Today you have heard Saint Luke’s version of the thing we call the “Sermon on the Mount.”  And now I want you to suspend everything you’ve ever been told about Jesus and the crowd to whom He has preached.  I want you to ignore every pious book or essay you have ever read about the “Sermon on the Mount.”  Today I want you to try to hear for the first time the Gospel which has just been read to you.  . . . It comes from the Sixth Chapter of Luke -- quite early in that venerable Book; . . . the Gospel you have heard today comes from the Sixth Chapter of Luke, which starts with Jesus off by Himself, high on a mountain, praying throughout the night.  Further down the mountainside are gathered quite a large number of disciples, and in the morning . . . Jesus comes to them from His place of prayer and immediately selects twelve of their number and appoints them “apostles”, Luke says; . . . Jesus appoints from His assembled disciples Twelve emissaries of The Message to be taken to the Twelve Tribes of Israel.  And Luke names the Twelve:  Peter and Andrew and James and John and Philip and Bartholomew and Matthew and Thomas and James the Less and Simon and Jude and Judas Iscariot.  . . . And then Jesus and His apostles and the rest of His disciples proceed down the mountain to a broad plain . . . where they are met by a vast multitude of desperate and hopeful people; . . . they are met by the off-scourings of the land; they are met by the diseased and deranged refuse of a stern and unforgiving society.  This unsavory multitude crowds the plain like locusts; . . . they crowd the plain expectantly waiting to see Jesus and to touch Him, . . . because “power came forth from him,” Saint Luke says.

    So, here is Jesus with the Twelve standing behind Him . . . and the rest of His disciples gathered at His feet . . . and a vast multitude of desperate people . . . utterly silent . . . expectant . . . waiting for Him to speak.  . . . And if you are among that multitude, . . . what you are expecting to hear this man of power say is . . . “Whoever is of the Tribe of Benjamin, stand with Peter; Whoever is of the Tribe of Judah, gather about John . . . !”  Because, you see, this isn’t some docile collection of needy people waiting for God’s Son to minister to them.  You are among as savage, bellicose, and brutal a group of First Century Middle Easterners as the Twenty-first Century Middle Easterners you might see on the evening news tonight!  You have been disinherited from your country by heathen invaders; . . . you have been marginalized and impoverished by a haughty and scheming religious leadership, whose intrigues amount to collaboration.  You have prayed for the Lord God Almighty to liberate you.  You have prayed for God to raise up just such a man of power as Jesus to make you an instrument of death in the Name of the Righteous One of Israel so that what is rightfully yours might be restored to your children!  You will gladly strap on an explosives vest and kill an infidel for Jesus!  … And so, you wait expectantly for Jesus to martial this small army that stands waiting at His feet.

    So, imagine the shock and disappointment to everyone when they hear Jesus say, . . . “You who are utterly impoverished and have absolutely nothing, . . . you are blessed; you are blessed because God will give you the unimaginable wealth and favor of Heaven; . . . so that, your hunger will be satisfied with ample bread and your weeping will become laughter.  So, regard with joy the contempt the world has for you, . . . because you are God’s most precious.  . . . But, beware anyone who has something to call your own; . . . beware because you are in grave danger.  You are in grave danger because, having something, the unchastity of your wealth makes you no better than your oppressors, . . . and God will give you nothing as a consequence; . . . you shall go hungry, and you shall be sorrowful.”

    We tend to romanticize the poor when we are in the mood, and to villainize them when we are not.  But Jesus, Who was one of them, did neither.  Jesus spoke to the greater need of humanity, and He advocated service to a monarchy more enduring and ineffable than any institution which human thinking and willing can ever devise.  And so, Jesus wisely says what no one wants to hear; . . . Jesus wisely counsels detachment from temporal ambitions . . . in order to serve that which is sacred; . . . Jesus wisely says, “If you have absolutely nothing, you need nothing more, because you possess the riches of Heaven; you possess the Lord God’s ineffable love and favor; . . . but if you can claim anything as your own, beware; . . . beware, because what you possess (or think you possess, or desire to possess) will make you an enemy of God.”

