O, when the saints go marching in,
O when the saints go marching in,
O Lord, I want to be in that number,
When the saints go marching in.
I love that hymn. Ever since childhood I have imagined the great marching scene. A long procession of heavenly figures dressed in white winds its way through the clouds. It goes on and on, into the stars. The people are different sizes and colors and they all have big smiles on their faces. They glow with joy. When those saints go marching in, yes, Lord, I want to be in that number!
Today we celebrate All Saints, all the heroic men and women who have gone before us in the Church. Some are people we have known and loved but see no longer. Others are those whose stories come alive for us through the scriptures and history. Each one lived faithfully in their own day, following Christ in and out of season.
While the saints may be smiling in that heavenly parade, their lives on earth are full of challenges. The saints struggle with fear and pain and doubt and they know suffering like everyone else. They have to make it up as they go along, just as we do. Their lives witness to God’s constant love and faithfulness, even when others forget.
The Danish philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard described the life of a saint as a cranny though which the infinite peeps. The saints are our peepholes; they give us glimpses of God.
Above all, the saints teach us what God loves: justice, mercy, forgiveness, kindness, compassion, generosity, all the things on God’s wish list for humanity.
The saints have been the poster children for God’s love throughout the ages. We have posters on both sides of our property at Trinity today that say God is love. It sounds simple, doesn’t it? God is love, straight out of the Gospel of John. We post it to remind ourselves and the city of this fundamental truth.
But there is the threat of other signs that bear a different message in Copley Square today. Members of the Westboro Baptist Church from Topeka, Kansas have targeted Trinity and two other churches in Boston this morning. If they picket us in the Square it is because we invite all God’s children to be part of our church.
We recognize God’s love at work in creation as we welcome humanity’s diversity at Trinity. We are diverse in gender, sexual orientation, race, income, age, citizenship, mental ability and religious experience, for starters.
We see these distinctions as signs of the greater mystery of our Creator at work in the world around us. Those who picket from the Topeka church preach a false gospel based on condemnation. In fact, they claim that God hates the people that they hate. They have long lists which include very vulnerable people, such as victims of violence. If you read the group’s literature you will find yourself and everyone you know on the hate list.
The very idea of God having a hate list is blasphemy.
Today at Trinity, we set our sights higher. We are inspired by the saints who lead us toward God’s love. And we are strengthened by the teaching of Jesus, who demands that we respond to hatred with love. It is a tall order, but Christ shows us the way.
Christ always stretches us beyond what we think are our limits. He teaches us that we have a much greater capacity for love than we suspect. He is building a community, a kingdom, where barriers are removed and God’s people are brought together rather than divided.
He begins by leveling the playing field among his own disciples.
The beatitudes we hear today are not the traditional Sermon on the Mount from Matthew’s gospel. This is a different scene from the gospel of Luke. In this story, Jesus comes down from the mountain and stands at eye level on a flat plain. Crowds have come from the north and south to hear him and seek healing.
Jesus looks up and over their heads and calls out to his disciples. He teaches them in the middle of the crowd and uses surprise and contrast to make his point. In a culture where poverty was a source of great shame, Jesus gives special honor to the poor. As for those who are celebrated for having great wealth, Jesus says they have peaked and cannot get anything else out of their riches. His words are as startling to us as they are to his disciples and the crowd.
Jesus also teaches us how to resist evil. He preaches non-violence, which is not the same as being passive. If you want some creative strategies for non-violence, they are right here in the teachings of Jesus. Here are three good ones.
- If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also.
Turning the cheek is meant to confuse the striker. Think about it; if you are trying to give a back-handed slap across the face and the person turns his cheek, it doesn’t work, the nose gets in the way. If this turning keeps up, sooner or later you will switch hands. At the time of Jesus, using the left hand was considered unclean and horrible. So when a victim turns his cheek, the aggressor eventually uses the left hand and looks foolish and shameful. Jesus describes a scene in which power is shifted from the aggressor to the victim. Evil is resisted, but not through violence.
- Or how about: …from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Jesus addresses this to the poor in the crowd who are trapped in debt in an unjust social order. The loan shark demands a man’s overcoat as collateral each morning and the debtor has to get it out of hock every night to sleep in it for warmth. He lives in an endless cycle of intimidation.
Jesus instructs the debtor to give back his coat and to give up the next layer of clothing, too. Since there was no underwear in those days, this means stripping down to nothing. Nakedness was a strict taboo. AND the shame of nakedness did not rest upon the naked person but on the one who looked at him. Shame was in the eye of the beholder. The powerful bill collector is humiliated in the public court as he stares at his nude client! Power has been shifted, an evil system resisted, but there is no violence.
- Finally, elsewhere in the gospel Jesus teaches against retaliation. Giving an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth was the traditional code of ethics. Jesus offers an alternative. He uses an example of bullying that was familiar to his audience. At the time of Christ it was legal for a Roman soldier in the occupying army to make a civilian carry his backpack. Anyone could be forced to carry a 65-85 pound load plus weapons for one mile.
Every road had mile markers, and the burdened citizen would struggle to the marker and dump the load at exactly one mile. It was against the military code to require more than this and soldiers who did so could be severely punished. Jesus says to carry that backpack and then carry it some more. Keep walking on past the mile marker. Go an extra mile. Let the soldier panic that a centurion will catch him breaking military law. Who has the upper hand now: the bully or the victim? So power is temporarily shifted as evil is resisted, and still there is no violence.
Jesus teaches us to stand fast against evil, whether it is bullying or exploitation or any other form. He also teaches us to resist violence. Gandhi once said, Everyone in the world knows that Jesus and His teaching is non-violent, except Christians.
Violence is a primitive vocabulary. Hatred can be a form of moral and intellectual laziness. Sometimes it is easier to attack than exercise restraint and seek other solutions. Perhaps this is why war has been the default mechanism throughout human history.
From Jesus we learn that love is stronger than hate and it leads us to the heart of God. Everything we know about love, we learned first from God. We able to love because God already and always loves us, all of us.
And so today we give thanks for the mystery and abundance of God’s love. We turn away from those who preach hate. We peer through peepholes to God as we honor all the saints. They have served as agents of God’s love for generations. The saints march on across time and memory. Their witness continues to lead us on the path to God.
And when those saints go marching in, when those saints go marching in, O Lord, you and I want to be in their number.
Amen.
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