Are you sitting comfortably then I will begin ........

 Do you remember Listen with Mother the programme always opened with the phrase "Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin".

 

My memory of it brings back strong emotions as I recall as a young child how the ritual involved a sense of snuggling down on my mother’s knee to hear the story being read.

 

In our psalm today, psalm 34 we are invited to say with the psalmist at verse 8, Happy are those who take refuge in him.

 

The idea of taking refuge involves quite literally hiding yourself in God or in your parents love.

 

Which is why I found myself transported back in time to the memory of hiding myself in my Mother’s protection as I was asked ‘Are you sitting comfortably?’

 

This image of a small child wrapped in it’s Mother’s arms, protected, warm, loved, the sense of being happy, as the psalmist invites us to imagine the possibility of taking refuge in God.

 

Of being protected, warm and loved which brings with it a deep sense of contentment a feeling that in the very depth of your being, in the very depth of these troubling times of pandemic, of Covid with its existential challenge to our lives and security, that all is well after all, that as we are wrapped in God’s arms we can find contentment and purpose.

 

Reminding ourselves of what we sang a few moments ago that in God, in Faith in the blessings of God’s promise we have the possibility that we will be:

 

delivered from all our fears, be radiant, never ashamed, saved from every trouble. 

 

I guess that I was a serious minded young man at age 19 or so. A new curate came to our parish and through his influence I found myself drawn to the idea of ordination, it somehow seemed to me that there was a goodness here being acted out very practically by the curate in his ministry in the parish.

 

I recall asking him on one occasion what had influenced him to seek ordination and how his vocation expressed itself.

 

His answer was that he felt called to ‘Love people into believing’.

 

It is a phrase worth repeating as we reflect on All Saints Day of those who have gone before us as examples of Christian life and living.

 

The letter from Saint John’ which we read as our epistle’ reminds us of our inclusion in the family of God. 

 

There may be a maximum of 16 of us here in Church as we seek to keep one another safe and we are joined by another communion of Saints joining us through the wonders of technology, mobile telephones and 4G.

 

But from down the ages and across time we on this feast of All Saints we stand alongside all those confessing and relying on Jesus as God’s Son and Christ—past, present, and future.

 

St John reminds us that we are “children of God.

 

Yet, rather than justifying our separation from the world, both the Epistle for today and and the Gospel remind us that God’s children have a mission: to love.

 

The key to understanding the Gospel imperative is the Greek word ‘Metanoia’.

 

It is translated as ‘to repent’.

 

But the dictionary definition is rather more dynamic it means more than sorrow or regret for previous actions it means a complete change in one's way of life resulting from penitence or spiritual conversion.

 

My dictionary states  "what he demanded of people was ‘metanoia’, repentance, a complete change of heart"

 

So the Beatitudes in Matthew’s Gospel remind us that Jesus is in the business of inaugurating a new community.

 

We are part of that new community alongside those we remember on this All Saints Day. The Church of which we are a part is called to be a community of action and transformation.

 

The Beatitudes are a deeply subversive text in the context of an economy where the word “blessed” is often associated with and hijacked by the wealthy, the healthy and the most powerful. 

 

But here in Matthews Gospel we read very clearly that it is precisely the poor, the sick and the meek that are entitled to the blessings of the new kingdom.

 

To take a risky modern example it might be that Marcus Rashford’s campaign for school meals for hungry children has more of the beatitudes about it because it carries a promise of blessing to the oppressed.

 

Are you sitting comfortably? Then I will begin.

 

It is said that at the end of his life at every celebration of the Eucharist, this last of the Apostles would deliver the same homily again and again. 

 

This wizened, elderly man, would stand up and look at his congregation and simply say: “My dear little children, let us love one another.”