The Whole Body of Christ / Matthew 5:1-12 / Pr. Ted A. Giese / Sunday November 2nd 2025/ All Saints Day (Observed) / Mount Olive Lutheran Church

Mount Olive Lutheran Church / Pr. Ted A. Giese / Sunday November 2nd 2025: All Saints Day Observed / Matthew 5:1-12 “The Whole Body of Christ”

Seeing the crowds, He went up on the mountain, and when He sat down, His disciples came to Him.

        And He opened His mouth and taught them, saying:

        “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

        “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

        “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

        “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

        “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.

        “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

        “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.

        “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

        “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in Your sight O Lord. Amen.

Grace peace and mercy to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Good Christian Friends,

“Sing with all the saints in glory, sing the resurrection song!
Death and sorrow, earth’s dark story, to the former days belong.
All around the clouds are breaking, soon the storms of time shall cease;
In God’s likeness we, awaking, know the everlasting peace.”[1]

Dear ones for about a hundred years the Eve of All Saints Day has been more popular than All Saints Day itself to the point that most Christians have lost track of what these days teach and confess. For our part we work to remember the faithfully departed, those who have gone ahead in the past year and to remember those from years gone past in our hearts, the ones we look forward to being untied with in Christ when our time finally comes. All Hallows Eve the night before All Saints Day certainly has a focus on mortality and the supernatural and yet if we were to simply trust what society thought about these things we would be lost in a confusing soup of lies, half truths and nonsense. Today as we remember the faithfully departed in Christ and we are given a Gospel reading from Saint Matthew’s Gospel that includes the famous Beatitudes where Jesus says “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” With these words we along with the faithfully departed find our identity together in Christ Jesus.  The promised Kingdome of Heaven that Jesus speaks of is as much ours as it is theirs because in your Baptism you too are counted with the poor in spirit, and you like they are blessed, you with them have the promised Kingdom of heaven; for in Christ Jesus the Kingdom of heaven has come near to you in your baptism and near to you in your faith.

Note that when Jesus says “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” He doesn’t say ‘Blessed will be those who achieve poorness of spirit’ no, He says “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” Being poor in spirit isn’t something you achieve, it’s something that you are. Beatitudes aren’t Be-Happy-Attitudes; beatitudes are a declaration of blessedness. The condition of blessedness that believers enjoy resulting from the fact that God is in Communion with them through His Son, Jesus the Christ.

Now we understand being finically poor as meaning that a person has nothing of monetary value, or has so little of value that it’s not counted as much. So outside the realm of money the person who is poor in spirit brings nothing to the table spiritually, they simply don’t have anything of their own counting toward spiritual richness. Saint Paul describes it like this in his letter to the Ephesians:

“… you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages He might show the immeasurable riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”[2] 

Homeless, blacked out on the hard pavement of life, we find ourselves dead in our sins without a spiritual penny in our pockets, yet we’ve been picked up and washed off and given life in Christ and now we are like spiritual beggars at the banquet table of God. We who are not able to garner an invitation based on our own merit have received an invitation in Christ Jesus, we who are not able to bribe or purchase our way into this invitation with money or with influence have graciously received the invitation written in the shed blood of Christ Jesus’ cross and passion. And this is what you hear in this beatitude: Jesus is applying all of what He has to you. We are “clothed” “with Christ” in our “baptis[m].” Jesus transfers these qualities of His onto you as a gift, as unwarranted, undeserved grace.[3] You have the invitation to enter the eternal gates into the kingdom of heaven apart from anything you can do or say or pay. You have it on account of Jesus. New spiritual clothing fit for your new life in kingdom of heaven.

"Oh, what glory, far exceeding all that eye has yet perceived!
Holiest hearts, for ages pleading, never that full joy conceived.
God has promised, Christ prepares it, there on high our welcome waits.
Every humble spirit shares it; Christ has passed th’eternal gates."[4]

In our Epistle reading from 1 John we are told that, “We are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared.”[5] This is the Now, Not Yet reality of All Saints Day, the Now, Not Yet reality of every day in the life of the Christian. The fact that in Christ both we who are now living, and those who have fallen asleep in Christ — those who have died with their faith in Him, both the physically living and the physically dead — share this poorness in spirit reflects that we as Christians are one body, we’re all in the same boat: On this side of things ‘we feebly struggle’ on their side of things ‘they in glory shine.’ But this appearing of ‘what we will be’ doesn’t happen at our death it happens at our resurrection from the dead with all the saints. The passage from Revelation, that was our first reading hasn’t happened yet in time; this vision shown to Saint John the Apostle of the great multitude arrayed in white robes washed in the Blood of the Lamb praising God around the throne in the new heaven and new earth is a picture of what will be our entry into the joy of eternal life: the time when the whole Body of Christ attached with its head (Who is Christ Jesus) will no longer be separated by physical death. The Day when all things are finally made new and death is no more: Our Now, Not Yet connection to the whole Body of Christ — to the ones that are seen and the ones who are unseen — comes to us in the Lord’s Supper when we with angels and arch angels and all the company of heaven celebrate the feast as the unbreakable circle; all those alive in Christ fed by His love in the meal: All of us together in the same boat. We do this at the Communion rail, by the sick bead, in times of great need adding more and more to that circle as we await the Last Day, the eternal feast. The early Church did it whenever they came together as Christians; they did it weekly on the Lord’s Day as we do. The struggle for us, for we who live with our physical bodies in this fallen world is that on the one hand we are surrounded by so much suffering and pain and destruction, so much death and this can be discouraging; while on the other hand the seeds of faith can also be choked out by the cares and riches and physical pleasures of life[6] stifling what was planted in our hearts — hiding the importance of what is present in the meal — degrading it as poor bread and cheap wine. We become so blinded by the physical that we miss the spiritual, and thinking ourselves spiritual we fail to see how the Lord truly blesses us at His table.

