Image: Cosimo Rosselli, “The Sermon on the Mount,” 1481 (Public Domain)
Who are the saints? Most Lutherans will tell you that saints are ordinary people, people like us, who both struggle with their own sinfulness and are recipients of new life in Christ. If a Lutheran is feeling particularly bold when you ask that question, she might point to herself and say, “I am a saint myself.” (And then add in a quick breath, “And a sinner, too!”)
There’s more involved in being a saint, however. First, saints are chosen by God in baptism. Our reading from Ephesians uses provocative language regarding God’s choice. Ephesians says that having received this inheritance of eternal life, we are destined according to Christ to live for the praise of his glory. The first choice, we are reminded, is not ours. We don’t choose ourselves to become Christ-followers. Jesus himself makes the first choice, pointing to each one of us in our baptism, and saying, “I choose you.” Even, and especially children, who don’t have conscious belief yet, are given the gift of new life in Christ by his sovereign choice alone.
The story doesn’t end when Jesus chooses us, though. That’s just the beginning. It’s the beginning of our time as Christ-followers. Jesus has more planned for us, not just in the hereafter, but in the here-and-now.
And that brings us to the Gospel reading, which might make us a bit confused. Why was this section of the Sermon on the Plain from Luke the choice for the day? Jesus gives a list of blessings, half the number of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew. The difference between Matthew’s and Luke’s beatitudes is stark, however. In addition to the four blessings, Jesus pronounces four woes, which may make us squirm. Jesus says, “Woe to you who are rich, who are full, who laugh, who are spoken well of.” All these things, Jesus says, are all too temporary, all too fleeting. But who wouldn’t want them? Everyone wants wealth to some degree (even if, as humble Midwesterners, we would never admit it!). Everyone wants to be full, to laugh, to be well-spoken of. No one wants the kind of blessings that Jesus gives – blessings to those who are poor, hungry, weeping, and persecuted. And following that, where Jesus says to “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you,” I don’t know o a single person who wants to do that. We may want revenge on our enemies, or at least to separate ourselves from them, but love them? So often we’d rather hold a grudge and make ourselves out to be the sole victim. These words of Jesus make us uncomfortable partially because they apply to us and partially because they defy common sense.
But this defiance of the common way in which the world operates is at the heart of gospel. It is at the heart of Jesus’ promise of eternal life for all the saints. Because both in the hearts of the saints now, and in the world to come, ordinary values are entirely reversed. The world will be turned upside down. This theme of Luke and Acts begins right away in Luke 1, when Gabriel promises that God will give the aged Zechariah and Elizabeth a son. It continues in Mary’s song, when she sings, “You have cast down the mighty from their thrones and lifted up the lowly. You have fed the hungry with good things and the rich you have sent away empty.” It continues when Jesus is born in a stable, laid in a feeding trough, and grows up in a little nowhere town in Galilee; when begins his ministry among the poor, weak, and sick; when he chooses a group of twelve men; when he descends from the mountain right before our reading to a group of not just Jews, but Gentiles from Tyre and Sidon as well; when he eats with sinners and tax collectors; when his ministry is bankrolled by a group of women. This inside-out way of life reaches its conclusion on a hill outside Jerusalem, when the Lord of Life, God-in-the-flesh, is crucified at the hands of religious and political leaders, who see Jesus as a grave threat to the common sense values they espouse – rich over poor, strong over weak. And then, just when it seems like all hope is extinguished, God the Father vindicates Jesus and his gospel by raising him up.
The saints know this story well. Jesus is the one who was in solidarity with the weak, poor, and suffering all his earthly life, and is still with them now. Jesus is with them, not with those who are already dominant. He certainly could have created a heavenly kingdom on earth. He was tempted with precisely that when Satan promised him all the kingdoms of the world. But Jesus chose a different way; a harder way; a way that includes the poor and suffering.
And we can be grateful for that choice. Because that choice includes us. On his deathbed, Martin Luther wrote, “All of us are beggars. This is true.” Deep down, under any material wealth we may have, under whatever privilege or power we may have, we know all that comes to nothing. The saints know that true wealth, that true happiness lies in Christ and in him alone. The saints know because Christ’s solidarity is with them, they are to be in solidarity with the company that Christ kept. Those are kingdom values, not earthly values.
On this All Saints Sunday, we remember those who now fully know of Christ and his kingdom, who are kept in the heart of God. They were the ones who taught us the faith; who taught us these crazy, inside-out values at the heart of God’s kingdom. And they are the ones we will one day be re-united with, when we ourselves pass through that gate of death and await resurrection to life everlasting. We are with them in the community of all sinners and saints, and God will keep us with them.
God help to continue to come to know him, in the words of Ephesians; to grow in wisdom, and to live out these kingdom values, the values of the saints, the values of Christ, in our earthly lives.
Let us pray.
Jesus, you came down to our human state to give us a new word of life. Help us to be united with those you pronounced blessed, and to keep in mind our own reliance upon you for everything we have and everything we are. Give us a certain hope that we will be re-united with the saints who have gone before us, who know fully of your kingdom.
Amen.
© 2025, David M. Fleener. Permission granted to copy and adapt original material herein for non-commercial purposes with appropriate credit given.