Harry Potter and All the Saints

A sermon on the Lukan Beatitudes, preached on All Saints @EmmanuelBakerSt

I feel it is important for me, as your pastor, to let you know that I have contacted all of the appropriate authorities (including the Bishop’s office both in Glendale and at churchwide headquarters in Chicago) regarding a significant event which took place this past week. I expect that shortly task forces from both of these respective offices will soon descend upon Emmanuel and Bakersfield.

The incident in question took place last Sunday night while we were finishing up our Trunk or Treat event in the church parking lot. Just about all the games and candy had been packed up. The last of the trick or treaters appeared to have left. And just a couple of folks from Emmanuel were closing things up in the Parish Hall. As those last trunk or treaters were leaving the church parking lot, they ran into to a large group of people making their way down the sidewalk on Jefferson. This group of kids approached the other and said, “Hey, they are giving away pumpkins and candy up there,” pointing back at the church.

And then the most unbelievable thing happened, something which would shatter the walls and imaginations of most folks at the ELCA headquarters or just about any church in the United States. This large group of trick or treaters heard the news of pumpkins and candy at Emmanuel and they took off. They started running towards the Parish Hall. There was stampede of probably 20 to 30 kids of various ages running towards the church. [BREATHE] Yes, you heard correctly. This past Sunday there were crowds of people running to (not away from) the church. People were running towards our church.

I must say I was in awe of the scene on the streets of our neighborhood on Sunday night. Either the folks in our neighborhood are really into the Reformation and Lutheran heritage or they are really into Halloween, either way it was impressive. I drove slowly up and down the streets around the church before I made my way home after Trunk or Treat. There were people everywhere. People lined the sidewalks and spilled out into the streets, making their way from house to house. There were a good number of older adolescents, but the crowds were also filled with younger children and parents holding the younger hands. On the porches and front stoops, older people, with elaborate decorations, waited to greet these throngs of trick o’ treaters. It was an amazing scene.

With such great multitudes embracing Halloween, I am left a bit perplexed as God speaks to us through the scriptures this week. With kids and adults dressed as all kinds of fantastic creatures from ghouls to ghosts, and fire fighters to super heroes, and with the extraordinary success of books and movies like Harry Potter and the Lord of the Rings, it seems that fantastic characters and larger than life images should strike a powerful cultural chord.

But I have sneaking suspicion that for most of us (myself included) as we heard this morning’s reading from the book of Daniel we probably were not as excited as when we opened the first pages of the seventh and final Harry Potter book (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows). Perhaps we think this reading from Daniel with its four great beasts, winds, and kings might be irrelevant to us; its imagery just too fantastic. Rarely in our moments of crisis do we encounter great bears with tusks or leopards with wings. Or perhaps this reading from Daniel causes us some dread. We might prefer to cede this particular reading, (if not the whole book of Daniel) to Christians of a more “evangelical” stripe. I don’t think it’s a stretch for me to say that this text doesn’t exactly resonate for most of us. And yet, the fantastic images and costumes of Halloween seem to be so popular.

After the daring imagery of Daniel, we have these beatitudes or blessings from Luke. They start off on a similar note of apparent irrelevance. Perhaps, we all passively nod our heads as we stand in the crowd gathered on the plain when Jesus says, “Blessed are you who are poor, yours is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you who are hungry, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.” Perhaps we nod in assent that Jesus is right, it is about time somebody did something for those people, the downtrodden.

But as Jesus goes on perhaps we feel the need to distance ourselves a bit, not because the text is irrelevant but perhaps because it feels too relevant, perhaps Jesus hits too close to home. Because Jesus moves in these Lukan beatitudes, through the blessings and on to the woes; Woe! to you who are rich, Woe! to you who are full, Woe! to you who are laughing, and Woe! to you when others speak well of you! Now these Woes! might cut too quickly and deeply.

