All saints Day
Appointed Reading:
Matthew 5: 1-9 (10-12)
Today is a good day to pause and reflect on the lives of grace lived by those we know who have departed. It’s a good day to reflect on the grace we have been given and how that impacts our day-to-day thoughts and actions.
Jesus words here sound so comforting. We would all like to have people in our lives that treat us like this. But in reality, our human condition tends to marginalize those whose actions and beliefs are such as these. Mankind’s penchant for ‘self-reliance’ has become an excuse, a defense for lives of narrow self-interest directed towards attaining the ‘good life’. Our sense of transactional relationship is based on actions performed for self-advancement.
Jesus turns the self-interested man towards a God-interested and other interested man. Our transactional culture would say that the people described in these verses have nothing to offer that will enhance their position.
-the poor, the downtrodden of our culture
-the gentle
-the meek
-those who ask,’is that the right thing to do’ or ‘Can we do better’?
-those who show mercy
-the pure in heart
-the peace makers
-those who are mocked because they try to follow this existence-that of Jesus.
No, they are not rewarded by our transactional culture. These are traits of ‘losers, suckers’. These are people who get walked all over. At best, they are naive and at worst they are dangerous to our ‘way of life’. They just don’t get it!
Yet, these are those who are promised the kingdom of God, They are part of God’s community. Not one of us can live this existence completely. Not one of our ‘dearly departed’ did. But, in Christ, God has restored us to the promise again and again. As we, as they did, realize this grace in our lives, may we respond more and more with lives that are steeped in these characteristics of the community of God.
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