This Sunday at church, we continue our “Grateful For…” series by celebrating All Saints Day with the theme “Grateful for All God’s Saints.” This week’s Scripture readings are 2 Corinthians 5:1-7, 16-21, Psalm 116:1-9, and Luke 6:20-31.
You can also read the previous sermons in this series: Grateful for All the Wrong Things and Grateful for God’s Grace.
Here’s the audio of the sermon from Christ the King, and the video of the whole service from Living Hope.
As a pastor, experiencing my first All Saints Day in a new congregation is an interesting experience, because I’m remembering a history today that I wasn’t here for. Later in the service, we’ll name aloud everyone in the congregation who has died, those who have been baptized, and those who have affirmed their baptisms over the last year, in the time since All Saints Day last year.
Our theme today is being grateful for all the saints, so today’s a day to pause, to acknowledge the ways God has been at work in our communities, especially remembering those who have completed their course on earth. But it’s strange having only been here since the middle of the year. I know it’s not just me, some of you are new to this community as well, so maybe it’s strange for you too. Maybe not—maybe it’s just me.
When I do funeral services for people I didn’t know well, I usually say something about how I’m one of the least qualified people in the room to talk about them. There are usually family and friends there who’ve known the person much better than me, so I shouldn’t be the one trying to share the story of their life.
But the purpose of a funeral is not to speak only about the person who’s died; it’s to proclaim God’s promises of life and redemption. I can always talk about the promise that death is not the end of the story, how God delivers us into the land of the living, as the Psalm says. It’s about the promise of new life, resurrection life in Jesus Christ.
All Saints Day is about remembering our connectedness, remember that our little community here is part of the Body of Christ, the church throughout time and space. Today we are remembering—we are grateful for—saints whom some of us didn’t know in this life, but with whom we are united in the Body of Christ. We remember and celebrate them as beloved children of God, people for whom Jesus died.
Today we remember those who have died, and we give thanks for them in the context of all the saints, all those who have come before us.
We celebrate all the saints who have come before us, who have been examples for us and passed on the faith to us. We give thanks for their lives and what they accomplished, what they did, but more importantly, we give thanks for what God did for them, and for us.
Because it’s God who makes saints. In some traditions, saints are people lifted up as particular examples of faith, sort of faith superheroes, those few who clung to their faith in extraordinary circumstances, martyrs and missionaries and warriors. And of course, following the example of those great heroes of faith is important. But as Lutherans, that’s only part of our understanding of saints.
Last week, we remembered Martin Luther and the beginning of the Reformation. Luther himself was far from a perfect saint—and he’d have been the first to say so—but one of the gifts he gave us is the understanding that all of us in this life are both saints and sinners.
We’re sinners, because, well, look at us. All of us mess up. But at the same time, we are saints, baptized into membership in Christ’s body.
There’s an illustration in a book I have that asks you to spot the difference between the saint and the sinner. It has two pictures, and you’re supposed to find the difference to identify which one is a saint and which one is a sinner.
But when you look closely, you realize it’s the exact same picture twice. The person in the picture is both a saint and a sinner.
That’s true for all of us. We are all simultaneously sinner and saint, because God has looked at us sinners and said, “I love you.” God has redeemed us, forgiven us, and claimed us. God makes us a new creation.
As Paul describes it, “In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.”
This is all God’s doing, not ours. God makes us saints. Not just the people who start churches, or go on mission trips, or graduate seminary, but all of us. You and me. Blessed are the poor, and the hungry, and those who mourn, the hated, the outsiders, the sinners. This is “All Saints Sunday,” not “some saints Sunday.” (see this fantastic All Saints Day sermon by Nadia Bolz-Weber for more!)
And then God entrusts this good news, this message of reconciliation to us.
One of the images for All Saints Day is the cloud of witness—the community of the Church on earth and in heaven—the cloud of witnesses surrounding us and supporting us in our journey of faith.
This is a great time to reflect and give thanks for those saints in your cloud of witnesses, the people God worked through to get you here today.
Our theme this month is gratitude, and celebrating All Saints Sunday through a lens of gratitude invites us to think about the legacy we leave for those who come after us.
Earlier this year, I heard a speaker say—and I really wish I could remember who said it or find who they were quoting; I think it might be a Native American proverb—someone said, “Be the ancestor your descendants will be proud of.” (only source I can find)
Be the ancestor your descendants will be proud of. Think about that not just as an individual, but as a community. What is our legacy as a church?
I have some books in my office right now that I received this week from Pastor Jon Breimeier from Capital Drive Lutheran Church, which closed in September. In my previous call, we received boxes of hymnals from a church in Texas that closed. And of course, the people in those congregations did much more than pass on books.
I trust we’re not in any danger of closing anytime soon, but there will come a day when this congregation’s ministry is complete (hopefully many decades, centuries from now!). What legacy will we leave?
I don’t mean that as any sort of doom and gloom; I think we’re still in the early days of our congregational history, let alone our story as saints in the context of eternity, and that’s the point: God has called us here in this community, in this time and place for a purpose. What sort of foundation are we building for those who come after us?
Be the ancestor your descendants will be proud of. I love that idea, because basically, it’s saying, make your life count. Let God work through you to make a difference here and now and in the future.
Looking through that lens affects so much, right? It affects how we care for creation. It affects the causes we choose to support. It affects how we spend our time, how we interact with others, family, friends, and strangers. It’s motivation to regard others not from a human point of view, but as God’s beloved, and to share the gospel with them, the message of God’s love.
I asked people at a committee meeting this week to name someone who’d influenced their faith, and someone in the room named the person sitting across from them, how they’d influenced her faith for decades. What a beautiful All Saints Day image!
I remember when I visited Jerry Baganz in the hospital this summer before he died, he said several times how grateful he was for this church community and how we had been there to support him. And I say “we” intentionally there, because again, this is about our connectedness, how in Christ’s body we are joined together across congregations, across time, across space.
Paul says, “We are ambassadors for Christ.” Our job as Christians—our calling—is to represent Christ, to be the hands and feet of God in the world.
How do we do that? How do we represent Christ to the world?
We follow Jesus’ directions: We love our enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you…do to others as you would have them do to you.
We use our lives to proclaim God’s good work of reconciliation in Jesus Christ, to share the good news of God’s grace and forgiveness with others. That’s our legacy.
We get to proclaim hope. We get to proclaim that for all who are in Christ, there is a new creation; everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!
We get to be part of that cloud of witnesses for each other and for the world. We get to tell our neighbors and our friends and our family about God’s love for them. What a joyful privilege to be saints representing Christ, bearing good news.
Rise up, O saints of God.
Read the previous sermons in this series: Grateful for All the Wrong Things and Grateful for God’s Grace.