Dear Friends,
We are moving toward the Sunday where we celebrate All Saints. This is a beautiful, sometimes sad, and yet wonderful day in the life of the church. When we light some candles and lift names of those who are now with God, a sense of community, the love and encouragement we draw from one another, is very real to us. I’m grateful to you who lead our congregations in remembering – and – in recognizing all that we have in one another, through the Holy Spirit, right now.
Blessed are the Peace Makers. Photo by pittigliani2005/2010. Some rights reserved.
At the end of our services each week, we offer a benediction, some words to take out into the world with us, a blessing upon us we go from our place of worship. I look forward to offering blessings, as a worship leader and pastor, and I enjoy receiving a blessing. My spirit leans in whenever we get to this moment in the service. I feel like a plant turning my leaves toward the sun or like a child being enveloped in the arms of a grandparent. Blessings are offered for free, a gift, to take with us. Blessings are given to be received.
The gospel text is from Matthew 5, The Beatitudes, for All Saints’ Day. These read like blessings, each starting with “Blessed are they.” I came across this poem entitled All-Saints Day (from 1867 or 1868) by Ada Cambridge:
Blessed are they whose baby-souls are bright,
Whose brows are sealèd with the cross of light,
Whom God Himself has deign’d to robe in white –
Blessed are they!
Blessed are they who follow through the wild
His sacred footprints, as a little child;
Who strive to keep their garments undefiled –
Blessed are they!
Blessed are they who commune with the Christ,
Midst holy angels, at the Eucharist –
Who aye seek sunlight through the rain and mist –
Blessed are they!
Blessed are they – the strong in faith and grace –
Who humbly fill their own appointed place;
They who with steadfast patience run the race –
Blessed are they!
Blessed are they who suffer and endure –
They who through thorns and briars walk safe and sure;
Gold in the fire made beautiful and pure! –
Blessed are they!
Blessed are they on whom the angels wait,
To keep them facing the celestial gate,
To help them keep their vows inviolate –
Blessed are they!
Blessed are they to whom, at dead of night, –
In work, in prayer – though veiled from mortal sight,
The great King’s messengers bring love and light –
Blessed are they!
Blessed are they whose labours only cease
When God decrees the quiet, sweet release;
Who lie down calmly in the sleep of peace –
Blessed are they!
Whose dust is angel-guarded, where the flowers
And soft moss cover it, in this earth of ours;
Whose souls are roaming in celestial bowers –
Blessed are they!
Blessed are they – our precious ones – who trod
A pathway for us o’er the rock-strewn sod.
How are they number’d with the saints of God!
Blessed are they!
Blessed are they, elected to sit down
With Christ, in that day of supreme renown,
When His own Bride shall wear her bridal crown –
Blessed are they!
The Beatitudes read a bit like poetry. They are not a list of distinct things beside which we place a checkmark. They are a set, stanas of a poem, perhaps.. Maybe they are connected, like rungs on a ladder. Even better, they are like a painting (as James Howell suggests) of the life of God’s children. 1 John 3:1 says this: “See what love the Father has given us that we should be called the children of God. . . “
We read these words as pictures of who Jesus is. He is all these things: humble and meek, he hungers and thirsts, he is merciful and pure of heart. We have no problem recognizing Jesus here in the Beatitudes. As disciples, we seek to “be like” Jesus – in our words, our actions, in our treatment of others. I wonder: can we read the Beatitudes and receive them as a blessing? Instead of a goal to “do”, can we receive them as a gift? Rather than a commandment, a goal we aspire to today, what if we were blessed? Jesus offers these words to people who had no particular standing, who felt rather oppressed, and offers them blessing. What a delight!
We are children of God and belong to God. When we weave together these scriptures, we find we will be like Jesus in these ways.
Here’s another poem composed by a church member at the request of his pastor. I like the realness and the description he offers of sainthood in the present tense.
“All Saints’ Day”
our pastor posed the question, like a Zen riddle:
if Jesus stood before you
asking, “what do you want me to do for you?”
what would be your answer?
through days of prayer and fasting, grappling with this inquiry
it dawned on me, obvious in hindsight…
ah, but let me digress:
in Catholicism a saint is one who’s been canonized
elevated above the rest, deemed worthy of special status
yet in New Testament reality
the communion of saints is the body of believers
the Mystical Body of Christ, miraculously renewed
what, then, is my request of Jesus?
simply put, sainthood, the real deal,
deliverance from self-preoccupation,
self-deception, every pretense and intellectual conceit,
lack of faith, casual indifference and denial,
fear, confusion, egoic blindness,
in short, an end to The Story of Rick
as our apostle-brother Paul wrote,
“not I, but Christ lives in me” *
or as the Sufis say, die before you die
only to be joyously reborn
through the power of Divine Love
a Spirit of Love who changes everything,
who brings healing and restoration
my prayer is the very same plea
for all of us in this room
for everyone in the freeze-dried, anemic churches
for each of us on this dying yet still-beautiful planet
and so, as they used to say each Sunday
in the Pentecostal tabernacle of my younger days,
“good morning, saints!”
* Gal. 2:20
-Rick Carlson
I am praying for each of you, saints. May the peace of Christ be with you.
If you would like to view past editions of Time with Tara, follow this link: https://harbordistrictnc.org/category/from-the-ds/