“Blessed are you…. who love.”
Blessed are you… who live and love.
Blessed are we… when we dare to live and love.
Blessed are we… when we live this life of ours that gives us the greatest gifts of joy and love but also gives us the heaviest burdens of grief, sorrow, and loss.
Blessed are we all: who are poor in wealth and poor in spirit, who are hungry for the daily bread and the daily spiritual nourishment, who are weeping now because life is tough, and losses are unbearable. Blessed are we all for ours is the kingdom, for we will be filled, for we will laugh again.
And woe, are we when we are so rich that we forget our blessings or ignore the needy; woe are we when we are too full in belly and mind, so we forget how fleeting happiness and fullness may be; woe are we when we laugh and forget that happiness, laughter, and love now is fragile.
Blessed are we when we remember our humanity, our common conditions, our shared responsibility, and our commitment to the other.
This sermon on the plain by Jesus is a sermon at eye level with all of us. It is a promise of comfort and consolation, and it is a reminder of continuing realities of life and love.
Jesus’ words that day on the plain were in eye and heart level, for all to understand and for all to feel. And after all the blessings and woes, after all the promises and warnings, - Jesus said: “But I say to you that listen: Love……” Because that was the one commandment of Jesus: to love. Love your God and your neighbor. Love even if it’s hurt because it is the only way.
“But I say to you that listen: Love…. Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.” Love even when it seems impossible and difficult – embrace even your enemies with love.
“But I say to you that listen love…. And do to others as you would have them do to you.”
It is All Saints Sunday.
It is All Saints Sunday on the first somber Sunday of November.
It is All Saints Sunday as we enter the 11th month of the year when the weather turns colder, and the trees become barren when we turn the clocks back.
It is All Saints Sunday, and it is all about love. Even if we might feel loss, grief, sorrow, and despair, - all of that comes from love.
“Why love, if losing hurts so much?
I have no answers anymore: only the life I have lived. The pain now is part of the happiness then.
That’s the deal.”
Why love when losing hurts so much, we might as. Why love? Why love when the pain now seems to numb the happiness then? Why Love?
All Saints is a day of remembrance and hope, a day of grief and despair. All Saints is a day that embraces the fullness of human life: the blessings and the curses, the beatitudes and the burdens, the light and the darkness, the faith, and the despair.
Today we are here. Carrying with us our blessings and burdens, our loves and our losses, our memories and our hurts. All of it, we bring. And here in church, we may share, we may cry and grieve, we may remember.
Once a young boy said to me in the weeks after the passing of his beloved mother: “People pretend all is as it used to be, but in our home, nothing is like it used to be because my mom used to be there.”
The words of the young boy so fully describe the state of loss we are all dealing with when we lose a beloved person. It seems as if that life ends when we lose. Our world is changed. And nothing is like it was. And at the same time life continues as if nothing has changed: at work, in school, in traffic, in the supermarket, and among friends.
“Why love, if losing hurts so much?” we cry.
We are not always good at giving grief time and space. We are not always good at leaning into grief with the acceptance that it hurts and reminds us of what once was, of our mortality and life’s frailty.
We talk about grief as something we need to work through, manage, process, endure, and bear…. all negative verbs. Something that needs to be done, sooner than later. And thus, grief becomes very private and shameful: as if you have lost faith and you need to deal with it alone. We say time will heal.
On a day like this, we are reminded that grief is an act of bold faith and deep love; that grief needs to be shared with others and that grief is a remembrance and honor of the one we miss. On a day like this, we know that grief is not just in our mind, but in our entire body: in aches and tears, in the deep longing for touch and company.
When Jesus gave his sermon on the plain, looking into the eyes and souls of the rich and poor, the hungry and the feed, the mourning and the happy, - Jesus spoke into that shared humanity that we still experience. The deep longing for comfort, for touch, for company, for love.
Why love and grief ask us? When it hurts so much.
We love because it is the meaning of life, the purpose of our existence, and the joy of being. We love because we receive so much through love, - even if it hurts when we are separated.
It is all Saints, and we are celebrating all the Saints with halos who served well and true through time and history, but we also celebrate all the Saints with flickering halos, like ours. What makes us Saints is not that we are above it all, but that we are in the middle of it all: this life. Working, serving, and making a difference. Remember Martin Luther said we are both Saints and Sinners.
So, as we grieve and remember we might think about mistakes made and endured, sacrifices and sorrow, quarrels and challenges. To remember our lost loved ones, to bring them back into light and life is to reconcile and maybe even forgive and forget to be able to live life now.
Take time to grieve. Take time to heal. But blessed are you who weep now for you will laugh again. Live again. Love again.
So today we give time and place to our grief and our loss. Today we dwell on our memories and our emotions that defy time and separation. And today we do light candles of hope, faith, and love for every one of our saints, whom we miss and still love. Today we remember with gratitude and with grief and we pray with love and longing.
And we continue to love and live as we do believe that
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
Even though I walk through the darkest valley,
I fear no evil; for you are with me.”