Matthew 5: 1 12 Gone Where? November 2, 2014 (All Saints Day) Rev. Lou Nyiri

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1 Matthew 5: 1 12 Gone Where? November 2, 2014 (All Saints Day) Rev. Lou Nyiri Read Scripture [9:30 a.m. Lou introduces the video clip Matthew 5 & we watch it ] On this Sunday closest to All Saints Day, we in the church, take time to remember and be thankful for those we love who have died since last All Saints Day. We give thanks, in the words of our Witness to the Resurrection liturgy, (what some might refer to as a funeral service) for all the servants who, having lived this life in faith, now live eternally with God. [We] especially give thanks for the chance we are given to know another of God s servant s in our loved ones and we recall everything in them that was good and kind and faithful for the grace God has shown our loved one Often, over the course, of the days following a loved one s death or in the services where we gather to remind ourselves of the gifts these loved ones have bestowed upon us we recall how their lives have shared with us some of the beatitude markers which we read this morning we often can recall how an interaction or two with loved ones has served to bring the kingdom of God a bit closer to us by helping us to see who it is God desires us to be. We are attracted to such qualities in people, aren t we? Blessed are the poor which can imply literal poverty though aren t we also attracted to those who possess the quality of life that lives without a sense of arrogance a sense of one s need the person who forego bolstering robust egos & strong sense of self worth in favor of identifying their security is in God. Their identity is not in what they know and rather in having a certain (poverty of) spirit. Blessed are those who mourn Matthew s writer taps into the deep biblical tradition which characterizes God s people as they lament the present condition of God s people & God s program in the world. This community of faithful people is not resigned to the present condition of the world as final, rather it laments the fact that God s kingdom has not yet come and that God s will is not yet done. This kind of person knows that while it may not be as it should be one day it will and for that they await with anticipation. Blessed are the ones who hunger & thirst for righteousness Righteousness is a key Matthean concept which marries together the primary understanding of actively doing God s will & its Old Testament counter melody of way God will make things right in the end. For Matthew, then those who hunger & thirst for righteousness are not merely those who long to be personally pious or idealistic dreamers or do gooders they are also persons who long for the coming of Page 1 of 5

2 God s kingdom & the vindication of right which will come with it & furthermore, on the basis of such hope, these people actively do God s will now. Blessed are the pure in heart This is Matthew s way of clarifying what the focus is really all about it s not about filling one s mind with wholesome thoughts, rather it is Matthew s way of referring to the single minded devotion to God appropriate to a monotheistic faith. It is, in the words of Psalm 86, having an undivided heart. Faith in the one God requires that one be devoted to God with all one s heart. It s not about adding one more thing to the list it s about setting our hearts on the one thing that matters and guides us in this life and the next! We ve all known people who possess qualities such as these and we ve been drawn to them there s something about their outlook their demeanor their life perspective that reels us in. Perhaps as we reflect on our own life encounters with those we love who have died, we can see how some of these beatitudes were lived out in their lives. For some it may even seem as though the beatitudinal characteristic (and yes, I just made up a word there) was part of their genetic makeup. It s as if it was there from birth or perhaps as is more likely the case it was written into the DNA of the person over the course of a lifetime as he or she made choices along the way to live into the life God has given them. The beatitudes however are not prescriptive in that they do not lay out a get rich blessing scheme; rather they help us to see life as it can be. The form of the beatitudes is not, if you will x, then y, or whoever x, then y, instead the beatitudes unconditionally declare that those who are x will be y. The beatitude brings into being what it is saying. They are not entrance requirements for outsiders rather they are declaration statements about insiders. And it s not even about being on the outside or being on the inside it s about being who God desires us to be it s about living in such a way that our lives declare to the world that we march to the beat of different drum line we take our cues from another source we live not for this world we live for something greater than this world & until we have the chance to see that other greater world first hand we will live in such a way as to bring that world into this world in the words of our greatest prayer The Lord s Prayer thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven The beatitudes then could be thought of as a form of gospel of Good News. Those whose lives exhibit such qualities might very well be called saints now, while we make such a statement let us do so clinging to our humanity which reminds us that we call them saints not because they are perfect in every way rather they have chosen to allow us to see their humanity lived out in such a way that they seek & desire to follow God. The words of Robert Louis Stevenson come to mind, The saints are the sinners who keep on trying. Page 2 of 5

