Blessed Are the Uncertain — 2 November 2025, All Saints Day

Blessed Are the Uncertain

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Luke 6:20-31

Then Jesus looked up at his disciples and said: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice on that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven, for that is how their ancestors treated the prophets. But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep. Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets.But I say to you who are listening: Love your enemies; do good to those who hate you; bless those who curse you; pray for those who mistreat you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who asks of you, and if anyone takes away what is yours, do not ask for it back again. Do to others as you would have them do to you.”

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In the Spring of 2013, the author George Saunders gave the graduation address at Syracuse University. It is a stunning address— which went largely unnoticed until the New York Times picked it up months later. Like all graduate addresses, it tries to offer some advice, some kind of essential life hack. But instead of thinking about the moments he’s most proud of, Saunders, instead, thought about his regrets. “What I regret most in my life,” he said, “are failures of kindness. Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded . . . sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly.” He has, he said, a theory of sorts:

Each of us is born with a series of built-in confusions that are probably somehow Darwinian. These are: (1) we’re central to the universe (that is, our personal story is the main and most interesting story, the only story, really); (2) we’re separate from the universe (there’s US and then, out there, all that other junk – dogs and swing-sets, and the State of Nebraska and low-hanging clouds and, you know, other people), and (3) we’re permanent (death is real, o.k., sure – for you, but not for me). 

Admittedly, we know it isn’t true, Saunders admits we know it isn’t true, but it is how we live. And these beliefs, he says, “cause us to prioritize our own needs over the needs of others, even though what we really want, in our hearts, is to be less selfish, more aware of what’s actually happening in the present moment, more open, and more loving.” Walt Brueggemann has noted something similar: that we are deeply ambivalent to both the stories our culture tells us the way the world just is and our faith in a God who saves by grace through faith. We know we aren’t being served by the stories that center our specialness, our terminal uniqueness, as it is known in recovery circles. But we also struggle to believe in this God beyond our knowing, whose realm is confusing and mysterious and unintelligible, who is, too often, frustratingly two-faced— full of mercy and full of rage, full of love and full of vengeance, slow to anger and quick to violence. The good news, though, is that it is in this ambivalence, as Brueggemann calls it, this uncertainty, this in between, this chasm—haven’t we called it? this is where the Spirit does her best work.

The Sermon on the Plain is Jesus’ second sermon in the Gospel of Luke. His first sermon he preached at his home congregation. And…it didn’t go well. He ticked them off, and they pushed him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built. Presumably to push him off it. He message of good news to the poor, recovery of sight to the blind, release to captives, and freedom to the oppressed— all it did was reveal the Nazarenes’ ambivalence: Rome was no good, but would this quick-tempered God of ours ever actually act? So here’s Jesus, take two. And he starts again with: “Blessed are the poor.” Yes, Matthew adds “in spirit,” but not Luke. There are a lot of bossy scholars who want to try to figure out which is the phrase Jesus actually said. And most of the time, I think, they want to figure this out so they can say, clearly it’s Matthew’s version, and Matthew means me,I can continue to live by the world’s script. Yay! But I’m generally not interested in a reading that gets me off the hook. I want the complicated reading because my life is complicated, our lives are complicated. Poor people’s lives are complicated, and hungry people, and people who are grieving, and people who are discriminated against. And Jesus says these people are blessed— they matter to God.

But that word for blessed is weird. Some translators says “happy.” Happy are the poor. And this makes us do a double take. Because, hang on, of all the assumptions I make about people in poverty, or people who are being discriminated against, or people who are just in a hard season— of everything I’ve been told about what matters in this world, I generally don’t assume poverty is next to happiness. Or blessedness. No one feels blessed when there is more month than money in the bank. No one feels blessed when a bag a carrots, a container of yogurt, and gallon of milk costs four times as much as it did six months ago, and that’s even after spending half an hour clipping digital coupons and visiting three stores for the best deal. No one feels blessed when they’re furloughed. When the future is uncertain. No one feels blessed when they’ve been kicked out of their home and told to never come back. Blessed, Jesus says, huh. Yeah, right.

We don’t buy it because the the stories we’ve been told, the script we bought, says that the people are blessed are the one who have it together. The people who are blessed show no signs of struggle. The blessed are the ones whose faces are on TV, blessed are the ones whose TikToks go viral, blessed are the ones whose homes are immaculate, designer, redone thrice-over, blessed are the ones whose bodies look the right way, slender, muscular, perfect, and blessed are the ones who have seemingly unlimited time, because they never have to hustle to make it all work out.

But Jesus says that in the kin-dom of God, things are different. That the ones at the bottom of the food chain, the ones in the neglected province at the end of the Empire, they mattered. They mattered to God. The ones who just lost their SNAP benefits matter to God. The ones whose tears will just. not. stop. flowing…matter to God. The ones who go to bed every night feeling unloved matter to God. You matter to God.

And we are ambivalent to this. We want to believe that we can support our families by our own means. That we can achieve by our own efforts. That we can be worthy by our own good works. That we can be safe by our own preventative measures. And when we finally do, it will be evidence that we are blessed.

How can we believe in a God who blesses, when we’re so busy trying to earn that blessing in the first place?

We are ambivalent, uncertain. We see this story and that story, and we don’t know what to do, what to choose, we don’t know how to believe when we’re told to do it for ourselves, and to fully rely on God. But here’s the thing, Beloved, this is where the Spirit is at work. When we are at the sea, with Pharaoh at our back. When we are see exile before us and destruction behind us. When we come face to face with suffering and sorrow and death, and hope seems a memory. The Spirit makes a way where there is no way. The Spirit, Walt Brueggemann says, “is wind and not wall. It is possibility and not coercion. It is opportunity and not threat.”

Jesus says “Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kin-dom of God.” Theirs is the realm of God. He says, deep in the Realm of Rome, there is another realm. There is another way. Things are not right right now, but God is at work. God is setting the world to right.

That is, I think, why this day matters so much, All Saints Day. At the end of our lives, the world asks, “What did you make of yourself?” “What is your legacy?” “What is your claim to fame?” But we don’t spend this day like the “In Remembrance” video at the Oscars, recalling the famous and beautiful and seemingly perfect. We remember the people whose way was strikingly ordinary, and also, somehow, infused with divine call. We remember the people who, in this in-between life, in this ambivalence between what we’re told matters and what we know matters to God… people lived lives blown by the Spirit. We remember those who changed the lives of countless band kids, who taught kindergarten, who courageously immigrated to this country, who faithfully crunched the numbers. We remember by name, by candlelight, people whose names are little known beyond this community, gathered here. In the face of uncertainty and ambivalence, we remember them for this one, unchanging fact: they—we—are the beloved of God. Amen.