On November 5 many of us will mark All Saints Day, and the gospel text that is assigned for All Saints is Matthew 5:1-12, the Beatitudes. When seen together, the day and the text throw light on each other. You could start with either one, but let’s start with the day.

All Saints, historically, is the feast day for canonized saints who do not have an individual feast day in the church calendar. Practically speaking, it was a way for the early church to make the calendar work and handle the accumulation of saints over the years. In the very early days, it was connected with the Easter season as a feast of martyrs, but since 835 it’s been celebrated on November 1.

While that’s the history, for most of us the day is more personal. All Saints is a day to remember our saints – the ones who were saints to us, and for us, and alongside us. Many congregations remember the names of their members who have died in the previous year. Individuals recall the names of friends, parents, grandparents, mentors, and others who have been important to them and who now dwell “with the saints in light.” Each year, I am struck by the tenderness and inspiration that emerges from re-membering our individual and collective canons of saints. The act of recalling them in worship truly re-members them for us, expresses gratitude for the difference they made, recalls how their legacy lives on in us, and summons us to continue learning from them by living toward our highest ideals. All by just saying the name in the company of God’s people.

So, what does that have to do with the Beatitudes. If All Saints invites us to think of luminous people, the opening lines of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount are showing on whom God’s light is shining today. In the previous chapter of Matthew, Jesus has begun his public ministry by preaching repentance and the good news of the kingdom, calling disciples, and healing the sick. As chapter five opens, the crowds gather around him on the hillside and he teaches them about this kingdom he has been proclaiming. The first word he utters, as written in Greek, is macarioi. Literally, it is “happy are they,” and it echoes the very first word of psalter in Psalm 1.

In a way, the translation of this first word takes us straight to the rub of the text. Are they blessed? That sounds like religious vaguery, and a bit hard to believe when you read on to those whom Jesus names. Some contemporary language versions opt for the literal, happy. That sounds more straightforward with less veneer, but it takes a lot of cultural unpacking to understand what it means in this context. And it still doesn’t resolve the challenging disjunction between everyday notions of happiness and the conditions of the people Jesus names. The Presbyterian theologian Margaret Aymer, in a study series called Confessing the Beatitudes, translates the word as “greatly honored,” and that might be closest to what Jesus is saying. They are greatly honored, in their difficult circumstances or their lowly position, by the close presence of God. God’s presence is with these in a special way, a way that is indeed blessing, like the blessing of water when you are thirsty, food when you are starving, shade when you scorched by the sun, and light when you cannot see the way ahead.

They are unlikely saints: the poor in spirit, the ones who mourn, the meek, those who hunger and thirst for justice, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, the ones who are persecuted for justice’ sake. Yet they are saints because they are the ones whom God blesses with God’s own and very near presence. God’s promises are for them, God’s gifts are for them, God’s parental care belongs to them. Just so are they the everyday saints of God.

And on All Saints’ Day, if we come to this day with some hope of becoming more saintly ourselves, then they are also our teachers. They are our unlikely examples. They show us the life of God’s kingdom. They are living portraits of God’s reign, not in their nobility but in their need, and thus in God’s presence with them. By their lives, they point us in the direction of God’s goodness and love.

If we draw close to them, we enroll in the school of the Spirit. By getting closer to them, they will raise our game. Through our proximity, we will learn something about being holy. And if – more accurately, when – we find ourselves truly in their company, and we are the one who is poor, or grieving, or voiceless, or longing for justice, or trying to make peace, then we can be assured of this promise: we are living in the light of God, greatly honored, walking in the holy way, on our way to become saints too.