You are blessed, you are Christ, and you are becoming Christ: trust the One who knows.
Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
All Saints Day, year A
Texts: 1 John 3:1-3; Matthew 5:1-12; Revelation 7:9-17
Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
Do you know how much like Christ you already are?
Do you see yourself as God sees you? People in our community, I’ve learned, are ones who can easily name their weaknesses, their flaws. I don’t see people puffed up about themselves here. I do see people who feel that they don’t measure up well to the life of Christ we are called to walk.
The world doesn’t know who we are, the elder of 1 John says, because the world doesn’t know God. But we also don’t know who we are, the elder says. We’re God’s children, but we don’t know fully what that means, or who we are becoming. We don’t know if we are at all like Christ right now.
We’re told today that when Christ is revealed we’ll also be revealed as who we really are, as Christ. And most of us – perhaps especially on All Saints Day – might hear that as happening “when we get to heaven.”
But the thing is, Christ has already been revealed to us. To you. To the world. Through Jesus’ life, teachings, death, and resurrection, and now through the Spirit’s life in you, you already know Christ.
Which means who you are meant to be is being revealed right now. Now is when you look more and more like Christ yourself.
But it’s really hard to see ourselves as God sees. Even as others see.
There’s no mirror you have that can show you the truth about the heart of Christ in you, about how you look like God’s child. You probably don’t have a great sense of how you are living the vulnerable path of love of God and love of neighbor. You see your flaws, your failings, because you know how you think, and how your heart is sometimes, and you can’t see what others see in you.
And on All Saints Day, that vision challenge is complicated by how we think of those we love who have died. When someone we dearly love dies, we often tend to put them on a pedestal as the years go by, remembering only their goodness, the love they showed to us and to others. And that’s good, it’s a holy thing. Would that we all were remembered only for the love we were and did, all our sins and failures forgotten by those who remember us.
But that makes it hard to see yourself clearly in comparison to such goodness. To see your loving heart as God sees it. To see the ways you are God’s love to your family or your neighbor or this world.
So who really knows the truth about who you are?
In Revelation this morning, one of the elders asks John who these white-robed martyrs are who surround God’s throne, this vast multitude from every nation, every tribe, every language, from all peoples of the earth. And John, with great wisdom, says: “Sir, you are the one who knows.” Just as Ezekiel in the valley of dry bones, when God asks if those bones can live, wisely says, “O God, the I-Am, you know.”
There’s your answer. Maybe you can’t see yourself as God’s child the way God does. Maybe you see the ways you fail to be Christ more than the ways you are Christ. But God knows who you are. And Jesus, the face of the Triune God for us, God-with-us, sees you as you are: a blessed child of God who is making a difference as Christ in the world. Ask Jesus, he knows. He knows who you are now, and who you will be, not just in the life to come but in this life here.
This is what Jesus knows.
He knows you can be poor in spirit, despairing over this suffering world, or over your failings, or your fear of the future, that you feel inadequate, weak, in your faith in God, and he blesses that. Jesus doesn’t see that as a failure. Jesus says you are blessed when you are this way, because God’s reign isn’t something you earn by a strong faith, it’s your gift as God’s child.
Jesus knows that you mourn sometimes, and he blesses that. When you feel pain and grief for your neighbors, for children around the world devastated by violence, daily sacrificed to human pride and greed and evil. You are not failing when your heart is breaking, Jesus says. You are blessed because God’s heart is breaking, too. Your heart is one with God’s when you mourn. And God is with you, child of God, to comfort you.
Jesus knows you can be gentle, and show mercy, and he blesses that. Your empathy is a sign that your heart is God’s. The gentleness you show instead of cruelty is a sign that the whole creation belongs to you, matters to you. The mercy you show instead of retribution is a sign that you have received mercy yourself and it has changed your heart, child of God.
Jesus knows that you hunger and thirst for God’s righteousness to fill this world, and he blesses that. When you look at this election and wonder when we can turn toward a society where all are safe and whole and loved, all are fed and sheltered, none are oppressed. All these things God longs for, the things the prophets declare, all that righteousness, when you want that to happen so badly you feel the pain of hunger and thirst, you are blessed, because you share Christ’s hunger and thirst. You will be filled, Jesus says, and see God’s healing come to this world.
And Jesus knows you try to make peace, and he blesses that. Maybe you don’t have influence on the huge wars and violence and hatred raging in our world, but you are blessed when you are a peacemaker in your family. To your neighbors. In your voting. When you choose peace with God’s justice, you are living as God’s child, Jesus says.
You don’t have to see yourself as God sees you. You only have to trust God’s vision.
Trust that God knows what you don’t. Trust that these ways of God Jesus describes, so different from the ways of the world, are signs to you that you are already living as Christ in your world. Whenever you see any of them in you, trust that. Trust that Jesus doesn’t lie, and that you are blessed. Even when you see your failings, the flaws, don’t just trust God’s forgiveness. Trust that God sees your truth beyond the flaws, a truth that is shining a light in the world.
And since we can see others better than we see ourselves, let’s all start saying what we see. When you see Christ in your sibling here, when you see God’s heart in them, when God’s love touches you because of them, let them know what you see. Assume no one really thinks they’re living as Christ calls them to live, and tell them when you see that they are.
You are blessed, child of God. You are a blessing in this world. God sees you. And is with you as you walk as Christ in this world, shining through all you do. Even when, maybe especially when, you don’t know it.
In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
