To the church at Sportland Corners, Nisswa, MN, called to be saints - grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

We live in a culture that loves celebrities. Sometimes we are, in fact, a bit voyeuristic in our fascination with celebrities - we want to know not only about those things which have made them famous, but we want to know all the dirt about their private lives too; and we seem particularly fascinated when they fall from the pedestals we put them on.

On All Saints Day, the church lifts up those who are not celebrities, who were not seeking to be famous, but only to be followers of Christ. We lift up not only those who have died in Christ, but those who are living in Christ. We commemorate not their celebrity, but their ordinariness, because it is through their - our - ordinariness that God accomplishes extraordinary things. We remember the lives of these people for inspiration in our own lives as we seek, as Paul writes, "to live for the praise of [God's] glory."

We have innumerable saints among the members of this congregation, as in every other congregation, performing ministries, living lives of deep faithfulness, sacrificing for the sake of the ministry of Christ - some in very public ways some known only perhaps to me and one or two others who know them or visit them.

An 80+ year old woman in Appalachian Zanesville, OH where I once served, who read aloud all of her blind husband's textbooks so he could complete medical school - this woman who ended up living in dingy and cramped quarters in the County Home, having been widowed for quite a number of years. She grasped my hand after receiving Communion once, in a tiny little custodian's closet where we sat squeezed between the tables and the cabinets; she in her wheel chair, me on a metal folding chair we had found, because she shared her little room with three other women, one of whom was deaf and always had the television blaring, and in the County Home, there was no other quiet place. In this stark and decidedly non-devotional, closet, she grasped my hand and declared with deep emotion, "I know I am never alone. God is always with me. I know I am never alone." She lived in praise of God every day, in her wheelchair, in a crowded and dreary county home. "Blessed are the poor, for yours is the kingdom of God."

There are among us individuals who are suffering severe, debilitating illnesses, confined to bed, or the few rooms of a home, or to the single room of a nursing home, or to a wheelchair. I wish those of you who are well and mobile and almost oppressed by how terribly busy you are, could or would accompany me or my husband on some of our visiting; or better yet, go on your own, and experience the dignity, the faith, the gratitude to God for the assurance of God's love and of their salvation through Jesus Christ, their deep thanksgiving for the comfort of Holy Communion and prayer, that pastors and lay visitors are privileged to witness on a regular basis.

There are teenagers of this congregation who daily live out Christian, life-affirming values they are learning through the faithful parenting they receive at home, and by the dedicated teaching of many of you. They struggle to live out these values in the midst of constant pressure from their peers and from the media to experiment with substances and behaviors and beliefs that could harm them or others. These teenagers are also saints, witnessing to a power higher than peer pressure, to divine love and acceptance which utterly dwarfs the promised acceptance of going along with the crowd. Do we adults want to be encouraged in witnessing among our friends, or in the work place? Watch our kids for a while, and you will be.

The Beatitudes of Jesus are blessings, not commandments. Jesus isn't telling us what to do; rather he pronounces blessing upon those hearing his words. The Beatitudes direct us toward counter-cultural lives, lived in praise of God and love toward one another, acknowledging our need of God in ways which uplift and encourage us in faithfulness and in hope. Where this is no faith, there is no hope when the going gets rough; and where there is no hope, there is no courage. Faith. Hope. Courage. All works of the Holy Spirit in ordinary lives like ours by which God accomplishes extraordinary things.

About the Beatitudes, Martin Luther wrote: My dear disciples, when you come to preach among the people, you will find out that this is their teaching and belief: 'Whoever is rich or powerful is completely blessed; on the other hand, whoever is poor and miserable is rejected and condemned before God.'...This is the greatest and most universal belief or religion on earth ...That is why Christ preaches a totally new sermon here for Christians: If they are a failure, if they have to suffer poverty and do without riches, power, honor, and good days, they will still be blessed...all this is intended to say [Luther continues] that while we live here, we should use all temporal goods and physical necessities the way a guest does in a strange place, where he stays overnight and leaves in the morning...he dare not take possession of the property as though it belonged to him by right; otherwise he would soon hear the host say to him: "My friend, don't you know that you are a guest here? ...The temporal goods you have, God has given to you for this life ...You should not fasten or hang your heart on them as though you were going to live forever."**

Interesting words to ponder as we move toward Commitment Sunday in a few weeks.

At Church of the Cross, we give Bibles to preschoolers and third graders. In one congregation I served, we set Bibles out, free for the taking, in the narthex and at a meal program called Christ's Table, where we fed dinner to anyone in the community who couldn't afford to pay for it. When I suggested we do this, the Council was very skeptical. But, once we started putting them in the narthex, we couldn't keep enough of them out. We would no sooner place them out, and they were gone. Do we think all recipients of food and homeless ministries come only for a meal, a place to sleep; that worshippers come on Sunday only for the ritual and traditions of worship? My friends, people come also to see if the love of God is real; if the word of God on our lips is a mere pipe dream, or is trustworthy; to witness themselves the love of God on this earth in their lifetime, in this community; to hear and to read themselves the Word of God; to find the light that has perhaps long eluded them, whether they can pay for one meal a week, or for a sit-down dinner for 200.

We, who are called, gathered, enlightened and made to be saints of God remember those who have come before us, those who are in our midst even now, who have witnessed to us - not through perfect, sinless lives, but through lives which witnessed to the trustworthiness of God; guests and travelers on this earth who have not taken possession of their property as if it belonged to them by right, but who have realized that all we have is merely lent to us by God as we travel through this life; saints who have inspired us in faith and in serving.

In remembering them today, we remember them not in a spirit of mourning and grief, but in a spirit of thanksgiving and celebration; that those who are now the "great cloud of witnesses" have gone before us, and dwell in the glory that inspires our prayers of hope and our deeds of love.

And we pray that we live our lives also as witnesses, not to all that is broken and shabby and greedy among us, but to all that is good and right and generous, as witnesses and instruments of God's gracious love.

Amen.

** from Speaking of Trust , Conversing with Luther about the Sermon on the Mount; Martin E. Marty, Augsburg Fortress, 2003.