Bishop Wayne Miller summarizes the gospel, the good news of God, in two lines:
"God loves you exactly the way you are.
And God loves you too much to let you stay that way."
Beloved, we are God's children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed.
Linger a moment over the first part of the good news, the part that I so often miss.
God loves you exactly the way you are.
We are God's children now.
God does not wait for us to get our act together before naming us beloved and blessed.
Unlike the church, God does not wait for us to complete an application packet for sainthood.
Jesus doesn't preach goals, he announces blessing.
Blessed are the poor in spirit, the bereaved, the meek, the hungry, the deprived.
Blessed are those who ache with pain and want and need; blessed are those who are mocked and misunderstood, whose lives are a hot mess.
Blessed are you, beloved child of God, no matter where you are or where your life is or
how far that is from where you or others think it should be.
God loves you exactly the way you are.
You are a saint; you are a dear child of God, right now and forever, just like those around you who don't have their act together either.
Maybe you've noticed; maybe you've mentioned it.
God loves you anyway.
God loves you exactly the way you are.
And God loves you too much to let you stay that way.
What we will be has not yet been revealed.
The process of getting there is classically called "sanctification"—saint-making.
It typically involves what John of Patmos might call a great ordeal.
In his day, it involved resisting the pervasive idolatries of the Roman empire,
including civic worship of the guy whose face was on the money with the subtitle
"Son of God."
Rome didn't have Election Day, with our privileges of voting and voice.
Rome had imperial threats ranging from peer and economic pressure to public
execution; those who came out of that great ordeal did so through a bloody death.
Blessed are they, John says, describing what they have become, which is why his vision
is called Revelation: his letter is a first fruits look at the promise come true.
What we will be is partially revealed in John's glorious glimpse:
a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne, less than six feet apart.
The joy of victory waves in their hands and songs.
Their blood stained clothes shine blinding white, laundered in the blood of Jesus.
They will hunger no more, and thirst no more; and sweat no more.
The Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd; they shall not want.
He will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear
from their eyes.
Because God loves us too much to let us stay this way.
Yes, life is a great ordeal, especially this year for so many.
It is exhausting unto soul-crushing to live in an empire now worshiping and ruled by money rather than the faces on it.
Our hunger and thirst for righteousness continues to burn unsatisfied.
Our mourning multiplies as lives and livelihoods continue to be compromised and lost.
Our spirits are impoverished in isolation as mercy and peace flicker like dim, distant stars in a vast, deep night of violence, selfishness, cruel apathy, and fear.
Our faith wobbles, our anxiety throbs, our facades crack, our eyes leak.
Blessed are we.
Beloved, we are God's children now, warts, wounds, sins, scars, tears, and all.
And we are not alone.
The candles remind us of the great cloud of wearied witnesses we call the saints.
They are a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all
tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and cheering us on.
They made it through the great ordeal, proving that we can too.
They live in our memories and our hearts and our liturgy and our work.
They embolden and empower us on the arduous path of sanctification until what we will
become is ready to be revealed.
They followed Jesus all the way home and now watch and cheer our journeys too, as we
also pave the way for saints coming after us.
That's why we continue to share the same meal they did, and pass it along to our children,
so that tomorrow's saints will still do this in remembrance of me.
That's why we serve others, rely upon others, cast votes for the wellbeing of others rather
than only ourselves and our portfolios, because money isn't God, which is why it
doesn't love us.
We are part of something greater and far more glorious than ourselves, a vast web of life,
an unmeasurable network of unfathomable love, for us and beyond us for all.
We are part of a cosmic family of flawed, sinful saints on the way to salvation that is
already promised and glimpsed but not yet fully revealed.
What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him.
Because God loves us that much.
Blessed are we.