Instead of thinking you must become this state in order to be blessed, this emphasis teaches is that wherever you find people in this low estate there you find God.
People’s lives are a lot like stained-glass windows. They are filled with all kinds of different pieces. Some pieces are colored one way, and some colored another way. If you take a closer look, you will notice that all stained glass is just individual pieces of colored glass. That is all it would remain unless an artist gets hold of it and, when they put it together in such a way that when the sun shines through these little pieces of glass, they are transformed into a beautiful work of art. However, this only happens through the workmanship of an artist. Apart from that it would just be individual pieces of broken looking glass.
On All Saints Day we consider the light of Christ that shined through the lives of those saints who lived among us, shared the Gospel with us, and supped at the Table with us. An effective way to open our eyes to this vision of Heaven is to use the stained glass by Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, entitled Rivers of Paradise, with the Worship of the Holy Lamb. It is a set of windows in the East Chancel in the All Hallows church in Allerton, East Liverpool England. What I like best about this set of windows is that it is installed in a church which is literally dedicated to All Saints and it depicts the assigned text for the day. I would begin the sermon by taking your hearers into the image. Talk about the significant elements and speak about the history of it. Spending time highlighting the parts of the image that relate to the text will draw your hearers deeper and deeper into both the text for the day and the image itself. Avoid getting too technical with the text or the image. You should only develop details that serve for reflection on the environment All Saints Day creates.
Then the kicker, you bring in the Gospel lesson from Matthew 5:1-12. Here, Jesus Himself teaches us what it means to be a saint who “blessed.” However, most people view His beatitudes as imperatives, giving His teaching a particular law emphasis. This is unfortunate because they are actually adjectives which, when translated according to their proper emphasis, give a distinctly gospel flavor to Jesus’ teaching.
Jeff Gibbs gives some rather helpful insight into this understanding of Jesus’ beatitudes. “In each of the nine Beatitudes, the Greek puts the plural adjective μακάριοι, “blessed,” in emphatic first position, and, therefore, I have italicized it in the translation. Wallace notes this common phenomenon of fronting for emphasis.1 In each Beatitude μακάριοι is predicate to the subject (here οἱ πτωχοί).
“The poor in spirit are blessed because the reign of heaven is theirs! The people who are mourning are blessed because they will be comforted! The lowly are blessed because they will inherit the earth! The people who are hungering and thirsting for righteousness are blessed because they will be satisfied! The merciful are blessed because they will be shown mercy! The pure in heart are blessed because they will see God! The peacemakers are blessed because they will be called sons of God! The ones who are persecuted because of righteousness are blessed, because the reign of Heaven is theirs! You are blessed whenever people insult you and persecute you and, by lying, say every kind of evil against you because of me! Rejoice and exult, because your reward is great in Heaven, for in this way they persecuted the prophets who were before you!”[1]
Instead of thinking you must become this state in order to be blessed, this emphasis teaches is that wherever you find people in this low estate there you find God.
Is it not strange what this slight shift in emphasis reveals? Instead of thinking you must become this state in order to be blessed, this emphasis teaches is that wherever you find people in this low estate there you find God. And what is He doing? He is making sure these people (in a hidden way) are blessed. How? It happens when Christ shines through and meets us in our suffering through the cross and raises us again in His resurrection. Christ is the craftsman, the artist, cobbling together these people whose lives are broken and, yet, made beautiful by His work of binding them together with His blood and then shining the resurrection light through to leave us with a beatific vision of the Kingdom realized in Heaven forever.
Chad Bird probably put it best when talking about finding God in the lowly, unexpected, thin, blessed places:
“To visit the site where Jesus was crucified, you need only spend some time with those who bear the crosses of sickness, loss, grief, loneliness, persecution. Golgotha is as close as the nearest hospital. It is down the street at the Starbucks where you meet a friend who got laid off work six months ago and is fighting the demons of depression. The cross is where Jesus is—for though resurrected, He is always the crucified Christ. In, with, and under the crosses of His children is the cross of Jesus Himself. They are crucified with Him. And their crosses are grafted as branches onto the tree of His cross. Calvary is as close as the nearest person in need of grace and mercy.”[2]
It is in the lives of all the Saints living now in the presence of the Lamb who was slain and yet reigns.
Reflecting on the Gospel lesson in this way recasts the artistic reflection in light of the less glittering image of what it means to be a saint in this life. Critical to this turn in the sermon is its power to connect us to Christ and the gritty real life work He did on the cross. This reshapes the Lamb who was slain and yet reigns from the stained-glass depiction of our reading from Revelation. Invite your listeners into the water flowing from the Lamb, remembering those joined together with Christ in the waters of Baptism. The “blessed” are those found where Christ is doing His intimate work of caring for the community called the Church through His Word and Sacraments and His vicarious death and resurrection.
The obvious choice for a Sermon Structure for this text would be the Image Based Structure with a Single Focus.
“This sermon structure uses a single image throughout the sermon and fosters devotional contemplation of an image.
In the opening of the sermon, the preacher describes the image for the hearers. The preacher then uses that image as a source for continuing devotional contemplation throughout the sermon. The image serves as a lens through which one views the textual exposition, the theological confession, the evangelical proclamation, and the hearer interpretation of the sermon. Having a single image lends coherence to the sermon.
As the preacher returns to the image periodically throughout the sermon, he may approach it in one of two ways: Through a single focus or a multiple focus.
With a single focus, the image remains the same throughout the sermon. The preacher may approach that image from one perspective (for example, viewing the image from the perspective of the artist who created it) or the preacher may approach that image from a variety of perspectives (for example, viewing the same image from the perspective of different people who come into contact with it), but the image itself remains the same.
If approaching the image from one perspective, the sermon can reinforce a single theme in a variety of situations. For example, the first encounter with the image can establish a theme and then, as the preacher uses the image again in the sermon, it can locate that theme in relation to the text and then, later, in relation to the hearers.
If approaching the image from a variety of perspectives, the sermon can develop or unfold the theme. For example, the first encounter with the image could evoke an interpretation that will later be expanded or even corrected in the sermon. By changing how the image is seen, the hearers are able to track the basic development of a larger theme in the sermon. Each stage of development is captured by preaching the image through a different perspective.”[3]
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Craft of Preaching-Check out 1517’s resources on Revelation 7:2–17.
Concordia Theology-Various helps from Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, MO to assist you in preaching Revelation 7:2–17.
Lectionary Kick-Start-Check out this fantastic podcast from Craft of Preaching authors Peter Nafzger and David Schmitt as they dig into the texts for this Sunday!
The Pastor’s Workshop-Check out all the great preaching resources from our friends at the Pastor’s Workshop!
1 Wallace, Greek Grammar, 307–8.
[1] Gibbs, Jeffrey A. Matthew 1:1–11:1. St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 2006. 234.
[2] Bird, Chad. Your God Is Too Glorious: Finding God in the Most Unexpected Places. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2018.
[3] https://concordiatheology.org/sermon-structs/dynamic/imagistic-structures/central-image/
