Sermon: All Saints Sunday, Luke 6:20-31, November 6, 2022

Sermon: All Saints Sunday, Luke 6:20-31, November 6, 2022

Faith Lutheran Church, Pastor Jonathan Linman

Today is All Saints Sunday. But All Saints Day, strictly speaking, was November 1. Halloween, October 31, is actually All Hallows’ Eve, the Eve of All Saints. November 2 is All Souls Day, Commemoration of the Faithful Departed, or day of the dead (Dia de los Muertos). It’s a complicated set of festivals. All of this gets conflated and combined into what we’re doing today.

Throughout the year, there are days dedicated to remembering particular saints. All Saints Day historically was focused on remembering saints of the Christian tradition who didn’t have their own special days of commemoration. Normally those days of remembrance occur on the anniversary of death, since so many named saints were martyrs. All Souls Day, by contrast, was dedicated to remembering everybody else who has gone before us, especially among our family members and friends. Dia de los Muertos is a significant day in Hispanic culture. We had a lovely liturgy that day, led by Pastor Veronica, her first occasion to celebrate Holy Communion.

But again, today, all of the themes of the week get mixed all together as we remember everyone. Today’s focus on all the saints begs the question: just what is a saint?

The Roman Catholic Church has a very particular process for beatification and then canonization of saints.  These processes are generally long and involved in determining who can formally be named a saint in the Catholic tradition. Lutherans don’t have such a formal process. But we do have a calendar commemorating those whom we Lutherans wish to remember throughout the year. In fact, their names are listed in each week’s bulletin for your own devotions.

So, what makes for being a saint? What are the qualities of saints? Since we don’t have a process of canonization, let’s do what we Lutherans usually do methodologically when we seek theological understanding – we turn to the holy word first to see what the Bible has to say.

What, then, do today’s lectionary readings have to say about saints, who they are and how it is that they are considered saints?

Let’s start with Luke and his version of the beatitudes. Luke reports that Jesus called some blessed. These blessed, or beatified ones, are the saints. According to Luke, the saintly ones are poor, hungry, weeping, hated, excluded, reviled and defamed – all on account of the Son of Man, that is, because they followed Jesus.

Their suffering fate is like that of the prophets of old who suffered because of their proclamation of God’s word. In response to such suffering, rather than lashing out in anger and grievance, they are called by Jesus to love their enemies with God’s agape, or unconditional love. They bless those who curse them. And they pray for their abusers. And they give of themselves and their belongings generously. In short, they follow the golden rule – “do to other as you would have them do to you.” And by their example, the show the way to Jesus.

In all of this, they are blessed, beatified, saintly. Moreover, the Greek word translated blessed also can be translated happy. Happy are you who weep now! What? How can that be?

The happiness of the saints has to do with the promise that they will be part of God’s future in the divine dominion where there be no more hunger, or weeping or hatred, reviling and defamation. Thus, the saintly, blessed ones are exhorted to “rejoice and leap for joy” – for surely the reward is great in heaven, in the realm of God’s reign.

That’s the saintly wisdom from Luke. How about our first reading, that from the book of Daniel (which, by the way, is the Old Testament’s version in the same apocalyptic style as the New Testament’s Book of Revelation). Daniel reinforces the message, like Jesus in Luke, that the “holy ones [the saints] of the Most High shall receive the kingdom and possess the kingdom forever – forever and ever.” This is promised despite their having to endure the realities foretold in troubling and terrifying visions in a dream, visions of four great beasts who are four kings who will arise out of the earth to wreak havoc on everyone and everything. So, saints in the Daniel passage are the holy ones destined to receive God’s kingdom forever and ever.

Then what does the second reading for today attributed to the Apostle Paul reveal about the nature of saints? Today’s Ephesians passage basically equates saints with all believers. To be named a saint, you’re simply one who believes in Jesus. So the apostle writes, “I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints,” that is, other believers in Jesus. The apostle wishes the readers of his letter that they “may know what is the hope to which God has called [them], what are the riches of God’s glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of God’s power for us who believe, according to the working of God’s great power” – especially in raising Jesus from the dead such that “God has put all things under the feet of Christ and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is the body of Christ, the fullness of the one who fills all in all.”

