Reform and Remember
Matthew 5:1-12
Gospel Reading for All Saints Day (Year A)
October turns over to November with two significant days that often get buried under a pile of Halloween candy. The 31st is Reformation Day, which remembers Martin Luther nailing 95 theses on the Wittenberg church door protesting the shortcomings he saw in the church of his day. This action is considered the symbolic catalyst for the Protestant Reformation, a movement that dramatically transformed not just the Christian church, but all of Western Civilization.
Then today is All Saints Day. If you want to get into the weeds concerning a church holiday (and I always do), some celebrate All Saints Day as a memory of all the faithful who have gone before us. Others celebrate solely the canonized saints and then remember the rest on All Souls Day the next day. Because of my priesthood-of-all-believers-confessing Baptist roots, I tend towards remembering everyone on the same day. The way I see it, the lessons I learn from St. Francis of Assisi and my Grandma are equally profound and important.
Reformation Day and All Saints Day hold together our past, present, and future. The animating force behind the Reformation is that the church should always be moving forward to God’s calling of us. Since we are all flawed individuals, the Christian institutions are always stumbling in the vocation of loving God and neighbor. Thus we always need to take sober stock of the church’s actions and reform for a more Christlike tomorrow. All Saints celebrates the hope, courage, conviction, and failures of past Christians who can illuminate that way forward.
We need to reform and remember; perhaps now more than ever (though I suppose that is always true). There is good in many places, but we would be kidding ourselves if we said the American church is a shining city on a hill.
I was about to go in a direction in which I enumerated all the ways that we were falling short. This last week or so, I have been fighting the entropy of fear. I am genuinely concerned about what happens next and the church’s complicity in that. But I know from experience that operating from a place of fear and a feeling of scarcity does not move us towards that to which God calls us. So let me try to achieve escape velocity and write this:
God has this dream for this world that is far greater than you or I can imagine. It is a place where every person knows that they were created in the image of God and full of dignity. When people know that they and all around them are loved, they are spurred to pursue justice for one another. They take care of the orphan and widow. They feed the hungry. They seek to undo systems that dehumanize. They care for the creation which provides us all a home. When one faces trials and tribulations, they are not alone because a community comes to wrap them up in love.
It is a place where the poor in spirit and those who mourn can be called blessed. It is a place where a hunger and thirst for righteousness is as common as breathing the air. It is full of mercy and pure. It is a place where people pursue peace. When they face obstacles—because this broken world which has thrived on division will throw every obstacle possible—these people rejoice rather than whine because it means that they are getting somewhere.
It is a great banquet where every child of God has a seat at the table. It is a hospital that binds up the wounds that we inflict on ourselves and sets the bones broken by others. It is every person knowing what it feels like to see God sprinting towards them for an embrace because that is how much they are loved. It is a song, a shout, an infectious burst of joy.
It looks like Jesus. It sounds like the Sermon on the Mount. It is full of heart and humility. It sacrifices and loves. It stands firm against promises of earthly power and selfish pursuits. It stands up to that which would try to co-opt faith for personal gain. It is willing to lay down its life for others. And it has this God who can resurrect it from the dead.
There are beautiful glimpses of this beloved community in the past. The saints—all who followed the way of Jesus—carried this dream around in their being. And when that light shone from them, it transformed the world around them. We ought to search for those spark like a treasure hunter scouring for gold. May those ignite our imagination to dream of ways we can live like Christ today; for Christians to be that light of the world. May we humbly seek God, always remember, always reform.
