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S. All Saints (Observed) 11.3.24 Matt. 5:1-12

What is a saint?

Jesus uses the word “blessed” μακαριος in Greek and it simply means in this context those who enjoy God’s favor. Nearly all English translations will use the word “blessed” again in Matt. 25:34 when Jesus tells us what will happen at the last day: the dead are raised and all are gathered before the throne and Jesus separates humanity into 2 groups—sheep and goats. And he says to the sheep: “come you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you…”

Except it’s not μακαριος this time, it’s a different Greek word: ευλογεω, which is literally “good-worded”. Since that sounds… weird, in English, I see why most go with “blessed”. But, it expands our idea of blessedness, or saintliness, doesn’t it? God’s favor comes not from anything we do, but what he does to us by “good-wording” ευλογεω-ing us (the λογος, Greek for word, is made flesh in Jesus you may recall 😉

It’s what Jesus does for us, what he thinks of us, what he proclaims us to be, that makes God favorable towards us, well-pleased with us. That All Saints is literally the day after Reformation is no accident. Luther, nearly alone among the church fathers, clearly sees what it is that makes us holy, that makes God happy with us: it’s what we receive from Jesus as beggars after all that does the trick and nothing, absolutely nothing that we do for God!!!

The medieval Roman church thoroughly screwed up the Gospel notion of holiness for everybody, for centuries! Luther shows how really, truly awful the medieval Roman church is, for making the chief act of the Liturgy, the Lord’s Supper, not a gift of grace that Jesus gives us, forgiving our sins and covering us with his righteousness by eating his body and drinking his blood faithfully, but instead, turning it from a pure gift of God into a bizarre sacrifice that we are supposedly offering to God(!) on account of which we earn God’s favor for our “work”!

Which is… stupid! Jesus sacrificed himself on the cross for us once for all, April 6 30 AD, and all sacrifice was finished on that Good Friday. How can you imagine you could take Jesus’ body and blood that he makes present by his good-wording (in Matt. 26:26 this is what Jesus does to the bread and cup of his Supper: he “blesses” that is ευλογεω “good-words” it!) how could you take that divinely amazing GIFT and imagine you can offer that up to God as a sacrifice to pay for your sins and those of others you have the Mass said for!!!???

It’s… stupid! But worse, it’s blasphemous. It take the very notion of holiness that scriptures give us and twists it 180* around to make it a work we do to win God’s favor instead of a work he does to favor us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

And Rome still does this, blatantly. An old grad school buddy of mine invited me last March for a weekend visit to Manhattan where he lives and edits a religious-political journal. He grew up Episcopalian but swam the Tiber to Rome in 2004. He took me to Mass at a tony midtown Manhattan parish. It was the first Mass I’d ever attended that was in English.

And I was floored at how the priest rattled on and on, lifting up the consecrated elements (that he thinks he’s turned into Jesus’ body and blood by some magic power of his rather than Jesus’ good-words spoken once for all in the Upper Room early Good Friday) droning on about how we’re offering this sacrifice to take away our sins. It made me so mad, I had to leave and fume in the cafe across the street, resolving to preach more forcefully against the papalist tyranny of Rome following that joyful, Lutheran tradition!

The sermon that preceded this abomination was on John 3:16. I thought we’d hear a solid Gospel message on how God loves us for Christ’s sake! But… “oh, no! I’m sorry. It’s “moops!”. The priest got up and said “Why does God love you? 3 reasons 1) you come to Mass on Sunday; 2) you do what the pope says, just because; and 3) you will keep your Lenten fast” (it was Lent). I was floored. It’s just so bad.

It really makes you appreciate Luther, more!

But the Roman idea of holiness as something we do has totally wrecked our notion of what and who the saints are. You can read the Beatitudes as something the saints do if you’ve heard too much of this nonsense. As if the saints made themselves poor in spirit, sorrowful and meek, as if they achieved righteousness by hungering, by trying real hard, as if the mercy they show is what makes them merciful, as if their purity of heart was achieved by sacrificing Jesus’ body over and over (along with the rest of their worldly goods) as if their peacemaking efforts in the world has made them sons of God.

But… no. God favors us by doing a tear-down and rebuild on us. We’re like a rotten old house, rat-infested, broken down, falling apart. Not a house a King can come and dwell in. God favors us not because we’re poor in spirit, but by making us poor in spirit.

Hmmm…. how would he do that? Well, by the Law, the 10 commandments, that show what a good person looks like—making it apparent we have failed at every single of the 10 points to be good. This robs us of any notion that we’re actually good or that there is anything in us that God could favor or be pleased with. We’re like dead vines that nothing can be built with, but are only good for burning in the fire.

The mourning over our sorry state follows from the shock of the Law’s condemnation. But when we’re poor in spirit, our hands and hearts are open to receive an alien righteousness—the good-wording of Jesus that declares us righteous because of his taking our sin on himself at the Jordan, bearing it for 3 tough years and dying of it horribly on the cross and rising victorious on the 3rd day with sin destroyed and the gates of heaven propped wide open.

This is the righteousness the Word makes us hungry for, a hunger that will be satisfied by Jesus’ gifts of Word and Sacrament, and by those, alone. His Baptism has filled us with mercy by the forgiveness of sins and overflows. Purity of heart is to will one thing: to be whatever Jesus wants us to be!—and, if a total tear-down and re-build is needed to make him happy with us, then… BRING IT!

All the persecution the world heaps on us—as Rome did to Luther and Co., as the world still does because we cling to the alien righteousness of Jesus by grace, through faith, for Christ’s sake—helps burn off the last vestiges of self-righteousness. So we rejoice and are glad to share, in a small way, the sufferings of Christ, knowing that those sufferings make us blessed, favored by God, good-worded by Jesus.

What is a saint? Someone who says Amen! to that… In Jesus’ Name.