All Saints’ Sunday - 5th November
All Saints’ Sunday
5th November
8 am Holy Communion and 11 am Sung Eucharist
The Stream of Blessing
Hebrews 12.18-24
Matthew 5.1-12
Angela Tilby,
Canon of Honour
What do we make of the Beatitudes, the blessings of Jesus gave in the sermon on the Mount? Those mysterious blessings on the people we would normally regard as unblessed: the poor in spirit – that’s all you depressives and anxiety-ridden; those who mourn - that’s all of you who have lost your dearest loved ones, or your health or your purpose in life; the meek - that’s you who are not so good at standing up for yourself - along with people hungry for justice and, with them, the forgiving, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, the persecuted and those who are lied against and slandered.
So much in our contemporary culture, and, even in the life of the Church, flatly contradicts the Beatitudes. Blessed are the talented, the ambitious and the strong, blessed are those who are popular. Blessed are those who are assertive and those who stand up for their rights. Blessed are the competitive, blessed are the plausible, blessed are those who get their due revenge. As Christianity withers from our culture we should expect more and more of this kind of Sunday supplement life-style advice. How to win. How to get rich. How to be happy. It’s what in more Christian days we used to call the wisdom of this world.
But Jesus was not a life-coach and the blessings he pronounced were not intended to make us successful or even to make us feel safe or comfortable. St Paul famously contrasted human wisdom with the foolishness of God, claiming that the weakness of God is stronger than human strength. The Beatitudes are God’s foolishness. They are words to pierce our complacency, our half-heartedness, our self-centredness. And they are hard to hear, hard to bear. They remind us of the terror experienced by the children of Israel on Mt Sinai (Hebrews 12. 19-21) when they could not endure listening to the word of God. The Beatitudes tell us all is not well with the world because all is not well with ourselves. In spite of what we like to believe about ourselves we are mired in self-regard.
And then we look around us at the horrors we are seeing in Israel and Gaza and in Ukraine; we look at what has been revealed by the Covid enquiry about the dysfunction of our government and civil service; we look at the Church, at its loud denunciations of the failure of other institutions and its creepy silence in the face of its own, and we wonder how do the Beatitudes speak into all this? What happens to the poor in spirit, to the meek, to those who long for justice? What happens to the wrongly accused? For most of them: pain, misunderstanding, suffering, rejection. And if we take on some of the burden of listening and trying to understand we ourselves will face opposition and conflict.
And yet, on this All Saints’ Sunday, the Beatitudes are given as the path to holiness, as the language of sainthood. And remember sainthood is not just for “saints.” Those we call saints were not all nice people. Some were rude, some were angular, some cried a lot, some were totally ordinary and unmemorable, some neglected their personal hygiene. But they had one thing in common, an awareness that while they struggled here on earth they were supported by the light of heaven. That lovely Portsmouth motto ‘Heavens light, our guide’ was the way the saints lived, trusting in the invisible, in what is not seen, in the hidden kingdom of love, justice and faithful endurance that Jesus opened for us.
Our true orientation, our true faith, is revealed in the choices we make day by day, year by year through our lifetime. We are either following the wisdom of this world or the wisdom of Jesus, we are becoming either saints or sinners, those whose hearts have expanded to embrace the love of God and those whose hearts have withered into a whine of self-regard and self-pity. Of course here and now, we are both sinners and potential saints; destined to be saints and yet capable of catastrophic sin. There is all to play for, which is why a Christian life should include self-examination, repentance, and the acceptance of God’s forgiveness. And not only our individual lives but our institutions too. I’m not suggesting that it is easy. Think of the current Covid enquiry. Is it just an exercise in apportioning blame? Or a chance to rediscover the Christian values of compassion, mercy and truth which were once regarded as the foundations of a civilised and Christian society?
I recently found some helpful insights in the writing of the poet Malcolm Guite. Malcolm Guite is an extraordinary man, a priest, with long silver hair and a limp. He plays in a rock band as well as writing exquisitely formal poetry on Christian themes. He writes from reflection on the horrors of today’s wars, and, what can we do? And this is his answer: ‘What can we do but stand in the stream of Christ’s teaching, lift his beatitudes back up to him, set his lantern once more upon a hill and pray: “Lord, make these words come true, show and give those blessings of which you speak….”’. Lift those blessings back to him and ask him to show these blessings and give these blessings. When we speak of the saints we speak of men and women who naïve enough, faithful enough and unguarded enough to do just that, to lift the beatitudes back to Christ in lament and hope and faith. In a poem on the Beatitudes Malcom Guite speaks of the sufferings of the present time as veils. You know a veil as something widows used to wear and some brides still do. A veil conceals the face. In Holy Week we veil our crosses and statues which both draws attention to them and hides them from our sight so they become mysteries once again. So, Malcolm Guite suggests, we should look on the sufferings of the world and of our own hearts as mysteries. Here’s his sonnet:
I bless you, who have spelt your blessings out,
And set this lovely lantern on a hill,
Lightening darkness and dispelling doubt
By lifting for a little while the veil.
For longing is the veil of satisfaction
And grief the veil of future happiness.
I glimpse beneath the veil of persecution
The coming kingdom’s overflowing bliss,
O make me pure of heart and help me see
Amongst the shadows and amidst the mourning,
The promised Comforter, alive and free,
The kingdom coming and the Son’s returning,
That even in the pre-dawn dark I might
At once reveal and revel in your light.
So, on this All Saints Sunday turn your eyes to what is invisible, open your ears to what is not yet heard, lift up your hearts, for Christ with all the company of saints, surrounds your steps, his light our guide, on the hard road to heaven.
Angela Tilby
Canon of Honour