by Marjorie D. Grevious, Evangelist for Spiritual Healing
Click here to watch the sermon recording on YouTube.
Good Morning! Tis the season of tricks and treats, Election Time! As we pass through All Hallows Eve last night, which is also known as the holy evening before All Saints Day today, and tomorrow’s All Souls Day, which is the eve of Election Day Tuesday. This is the time of year where many believe the veil between the physical and spiritual worlds is very thin, making the ethereal more accessible. The gospel this week is The Beatitudes from the sermon on the mount. The Book of Matthew shows Jesus going up a mountain to preach to poor farmers and laborers of that region, reminding us of Moses going up Mt. Sinai. Jesus does not go up to receive laws and codes from God, but rather to share a radical reframing of divine blessings. Bless-ed in this Hebrew understanding means deeply fortunate, fulfilled, or experiencing the soul’s deep joy and well-being that comes from belonging to God.
In my work as a spiritual wellness consultant I work with people around joy and how to sustain and maintain their own inner joy. I believe that joy is the pilot light of the soul. If it goes out life becomes very dark and dense, nearly unbearable. This is why keeping that internal flame lit is essential to spiritual wellness. To maintain one’s joy requires regular ongoing upkeep, like an oil change for your car. If you are like me, you drive around a while longer after that check oil light comes on. Eventually your car will refuse to run without this essential maintenance. To sustain something is to provide the necessary support, resources, or strength needed to keep something alive and functioning. Now if an oil change is the regular maintenance needed to keep a car running then gasoline is the sustenance. Once that gas light comes on you have much less time to get gas to sustain full function. Regular maintenance and consistent sustenance is needed for your internal pilot light of joy to stay burning.
Now how is this joy connected to All Saints Day? The Collect for this morning had a phrase that gave me pause “Give us grace so to follow your blessed saints in all virtuous and godly living, that we may come to those ineffable joys that you have prepared for those who truly love you” Ineffable Joy, what is that? Now being an English major as an undergraduate and a writing instructor, I had to look up this word: ineffable. Its theological definition is the nature of God that cannot be fully comprehended or named by human intellect. The emotional definition is deep feelings that leave a person completely speechless. The aesthetic definition is experiencing art, music, or nature so moving that words cannot do it justice.
Synonyms for ineffable are unutterable, indescribable, beyond words, transcendent, unexpressible “Give us grace so to follow your blessed saints in all virtuous and godly living, that we may come to those ineffable joys that you have prepared for those who truly love you “ This made me think about moments of ineffable joy in my own life like my wedding day, seeing La Sagrada Familia Basilica in Barcelona, walking back through The Door of No Return at a slave castle in Ghana, West Africa. These were moments that felt divine and beyond words. To think that God has prepared that for me simply because of my true love for God, made me think about the power of love and how Love is the law. In Matthew 22, Jesus was asked what the greatest law was and He responded to love God with all your heart, soul, and mind AND love your neighbor as yourself. It made me realize we experience ineffable joy when we love one another as well as we love God.
Fulfilling the law of love requires action. Love is a verb, and not just a noun that has come to name a myriad of feel good moments and fleeting emotions. Biblical agape love is intentional, a self sacrificing choice to promote the well being of others. This brings me back to our present season of tricks and treats as we go into this election. Now in its purest form our democratic government allows us the right to vote however we so choose without undo pressure and no other outcome than the most votes win. As American citizens we live with the consequences and rewards of elections, this process that anchors our democracy. As christians our directive is clear: Love is the law, which is a treat to our minds and hearts. The trick is to allow love to lead our actions, not just some of them -all of them. Not just in the ballot box, but all the hours, days, weeks, months and years in between. This is where action matters most. It is hard for people to experience God’s ineffable joy when they are hungry, sick, unhoused, or terrorized by any of a multitude of inequities and mistreatment.
I read today’s gospel known as the Beatitudes as my voting guide on what my actions should be in this important election season. This is not about who to vote for, but what to look for as Christians who love God and follow the teachings of Jesus. My list reads like this: Who is speaking for the poor in spirit?–those who are down trodden by life, those whose pilot light of joy no longer flickers.
Who is bringing comfort to the grieved as government-sanctioned agents still incite terror and violence in marginalized communities across our country?
Who is working to uplift the meek who are weakened by social systems, constructs, and norms that diminish their divine value?
Who will help fill the hunger for righteousness with so many disenfranchised communities in need of justice?
Who is using the language of lovingkindness to show they are merciful and work in service to the common good?
Who is pure in heart, connected to love as service in action?
Who are the peacemakers-believing in its power, over war and strife? Who is willing to go the distance for righteousness showing high ethical standards, honesty, integrity and virtue?
Who has a deeper spiritual grounding that roots them into something more substantial than being liked or put in power?
Ineffable joy comes from our true love of God. We show love through our actions as individual disciples of Christ Jesus and as a powerful collective of Christian people when we move in love, with love, to show love. We will not be liked, or even loved in return. The final beatitude verse reminds us of this when it read: “”Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account…” Then the verse tells us what to do when we know we have done right and moved with love as our intention in the face of great opposition Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, And it ends reminding us that we are not the first ones to face backlash when we follow the rule of law as the verse ends: for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”
My dear brothers, sisters and siblings in Christ, we must put on the WHOLE armor of God because we are called to a time such as this. Our work goes beyond the ballot box to all the days that people are in need before election day, and all the days after. On this All Saints Day, I want to remind you that the word ‘saint’ describes every living follower of Jesus Christ set apart for God. As the elders used to say when I was growing up: we are in the world, but not of this world. We move in true love with actions of love towards the ineffable joys offered to all God’s people. Those of us who grew up citing the Pledge of Allegiance at the beginning of each school day, may remember that it stopped being said because of the ending phrase: one nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all…
With liberty and justice for all…If you need a reminder of who to vote for and if the Beatitudes prove to be too long and complicated a list for you, then just think about your vote as an act of love looking for those who will help you in our collective work as christian people to offer liberty and justice to all. Voting is the maintenance we do as citizens every two to four years to maintain our fragile democracy. Love as service in action is the sustenance we provide no matter who is in office. We must love and care for others as much and as well as we do ourselves. On this All Saints Day I want to remind you that you are a saint, set apart for God. Tomorrow on All Soul’s Day give thanks to the many ancestors who died to allow voting rights for those of us originally shut out of that process. And after the election results remember that the Beatitudes become our marching orders of how to do love and show love, so that we may all come to divine ineffable joy.
