All Saints 2025

Blessed be God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Blessed be God's family.

Amen.

Together, Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid.

Bless the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit.

That we may perfectly love you and worthily magnify your holy name through Christ our Lord.

Amen.

Let us pray.

Almighty God, you have knit together your elect in one communion and fellowship in the mystical body of your Son, Christ our Lord.

Give us grace so to follow your blessed saints in all virtuous and godly living, that we may come to those ineffable joys that you have prepared for those who truly love you.

Through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you in the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God in glory everlasting.

Amen.

Please be seated for the lesson.

Our lesson today is from Isaiah.

Holy one of old, you are my God.

I will exalt you.

I will praise your name.

For you have worked wondrous, ancient counsel, faithful and trustworthy.

For you are a refuge to the poor, a refuge to the needy and their distress, a shelter from the storm, and a shade from the heat.

The commander of heaven's legions will make for all peoples on this mountain a feast of rich food.

A feast of well-aged wines, of rich food prepared with marrow, of refined well-aged wines.

And God will destroy on this mountain the shroud that shrouds all peoples, the veil that veils all nations, and God will swallow of death forever.

Then the sovereign God will wipe away tears from every face, and will sweep aside the shame of God's people from the whole earth.

For God whose name is holy has spoken.

It is said on that day, look, this is our God in whom we hope and who saved us.

This is the creator of all in whom we hope.

Let us be glad and rejoice in God's salvation, for the hand of the ancient of days shall rest on this mountain.

The word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

So everybody knows when Mike's gone, I make one huge mistake, and we just got it out of the way.

So, all of our kids, if you would like to go back for the godly play lesson, now's the time to meet in the back and let's go do godly play.

They already did.

Okay, see.

Well, at least it's out of the way, friends.

We don't have to worry about it.

You can relax.

It's all good now.

Our reading today is from Psalm 67.

We'll read responsively on the half-verse.

May God be merciful to us and bless us.

Show us the life of your continent and come to us.

Let your ways be known upon earth.

Your saving hell among all nations.

Let the peoples praise you, O God.

Let all the peoples praise you.

Let the nations be glad and sing for joy.

For you judge the peoples with equity and God all the nations upon earth.

Let the peoples praise you, O God.

Let all the peoples praise you.

May God, our own God, give us her blessing.

May God give us her blessing.

And in order that the Gentiles might glorify God on account of God's mercy.

As it is written.

And therefore, I will convert you among the Gentiles, and then praise it into your name.

And again it says, Rejoin, O Gentiles, with God's people.

And again, praise to the Most High and all you Gentiles.

And let all the people praise God.

And again, Isaiah says, The ruler of the Gentile shall come.

And the one who rises to rule the Gentiles.

And the rule of the Gentiles shall hold.

And may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing.

So that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit, the word of the Lord.

Jesus cried again with a loud voice and relinquished his spirit.

Then look, the curtain of the temple was torn from top to bottom in two, and the earth was shaken, and the rocks were split, and the tombs were open, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised.

Then after his resurrection they came out of the tombs and entered the holy city and appeared to many.

Now, when the centurion and those with him who were standing guard over Jesus saw the earthquake and what took place, they were terrified and said, Truly this man was God's son.

Now there were many women there from a distance watching.

They had followed Jesus from Galilee and had ministered to him.

Among them were Mary the Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Joseph and the mothers of the sons of Zebedee.

This is the gospel of the Lord.

Amen.

Please be seated.

That's comfortable.

You can stand if you want.

That'd be weird, but you could.

I need water, friends.

I'm gonna get some water.

So one of the things that I'm fascinated in is AI.

Anybody interested in AI?

I probably spend a little bit too much time thinking about AI.

I think we're in a really interesting time in like human development right now.

And one of the questions that keeps coming up for me philosophically is what does it mean to be a human being?

Because we talk about artificial intelligence and sentience and things like that, but like broadly, what does it mean to be a human being?

What are the constituent parts of our consciousness?

Like we we tell this story and we we say that we have sort of this unique consciousness that God has gifted us.

We tell this beautiful, intimate story about God molding us out of the dirt and blowing God's very breath into us, and that we're made in this image.

And we can tell that the consciousness that we have is different from the rocks and the trees and our dogs and the birds.

