This week is All Saints Sunday, and our readings are 1 John 3.1–3 and Matt 5.1–12.

For me one of the great joys of All Saints and All Souls is the reminder that the church we experience, the community of Christian believers, in our particular moment in time is just a tiny piece of a much larger whole.  We are reminded by these feasts that innumerable saints have come before us, and many more will follow us - the Church of God extends throughout time and is much bigger than we often remember.

The extraordinary truth of the resurrection (alluded to in our reading from 1 John) means that  that continuity is more than just figurative - it's actual.  When we meet in worship, our hymns, praises, and devotions are joined with those of heaven - we don't worship after those who have come before, we worship with them; and those who follow will join their worship with ours.  It's slightly mind-bending, admittedly, but the full church is all those who raise their voices in praise together in every moment of history and eternity.  You are a part of something very big, and very special.

But it is also important to remember the breadth of the church in this moment in history.  It's important to look for encouragement for our own lives and faiths not only from the 'greats' of history, but from those around us who exude holiness.  In our reading from Matthew, Jesus tells us what sort of people to watch for, to be encouraged by, to learn from: the merciful, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the pure in heart, the peacemakers.  So far so unsurprising.  There is a surprise, though, because Jesus doesn't equate those attributes with the people to whom we tend to look for inspiration: the popular, confident, influential, loved and liked ones who seem to have it all together.  Rather he suggests that those things we seek, which will bless us with good example, can be found in the experiences and characters of quite the opposite.  

Look, he says, to the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, the persecuted, the reviled.  There you will see the blessed.

I wonder if that's because faith is pretty easy when all is well. It is fairly straightforward to believe and trust that God is loving, kind, merciful when you're well fed, warm, and at peace; it's a little more challenging when you're staring grief in the face, or coming to terms with a death that's unavoidable, existing under oppressive persecution, or living as a refugee in a foreign place...  

But it is precisely into those situations that God stepped as the person of Jesus; and I believe it's in precisely those situations that his face is still most visible today.  When the comforts are stripped away that allow us to take our faith, and the freedom to express it, for granted, often something extraordinary emerges.  True holiness.  Utter, and complete dependence on the presence of God.  I know I have seen Jesus made visible in the lives of those I've been honoured to sit beside in their times of grief and terminal illness, and I know my faith is regularly strengthened by the stories of dedication and perseverance that come to us from our persecuted brothers and sisters across the world.

Don't misunderstand me - I'm not extolling the virtue of suffering. I'm trying to recognise that the fire of faith often - completely counterintuitively - burns hottest and brightest when our strength and energy are lowest and its heat and light are most needed; and conversely we often neglect it when we are at our strongest and fittest.  

So, to those of you who are in places of grief, suffering, and pain right now I'm saying thank you for your faithfulness (even when you might not realise you're showing it), and for the blessing that you are bestowing through it.

And to those who are doing alright right now, I'm suggesting that we  accept the invitation of All Saints to look wider in all directions.  If we can deliberately overcome our natural propensity to look only at our immediate here and now, and if we can humble ourselves to receive from those we might otherwise overlook, then maybe we can find our faith re-ignited by the face of Jesus himself, so that others may in turn see him in ours.

May the light of Christ, the King of all, shine ever brighter in our hearts, that with all the saints in light we may shine forth as lights in the world.