Quick Summary:

On All Saints Sunday we lift up the names of those in our congregation who have passed on to glory in the past year. Then we focus on Jesus' call in his "sermon on the plain."
In Matthew's sermon on the mount Jesus speaks in the third person…BLESSED ARE THEY. And we are left to decide on our own whether what follows can be applied to us or not. But in his sermon on the plain in Luke, Jesus uses the personal, second person address, BLESSED ARE YOU…followed by the shocking, WOE TO YOU… and now we’re left with our breath caught in our throat, because the YOU he addresses isn’t a hypothetical somebody somewhere—it’s ME, it’s US. Where is his sermon heading? To the mercy curve.