to be Gandhi.

And yet when we study the biographies of our heroes, we learn that they spent years in preparation, doing only tiny, decent things before one historic moment propelled them to center stage and used them to tilt empires.”

Paying attention to the tiny decent things matters greatly in this building of golden rule life together.

At my past church, it was my practice to take the Confirmation students into the woods for four nights at the edge of the Boundary Waters. There is no running water. There are two out houses and a tarped-in shelter and it is the most beautiful place in the world. The youth director I was then working with assured me that four nights out is the best number. The reason: people can keep their masks on for three nights. By that fourth, the real deal comes through, and that is when some powerful ministry can happen (if the adult leaders can keep themselves worth anything for that long).

For a number of years, we incorporated an activity that lasted for the four days. The youth were asked to pull a name of one of their fellow campers out of a hat. For the time we were in the woods together, that person was their secret buddy. The objective was that over the four days the secret buddy would practice acts of kindness toward the person whose name they drew.

It had to be sublte, or the other person would guess. And, it had to be intentional.

It was so beautiful watching the grace unfold. The fun became an issue of how to be good to each other doing tiny, decent things. And we couldn’t buy our way to goodness. There were no stores. What we had to work with was the creativity of our generous hearts. Bracelets woven by a friend’s hands appeared as gift, sculptures of leaves and berries were arranged and appeared where the buddy was sure to see. And the kindness?

The kids were beautiful in the ways they practiced goodness with each other. They thrived in an atmosphere where they were welcome to anticipate and participate in sharing the sweetness of doing onto others with grace.

Listen. What would life be like if we each decided that the people we share life with are our secret buddies? What if we spent more of our energy scanning our environment for what it is we can do for others rather than what it is we can do TO others? We don’t have to be Ghandhi. We just have to be_____________________, touching with the sweetness that only you can. In such a world, wars would cease, my friends. There wouldn’t be any point to them.

So. Live your sainthood on the mountaintops and plains of your life. Muck about, love boldly, accept love gratefully.

And rejoice. Blessed are you.

Amen