Known to God as saints. November 3, 2019 The Rev. Kathleen M. Sturges

Luke 6:20-31

Tennis, chess, poker, Chutes and Ladders, soccer, charades. Many of the games we know and love could be described as zero-sum games - where in order for one person to win another must lose. But it’s not just with games that we think in zero-sum terms. We do it in the world too, especially when resources are limited. Like if you have a pie. The bigger piece of the pie someone else gets means that there is less for me. That’s zero-sum thinking which can be summed up with the motto, “Your gain is my loss” and vice versa, “your loss is my gain.” 

So is that what’s going on here in our reading from the gospel of Luke? Jesus begins by proclaiming blessings to the poor, the hungry, the sad, the excluded. And then moves onto pronouncing woes. Woes to the wealthy, the full, the happy, the popular. Is Jesus suggesting that God’s world operates with a zero-sum model where every winner necessitates a loser or that every one of today’s pleasures will be repaid with a punishment tomorrow?

No. I pray that we all know Jesus well enough to discern that answer. Far from dividing people up as winners or losers, God’s kingdom is all about breaking down the walls that separate us all through the power of love - a love, a mercy, a grace that has no limits, no bounds. It never runs out. God’s abundance is available to all. No one is left out and no one is the less for it. And what Jesus is talking about is the way that we can enter more fully into that abundance which is found in God’s kingdom. A kingdom that not only exists in some distant future but is right here among us, unfolding in our very midst. And no matter who you are or what your condition - poor or rich, hungry or full, sad or happy, excluded or popular - Jesus does not want any of us to miss it.

So instead of playing some kind of zero-sum game, what Jesus is offering with his blessings and woes is more like the childhood game Hot and Cold. Perhaps you know it? Somebody hides an object and then the seeker moves around an area until the hider says something like, “You’re warm,” to signal to the seeker that she is getting close to the object. But if the seeker starts to unknowingly move away then the hider might warn, “You’re getting cold.” And if the seeker is really going in the wrong direction the hider might call out, “Your freezing!” in order to get the seeker back on track.

 Jesus’ blessings and woes aren’t judgments about winners and losers - a declaration of who’s in and who's out. Rather he’s calling to us, letting us know if we are either warm or cold, getting close to or moving away from God’s Kingdom. To those who live relatively comfortable lives, particularly those who act as if they are saying, “I’ve got mine. I’m good. I’m in. Close the door behind me.” Jesus cries, “Woe!” You are getting cold! Freezing, even! You’re going in the opposite direction of the Kingdom of God. But to those who suffer Jesus declares that they are blessed. They’re getting warmer. Not because there is anything good or holy about suffering in and of itself. But because it seems that God’s kingdom of full of love and grace and mercy is more easily found by those who are keenly aware of their need.

For when we recognize our needs and our weaknesses and entrust them to God we are moving in the right direction and come closer to God’s kingdom and God’s people. God’s people who, on this All Saints’ Sunday, we especially remember and celebrate. For in Christ and through Christ we share an intimate unity with one another no matter the differences or distances that separate us here on earth or in the heavenly realm. The connection we have with all people in all time is part of the mystery of our faith. And another part of that mystery is that no matter who we are or what we have done, we are known to God as saints. 

Now, of course, there are the famous saints. The ones whom the Church lauds for their holiness of life like St. Paul, St. Francis or St. Teresa of Avila. Those are the ones whose stories make it into our Sunday bulletin inserts. And then there are the rest of us - the not so well known and, perhaps we’d say, the not so holy either. But I have a sneaking suspicion that if we really knew the whole truth about any saint’s life, famous or not, we’d find a truth more complex and less holy than the legend or the story. For no matter who we are there parts of our lives where God’s love shines brightly and there are parts that exist in the shadows.

That complicated nature is certainly revealed in the life of Mother Teresa of Calcutta. She died in 1997 and in 2016 the Roman Catholic Church canonized her as a saint. But before that, during her lifetime many regarded her as a living saint because she poured her life into caring for India’s poorest of the poor. But after her death letters she wrote to spiritual confidants revealed that this icon of Christian faith spent most of her years of ministry in deep doubt. One time after watching the other sisters of her order pray in chapel, Mother Teresa reflected, “I see them love God, and I am just alone, empty, excluded.” In another letter she confessed that, “As for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great that I look and do not see, listen and do not hear.” This wasn’t just a dark night of the soul. This crisis of faith plagued her for over forty years. These writings were made public not in order to diminish her reputation, but to reveal to the world the fullness and the complexity of who she was. She loved the poor because of her faith even as she struggled with her faith.

Mother Teresa’s struggles and doubts were in no way sin, but I don’t think she or any of us would argue with St. Paul in the book of Romans when he makes the sweeping, but nonetheless accurate, assessment that, “we have all sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” (3:23). Yes, we may be called saints, but we are far from perfect. Yet it is when we humbly acknowledge our imperfections, our brokenness, our weaknesses that we actually come closer to the Kingdom of God and to the love that connects us one to another. And as we do, Jesus proclaims to us that truly we are blessed.