Sermon for November 1, 2020 - All Saints' Sunday - The Rev'd Jeffrey W. Mello

Revelation 7:9-17; Psalm 34:1-10, 22; 1 John 3:1-3; Matthew 5:1—12

I’ve been desperately trying to figure out who’s responsible for 2020 being the year that it has been.  What evil force is behind all this?  At the beginning, I thought it was marketing for Charmin, or maybe Purell.  Then I thought it was definitely Zoom.

Today, All Saints Sunday, marks for us the end of our Liturgical Year.  Next week, we will celebrate the First Sunday of Advent, and begin a new year together.  Last year, every Sunday in Advent we sang the Canticle of the Turning.  This song is based on the Magnificat, or the Song of Mary, in which she proclaims that God has flipped the world upside down by choosing her to bear the Son of God.

We sang, with great delight, “My heart shall sing of the day you bring.  Let the fires of your justice burn.  Wipe away all tears, for the dawn draws near, and the world is about to turn!”

And then I thought, maybe it wasn’t Charmin, or Purell or Zoom.  Maybe it was us.  Maybe we ushered in a new age of God’s reversals.

Is this what the world looks like when it is about to turn? Has our prayer actually begun to be answered?  Is this the disruption for which we have been longing and praying?

Mary’s song of reversal and turning is mirrored in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount and this collection of blessings we call the Beatitudes.  This is Jesus echoing his mom and proclaiming that God is still about turning the world upside down.

I wonder what prompted this sermon on the mount.  What was Jesus hearing in the crowd and amongst his followers that prompted him to cast this vision of the kingdom of God where those who mourn, those who are persecuted, the poor and the hungry; they are the ones who are blessed, the ones who hold the very keys to the kingdom.

I wonder if, perhaps, he was sitting with someone discussing the constant setbacks, the increasing oppression, the constant disruptions and I wonder if the person who he sat with asked him, “Where is God in all this?”

Someone asked me that very question this week. Absorbing difficult news after difficult news, they wanted to know where I thought God was in all of this.

And I thought about all the many people who have become my teachers in this time of disruption.  Those of us who are feeling the disruption of this time most acutely are those of us who are not used to disruption beyond our control.  The more predictable and safe our lives have been, the more this current time stretches our ability to makes sense and move forward.

So I search for teachers to guide me.  My teachers are all around me.  And they are my God-bearers.

When I feel like my life is out of control, I think of the rural indigenous peoples in Guatemala I have met, and I remember their daily practice of waking each day to greet unpredictable weather, or political climate.

When I worry if it is safe for me to leave my house, I think of all the women I know who, every day, navigate a hostile world that blames them for their own assaults.  And I think of people of color who teach their children how to get pulled over, in order to minimize the lethality of the interaction.

When I am frustrated that the disruption of the supply chain means I have to wait for something I wanted to order overnight shipping, I think of the clients of the Food Pantry who wait in the cold and the rain not for the groceries they want, but the groceries that happen to be available that day.

This isn’t to say my troubles and worries are not real.  I try not to play the “someone has it worse” game.  Someone always has it worse, and someone always has it better. Nor do I believe that God has sent any of what we are experiencing as punishment or as an opportunity to learn a lesson.  But I do believe that God is in what we are experiencing, trying to redeem it, trying to give us a glimpse of the kingdom, trying to turn us, over and over again, turning us toward God.

Our teachers in this time are our God-bearers.  Those who live their lives knowing what some of us are only just now learning, they are our teachers.  They have something to teach us, if we will only listen.

What a turning that is.  That those who have been marginalized and whose value and worth is constantly challenged, they possess what those of us who have known more privilege and security desperately need.

I wouldn’t say they are lucky.  But maybe Jesus is right; they are blessed.

2020 has been a tough year, and I don’t want to minimize any of that by suggesting a silver lining or a “God doesn’t give us more than we can handle” bumper sticker response.  The grief and the lament are real and they should be honored.

But honoring grief and lament is, in itself, an act of resistance and reversal; a turning upside down of how we think the world is supposed to operate.

In my conversation with the person who wondered where I thought God was in all of this we agreed, that for all the strife of this year, there has been a great deal broken open, made visible, spoken aloud that can never be sealed over, unseen or unheard.  And it is in those places that God’s presence, God’s justice, God’s dream for the world can be seen.

Perhaps 2020 is a beatitude year.  Maybe this has been one of those times of which Jesus spoke, where those who have been cast down will begin to be raised up.  Of course, the reversal isn’t finished.  Like doing a deep clean of your house, things often get messier before they get cleaner.  You can’t turn the world upside down without things getting knocked out of place.

Maybe in the storm of 2020, there has been an inbreaking of the truth of God’s dream for the world, the telling of a truth that the way it is, is NOT how God longs for it to be.

Maybe the world has begun to turn.  Maybe 2020 is a Beatitude year.

“Jesus, where is God in all this?”

Blessed are the black.  for their lives matter.

Blessed are the women, for their shouts of “Me Too” will be heard.  And they will be believed.

Blessed are those in the service industry, for they will be essential.

Blessed are the underpaid teachers, for they will be called heroes.

Blessed are the isolated, for the church will see them and make it possible for them to connect.

Blessed are the children, for they are ushering in a world most of us can’t imagine.

Blessed are those who thirst for justice, for they will march.

Blessed are you when you wonder where God is in all of this, for your longing will bring you closer to the heart of God.

Though the work is far from finished, and what lies ahead is far from certain, and the dream of God is far from assured, has the world begun to turn?

Keep turning us, Lord, keep turning us.

AMEN.

1 While all direct and indirect quotes are always cited, there are sources I read regularly in preparation for sermon writing.  Chances are thoughts have been spurred by these sources and so I list the usual suspects here:  David Lose, In the Meantime, The New Interpreters Bible, Sacra Pagina

© 2020 The Reverend Jeffrey W. Mello