Wednesday, November 2, 2011

ALL SAINTS SUNDAY/PENTECOST XXI



The commemoration of All Saints (November 1st) has long been a major Christian festival. It is now widely celebrated on the Sunday following. Accordingly there are two sets of readings for this Sunday. This lectionary note is based on the readings for All Saints. A link to the readings for the twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost can be found below.

All Saints' Day, RCL
Revelation 7:9-17 
Psalm 34:1-10, 22 
1 John 3:1-3 
Matthew 5:1-12



The Gospel for All Saints in this year of the lectionary consists in ‘The Beatitudes’, so called because they comprise a list in which each item begins with the word ‘Blessed’. Jesus tells his disciples that they are ‘blessed’ when they are persecuted, reviled and slandered. This is deeply counter-intuitive. It is also contrary to those Old Testament passages where the same word is usually translated ‘happy’ and refers to the emotional and material benefits that can be expected to flow from following God’s law. Here, it seems, Jesus is warning his followers that, in ordinary human terms at least, discipleship is likely to be bad for them.

So why would anyone go in for it? Sometimes the answer is thought to lie with post-mortem rewards – benefits that we can expect in heaven, if only we persist. But to follow Jesus for the sake of future benefits has the unwelcome implication that there is nothing to be gained from faithful discipleship now. A traditional hymn begins ‘My God I love thee not because I hope for heaven thereby’. That seems right.

The short but beautiful Epistle from the first letter of John contains a central Christian affirmation on just this point. The greatest possible blessing in life is ‘that we should be called children of God’ and ‘we are God’s children now’. Speculation about heaven and the hereafter is not really relevant because ‘what we will be has not yet been revealed’.

None of us wants to be persecuted or reviled. Being ‘meek’ or ‘poor in spirit’ is not a goal we are inclined to set our children either. Yet at All Saints we are invited to acknowledge this deep truth.  Though ‘the world did not know it’, the lives of the poor and persecuted who truly lived as ‘children of God’ were as blessed as we can ever hope our own will be.




Readings for Pentecost 21 
Joshua 24:1-3a, 14-25 
Psalm 78:1-7 or 
Wisdom of Solomon 6:12-16 or 
Amos 5:18-24 
Wisdom of Solomon 6:17-20 
or Psalm 70 
1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 
Matthew 25:1-13

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