Reflection on Luke 6:20-31

All Saints Sunday has caused my mind to wander and think about my grandma.  She died in the past year and my family still feels her loss quite profoundly.  She was the one who made sure that the family got together, whether if it was at Christmas or, most recently, during a summertime reunion.  When she was successful in herding all of us cats from our various corners of life, our family gatherings ended up being quite interesting, to say the least. 

You see, the members of our family are quite diverse in our social and economic status.  At one of these summer gatherings you had the part of the family who had graduate school under their belts sitting with a cousin who had an ankle bracelet to monitor his parole. 

You had a couple who scraped the bottom of the money barrel to just get ham sandwiches to bring to the table sitting with those who can afford an online meal delivery service. 

You get the idea: rich and poor…sinner and saint were all gathered together around the same sliver filled picnic tables in the city park.  My grandma even invited both my construction worker uncle and his now college educated ex-wife to the gathering…they did not sit together. 

It was important to my grandma that everyone be included.  It was important to my grandma that no one was left out.  After-all, we were family, and family does not leave anyone out.

Blessed are the poor, you shall get to sit at the sliver prone tables just like everyone else. 

Blessed are the hungry, you will get to eat grandma’s roast just like everyone else. 

Blessed are you who weep with ankle bracelets and broken lives, you get to laugh while playing UNO with everyone else. 

Blessed are the former aunts and uncles who used to assume that they were invited to these things, but now must wonder if the family has turned against them because of hardship, politics, religion, or divorce. 

Come and sit at the table, you are welcome.

My grandma cared deeply for all her family.  She rejoiced at each of our triumphs and felt the depths of all of our sorrows.  Her gravelly voice was a comfort on the other side of the phone as we each periodically shared the details of our lives.  And, she so looked forward to these family gatherings where we could all share our lives with one another face to face rather than hearing about each other’s lives through her conversations.

Grandma had little time for those of us who were doing well in life disparaging those who were not. 

“I’m your grandma, I remember when you threw a tantrum over not getting a Hot Wheel car at K-Mart.  You are not any better than anyone else,” she would remind us on our most high horse days.

Look out if you are rich, you are no better than anyone else. 

Look out if you are full, you could be eating ham sandwiches for supper tomorrow. 

Look out if you laugh at other’s misfortunes, no life is immune to hardship. 

Look out if you are at the top of the social order, the top is a perilous perch upon which you stand.

For my grandma, the family gatherings were a time when all the pretenses and social standings could all be forgotten and we could all just gather together at the same level…on the same plain…no one being higher than anyone else…everyone just as able to suffer the sharp vengeance of the picnic tables as anyone else.  Everyone shares food together and everyone loves each other because, after-all, we are family and that is what family does. 

Love your enemy.  Love your ex. 

Pray for those who look down on you.  Pray for those who try to astonish with an expensive cheesecake when all you could bring was Mac-and-Cheese. 

Share the food together. 

Forgive the past and join in the UNO game. 

Treat everyone as you would want to be treated.

I love my grandma.  I love how these biblical truths were so ingrained in her that they were simply an automatic way of life.  I love how her family gatherings so closely mirrored the Lord’s table where rich and poor, powerful and week, righteous and sinner all gather together to eat the same food and receive the same salvation of Jesus Christ. 

I love how she refused to label some of us as saints and others as sinners.  Rather, we were just family…her family…all in need of love and connection with one another. 

I love her heavenly desire to draw everyone together, just as Christ desires to draw all together through the salvation and forgiveness found in the cross as we see revealed in Colossians. 

And, I love her hope that the gatherings would all, somehow, work out in the end for the good of the family, just as Jesus desires the kingdom to finally come and God’s will be done.

As Christians, we give thanks for how the Bible brings us the words of life, and I also give thanks for how my Grandma made those Biblical words come alive in a very real way. 

She was a saint of God who clearly lived in God’s grace.  She was a saint of God who followed the vision of Jesus and made sure that we children lived it, at least once or twice a year at a family gathering. 

She was a saint of God who understood grace, love, and acceptance. 

She was a saint of God who probably was not much different from other saints who you are now thinking of as I tell her story.  I am quite certain that you could have written this sermon and referenced your own grandma, or aunt, or sister, or son, or dear friend.  You could have told of the ways that the truths of Jesus Christ were made alive through their lives in very real ways.

In fact, I want you to do that right now.  I want you to take just a minute to share through an email to someone or through a social media post, or just plain old conversation with someone else, how God’s grace worked through the saint that you are remembering and how, through them, God touched your life.

           

We give thanks for all these saints through whom Jesus has made the faith come alive for us.  We give thanks for these imperfect people…with all their faults…who none-the-less Jesus was able to use to teach us about the truth of God’s grace, God’s love, and God’s forgiveness. 

Blessed are they. 

Blessed are they who see Jesus. 

Blessed are they who live in the kingdom of God.