This was a very hard sermon to write and deliver. Bluntly, looking at the Beatitudes from a law perspective just comes so much easier to me. Speaking about things you have a intellectual understanding of but your gut consistently takes you somewhere else, makes either for a confusing sermon or just a bunch of babbling as one tries to sort it out.
That said I found it interesting that the idea I opened with also found expression on the New York Times Op-Ed page of all places. In the words of another blogger, Everyday Litergy, Halloween without All Saint is equivalent to Christmas Eve without Christmas.
At the end it was just too big a subject for my understanding level. I could not simplify enough for the given time. Maybe All Saints is just too big a subject for our culture in general. It is not our natural patern of thought, and we do not have the patience for something longer than 15 minutes. Maybe a better preacher could cover it. I was not up to the task.