All Saints C

Nov. 3, 2019

Luke 6:20-31

The Rev. Dr. Kathy Kelly

ineffable |inˈefəbəl|adjective

too great or extreme to be expressed or described in words : the ineffable natural beauty of the Everglades.

• not to be uttered : the ineffable Hebrew name that gentiles write as Jehovah.

My favorite A. A. Milne story takes place on a snowy day. I told you about it last summer, but here’s a brief summary. Pooh and Piglet are out walking in the hundred acre woods which is covered in snow. They come upon some tracks in the snow and become frightened but they try to comfort and encourage each other. Then they encounter more tracks, then a third set, then yet another set and they encounter these tracks with increasing fear. But before they, and the reader, realize the tracks are actually their own - because they are walking in circles around a spinner tree - Christopher Robin calls to them from above. He is in the tree. He climbs down, points out their mistake, laughs with them, comforts them and then leads them home. I love this story partly because, like any Winnie-the-pooh story it takes me back to my own childhood, a time of innocence and wonder. I also love this story because Christopher Robin, a child with the very name of Christ within his own name, comes down from a tree and resolves the fears of the faithful on their journey.

It also reminds me of the passage from Isaiah that says, “A little child will lead them” which is not so much about children as it is about the incarnation of a God who became man, which includes living through childhood. I have used this pooh story at other times to point out the difference between child-ishness and child-likeness. That is to say, the difference between undisciplined, demanding and greedy behaviors and the ability as an adult to take on the attitudes of innocence, wonder, amazement and joy. (A child may cry and scream when injured or hungry. An adult learns to bind his own wounds and get back to work.)

The opening collect this morning is my very favorite collect in the prayer book. It mentions that little phrase, “ineffable joy.” And I love that word, ineffable. I had to look it up the first time I encountered this collect years ago, and I was reminded that it means at root “un-utterable.” This is literally the name of God, Jehovah, which means “He whose name is un-utterable.”

If you remember, when Abraham encountered God in the burning bush God answered his question about what name to call him and God said, “I am.” The Jews took this to mean God is beyond a simple name and so Jehovah was used to denote this. So when we call God Jehovah, we mean that the name of God is “unutterable.”

So what then does it mean to live as “children of God” and to have “ineffable joy?” What does it mean to be a saint? Or at least to follow the example of the Saints who went before us.

I was ordained a priest five years ago next month. When the anniversary of an ordination or “ordiversary” as some clergy have begun to call it in jest, when this comes up each year, we tend to ponder our call in serious ways.

Traditionally, the ordinand spends some time getting to know the saint on whose feast day they were ordained. I was ordained priest on the feast day of a child. St. Lucy who was quite young when she was martyred.

Lucy lived in the 3rd century, during the Diocletianic era before Constantine lifted the persecution of Christians. Lucy was small and unnoticed and so she would sneak food to the Christians who were imprisoned. Ultimately she was caught and executed. Though this part of her story is clearly true, most of her story, as with many saints is myth and exaggeration. The images of her throughout art history are lovely though some are rather gruesome. She is often depicted with candles in her hair because her name means light and it is assumed she put candles in her hair in order to see as she would sneak to the prison at night because both hands would have been full of food. And because it makes a pretty picture, a young girl with candles in her hair. She is also often depicted with a palm branch for having victory over evil, but also with two eyeballs on a plate. Sometimes she is depicted with empty and bloody eye sockets. And we wonder why All Saints became Halloween!

The eyeballs, and her honor as patron saint to the blind, are because of a medieval myth that her eyes were gouged prior to her execution by the sword. As if her vow to lifelong virginity, feeding of the poor and imprisoned and a life lost at a very young age weren’t enough for sainthood. It turns out, some of the stories of other saints grew out of similar exaggerations. But rightly so, because these exaggerations were born out of outrage among the oppressed.