"Life eternal! heaven rejoices; Jesus lives, who once was dead.
Shout with joy, O deathless voices! Child of God, lift up your head! Life eternal! O what wonders crowd on faith; what joy unknown, When, amidst earth’s closing thunders, saints shall stand before the throne!"[7]

While death separates us from those we love who have gone on ahead, we are in fact less separated than we think. While the dead do not know what the living think or what we do we,[8] though the dead cannot speak to us or hear our prayers,[9] yet we share with them in the body of Christ:[10] We are still one church; we are all the poor in spirit together, everyone of us both dead and living, the martyrs at rest and the persecuted under pressure, all trusting in Christ alone for our salvation.

As he contemplates death and what it means, Saint Paul writes,

“it is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honoured in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labour for me. Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell. I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. But to remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account.”[11]

That same longing is the longing we feel today; we long for the day that the Apostle Saint John saw in the Book of Revelation when the entire church shall be resurrected, raised up with all mankind, the whole body of Christ set apart from the wicked and joined together in that promised happy reunion without end, with no death to separate us. But at the same time, this day (right now) we wish to remain with those we know and love here on this side of things because there is so much to do, so much that can be done. The tension of it pulls at our heart; the Now, Not Yet of it all.

In the Old Testament book of Hosea God promises: “I will ransom them [Those who are His] from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death: O death, I will be your plagues [says the Lord]; O grave, I will be your destruction?”[Says the Lord][12] On the Cross Jesus conquered death, He became death to death, He destroyed death and is its master. As He ascended into heaven to sit at the right hand side of God the Father He told us that all authority in heaven and earth has been given to Him.[13] Because of this Saint Paul confidently tells us that: “our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, Who will transform our lowly body to be like His glorious Body, by the power that enables Him even to subject all things to Himself.”[14] How’s that for a Now, Not Yet.    

The list found in the Beatitudes, this list given by Jesus to His disciples, isn’t a list of virtues you can perfectly attain although we strive to do so like little children who want to be like their older siblings, who want to be like their parents; What this list found in the Beatitudes truly is, is a list of your saintly condition, your sanctified condition, your Holy condition in Christ Jesus. Dear ones we do not transform our own bodies by our personal goodness or by our individual good works, we are transformed by Christ, by His true goodness, by His perfect works: This is what it means to be the poor in spirit, and like little children who fight their parents as mom and dad try to tie their shoelaces for them, who flip out when they are given a bath, who clench their tees when the food comes in for a landing on the spoon held with love, who want to dress themselves even when they are no actually able to do so, who cry when bed time approaches even though they are desperately exhausted and truly ready to sleep we in our life are often like the poor little child who needs all of these things and sometimes fights it all the same. And yet they are fed and cared for and are part of the family, a child of the family, little ones who need everything provided and given to them. And so these Beatitudes which are perfectly found fulfilled in Christ Jesus are like the spiritual roof over our heads, and food on our plate, and cloths on our backs, and shoes on our feet, and warm bath and bed provide for child who cannot provide these things for themselves, that we may live and grow in them.    

Until the Last Day and the resurrection of all the dead, we live in the mysterious Now, Not Yet. We long for the Return of Christ: For our happy reunion. We stand as beggars who have been promised a crown of glory and in a Now, Not Yet way of things we already have this crown in our hands. As Baptised Children of God regenerated and made new yet still suffering the effects of sin in our lives we await the revelation of what we will be when Christ returns in glory and yet this is already ours even now in Him: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Amen.

Let us pray: Lord have mercy on us, Christ have mercy on us, Lord have mercy on us, take our minds and think through them, take our lips and speak through them, take our hearts and set them on fire; for the sake of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,

Amen.

[1] “Sing With All the Saints in Glory, ”Text by William Josiah Irons, Lutheran Service Book, Concordia Publishing House 2007 #671 stanza 1.
[2] Ephesians 2:1-10
[3] Galatians 3:27
[4] “Sing With All the Saints in Glory” LSB 671 stanza 2
[5] 1 John 3:1-3
[6] Luke 8:14
[7] “Sing With All the Saints in Glory” LSB 671 stanza 3
[8] Ecclesiastes 9:5, 10,
[9] Job 33:23 and 1 Timothy 2:5
[10] 1 Corinthians 10:16
[11] Philip. 1:20-24
[12] Hosea 13:14
[13] Matthew 28
[14] Philip. 3:20-21

Photo Credits: Main photo Luther's Rose from from bawue.museum-digital.de with text and flipped illustration of men in boat from openclipart.