“God’s Kingdom is Ours” Colchester Federated Church, November 2, 2025, All Saints Sunday (Luke 6:20-31)

Today is All Saints Sunday.  The Presbyterian Church USA has a helpful explanation to orient us to this liturgical celebration: “In early Christian tradition, saints’ days began as a way to mark the anniversary of a martyr’s death — his or her “birthday” as a saint.  By the middle of the church’s first millennium, there were so many martyrs (particularly due to the persecution of Diocletian) that it was hard to give them all their due.  All Saints’ Day was established as an opportunity to honor all the saints, known and unknown.  All Saints’ Day has a rather different focus in the Reformed tradition.  While we may give thanks for the lives of particular luminaries of ages past, the emphasis is on the ongoing sanctification of the whole people of God.  Rather than putting saints on pedestals as holy people set apart in glory, we give glory to God for the ordinary, holy lives of the believers in this and every age.  This is an appropriate time to give thanks to members of the community of faith who have died in the past year.”[1] 

All Saints Sunday provides an opportunity to think about the ordinary, holy lives of believers in our lifetime, and to give God thanks for those people who have lifted us up when we have been down.  Those people who have given us hope when we were hopeless.  Those people who have been a light when we have felt surrounded by shadows.  We can rise by lifting others up.  This is one of those days in the church calendar where we can be intentional with our gratitude for those who have lifted us up. 

Perhaps those who have helped us on our faith journeys have passed on and are now home with God where “death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.”[2]  Perhaps we will hear their name read later in our worship service as we honor their life out loud.  Though maybe people we consider saints are still living and very much physically with us in the present.  The point is to give thanks and to remember as a way to honor our saints.

Personally, I have always appreciated the expansiveness of All Saints Day in Protestant traditions.  This celebration began as an expansive celebration to honor all the saints known and unknown in Church history.  Though what makes it an especially powerful day is that there is more than one meaning here.  Because this holy day highlights the idea that saints are not just famous people from the pages of dusty, old church history books that we do have a habit of putting on pedestals to admire and emulate.  Saints may seem totally ordinary, and yet are extraordinary for us.  It can remind us of the pure poetry in the old hymn “I Sing a Song of the Saints of God:”

I sing a song of the saints of God, patient and brave and true,
Who toiled and fought and lived and died for the Lord they loved and knew.
And one was a doctor, and one was a queen, and one was a shepherdess on the green:
They were all of them saints of God and I mean, God helping, to be one too.[3]

So, what makes someone a saint?  In that famous old hymn, we hear that saints are doctors and queens and a shepherdess on the green.  Saints are not just professional church folk is the point.  Saints come from all corners and backgrounds.  And we can be saints of God, too.  We also heard traits about what makes someone saint-like—being patient and brave and true.  What makes someone a saint has much more to do with the way a person lives as opposed to one’s occupation or societal status.  What makes someone a saint is that they do not just talk the talk, they walk the walk. 

When Episcopal Priest Barbara Brown Taylor reflected on the importance of the church she once wrote, “In this age of a million choices, we are the remnant, the sometimes faithful, sometimes unfaithful family of a difficult and glorious God, called to seek and proclaim God’s presence in a disillusioned world . . . God looks at us and sees the best: sees beloved children, sees likely allies, sees able partners in the ongoing work of creation.  In faith, we set out to see the same things in ourselves and to live into them, trusting God’s vision of us more than we trust our own.”[4]

Saints bring out the best in us.  Saints may be able to see others with the loving eyes of God.  Saints are those who put their faith into loving action.  All Saints Day can remind us that when Jesus was teaching his followers the blessings and the woes (what we refer to as the Beatitudes in our Christian tradition) he was teaching that God’s Kingdom is ours to behold and ours to enact.  This was a series of blessings that stressed God’s concern for those who were economically poor and physically hungry.  Jesus was not just speaking to those in positions of power.  Jesus was speaking to ordinary people. 

The way Luke tells the story Jesus comes down with them and stands on a level place with a great crowd of his disciples and with a great multitude of people from all over.  We can imagine a diverse crowd standing there on the shores of the Sea of Galilee.  Folks had come to hear Jesus teach about the Kingdom of God and to be healed.  Folks in the crowd are pressing in on him and trying to touch him, for Luke tells us that power came out of him and Jesus healed all of them.  After these healings, Jesus focuses on his recently called disciples and teaches those blessings and woes. 

This is how Luke tells the story of some of Jesus’ most famous teachings.  There is reassurance in the Beatitudes that difficult circumstances will be reversed in God’s kingdom.  “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.  Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled.  Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.”[5]  Words of encouragement to the poor are balanced with warnings to those who are especially wealthy and influential.  Jesus also challenged a culture of retaliation.  We sometimes want to get even when we are wronged.  Though Jesus says, “Love your enemies; do good to those who hate you; bless those who curse you; pray for those who mistreat you.”[6]  Jesus is not advocating for those who suffer to stay and remain in an awful situation.  That is not ultimately loving yourself as Jesus taught.  Though Jesus is challenging us to rise above for our own good.

As we have gratitude for the saints in our lives we can do so with Jesus’ words on our hearts.  We can be inspired by those who have blessed us with their lives and blessed us with their loving actions.  We can do unto others as we would have done unto us and help co-create the Kingdom of God here among us.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.

[1] “All Saints’ Day,” Presbyterian Church USA, https://pcusa.org/about-pcusa/agencies-entities/interim-unified-agency/ministry-areas/theology-worship/worship/christian-year/all-saints-day
[2] Revelation 21:4, NRSVUE.
[3] Verse 1 of “I Sing a Song of the Saints of God” in Hymns, Psalms, & Spiritual Songs, #364.
[4] Barbara Brown Taylor, The Preaching Life, pg. 12.
[5] Luke 6:20-21.  
[6] Luke 6:27-28.

Photo by Rev. Lauren Ostrout.