When I consider modern ideals about sainthood I also wonder about celebrity. We celebrate the saints, but it is in a different way that we celebrate the rich, the powerful and famous people in our time. We lift up “celebrities,” so called because they are celebrated, and we reward them with its of money and much ado. And yet we are frequently disappointed in our political leaders, musicians, artists, entertainers and athletes. We continue to see saints as humble, poor and maybe even unnoticed. Those who the church deems as saints are beatified by the church. Beatified is an English word which means “Blessed".

Which brings me to our beatitudes, the Gospel lesson for today when Jesus speaks of those who are blessed. It is a relatively long list and it seems everyone is saint-worthy by the time he is done.

This sermon begins with a list, but not with a list of “thou shalts” and “thou shalt nots.” Too often, we try to make the Beatitudes into law. “Be merciful,” the preacher exhorts, “and you will receive mercy.” That may be true at times, but it is not what Jesus is saying here. The list we find here is in the indicative mood, not the imperative. It is description, not prescription. Jesus is not insisting that we become people who starve to see justice done - I suppose you either do or you don’t. What he is saying is that such people are already blessed of God. God looks upon such people with favor. God’s eye is on them; they will be happy in the end. This, says Jesus, is the way things are.

But if the Beatitudes are a description of reality, what world do they describe? Certainly not our own. “Blessed are the hungry,” says Jesus, but in our world the hungry don’t get their fair share of the abundance of food, they get left empty. “Blessed are the those who weep,” says Jesus, but in our world mourning may be tolerated for a while, but soon we will ask you to pull yourself together and move on. “Blessed are the poor,” says Jesus, but in our world the poor are dismissed as free-loaders. “Blessed are those who are hated,” says Jesus, but in our world hating the other side is not only widely practiced, it is expected. We don’t really live by these images of how the blessed should live. No, we live by those other beatitudes:

Blessed are the well-educated, for they will get the good jobs.

Blessed are the well-connected, for their aspirations will not go unnoticed.

Blessed are you when you know what you want, and go after it with everything you’ve got, for God helps those who help themselves.

Listen to what one of the scholars said of this text:

If we are honest, we must admit that the world Jesus asserts as fact, is not the world we have made for ourselves. And so, for now at least, we do not yet see all these things, “but we do see Jesus” (Hebrews 2:9). Jesus not only declares, but embodies this new world. And the old poem from Philippians promises that a day is coming when every knee will bow and every tongue confess that a crucified man is Lord (Philippians 2:10-11). Until that day, the Beatitudes stand as a daring act of protest against the current order. Jesus cannot very well insist that we be poor in spirit, but he can show us how to look upon such people with new eyes, and so gain entrance to a new world. On All Saints Day, the Beatitudes testify that it matters deeply whom we call “saint.”

The Kingdom Jesus proclaimed and embodied is precisely a new way of seeing, a new way of naming, and so a new way of being. The current regime sweeps aside those who Jesus declares are blessed of God, but we are invited to look again and discern a new reality that is coming into being. When we learn to recognize such people as blessed -- to call them saints -- we pledge our allegiance to that new world even as we participate in its realization. (Lance Pape, http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2203)

So what does it mean to be a saint? Can we all, or any of us be saints? Is sainthood attainable? Is doing and giving our best effort close enough?

So friends, I hope that we might gain wisdom in our individual and communal journeys toward our efforts to answer the call of Him who first blessed us and called us “blessed.”

Let’s continue to seek and to do that which seems unattainable, with ineffable joy, and childlike rather than childish demeanor, following Him who models for us how to love unconditionally. May we praise God always as if we are daily amidst the entire world bowing before the throne of God, listening, knit together, elect, one communion, mystical, and full of grace. May we practice the virtues - prudence, justice, temperance, courage, faith, hope, and love, in all our best efforts, not because we are celebrated but because we truly love and celebrate Christ and His Church.

I will close by repeating our collect of the day. Let us pray.

Almighty God, you have knit together your elect in one communion and fellowship in the mystical body of your Son Christ our Lord: Give us grace so to follow your blessed saints in all virtuous and godly living, that we may come to those ineffable joys that you have prepared for those who truly love you; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, in glory everlasting.

Amen.