All Saints’ Sunday
Dear friends in Christ. We confess in the Creed that we believe in the Communion of saints. That’s what this All Saints’ Sunday is all about. Christianity is not a “me and Jesus” sort of thing, but it is me and Jesus together with all my fellow Christians—both the living and the dead: the communion of saints.
What a joyous comfort this is as we mourn over our loved ones who died in the faith. They are not dead and buried and gone. Instead, yes, their bodies are in the ground, but their souls are with the angels and the holy Triune God in heaven. They are alive in bliss enjoying the Beatific Vision, beholding God Himself. They are, with us, awaiting the resurrection of the body on the Last Day. The holy Apostle describes the saints this way [Heb. 12.1]: Therefore we also are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses. The Therefore comes after what? –Right after the holy writer goes through pointing out so many OT heroes of faith, saints.
The saints, those who have gone before us in the faith—not just “the big names” but also those Christians near and dear to us personally whom most other people never heard of, are part of a great cloud of witnesses that surround us. The saints have left us examples that give us courage. They are more than spectators cheering us on to finish the race/ our life in the Christian faith. Instead, they are witnesses, encouraging us by their own lives.
Here our Lutheran Confessions rightly recognize that we should honor the saints. Because the saints are witnesses, we should imitate them first, in faith and their other virtues. We then should give God thanks for them and their example. And here, for us, the saints truly serve to strengthen our faith as we see God so busy and active with His grace in their lives forgiving them their sin, showing them mercy, and bringing them safely through this life to Himself in heaven; here we are certain that just as God was gracious and merciful to the saints now in heaven in forgiving them their sin and keeping them in the faith, working all things for their eternal good, He will do the same for us.
The saints are the saints in heaven today, just like we, dear Christian, are the saints on earth today, only because of Jesus. It is His holy, perfect, sinless life that is credited to us; it is the forgiveness of sins He won for us on the cross that is given to us and which we, in Spirit-worked faith, believe and receive. In other words, the saints are saints, we are saints because we are connected to/ bound to Jesus—and this through the Sacrament of Holy Baptism. The life that we now live as Christians is a life in which Jesus is in us.
What type of life is it that we live as Christians, a life in which Jesus is in us? That’s what Jesus describes in our text, the Beatitudes, from the beginning of His Sermon on the Mount--Blessed. In Jesus it is a Blessed life. In the Beatitudes Jesus is not setting down a whole series of laws—you have to do this/ not do that, etc. Instead, He is describing our lives as Christians, our lives in Him; our lives as He is in us, leading and empowering us by the Holy Spirit. Notice the focus, as Christians because we are connected to Jesus in Baptism, because He is in us and we are in Him, our lives will be/ are naturally different. It’s not a new law—like in today’s text, that we have to be merciful. Instead, in a life in Jesus and He in us, we will be merciful because we want to be. To put it differently, as Christians we will be different because a life of love, mercy and good works flows from faith. In Jesus we are blessed—God so declares it and our lives show it. The Beatitudes, then, describe us Christians now, as we are already in this life.
Today as we ponder specifically the fifth Beatitude: Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy, the question comes: what does mercy mean? The simple definition of mercy is: love set in motion and expressed in action; a person receives not what they deserve but what they need.
All of us have received nothing but the mercy of God—that is, not what we deserve but what we need. After all, by our sins we only deserve God’s punishment and wrath both now and forever. But what does God the Father do?—He shows us mercy, not giving us what we deserve but what we need. Later on in His Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says [Mt 5.45]: your Father in heaven…makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good and He sends rain on the just and on the unjust; and in another sermon Jesus says of God the Father [Lk. 6.35]: He is kind to the unthankful and evil. Again, from God the Father we all receive pure mercy—not what we deserve but what we need. All that we are and have is purely the result of God’s mercy.
We see the mercy of Jesus, the Son, the Second Person of the holy Trinity. His whole work in coming to this earth, taking on human flesh and blood, placing Himself under the Law of God, suffering and dying to pay the price for our sins and to reconcile us sinners to the holy God was nothing but pure mercy; it was precisely what we needed; and precisely because we needed rescue from sin and damnation, because we couldn’t save ourselves, we didn’t deserve it. But Jesus, the true God, became also true man and carried out the work to save us because He is merciful, as the apostle writes [Heb. 2.17]: in all things He had to be made like His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful High Priest in the service of God.
In the same way, the Holy Spirit is merciful, coming to us poor sinners, who in no way deserved any good gift of God and through the water and the word of Holy Baptism created true faith in Jesus in our hearts to receive Him and His work, to wash away our sin and bring us into God’s holy family and give us every heavenly and spiritual gift in Jesus. The mercy of the holy Triune God toward us poor sinners is so overwhelming that we cannot ponder it enough nor sufficiently thank Him for it.
