November 2, 2025 – Patronal Feast Day

There is a line in John Tavener’s Funeral Ikos, our communion music this morning, where the choir sings: “Where then is the glory of this world?” It is sung plainly, without sentimentality. The music feels suspended between lament and hope, between the dust of death and the radiance of God. It is sacred music that tells the truth: that to be a Christian is to live with our feet still in the earth while our hearts strain toward the light. It is All Saints in sound.

Today, on our patronal feast, we rejoice in the communion of saints—those known and unknown, named and unnamed, those who have shaped this parish across its generations, and those who sit beside you now in the pews. Today we remember that God gathers ordinary people into extraordinary communion, calling us to be part of a story far larger, longer, and holier than we often realize. And this year, we name it out loud as our stewardship theme: All Saints—Past, Present, and Future.

The Past: The Saints Who Shaped Us

In Daniel’s vision, the prophet sees “four great beasts” rising from the sea—terrifying symbols of chaos and empire. The world around Daniel was filled with breakdown, violence, and political turmoil, yet the vision does not end in fear. In the midst of the storm, Daniel is told: “The holy ones of the Most High shall receive the kingdom and possess the kingdom forever—forever and ever.” In other words: the saints endure. They inherit. They belong to the God who outlasts every beast.

When we recall the saints of the past—those from Scripture, those from the long centuries of the Church, and those who built this parish—we are remembering people who lived in the midst of their own storms. None of them were perfect. None of them lived in ideal times. But they bore witness. They endured. And they passed on what had been given to them.

Think for a moment of the history that pulses beneath the floorboards of All Saints. Names in parish registers, the laughter of children long grown, the prayers whispered in dark nights, the meals cooked, the hymns sung, the tears shed, the hard decisions made by leaders who wanted this parish to survive and flourish. Those saints—our saints—lived the truth Daniel saw: that God’s people are held in a kingdom not of their own making, upheld by a promise older than our worries and stronger than our fears.

Stewardship begins here, with gratitude for the past. We do not inherit an empty field. We inherit a garden others planted—some with joy, some with sorrow, some with stubborn hope. And we remember them today as part of the great communion that surrounds our worship like a cloud of witnesses.

The Present: The Saints Beside Us Now

Saint Paul, writing to the Ephesians, speaks in language that lifts our gaze upward: “I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you may know the hope to which he has called you… and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe.”

Hope is not a passive waiting. Hope is an orientation. Hope is what you choose to see.

In this present moment—this season of our life as a parish—the invitation is to open the eyes of our hearts to the saints who sit beside us now. To recognize that sainthood is not the preserve of stained-glass heroes but the quiet holiness of people who show up, again and again, to love God and neighbour.

Saints are the ones who offer coffee to newcomers.
Saints are the ones who pray for the parish when no one sees.
Saints are the ones who teach our children, serve on committees, partner with Huddle, visit the sick, bring food to the bereaved, and keep showing up even when their life is heavy.
Saints are the ones who sing Funeral Ikos, or any hymn for that matter, not because they feel holy but because they need to remember what holiness sounds like.

In our stewardship conversations this year, we are asking a simple but profound question: What is God calling us to offer in this moment? Our time, our talents, our resources, our imagination—these are not small things. They are the raw materials of holiness. Stewardship isn’t about filling volunteer slots; it’s about offering ourselves to God’s work in the present tense. It’s about saying: Here I am, Lord. Use me.

And what a gift it is to be used by God—not because we are perfect, but because we belong to this communion of imperfect saints, stumbling together toward the kingdom.

The Future: The Saints God Is Still Forming

That brings us to Jesus’ words in the Gospel: the Beatitudes according to Luke. They are not gentle. They are not comfortable. They are not even particularly polite.

“Blessed are you who are poor… Blessed are you who hunger… Blessed are you who weep… Blessed are you when people hate you…”

Jesus is not offering inspirational sayings for kitchen walls. He is revealing the shape of God’s future—a future in which the poor are lifted up, the hungry are fed, the grieving are comforted, and those pushed to the margins are drawn into God’s embrace. This is the future we are stewarding toward. This is the future God longs to enact through the life of the Church.

And Jesus continues: “Love your enemies… Do good… Lend expecting nothing in return… Do to others as you would have them do to you.”

The saints of the future—the saints God is forming in this room, perhaps in you—are those who take these words seriously. They imagine a world where generosity is stronger than fear, where love is stronger than resentment, where courage is stronger than cynicism, and where forgiveness breaks cycles of harm.

On this Feast of All Saints, we remember: the future of this parish is not yet written. It is a blank canvas, like the potter’s clay from our stewardship letter. God is still shaping us. The Holy Spirit is still stirring. And we are invited to co-create with God.

What will All Saints be known for in ten years?
In twenty?
What will future generations say about the saints of this era—about us?

Will they say that we dreamed boldly?
That we welcomed generously?
That we grew in depth and faithfulness?
That we reached out to neighbours with love?
That we invested our treasures in the mission of God rather than in our own comfort?
That we sang, as Tavener’s music teaches us, with open hearts and unguarded hope?

We get to decide that. Not alone, but together.

Tavener’s Funeral Ikos ends not with despair but with almost luminous simplicity: the recognition that death is real, yet God’s promise is more real still. “And they are at rest.” The music doesn’t resolve all tension; it doesn’t try to. Instead, it opens a space where sorrow and hope coexist, where the saints who have died linger not far from us, and where the future stretches like a horizon touched by dawn.

This is the communion of saints—not a theological idea, but a living mystery.
Past saints behind us.
Present saints beside us.
Future saints emerging among us.
And Christ Jesus, in whom all things hold together, raised from the dead and seated above every power, filling all in all.

Paul says that Christ is the “head over all things for the church”—which means our stewardship, our worship, our decisions, our conflicts, our hopes, our failures, our dreams—are not ultimately ours. They belong to him. And he is faithful.

Today, as we celebrate our patronal feast, we are invited not only to remember the saints but to become them. To let Christ’s hope illuminate our eyes. To let God’s future claim our imagination. To let the Spirit move through our gifts, our time, our resources, our love.

All Saints is not a feast of nostalgia. It is a feast of vocation.

So we pray:
Holy God, make us saints.
Make us brave.
Make us generous.
Make us faithful.
Make us the people future generations will thank you for.

And may the music of the saints—those hymns of hope, the haunting truth of the Funeral Ikos, the heartbeat of this parish across its many years—lead us deeper into the life of the God who calls us, who loves us, and who will one day gather us with all the saints in light. Amen.