So what is that?

What does it mean to be a human being?

I think a lot about this because I don't think it means you can just fake somebody into believing you're a human being, right?

I mean, that's that's kind of where a lot of people are in thinking about this AI stuff.

I don't think that's what it is.

I think there's something more to it.

You've heard me preach the sermon uh about time, and I think I think one of the big things um that we have to consider with our consciousness is what is our relationship with time.

Like this is something that AI is not gonna do.

Another thing that I think we have to do is we have to address the reality of death.

I mean, the truth is, some uh philosophers, some sociologists will say that all of religion is really just humanity's like attempt at answering death and facing the reality of death.

That seems a bit naive to me.

Now, don't get me wrong, I think it's really important.

I just think that's too simple.

I think that's too simple.

But I do think that that is partially the question that I want to talk about today is death.

You see, I'm wearing white, people have noticed it's like this beautiful chasmable that we only bring out on certain occasions, and you'll notice that the altar is white, and it's not Easter, and it's not Christmas.

So what is it?

It's all saints.

It's a high feast day that we have inherited from the ancestors called All Saints.

Because, as Christians, the way that we answer the question about death is that it's just a transition.

As scary as it is, it's just the next thing that we face because death isn't an end.

It's a gateway.

Because we are people of resurrection.

Like, that's the story.

Like, a big piece of the entire Jesus' reality is that God is faithful even unto death.

There's this underlying reality underneath everything that is both beautiful and calling us into relationship and calling us into life, and that when we die, we are changed and transitioned in some way, and that we go be with Jesus, right?

And we still get to maintain who we are.

Like my shawnness, whatever that means, is going to eternally be in relationship with God and other people after I die.

And so the one A question after that, if that is true, if it is true that we believe in resurrection and that resurrection is real, then the next logical question for me is how am I in relationship with the people that have died before me?

In fact, I think every culture has tried to figure this out.

Like, if it's true that we just transition and we continue, how are we in relationship with the people that have come before us?

And what we get as Christians is we get all saints.

Like, now it didn't just start as all saints.

In fact, very early on, Christians asked this question and thought, well, I mean, if people are with Jesus, then I bet we could ask them to pray for us.

Anybody have a Roman Catholic background?

Yeah.

I mean, they get some flack here, right?

But but I mean, it's actually pretty ancient theology.

I mean, if you look at the most common of the saintly prayers, right, it's the Hail Mary, which is Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee, straight out of the Bible.

Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus, straight out of the Bible.

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us now and at the hour of our death.

Very early on, the people of the resurrection said, Well, if resurrection is real, I can ask Jim to pray for me, but I can also ask my Aunt Mary, who has died, who is faithful.

Now, just as an aside, I will tell you the reason that Mary became a big deal is because if Jesus' mama ain't with him, we we're not we're not in good shape, folks.

I'm just letting you know.

If his mom ain't with him, then then I don't know who is with him, right?

So the reason that Mary kind of rose up, because she was the one they're like, well, yeah, we can probably count on her being with Jesus, right?

She's, I mean, like, look at the Mary story.

That's an aside.

But the point is, is that very early on you found, like written on tombs and other things, that Christians were were asking their ancestors, the people who had died before, to pray for them.

Because they they believed in resurrection and they believed in relationship.

And then over the years, as it interacted with different cultures, particularly the Gaelic cultures, right, in Northern Ireland, right?

The Calic, the Celtic cultures, um, you started getting this sort of movement towards what we now call All Saints, which is a three-day celebration.

It's a three-day celebration.

It's All Halloween's Eve, or Halloween.

It is All Saints Day.

All Saints is the day where we hold up the people in the Christian tradition who we think for some reason were able to follow this Jesus way like really well.

Like they did something that felt like it was extraordinary.

And so they are called the saints.

And then you have All Souls Day, which is today, November 2nd, all three in the row here.

And All Souls is for all of us and just people like me who is doing the best that he can.

I'm not gonna get canonized, I promise, I promise you that.

That's not happening.

I'm just like, we'll get that out of the way.

Like shocker, right?

But all of us that are trying to faithfully try to follow Jesus, we hold them up as well, right?

Because we're proclaiming resurrection.

And I love this.