What does Jesus say in that Fifth Beatitude? Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. We are the recipients of God’s mercy and we Christians know it! So if we have received God’s mercy, how, then, can we not be merciful to others?
So properly speaking, for us Christians, being merciful is a fruit of faith. Just like an apple tree bears all sorts of apples, so too is faith the tree that produces all sorts of fruits of blessedness—like mercy. Mercy that we show others is not the “natural” mercy that is occasionally found among people [although in fact, many of the institutions and works of mercy in the world today are directly traceable to Christianity and/or its influence and effect]. Instead, the mercy we Christians show is the fruit of faith; it comes from having experienced God’s mercy first. We become merciful when we come to faith, when we experience mercy at the hands of God.
Also notice as well: Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. Jesus pronounces His Christians, His saints Blessed. This is not cause and effect; our blessedness is not a reward. The Christian/ saint, the one who experienced God’s mercy first, already is Blessed. Because we have experienced God’s mercy and have been brought to faith in Jesus, because we are the ones in whom Jesus dwells, our lives are different: as we go out and live lives of mercy, others recognize us as merciful and then we are recognized for what we are Blessed—by God—Blessed are the merciful.
2. Already now in this life we, dear Christian, are Blessed. Our blessedness is not something that will first come once we are one of the saints in heaven or on the Last Day. Just like eternal life begins the moment the Holy Spirit brings us to faith [Jn 5.24], so too our blessedness begins with the gift of faith and the indwelling of Jesus, in fact, the Triune God, in us. As we saints/ Christians have Jesus in us, we begin to live lives more and more of mercy and others recognize us as Blessed, the Blessed of/by God.
Our lives as Christians are lives of true holiness, which is merciful and sympathetic. Our lives of mercy show themselves in doing good to those who are outwardly poor and in need of help. Here we remember our Lord’s description of the final public judgment that we hear towards the end of St. Matthew’s Gospel. In it He addresses His Christians, those whose faith was shown to be a real faith, evidenced by works—works of mercy [Mt. 25.34-36]: Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: for I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was thirsty and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in; I was naked and you clothed Me; I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison and you came to Me. These are works of mercy: Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.
Just as we have received mercy from God, so we show that same mercy to those in need. Mercy only asks what a person needs, not what they deserve.
But mercy goes beyond the physical needs. Showing mercy also means gladly forgiving the sinful and the frail. Forgiveness and mercy go together. Dear Christian, we know and believe that God has shown us mercy and in Jesus has forgiven us our sin. All around us are sinners that have need of forgiveness—that we forgive them; just like we have need of God to forgive us our sin and we have need to be forgiven by others the sins we have committed against them. But if we do not forgive others who sin against us, who need our forgiveness, what does it show? –that God’s forgiveness has not permeated our lives; it shows that we have squelched Jesus in us who has shown us mercy and has forgiven us; it shows that we do not treasure the mercy shown to us—and in fact, that we don’t think we need any mercy. In Jesus’ parable of the unforgiving servant, the one servant owes the king a huge unrepayable sum of money and the king forgives his debt; but that servant right away goes out and sees a fellow servant who owes him a far lesser amount and demands immediate payment, or else! The king gets wind of this and calls in the servant whose debt he forgave and said [Mt. 18.33-35], “Should you not also have had compassion on your fellow servant, just as I had pity on you?” And his master was angry, and delivered him to the torturers until he should pay all that was due him. So My heavenly Father also will do to you if each of you, from his heart, does not forgive his brother his trespasses.
So why is this the picture of the Christian—Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy? We see, feel, experience mercy from God in our lives—not condemnation—and that’s why as Christians, who have experienced God’s mercy, we are merciful and do not hold others accountable for their sins but from our heart we forgive them. We are being shown and experience God’s mercy to us who in Jesus took our well-deserved sufferings for sin upon Himself to give us His kingdom and to free us from captivity to the devil. This is why we are now saints and the saints in heaven are the saints in heaven—God’s mercy! And as we continue to show mercy, we are living in the mercy we have received. And through Spirit-worked faith, we are continuing to receive the Lord’s mercy—and as we do so and understand and appreciate it, our hearts are softened to show mercy/ forgiveness to those it is hardest to.
What is truly wonderful and a grace upon grace is that God first shows us mercy in Jesus, freeing us from the guilt and damnation of our sin; in bringing us to trust in His mercy, He gave us merciful hearts; and then He blesses us for showing mercy—both now and forever. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. INJ