How are we to live—what is the way to the truly good life? What should we teach our children and grandchildren? How about this: Here, have all the candy you want. Eat fast food every night of the week. Never exercise. Watch TV anytime you want for all long as you want. Don’t worry about your homework, it’s OK to just scrape by in school. Do whatever you want because it doesn’t matter. You probably not going to amount to much anyway. You know what’s likely in store for such kids: a life of obesity, indolence, failure, even poverty.

As adults we may live such lack of discipline, if not externally, at least internally, believing that we really don’t amount to much, and hoping that God will magically allow our undisciplined life of the soul, lazy, whining, demanding our own way and sulking when we don’t. But such lack of discipline is never the way to a blessed life.

Fearing that kind of result some parents may go to the other extreme: You may never have candy. You may never eat at McDonald’s. You must be athletic, and excel at some sport. You must be totally disciplined, and you must spend hours every night on your homework, and we will check up on your progress. If you don’t get straight As in school, you will be punished and shamed. You may never watch TV. You must achieve, be a success, live up the family name.

As adults we may thus become high achievers, may be successful, we may become wealthy and famous and make a positive contribution to the world. But all that may not mean that in our hearts, we feel happy, blessed, at peace. Coercion, perfectionism, the workaholic drive for high achievement may be everywhere praised in our nation, but such zeal is no more a way to a blessed life than is total lack of discipline.

Well, what is the way to a good life, a blessed life? It is the way Jesus lived and the way Jesus taught. All Saints day we hear his teaching in the form called the beatitudes, either in Matthew’s notes on Jesus’ sermon, or, as today, in Luke’s. Listening to him and following his way, we and our children are taught well, in the ways of the truly good life called "blessed."

What does blessed mean? A biblical scholar writes of the evolution of the word and the final expression of it in Jesus:

The Greek word for "blessed" used in our text is makarios. In ancient Greek times, that word referred to the gods. They had achieved a state of happiness and contentment in life that was beyond all cares, labors, and even death. To be blessed, you had to be a god, living in some other world. [Later] the word came to refer to the elite, the upper crust of society, the wealthy people. It referred to people whose riches and power put them above the normal cares and worries of the lesser folk -- the peons, who constantly struggle and worry and labor in life. To be blessed, you had to be very rich and powerful.

When this word was used in the Greek translation of the Old Testament, it took on another meaning: It referred to the results of right living or righteousness. If you lived right, you were blessed—[meaning] you received earthly, material things: a good wife, many children, abundant crops, riches, honor, wisdom, beauty, good health, etc. A blessed person had more things and better things than an ordinary person. To be blessed, you had to have big and beautiful things.

Jesus uses this word in a totally different way. Throughout the history of this word, it had always been the rich, the filled up, the laughing who were considered blessed. Jesus turns it all upside-down. Jesus pronounces God's blessings on the lowly: the poor, the hungry, the crying, and the hated. [Brian Stoffregren, at his website]

If we think seriously about what Jesus teaches, it is shocking to be asked to see the poor, the hungry, the crying and the hated as blessed. In fact, we see people in those categories as problems to be dealt with, people to be fixed or eliminated, never as blessed. They are never the top concern of those who are successful and at ease with the ways things are. But God sees the broken ones as children to be loved. In Jesus’ teaching and way, the miracle happens when among us we can see the poor as blessed by God’s concern, and vow to live our lives Jesus’ way, blessed to be a blessing—to all, but especially to those marginalized in our world.

And that gets to the core of what Jesus is about. In their dysfunction people believe they’re nothing, or in striving after achievement, people turn themselves into "human doings." But Jesus wants us to see that ourselves and other first and foremost as human beings, children of God. St Paul expressed our gospel-born worth when he called us ordinary members of the church, saints; literally, the holy ones. I wonder how much our lives would begin to change into the state of blessedness if we every day lived as if we were what God says we are: holy ones. This is the gift we’re given in baptism!

On this All Saints Sunday, let us remember that some people have lived beyond the twin woes of success and wealth! Every so often God gives the Church certain individuals who are so radically different that we call them in a special way, saints--holy ones who show us just what a blessing a life lived totally for God and the love of others can be.

For example, St. Francis, such a popular saint these days, was even remarkable, even in his own day in Italy, some nine centuries ago. He lived in poverty, by choice. He was full of the joy of Christ’s love for the poor. He was transparent to God. In our day, Mother Teresa showed in a wonderful way what a life totally given over the gospel looks like. The radical nature of the God’s Good News of blessing for the poor, the hungry, the crying, the dying, and the despised became for her a way of life—a life, blessed to be a blessing, in the slums of Calcutta.

Blessed to be a blessing—that is what it means to be saints, the holy ones of God! Here is a story worth repeating from the Desert Fathers, those early Christian saints who made it their aim to do nothing but live for God:

Three Fathers used to go and visit blessed Anthony every year and two of them used to discuss their thoughts and the salvation of their souls with him, but the third always remained silent and did not ask him anything. After a long time of this happening, Abba Anthony said to him: "You often come here to see me, but you never ask me anything." The other replied, "It is enough to see you, Father." Henri Nouwen, The Way of the Heart, page 94

The way of Jesus is the way of detaching from our own dysfunctional dramas and stressed-out striving for the American good life so that we become like window glass, transparent to the love of Christ. When others come to feel of us, "It is enough to see you, it is enough just to be near you," then we know we’re living into our gift—to be holy ones, true human beings, children of God, blessed to be a blessing. Amen.