In some ways, it feels like just yesterday that a group of 31 peers and I from Seminary were driving up the Mount of Beatitudes, where it was believed that Jesus gave today’s portion of the Sermon on the Plain. I distinctly recall the chapel that was built, because anytime Jesus did anything, they built a chapel! And, how they had the Beatitudes in different languages around the outside, and inside, of the chapel. I especially remember the time my classmates and I commandeered our tour bus and took it to Tiberias while our trip leaders were having their pre-dinner nap. In our defense, we were staying at the convent directly across from the chapel on the Mount, which closed at 4:00 P.M., and there wasn’t much else for us to do on the Mount, especially when we wouldn’t get back from the daily adventures until right around the time the chapel closed.
Our commandeering adventure happened the night after we had gone for a hike down the mountainside toward Capernaum. I prayed the entire way, please don’t let me ankle roll, as we still had over half the trip left and I was notorious for injuring my ankle at the most inconvenient times. And, I remember stumbling across a cave in the hillside, that became a respite on the journey. An intense emotional and physical journey that we didn’t know would lead us into COVID times. We sat in this cave and watched as the sun set, wanting to linger a little longer before making the hike back up the hillside. This entire trip to the Mount seemed to be a good metaphor for life, as we sat, worn and weary, anxious and afraid at times too, in possibly the same places as those who were worn and weary sat listening to Jesus preach. Connected with the saints through the paths we walked, and perhaps even the troublemaking we got into too.
My time there, including our adventures in commandeering, our rebelliousness, helped to shape the way that I view the Beatitudes because I can’t hear them without being transported back to that place. So, in the past few years, I have come to love that this is the Gospel reading on All Saints Sunday. It isn’t a text about the promise of the resurrection per se, it doesn’t even really involve death, but it does get to the heart of the promises that we have in God. The promises, not the threat, that to truly live, life will come with hardships. When we open ourselves up to love, we will grieve and weep and feel that loss on a deep level. That God is not satisfied to leave us, or the world, as it is, but is instead continually in the process of turning the world upside down. Jesus’ teachings today offer us a reminder that no matter who we are, what we have done, or where we are from, God has not and will not give up on us. Even the woes feel less like threats and more like reminders that life is not constant or guaranteed. And, it is a reminder that no matter what we are going through, we do not go through it alone, nor are the we the only ones who have ever gone through it. It continues to connect us with our human family.
This is one of the reasons why I value our celebration of All Saints Day in the church. Whether we have come together to grieve already in the year or not, it is a time for us to come together as a community and openly name some of the grief that lays heavy on our hearts. Because even though Jesus says, “You who weep now are blessed, for you’ll laugh” (Luke 6: 21b), we know that that is not the full story of grief. We don’t just get over it one day as our weeping turns to laughter, but we bounce between both of those, and every other emotion too. We are impacted when the ones that we love die, and on this day in the church, we get to acknowledge the impact they have had on our lives whether they died this year or twenty years ago. And, it turns us more collectively to the promise of the resurrection and the life of the world to come, which is ultimately an act of God turning the world around, and I think it is something that Jesus is beginning to hint at in today’s Gospel.
As I have been thinking more about all of the commands that Jesus gives us in today’s reading from Luke; to give to others when they ask, to turn the other cheek, to love our enemies, etc. (Luke 6: 27-31). I think about what Jesus is ultimately getting at here. Because, while these commands feel impossible to live by, partially because we want to avoid the discomfort of it, I also think that it is a sign of the radicalness of what Jesus is proclaiming in the Beatitudes. By turning the world upside down and changing the way we relate to one another, God envisions a world without the violence and separation and division that lead to those commands in the first place. If everyone would treat others as they wish to be treated, we don’t have to worry about those other things because we would be looking out for one another, offering love and care and seeing them with respect and dignity, as we acknowledge that we are all children of God.
Yet, unfortunately, that is not our reality. And, we have to wrestle with that too. I don’t think that God is giving up on this hope, but it is a foretaste of the hope that we have in Christ, that God will not leave the world as it is. That God will continually be changing us too, as we are shaped by the experiences of not just life, but life in community with one another. By sharing and shouldering one another’s burdens in life, we come to learn that we are not alone in what we are experiencing, and that we have others who we can lean on during those hard times. I think that is one of the ways we are blessed in this; we aren’t blessed because we experience pain and hardship, but because those experiences can draw us more fully into relationship with one another.
I mentioned a few weeks ago, that while I was in Seminary, one of my beloved professors died unexpectedly in the middle of the semester. That next night, our community experienced the unexpected death of a spouse of another one of our staff. I was working on chapel staff at the time and that weekend became what we called “Funeral Weekend,” as we would be hosting an all-night vigil, a funeral, and then a Catholic funeral mass Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. It was one of the, if not the hardest weeks of my time in Seminary, but I still think about the way that everyone came together in that weekend to celebrate and grieve together. And, yes, there was some laughing as we affectionately remembered our professor’s karaoke microphone that she used every day in class (although she only used the lights if it was an important day), or how we would see her riding her bike down the street with her feet in plastic bags (something she deemed a really bad idea) because she didn’t want her feet to get wet when it was raining. There was a lot of laughter that day, and a lot of crying too.
When I think about the gathering of the people in Wartburg’s chapel, I think about what it would have been like to have that many people, if not more, gathered on the side of the Mount to listen to Jesus’ sermon in today’s reading. Jesus looks at them all and doesn’t promise that life will be easy or that life will stay exactly as it is now, but Jesus seems to look at them and remind them, this is your family, love one another. You will get through this together. And, I can’t help but think that Jesus is sitting us down again on this All Saints Day, in the midst of some incredibly difficult years, reminding us of those same things. Reminding us that we are community that gets to support one another through life, and death, doing our best to love each other along the way.