Sunday, October 25, 2020

31st Sunday – All Saints Day

The Revised Common Lectionary passages for the Lord’s Day are:

First Reading: Revelation 7:9-17
Psalm 34:1-10, 22
Second Reading: I John 3:103
Gospel Reading: Matthew 5:1-12

The liturgical color for the day is: Green

The celebration of All Saints’ Day falls on a Sunday this year and I would default to preaching on that theme.  The semicontinuous lessons remain a good choice, but the festival readings seem most appropriate for this Lord’s Day.

All of these lessons are great for preaching, and the gospel lesson with the Beatitudes seems especially fitting in a time of cultural division.  It becomes a good prompt for our thinking about what it means to pay attention to those who are poor, mourning, weak and wounded—all in a time when the world is so focused on the powerful and strident over ever single issue before us.

I am, however, most attracted to the complex simplicity of I John 3:1-3.  In a time of global pandemic, our confronting structural racism, a political system that is off the rails from everything we have ever witnessed, and our church all in a state of flux… (Breathe—deep breath in and let it out.)  In the midst of all that we need to hear the Good News. 

What is the Good News?  See. What. Love. (I’ve noticed how the young people do that in text messages; they put a period after every word for emphasis.)  “See what love,” one could stop there.  There is a sermon right there in those few words.  That is the Good News—and it gets even better: That. We. Should. Be. Called. CHILDREN. OF. GOD. (See, I did it again, and I’ve learned that when you use all caps its like shouting.)

This is the Good News—right here in this pandemic and the mess of everything.  That God claims us as God’s very own.  Wow, saints (yes, you, I’m calling you saints), is there a need for anything else?  I don’t know that there is.

Share such Good News!

Rev. Dr. Daris Bultena
General Presbyter and Stated Clerk