Michael Mitchell
From Luke 6: 20-31
All Saint’s Sunday
Today is All Saint’s Sunday, the day after All Saint’s Day. Today we commemorate all the Saints in Christian history and all Christians who have gone before us, and those who have followed Jesus Christ in our own church, Saint Luke’s. We remember also family and friends who have died, all the people you and I have lost that are so important to our lives, and those who have helped form our lives and our faith. Maybe we learned about Jesus Christ and how to follow his teachings from the Biblical writers, or maybe from reading about a Saint from church history, maybe from teachers, or from family members, or friends, or in this church. Our faith journeys are lived out with the support of God and those whom God sends us to walk with us.
I looked up how many Christians there may have ever been from after Jesus’ resurrection and Day of Pentecost till today. The estimates ranged from 3.5 to 13.5 billion; it’s a reminder that our being in the Church today is our inheritance from endless numbers of people of faith over a long time. Our Gospel reading this morning from Luke is the first few lines of Jesus’ sermon called the Sermon on the Plain in Luke, and Sermon on the Mountain in Matthew. These verses are the heart and soul of Jesus’ teachings on how to follow God, or how to follow Jesus, 101.
In Luke it begins with the blessings and woes which we typically call the Beatitudes. Jesus then explains how we are to treat our enemies, or those who want to harm us: he says, “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat or abuse you.” He was speaking to people who lived in a time when, as they followed Jesus, they would become targets of persecution, receive threats of violence and death, people wanting to murder them because they chose to follow Jesus and believe he is the Son of God, and because they chose to follow Jesus’ teachings.
The very first person we think was killed for being Jesus’ follower was Saint Stephen. Stephen was one of seven Greek speaking Christians who were appointed by the original Apostles to lead the Greek speaking followers of Jesus, Gentiles living in Jerusalem who had become part of the new Church. These seven people preached about Jesus in public, and gained the ire of the Jewish leadership. Stephen was singled out as someone who must be killed to stamp out these followers of Jesus; he was taken outside the city and stoned to death. And what did Stephen say as he was dying? “Lord, do not hold this sin against them” (Acts 7: 60). He put into practice as his life ended, “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you; bless those who curse you; pray for those who mistreat you.” At his dying moment while being murdered, Stephen put into practice Jesus’ words.
A second Saint from our history three hundred years later is Saint Nicholas, a Saint we will honor soon on December 6th. Perhaps you have heard of him? Dutch Christians brought his name to our country who’s name morphed into the name Santa Clause. Saint Nicholas exemplifies Jesus’ teaching to care for the poor and hungry and to “do to others as you would have them do to you,” (the last line of our scripture reading this morning). Saint Nicholas was a Bishop of the churches of Myra on the Southeast coast of Asia Minor, today’s Turkey. It is possible he was persecuted and imprisoned for a time for being a leader of the Church in the early 300’s; he may have been a member of the Council of Nicaea in 325, when the Nicene Creed was first being written (Episcopal Dictionary, page 360). He was a wealthy man from a wealthy family. He was known for giving away his family’s fortune to help the poor in secret. He gained notoriety for secretly leaving gifts for children throughout his communities on Christmas Eve. He was a follower of Jesus who took to heart the scriptures we read this morning.
These Saints remind us we are inheritors of their witness of Jesus Christ. The first lines from two prayers in the Book of Common Prayer (page 250, which I recently became acquainted with from Fr. Carey’s Inquirer’s Class) remind us we are not alone. “Almighty God, you have surrounded us with a great cloud of witnesses….” And “Almighty God, by your Holy Spirit you have made us one with your saints in Heaven and on Earth….” the stories are many of those who came before us who followed Jesus and put his teachings into action. Not only from the ancient Saints of the Church, but also from our own families and among our friends, and the members of our Church- Saint Luke’s past and present-come people who have walked with us on our faith journeys to follow Jesus Christ. Who are the people you honor today who taught you to do to others as you would have them do to you? I’ll mention a couple of mine. My parents taught me about the faith; and my father who died in 2018, a United Methodist Minister from the time I was five years old, began every new parish assignment with sermons about God’s love and God’s call for us to love each other (Do to others as you would have them do to you). I’ve been learning ever since how to do that; turns out it’s a life-long effort. Your people taught you how to follow Jesus Christ (be they family, friends, fellow church goers, and others); you’re on this journey together. We are surrounded by the cloud of witnesses who, in Heaven and here on Earth, walk with us as we learn to “do to others as we would have them do to us.” We remember today some of those who have died and entered Heaven ahead of us.
AMEN