by CCW | 1 November 2018 21:00
November is the grey month of remembering. Leaves lie scattered on the wind in piles of burnished gold and red, redolent with the smell of decay. Scattered leaves in a culture of scattered minds. And as if in testimony to the pathetic fallacy in which we attribute human emotions to the natural world, there is no end to doom and gloom in our human world that nature seems to mirror. The spectacle of the shootings at the synagogue in Pittsburgh is still fresh in our minds. And then there is all of the folly and frenzy, the fun and frolic of Halloween in our secular and commercial culture. I don’t know exactly what to make of it. I don’t quite understand why one would want to be frightened or to frighten others and while I get the whole matter of costumes and masks, I am uneasy about ‘trick or treat.’ What does it teach? To be a jihadi or a beggar? Just not sure.
Yet as the counter to these features of the dark of nature’s year and the darkness in the heart of our world, there is the wonderful mystery of All Saints’ which provides a powerful way for us to think more deeply and more spiritually about our humanity as gathered to God in whom we find our real truth and dignity. All Saints’ reminds us of our Christian vocation. It is to a sanctified life which is simply about the qualities of Christ living in us in and through our lives with one another.
All Saints’ recalls us to the Communion of Saints, to the idea of our humanity united through its true forms of diversity in the praise and worship of God. In the culture of scattered leaves and scattered souls, there is a gathering. It is to God and it is God in us. The great lesson from Revelation affords us a vision of heaven. It is not future so much as it is present. It is about the truth of our lives as gathered to God and to the qualities of grace that properly define our humanity. All Hallows’ Eve is not about ghouls and ghosts, of horror and gruesome images of our humanity in disorder and disarray, dismembered and ghastly; it is about the dignity of our humanity as found in God through the truer forms of our humanity. “A multitude that no man could number,” Revelation says, a multitude composed of“nations, kindred, people and tongues.” In other words, a multitude that embraces the legitimate diversities of our humanity in relation to cultures and nations, families and people, different languages and ethnicities. A vision that takes us beyond the tribalisms of our communities and churches and that recalls us to the communion of saints. Our lives are grounded in God and not simply in the accidentalities of time and history, of culture and experience.
All Saints’ calls us to the truth of ourselves. We are part of the community of the redeemed and we are called to do what the heavenly hosts of angels and saints do in giving praise and worship to God. The vision is exquisite and precise. The four and twenty elders represent either the various authors of the Hebrew Scriptures or perhaps more likely the twelve tribes of Israel together with the twelve apostles of the Christian Church. The four living creatures represent the four Gospels; a different creature serves as an image for each of the Gospel drawing upon imagery from Ezekiel and Daniel. The winged man of St. Matthew, the winged lion of St. Mark, the winged ox of St. Luke, and the winged eagle of St. John. All are united in one thing, the praise and worship of God.
A wonderful vision, this is not an escape from our world and day. It is rather more about a deeper and profounder understanding of exactly who we are here and now. It is a vision of our humanity redeemed, garbed in robes of white, to be sure, and yet this is said about those who “have come out of great tribulation.” There is more to human life than just what happens to us. That something more has to do with the quality of our lives in Christ.
This is the point of the Beatitudes. They turn the world on its head in a profound critique of human aspirations and desires apart from God. The Beatitudes are the charter of charity. They ground our lives in God. They signal the qualities of divine love that offer light and grace in the doom and gloom of our world and day. They are all about the necessary conditions of our lives as defined not by our experiences and our ambitions but by God’s will. In a way, they are powerfully subversive. They deliberately undermine our assumptions.
The first and eighth provide the frame. “Blessed are the poor in spirit … blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake.” These are profoundly ethical insights which challenge everything in our dog-eat-dog world. “For theirs is the kingdom of heaven”, we are told. The poor in spirit are not the so-called losers, the walking wounded in the battle of life. The poor in spirit are the humble ones. Humility is the necessary condition for our being open to the realities of the kingdom of heaven. And humility, too, we might say, means a commitment to truth, to what is right in the face of persecution. The humble commit to the truth of God.
The Beatitudes are not the happinesses. They are the blessednesses. There is nothing happy-making about being a mourner, about being persecuted, about so much of what belongs to human experience. Suffering is a part of those realities and All Saints’ does not deny them. The various experiences of our lives become the context in which these qualities of grace can be realized in us. The meek, too, are not the proverbial pathetic ones but simply the gentle ones who know as the proud and arrogant do not that the world is truly God’s world.This counters those whose arrogance leads to domination and destruction of our world and so to its darkness and despair. Those “who hunger and thirst after righteousness” will be satisfied for such desires are found in God first and foremost. Mercy begets mercy; it is, we might say, reciprocal. Among the paradoxes of difference in which there is a contrast between the character of the soul and its reward or truth, as it were, this Beatitude presents the paradox of identity. Mercy for mercy, itself the highest form of justice, of charity. “The pure in heart” shall see God as distinct from our scattered souls and distracted and divided minds. “The peace-makers” “shall be called the children of God.” In all of these we are gathered to God in Christ.
Jesus is the teacher of the Beatitudes and like a good teacher he drives the lesson home. “Blessed are you,” he says, when others revile you, persecute you, and call your good evil. This becomes the occasion not of sorrow, not of anger, not of complaint but of rejoicing. Why? Because out of tribulation comes salvation and joy. We are reminded of the triumph of God’s goodness and grace over human sin and evil. Tribulations become the occasion and setting for the Good.
Fr. David Curry
All Saints’, November 1st, 2018
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