I love that we gather together every year and we hold a space to say that we are in relationship.

We believe in resurrection, right?

And we believe we're still in relationship with those that have come before us.

I mean, how many of you have been through something where you've lost a loved one and you're just convinced that somehow this loved one was trying to communicate with you through something in the natural world to remind you that they were there, that they were okay?

I mean, I hear these stories over and over and over again.

Anybody?

Yeah, we don't like to talk about it because we don't want to be like, ooh, you know, like it's it's true.

I mean, okay, so we look at this Matthew reading.

It's odd, isn't it?

Was anybody like, I didn't know there were Jesus zombies?

I didn't know that was a thing.

Maybe it's just me who is macabre in that way, but like but this Matthew reading is kind of strange, right?

Where it talks about the tearing of the veil, the space that separated the heavenly places and the earthly places got torn and the space became thinner at the resurrection of Jesus.

And somehow those that are deceased, they're so close to us, they're close to us in a way that makes it feel like they're walking around, that they're still part of our life.

Friends, this is a testimony to our own belief about resurrection.

And just so you know, we do this every week.

So one of the things I love about our Eucharistic service, right?

Has anybody ever noticed that when I'm standing here and Mike's standing here, and we get to that part of the service, we say, we join the angels and the archangels and all the company of heaven who forever sing this hymn, holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might, all the company of heaven.

Is there anybody here that has said, gosh, I'd give anything for one more meal with my loved one?

Guess what?

Every Sunday.

And I find this extremely comforting.

I do.

It reminds me that life isn't ended, it's transitioned.

It makes me feel like I'm not alone in times when I feel like I'm alone.

It reminds me that I'm part of a big story.

I mean, in a world that is telling us to be the hero of our own story, like it's exhausting.

Right?

I just I want to be part of a bigger thing, and I want to offer myself over to that.

Like this day, there's a reason that it's, you know, after what, 1,5, 1,600 years.

I mean, if you go back in the seventh, eighth century is when things were really formalized, right, as far as this worship goes, this thing that I'm talking about is a really important part of what it means to be a human being, and I say a Christian trying to follow the way.

And I would like to leave it just as comforting, because it is.

And I think that that wouldn't be the fullness of the day.

I mean, you know, for 1500 years we've been doing this, at least in this way in some sort, and we're gonna do it again next year.

And and I want it to also be inspiring.

I want it to be inspiring.

You know, every single one of us, right, needs a role model.

Like we do.

Like, this is just how our our brains work.

This is this is how we learn.

There's there's an epistemology of apprenticeship, is what I call it.

Like, we can read all we want, but when we meet somebody who is like living and doing something and we we see a quality or a skill or a behavior in them that we want to emulate, like that's when we really can start having movement towards becoming somebody different, towards changing.

We need role models.

That's the other reason why I love the saints.

That's the other reason that I love to hold up these people who have faced really difficult things and they've tried to follow the way.

They have tried to emulate through the spirit what it means to do this thing that we're trying to do here.

That you've got out of bed to come here on a Sunday morning to try to lean into, to try to become a more part of.

And so I started thinking like about Miss Catherine.

You know, when I first started going to church, I had my big old, you know, Jesus transformation moment, and it was powerful.

Um, and so I just started going to church every day because that made sense.

And I sat next to Miss Catherine because she was the only person going to church every day.

She was 80, I don't know, probably 83 at the time.

And um eventually she told me to come sit next to her.

Uh so I sat next to Miss Catherine every day going to church.

Uh, and uh I built a friendship with Miss Catherine.

And to the day Miss Catherine died, she prayed for me and my family.

And she would call me every now and then just to remind me that she was praying for me.

Every single night she had a list of people that she prayed for.

And I want to be like that.

I'm not, just so you know.

I mean, but I kind of want to be.

And so here's what I want you to do.

I invite you to maybe soften your eyes, maybe close them.

You don't have to.

It's an invitation.

And I'm gonna ask you for 30 seconds now, it's gonna feel like a lot.

It's not.

To think of somebody who has gone before us, somebody who has enlarged your life, that is inspiring you in some way to live more deeply into your faith or to become the person you feel God is calling you to be.

And I want you to think about that person.

So I invite you to do that now.