There is a definite and certain immediacy to Luke’s beatitudes. Especially if we haven’t heard them in a while, they can shock us with their boldness. Perhaps we prefer to recall the more gentle blessings listed in Matthew. While Matthew proclaims blessing for the poor in Spirit; Luke proclaims a blessing more definitively rooted in the present, in our reality. “Blessed are you who are poor, who hunger, who weep, right here and right now, in this place!” Jesus says “YOU are blessed. YOU who hunger, who weep. Blessed are YOU, not some theoretical, “the poor in spirit.” Jesus cuts quickly and deeply; saying both ‘Blessed are’ and ‘Woe! to' YOU.

I think these two reactions to Daniel and Luke, perhaps equal but opposite, are related. I suspect that part of what makes Halloween as a holiday or fantasy literature and movies so popular is because on some level their fantasies allow us to escape the reality that surrounds us. For one night a year, we dress up in costumes. In doing so, we are given free license to cover up the places we are most afraid of, places of fear, poverty, hunger, and rejection.

Just as through the fantastic world of Hogwarts and magic, Harry Potter is able to escape the harsh reality of living in a tiny bedroom under the stairs in the house of his oppressive Godparents. In that same way we can put on our masks of fantasy to protect ourselves and our weaknesses from the harsh realities of weeping we know so well. Fantasy gives us the license to hide behind our masks and costume from the realities to which Luke points.

And so, I think our aversion to the fantastic images in this text from Daniel come because we fear that when the biblical writers use such unbelievable images, it might be because these images are nothing but another mask used to cover up and hide the reality of our frailty. 

But the powerful now-ness of Luke’s beatitudes speak to these fears. Against the fear that this might all be an illusion, Luke powerfully reminds us that God’s presence is a reality. No, it is the reality in which we live. Luke boldly reminds us, that when all the masks are removed, our brokenness, poverty, hungers, and our weeping will be revealed. But most importantly, when the masks and the costumes come off, the day after Halloween, on All Saints, the reality revealed is that fantastic and unimaginable reality of God’s love.  

It is this reality, the reality of God’s love among us, which Luke tries to describe in his beatitudes. It’s not that poverty, hunger, or weeping itself is a blessing. Rather in the fullness of God’s presence among us, with all the masks and costumes torn away, God’s love has the final word; a word and world without poverty and weeping. And it’s not that fullness or riches (weighed in dollars or pounds of candy in a plastic jack o’ lantern) or laughter (from fun games at a particularly successful church trunk o’ treat) are inherently bad things. Rather too often we wear them as masks that hide us from our dependence on God and the reality of our hungers and mourning. We are reminded that in the reality of God’s kingdom, all of our masks are pulled away, even ones that come across as particularly successful in this world.

This week the reality of God’s presence is forcefully proclaimed; the reality of God’s reality among us, that God is working to tear away the masks that keep us hungry and weeping.  In fantastic and unbelievable ways, God is bringing life and fullness to his people. And that is where the Saints, all those who have gone before us, come in. We celebrate them on one hand, because of the many costumes and hats they wore. We celebrate that we knew God’s active presence in the world through these Saints; through their work as teachers, policemen, and fire fighters. And perhaps we also mourn the times we did not know God through them. But ultimately, today we celebrate the Saints because they now know the fantastic fullness of the reality of the love of God. They know this reality, which God is bringing into our world. They know the absolute reality which we know in bits and pieces, here and there.

They know the true fullness of God’s kingdom, like an entire neighborhood and city gathered into one out on the streets or the masses on the plains of Palestine. They know the full satisfaction and richness of God’s kingdom; like a morsel of bread or a small sugary treat in each person’s hand. They know the true reality of God’s kingdom where all who ask receive what they need; where all who are made in the creator’s image come together; in conversation over a game of ring toss or around the table of the risen savior of the universe.

We celebrate the saints because we celebrate the fantastic reality of God’s love in our midst. We celebrate a day of imagination, a day of imagining the ways in which God is bringing the fullness of the kingdom. We are called to live into these fantastic images. We are called to imagine boldly, not in the sense of creating our own illusion. But rather to see what we do not know, to see the fantastic possibilities God's promises hold for us. Because really, what’s more unbelievable; great beasts, winds and kings? Or people running, running towards the church? Amen.