For All The Saints
Sermon — November 2, 2025
The Rev. Greg Johnston
Lectionary Readings
We sometimes think of the saints as the superheroes of the faith, the extraordinary subset of Christians who actually manage to follow the challenging way of life Jesus just described. These are people like the soldier Saint Martin, who cut his own cloak in half on a cold winter’s night to share it with a poor a man begging on the street. People like the martyrs of the early church, who were reviled and defamed, and finally put to death when they refused to give up their faith, but prayed for those who persecuted them, all the same. People like Saint Francis of Assisi, who never hesitated to give to everyone who begged from him, even though he had already given away everything he had. Our calendar of holy days commemorates too many saints for me to name, and admittedly, some I can barely pronounce. (My apologies to St. Mechthilde of Hackeborn.) We can’t always commemorate each one individually, but on All Saints’ Day, we recognize All the Saints at once.
But the “saints” are not only these famous figures. In fact, the Bible never uses the word “saint” as a title for a single person. The Biblical authors always use the plural form, “the saints.” And this doesn’t mean a list of named saints—Mary and James and Paul and John. “The saints” means the whole body of “the holy ones of God.” So Paul, for example, often addresses himself to “the saints” in thus-and-such a place, and this is a way of addressing the whole church. You, the whole church, are the saints—you all are the holy ones of God. And so All Saints’ Day is a day on which we remind ourselves, not only of the many famous named saints, but of all the unnamed saints, who appear in our lives in ordinary ways: the holy people who can be met, as one popular hymn says, “in school, or in lanes, or at sea; in church, or in trains, or in shops, or at tea.” (Why, yes, that is a British hymn… What gave it away?)
And of course, many of us primarily know All Saints’ Day as a time in which we remember those whom we have loved and lost, a commemoration of the faithful departed who have died and gone before us into eternal life. It’s a day on which we remember that their souls now rest in the loving hands of God; that, as our opening hymn said, while “We feebly struggle, they in glory shine.” Although we know that they are in the hands of God, we still feel their absence, and we mourn their loss. Even if we believe with all our hearts that we will one day see them again, we know that this is not that day, and so the joy of our memories is mixed with the sorrow of our loss.
These might seem like three different things—a celebration of the great heroes of the faith, a reminder of the ordinary members of the church, and a chance to mourn the loved ones we have lost. But All Saints’ Day really does combine all these things. It’s a day on which remember the extraordinary figures of the past, and we commit ourselves to emulating their lives as we try to follow Jesus’ words. And it’s a day on which we look for the Holy Spirit working in the lives of people we know, who will never make it into the history books, but who inspire us nevertheless. And it’s a day when we pray for the faithful departed, that they may receive a share of that inheritance that God prepared for them long ago.
And for me, these three disparate elements all come together in that same challenging Gospel text of the Beatitudes that we read today: in this series of blessings and curses in which Jesus describes what it means to live faithfully as the holy ones of God.
Jesus really does lay out a program of extraordinary things, the kinds of things for which the capital-S Saints became known, things that are challenging or even dangerous for us to do. “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you.” (Luke 6:27) Few of us can manage this at our best. “Give to everyone who begs from you”—to be fair, I’ve known a handful of people who do this—“and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again.” (Luke 6:30) Come on, Jesus. That’s theft! No ordinary Christian I’ve known in my own life really manages to live this way.
And yet, Jesus really is speaking to you, to us, to ordinary people. This part of Luke’s Gospel is sometimes called “The Sermon on the Plain,” rather than the “Sermon on the Mount.” Jesus comes down from the mountain, among the crowd. He sets himself on an equal footing with the ordinary people following him, and he says, not “Blessed are those who are poor,” but “Blessed are you.” Blessed are you who are poor, blessed are you who are hungry, blessed are you when people hate, exclude, and revile you. And yes, woe to you as well, who find yourselves in good times, because the kingdom of God is a world turned upside down. Blessedness in the eyes of God doesn’t look the way we expect. The holiest saints of God might be people whom the world, or the church, excludes or reviles, or just the faithful people who you’d never think to thank for what they do. We are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, ordinary people who shape our lives in extraordinary lives every day.
In all of this, Jesus reminds us that the story is not over yet. Jesus says, “Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.” But “woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep.” (Luke 6:21, 25) In part, this is just a literal truth: we all pass through these cycles in life. No weeping and no laughter last forever. But these cycles extend beyond this life, as well, and God has promised that there will be a day when he will wipe away the tears from our eyes.
On All Saints’ Day, we give thanks to God for the bonds of love that connect us to one another. And we make the claim that those bonds do not disappear with death: that just as we still love and care for those for whom we pray today, so also those who have died before us still love and care for us. They now dwell with God and with all the saints of generations before, but they still surround us with their love. They still inspire us to do our best to “Do to others we [we] would have them do to [us].” (Luke 6:31) And the strength of their love gives us a taste of the steadfast love of God, who has pledged to us that we, too, have a part in the inheritance of the saints, and that there will one day break “a yet more glorious day,” when we will see them again.