3 Or perhaps, as I ve shared with you before, the words of Louis A. Nyiri (my father), The only thing keeping your halo up is your horns. St. Vincent is a recently released movie starring Bill Murray and Melissa McCarthy, which captures the essence of these two statements. I read a review of the movie online at Spirituality and Practice in which the reviewers put St. Vincent on their list of the Most Spiritually Literate Films of While I ve not seen the movie based upon trailers and this review I have placed it on my list of must sees. Vincent is an anti social, angry man whose only companion later in life is a white Persian cat. In the opening scene of the film, single mom Maggie and her 12 year old son Oliver are moving in next door when the movers knock a branch off a tree in Vincent s yard and damage his car. He yells at the movers and threatens to sue his new neighbor. The uncomplicated image of Vincent is that he is a nasty and selfish old man. Out of desperation, Maggie hires Vincent to watch Oliver. Vincent agrees to in order to pay off some gambling debts. When Oliver is beaten up at school, his new caretaker teaches him how to break the bully s nose. Justifying it with words like, It s okay, you ll never get close enough to actually do it. Oliver, however, does get close enough and does break the bully s nose and Vincent is impressed. Oliver attends St. Patrick s School in Brooklyn and is given the assignment: locate and report on a real person you think might qualify as a living saint among us. Oliver decides to do his paper on Vincent and finds out how much of a challenge it is to find out more things about him because Vincent says so little about himself. During the course of their friendship, Oliver sees Vincent s loneliness, disappointment and the many ways in which he is quite self destructive. Most mysterious of all to Oliver are the regular visits Vincent makes to a woman named Sandy who lives at a nursing home and the love and beauty Vincent lavishes on her. Recalling Stevenson s words, Vincent definitely qualifies as a sinner who keeps on trying trying to be good and to do good. Frederick Buechner writes in The Clown in the Belfry how A saint is a life giver a human being with the same sort of hang ups and abysses as the rest of us, but if a saint touches your life, you come alive in a new way. As the movie unfolds, the viewer sees how Vincent helps Oliver come alive in new ways teaching him many practical things and giving him courage to take risks and stand up for his principles. And, isn t that the beauty of saints, that there is such an incredible variety? Take our Christian history for instance, there are traditional saints such as Francis of Assisi or Joan of Arc; lesser known saints such as Elizabeth of Hungary. More appealing to progressives in all religious Page 3 of 5

4 traditions is the inclusion of contemporary prophets as saints Ghandi or Dietrich Bonhoeffer; and artists, poets and scholars such as Flannery O Connor, G.K. Chesterton, or Albert Camus. And then there are those who live in our neighborhoods and families those who will never be officially bequeathed the title of saint and yet who help us to come alive in new ways. It is as Robert Benson writes, All of the places of our lives are sanctuaries; some of them just happen to have steeples. And all of the people in our lives are saints; it is just that some of them have day jobs and most will never have feast days named for them. (Between the Dreaming and the Coming True) It is reminiscent of the old sermon illustration about the little girl whose pastor asked her, What is a saint? This little girl thought about the stained glass windows in her church and said, A saint is somebody whom the light shines through. Frederica Mathewes Green in The Open Door has said of this illustration, There s something I particularly like about that analogy; it s that the brighter the light becomes, the more different the windows look from one another. At dusk, you can tell that the windows show a row of saints, but you can t tell who s who. When the light is at its brightest, every details stands out distinctly. It s like that with saints; the more they are filled with light, the more different they are from one another. Saints transform the world and in the process encourage us to flourish. And the best part of all is that when we say good bye to them in this life, we do so with the conviction of faith that we will one day say hello in the next life the resurrected life that is our faith claim I close this morning, with the following story from Henry VanDyke it is entitled The Parable of Immortality: I am standing upon the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength. I stand and watch her until at length she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where sea and sky come to mingle with each other. Then someone at my side says, There she is gone! Gone where? Gone from my sight that is all. She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side and she is just as able to bear her load of living freight to her destined port. Page 4 of 5

5 Her diminished size is in me, not in her. And just at the moment when someone at my side says, There she is gone! there are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices ready to take up the glad shout, Here she comes! And that is dying. Gone Where? It s a good question one which our faith decisively answers. In this life and the next we belong heart and soul to Almighty God Alleluia & Amen. Page 5 of 5