All Saints’ Sunday
Year C
All Saints’, Bentonville
Gospel:
Luke 6:20-31
Jesus looked up at his disciples and said:
"Blessed are you who are poor,
for yours is the kingdom of God.
"Blessed are you who are hungry now,
for you will be filled.
"Blessed are you who weep now,
for you will laugh.
"Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets.
"But woe to you who are rich,
for you have received your consolation.
"Woe to you who are full now,
for you will be hungry.
"Woe to you who are laughing now,
for you will mourn and weep.
"Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets
"But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. Do to others as you would have them do to you."
Last Monday my wife Cindee and I took the day off. I awakened that morning with an unusual desire to catch a big fish. I’m not sure where the impulse came from – perhaps a legacy passed on from days of fishing with my late father or maybe from this crazy idea I have that if we harvested all the food we needed from our quarter acre of rocky hillside, and from the lake that laps at the shore below, our carbon footprint on the earth would be a little smaller. In a short time I managed to convince Cindee that we should set out a trotline and catch our supper.
I had seen this process done before, but not since I was a child, when my brothers and Dad and I pulled dozens of catfish from the twisting waters of the Brazos River in Central Texas. Bra-zas we called that river. I later learned that the river had been named by the early Spanish setters – Brazos – Los Brazos de Dios – the arms of God. Our Anglicized way of referring to the Brazos never conveyed just how embraced I felt by that river and those times with my family.
So armed with a vision of good times and a plentiful harvest of fish, Cindee and I climbed into our rather tippy canoe, tied one end of the trotline to our dock and paddled out into the cove to tie the other end of the hookfilled line to the opposite shore.
In almost no time we were thoroughly entangled in an elaborate mess of fishhooks, twisted string, and stinkbait. A goodly number of the baited hooks immediately sank into the expectant arms of a submerged maple tree. It only took a couple of tugs on the tangled line, and Cindee reaching out just a tiny bit too far beyond the edge of the canoe, to send me, not Cindee, just me, flying out of the boat and into the morass of trotline, tree limbs and icy water. It was a baptism… of sorts.
I sputtered to the surface and climbed into the boat. The apprehensive look on my new wife’s face told me that she didn’t know how I would react. When I smiled at her, she smiled back in relief, and we laughed and laughed.
Eventually we collected ourselves, untangled the trotline, rebaited the dangling hooks, secured the ends of the line and left the house to attend a Monday night lecture. Returning home well after dark, armed with our flashlight, we made our way down to the dock. I lifted the line, revealing a succession of disappointingly empty hooks, until… halfway across the cove I could see, reflecting in the light beam, the wide head and muscled upper body of a 10 pound catfish.
Within the hour, I cleaned the fish, bathed him in olive oil, garlic, and spices and popped him in a hot oven. We steamed some kale. And then, in fitting celebration, Cindee said…let’s have martinis. And so we dined, like some royal hillbillies, on martinis, catfish, and kale.
And the next morning I read these words from Luke.
"Blessed are you who are poor,
for yours is the kingdom of God.
"Blessed are you who are hungry now,
for you will be filled.
"Blessed are you who weep now,
for you will laugh.
And I realized that I possess none of these attributes that Jesus says are required for blessedness. I’m not poor. I’m not hungry. And I’m not weeping. How then, in Jesus’ vision of the kingdom, am I to be blessed? How are we who are rich and full and laughing – How are we to inherit the kingdom?
Thankfully, Luke provides an answer in the departing blessing that Jesus gives his listeners.
"But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. Turn the other cheek. If someone asks for your coat, give them your shirt also. Do to others as you would have them do to you."
It is the path to salvation that Jesus holds up for us, over and over again. But it is so easy for us to forget, when we are rich and full and laughing, that most of the world is poor, hungry and weeping.
Outreach is our natural response as a church. Let’s go somewhere and do something good. Let’s start a ministry somewhere. Open a soup kitchen, repair homes, tutor underprivileged kids, visit those in jail, care for the frail elderly …these are natural and good responses to meeting the needs of the world’s poor and disenfranchised. And as the gap between rich and poor grows embarrassingly wide, we are called as a church to help God bless the lives of the poor, the hungry, and those who weep.
But I want to suggest something more. That is, if we are to be full allies with God in the task of blessing the poor and hungry and those who weep, we must bring them into our midst. Otherwise, it’s just too easy to forget, living our satisfied lives, what Jesus asks us to do.
To that end, it is my great pleasure to announce that within the next few weeks we will hold our first Spanish language worship service here at All Saints’. It will be a beginning, like the baptism our newest saints, Eli, Aiden, and Brady is a beginning. Jesus said,”Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you…” Such is the world of the Latino immigrant in Benton County. And Jesus has offered them his blessing. So that we too may participate in the blessing of all God’s Saints, our doors are opened wide.