For the apostle, the writer of Ephesians, again, saint is a generic term for any and all believers.

And the focus here is not on what they do, but what Christ does for them in giving them the benefits of God’s rich blessings.

So, there you have it: a brief exploration of what today’s readings reveal about what it is to be a saint. Boiling it all down, here’s my summary about saints in brief: Saints are ones blessed by God in Christ whose lives end up pointing back to Jesus Christ and what God did in raising him from the dead to usher in the fullness of God’s reign in the promised future. Saints don’t call attention to themselves. Rather, saved and blessed by God, they call attention to Christ and God’s dominion. Saints are witnesses to Christ. And many suffered as martyrs. And martyr comes from a Greek word simply meaning “to witness.”

The legalistic ways of human sin and finitude would have us think that saints become saints by the good things they do, that we need to do something to earn sainthood. The human mind corrupted by sin thinks sainthood is all about being good and doing good to earn God’s favor. That’s just not right, at least from the perspective of what today’s readings suggest read through Lutheran lenses.

The good news of the gospel suggests just the opposite, that people are made saints by God’s grace in Christ centered on faith, belief and trust in our gracious God with laser focus on Jesus Christ. Such grace is conveyed at baptism, which generates faith, and continues throughout our lives as our faith is renewed again and again our whole lives long.

Thus, Luther acknowledges that in Christ we are saints, even when we still struggle with our captivity to sin. We’re simultaneously saints and sinners, Luther says, and this is in keeping with the apostle’s view that saints simply are believers, those who trust in God in Christ and his mercy, grace, and forgiveness.

Here’s another essential point about saints: God uses saints as servants to continue to point us to Christ. Moreover, the Holy Spirit uses this witness of all the saints to renew our faith by their witness when we are weary…. That’s why it’s so important to commemorate the saints – to let the Holy Spirit work through their example to strengthen and encourage us on our journeys of faith.

Which points us to yet another reality of the Christian life which we celebrate on All Saints Sunday. We are not alone in our journey of faith; we are not alone in this room. Rather we share here and now in the mystical reality of the communion of saints. We’re in the good company of all of those who have gone before us.

I hope members of our Congregation Council don’t mind my sharing this story with you. One of the things we did at our recent annual Council retreat was spend about 30 minutes wandering about individually among and in the buildings on our campus seeking to see things we’ve never seen before. Then we got back together for show-n-tell.  

One of the things people shared was their palpable sense of the presence of those other members of the congregation who are no longer with us, those who have died in the faith. But yet, in the quiet time to just sit and be still on our campus, their presence was felt.

This is an experience of what we call the communion of saints. Which is to say, every Sunday, our church is packed, every pew is filled, even if there are only 50 to 70 of us here in the usual ways in the flesh.

This reality of the communion of saints is richly symbolized by the names affixed to the walls surrounding you. During the offertory, Nick will wield the thurible containing incense and walk about the nave censing the names, honoring and celebrating their memory, calling attention to their blessedness in Christ. This act promises to be a lovely and poignant moment conveying the sense, again, that we are not alone here.

And then we’ll all come forward to the sacramental table where, yes, we’ll commune with Christ, but also with all of those who have gone before us. I pray that you’ll feel their sainted presence today. It’s a crowded table!

And this calls to mind the encouraging words of the author of the letter to the Hebrews, who writes, “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.” (Hebrews 12:1-2)

Which is to say, all the saints, all of our loved ones and more of blessed memory, are in the stands cheering us on, encouraging us, to run our race, as they had run theirs.

And as the Holy Spirit uses the saints and their witness to renew our faith, we continue our course on earth in greater confidence doing the work that God has entrusted to us, which God also entrusted to the saints before us, namely to love our enemies, and do good to those who hate us and bless those who curse us and pray for those who abuse us and to give of ourselves generously. In short, we run our race seeking ever to live the golden rule, to do to others as we would have them do to us.

And in this, in word and deed, we, too, are the saints who point others to Jesus Christ.

Thanks be to God for all the saints, ourselves included. Amen.