    Quite recently the Diocese of Western Michigan sold their cathedral.  They had to sell it, they claim, because they couldn’t afford the upkeep.  But a retired priest of that diocese, Father Joseph Neiman, thinks differently.  He has written that what the Diocese of Western Michigan lacked was not substance, but vision.  They forgot to Whom they belong; . . . they forgot their identity.  . . . “[T]he people in the pews,” Father Neiman writes, “the people in the pews [could not] speak convincingly about three key questions:  . . . Why Jesus?  . . . Why the Church?  . . . Why this Church?”  The people of Christ the King Cathedral in the Diocese of Western Michigan could not give a reason for the faith that was in them; . . . they could not commend Jesus to a needy world; . . . they could not bring themselves to invite, with unflagging enthusiasm, neighbors and friends and co-workers into their common life of prayer and Sacrament and mission and fellowship, . . . and so, they languished; . . . they languished because they became so focused on simply possessing the attractive dignity of a cathedral . . . that they became the enemies of God.

    But what does the Son of God say, at the very beginning, to Peter and Andrew and James and John and Philip and Bartholomew and Matthew and Thomas and James the Less and Simon and Jude and Judas Iscariot; . . . what does Jesus say to all of us gathered at His feet?  . . . “If you have absolutely nothing, you need nothing more, because you possess the riches of Heaven; you possess the Lord God Almighty’s ineffable love and favor; . . . but beware, . . . because what you possess (or think you possess, or desire to possess) will make you an enemy of God.  And so, I say to you that understand this that the remedy for the seduction of wealth is to acquire genuine wealth; . . . it is to serve the sacred will of a realm wiser than any democracy, more majestic than any kingdom, and more holy than any theocracy; . . . the remedy for the seduction of wealth is to covet the wealth of your heavenly Father, . . . which is to

Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.  To him who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from him who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt.  Give to every one who begs from you; and of him who takes away your goods do not ask them again.  And as you wish that men would do to you, do so to them.  … Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful [to you].”

The remedy for the seduction of wealth is spiritual poverty; . . . the remedy for the seduction of wealth is to lay claim to nothing but God’s mercy.  Because, possessions of any kind, Jesus says, are a snare and a danger.  They threaten to seduce your heart and to make you unfaithful.  . . . And the remedy for the seduction and unchastity of wealth, Jesus says, . . . is not to imagine that you’re poor because you don’t have more; . . . the remedy for the seduction and unchastity of wealth is to manifest the radical love and mercy of the Most High God, Who is your heavenly Father.  The remedy for the seduction and unchastity of wealth is to

Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.  To him who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from him who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt.  Give to every one who begs from you; and of him who takes away your goods do not ask them again.  And as you wish that men would do to you, do so to them.  … Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful [to you].

    “But that’s impossible,” you say, . . . “what human being has ever lived by such an impossible standard as Jesus sets?”  . . . Well, quite a few, really.  Jesus Himself lived exactly as He preached, . . . and so did Simon and Jude, who we remembered before God right here just last Monday, . . . and so did nine of the other Twelve, and the Apostle writing to the Church at Ephesus, . . . and so did Francis of Assisi . . . and Elizabeth of Hungary.  In fact, there is a great multitude of faithful disciples of Jesus, who took His words to heart and, by prayer and the divine Strength breathed into them at Baptism, did a credible job of imitating His sacred Life, of giving a reason for their own faith in Jesus and membership in His Church, and of conveying the blessedness of Heaven upon human history to boot.  . . . We call these wonderful sons and daughters of God “saints”; . . . we call them “saints” in recognition of their sacred lives and the invitation to faith they have given to friends and neighbors and co-workers . . . and to us.  . . . And today we celebrate the life of every single one of them.  Today we celebrate the lives of all the faithful saints:  the ones we know . . . and the ones known to God alone, but who have been a blessing to us nonetheless.  Today we celebrate the lives of all the saints . . . and remember that we have every opportunity and encouragement to follow their example and be obedient to what we have once again heard Jesus urge us to take to heart and communicate to others.  Today we celebrate the lives of all the saints . . . and have opportunity to be reimmersed in the holy vows which have made us one with the saints by making our own lives sacred.  And so, I invite you, today, to renew your Baptismal Covenant with God, using the form found on page 292 of The Book of Common Prayer.