…For in the multitude of your saints [O Lord,] you have surrounded us with a great cloud of witnesses, that we might rejoice in their fellowship, and run with endurance the race that is set before us; and, together with them, receive the crown of glory that never fades away.

–Book of Common Prayer, Preface for All Saints

Today we commemorate the Feast of All Saints. But we don’t just commemorate it, we celebrate it. The secular world may be going on about its business, but this is a big deal in the life of the Church—one of seven of the Principal Feasts.

What, exactly, is it that we are celebrating?

All Saints rolls up three things into one: The Eve of All Hallows, now culturally corrupted into commercialized Halloween, but traditionally a time to ponder our mortality–when “thin places” opened between the spiritual and earthly realms, and people wore costumes to divert away evil spirits; followed by All Saints’ Day, when we remember what I call the big S Saints—the martyrs and great ones whose lives of faithfulness shine in the collective memory of the  Body of Christ; and finally, the Feast of All Souls, when we remember those who we love but see no longer—the unnumbered and unnoted who have crossed the river of life ahead of us. All Saints is a time of memory, of reflection, and for many, a time of grief as we remember the gaps in our lives left by loved ones, especially in the past year. 

So, it is not surprising, in our culture that rigorously practices denial in the face of death, especially our own, that the solemn overtones of All Saints are not generally embraced with great enthusiasm. We don’t want to ponder our mortality, thank you very much.  And yet we are called to celebrate and to know the joy of All Saints. Because it is joy. Moreover, it is audacious joy.

Though we might not usually think of it that way, “audacious” might be a term applied to Matthew’s Beatitudes. Here’s another reading of part of the text:

After [Jesus] sat down, his disciples came to him. He opened his mouth; he taught them; he says: Godlike in their happiness, the poor in breath: theirs is the dominion of the heavens. Godlike in their happiness, the mourners: they will be called as witnesses. Godlike in happiness, the gentle ones: they will inherit the earth…

Biblical storyteller Richard Swanson, my go-to scholar for interesting takes on New Testament translation, has zeroed in on the traditional reading– “blessed” –and brought it back from what over time has become its customary (and perhaps unintended) connotation of privilege–“I am so blessed”, meaning “I am comfortable/happy/prosperous” — to a grittier truth of what Matthew and Jesus were saying.

“Godlike in their happiness.”

What in the world does it mean to be “godlike in happiness?” As I’ve said before, Jesus was speaking to an occupied people. Matthew was writing for a traumatized audience. They were all “poor in breath”—the equivalent of having been hit in the gut by injustice and violence—like having the breath punched out of them. They were grieving all kinds of losses—the mere idea of inheriting anything, much less the earth, must have been inconceivable when they had lost their very land and autonomy—again. Yet Jesus called them “godlike in their happiness.”

Can we imagine saying this to the people in Israel today? In Gaza? In Lewiston, Maine? About any of our friends and neighbors who have lost loved ones and are still raw with grief? That they are “godlike in happiness?”

Swanson writes this advice to the preacher: 

“If you appear to imagine that it is natural and normal that mourners be called “Godlike in happiness” because they will be comforted (the traditional translation and reading), the mourners are likely to conclude that you are too inexperienced to be worth much, and they will nod and smile at you and wait for you to grow up.”

He’s not wrong. It’s important to understand that the Beatitudes are so much more than being told to “cheer up” –platitudes that flimsily cover the very real wounds that God’s people experience. 

Swanson continues: If the mourners hear that you understand the tight tension that goes with pronouncing blessing on those who have lost the world they had always lived in, at least until death destroyed it, they may well conclude that you know a thing or two about the reality of loss…

Exactly. Think of what we know about Jesus.

Jesus didn’t speak in platitudes. Jesus spoke challenge to our comfort zone. Jesus spoke of a dream of God that was a radical departure from the world as we know it. And if that’s true, then blessedness, or to be “godlike in happiness” must be, not a Band-Aid, but a very real theological claim about the nature of God.

Audacious.

So, what is the happiness of a God of mercy, compassion, and reconciliation? What is the happiness of a God of solidarity with those who grieve, those in need of liberation, those who suffer, those who are waiting with eager longing for the Dream of God to unfold? The happiness of a God of Incarnation who will make the free and costly gift of himself, saying, “Forgive them, for they know not what they do?”

This kind of happiness can only be what flows from a God for whom all things are possible. It is the happiness of true joy that encompasses the entirety of reality; hope blooming against all odds out of the dark fertile soil of suffering, doubt, and grief. God’s happiness is solidarity with the wholeness of our experience, a solidarity that knows that the last word, in the depths of despair, is not death, or evil, but Resurrection.

This was the audacious joy of the Saints. While the specifically named Feast of All Saints probably originated around the ninth century, its roots are traced to the third century, with the celebration of the martyrs who steadfastly, stubbornly, joyfully refused, in the face of horrendous Roman persecution, to renounce their faith in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Ignatius of Antioch wrote, for example, that he was wheat to be ground in the teeth of wild beasts to become the bread of Christ! These were people whose belief in Resurrection was so rock solid that they could see it everywhere, even through the worst disasters, even in their own lives and deaths. They had the courage to face the cross and the tomb head-on, knowing that Jesus showed them the way through to abundant life. They lived that faith in the power of Resurrection. With joy.

This is not always easy for us to take in. The world and its problems seem so big, and we are so small. Where can we find the courage, if not to face the lions like Ignatius, then at least to know the power of resurrection hope in these anxious days?

We begin by knowing the true audacious joy of the Feast of All Saints; why, year after year, we remember our spiritual ancestors in the Cloud of Witnesses; the Body of Christ from generation to generation to generation–the ones, as Revelation says, who have been through the great ordeal, who neither hunger nor thirst anymore, whose tears have been wiped away. Those whose deep faith in resurrection hope can sustain, uphold and enfold us across the boundaries and thin places of eternity. 

We, like the Saints, are challenged to be “godlike in happiness”—knowing even in our tears that death and evil will never have the last word. A vulnerable compassionate God will never let us go. It is a mystery of faith that can uphold us in these hard times. It is how, in the words of our funeral liturgy, we can come up from the grave saying “Alleluia, Alleluia,” and how we can sing joyfully of the saints even as we grieve our losses. 

This is who we are as Christians. When we embrace this facet of our identity we can live and serve courageously and faithfully in the face of disaster, as did the Saints who have marched ahead of us into the already/not yet Kingdom of God. And, in the fullness of God’s time, they will welcome us into their number with open arms.

Preservation Hall Jazz Band, “When the Saints Go Marching In”