Today we name the saints. Not a special class of the flawless, not a marble gallery of heroes, but those whom God has claimed as holy. Saint Peter in his first letter calls the church a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation. The book of Hebrews tells us we have been sanctified once for all through Christ’s offering, and that by that same offering we are still being sanctified. And Saint Jude in his letter greets the faithful simply as those who are called, beloved in God the Father, and kept safe for Jesus Christ. That’s what a saint is: not someone who clawed their way up to holiness, but someone drawn into God’s mercy and kept there.
That means when we say “All Saints,” we’re not only thinking of the shining figures in stained glass or even just the names we’ll read aloud today. We’re talking about every life God has claimed, every person carried by grace through hardship and joy, every witness whose very being points beyond themselves to the faithfulness of God.
And when Jesus looks out at his disciples today and says, “Blessed are you who are poor…blessed are you who weep…blessed are you when people hate you for my sake,” he’s speaking to saints. To people defined not by what they have or lose, but by who holds them fast.
When Jesus opens his mouth on the plain, he doesn’t say what we expect. He doesn’t say, “Blessed are you who have it all together.” He doesn’t say, “Blessed are you who have enough money to be secure.” He doesn’t even say, “Blessed are you who never stumble.” He says the very opposite. “Blessed are you who are poor. Blessed are you who are hungry. Blessed are you who weep. Blessed are you when people hate you on account of me.”
It sounds upside down, doesn’t it? To our ears, blessing usually means having plenty, having peace of mind, having people speak well of us. But Jesus blesses the places we’d rather avoid. And in doing so, he redefines what it means to belong to God. Saints aren’t spared from life’s hardships—they live right in the thick of them.
And that’s the paradox of this day. We name as saints not those who conquered life by their own strength, but those who, in weakness and weariness, were carried by God. We honor them not because they had no tears, but because in their tears they discovered God’s strange, life-giving love. That’s what makes them blessed—not their circumstances, but the one who held them fast through it all—God himself.
But let’s be clear: sainthood isn’t just about sorrow. Saints live the whole spectrum of life. They know family struggles and family laughter. They’ve carried the weight of work and school, and they’ve known the satisfaction of a job well done. They’ve faced hospital rooms, test results, and long nights of worry. But they’ve also savored joys small and great—the smell of bread baking, the sound of music ringing in a sanctuary, the smile of a grandchild.
In all these things, hardship and delight alike, the saints give thanks not to themselves but to God. Their witness is not, “Look what I’ve managed to do,” but “See how faithful God has been to me.” They remind us not of what they achieved but of what God has already begun in them, and what God is still doing in us.
That’s the gift of All Saints: not to make us feel small beside their memory, but to remind us that the same God who held them holds us now. The same faithfulness that sustained them is poured into our lives today.
And here’s where this day becomes more than simple remembrance. We are saints. You are saints. You are holy, set apart, called by God to the holy task of everyday life, sharing God’s strange love with people and a world that popular wisdom has told don’t measure up, can’t possibly be worthy of love without proving themselves or realizing whatever fleeting thing that counts as success is right now.
The communion of saints isn’t a museum of perfect lives but a living fellowship. The same Spirit who called them calls us daily—in classrooms and offices, in the grocery store and at the kitchen table, in the waiting room and in the sanctuary. Their sainthood isn’t different in kind from ours, only different in time.
And so the witness of the saints takes flesh in our life together here. In Emanuel’s steady offering of food for neighbors in need. In shawls knitted with prayer, wrapped around shoulders aching from grief or illness. In “God’s Work. Our Hands,” where books are collected so that children might flourish. In the way we open these doors to welcome sisters and brothers from traditions very different from our own—and discover in them God’s Spirit alive and well. These are not side projects. They are the very work of sainthood itself. These are the shape of God’s strange love lived out in us.
Death is real. Grief is real. Hardship is real. Many want to deny it. But we don’t. We carry those weights, and we feel them most sharply when we name aloud the saints we love but see no longer.
But there is a greater reality still: God’s faithfulness does not end at the grave. The saints are witnesses that life, not death, has the last word. They point us to the God whose strange, life-giving love is already breaking into the world, already raising us up, already binding us together in a communion that even death cannot sever.
Their memory is not nostalgia. It’s a promise. The story is not finished. What God began in them, God is continuing in us. What God carried to completion in them, God will bring to completion in us too.
So hear this once more: the saints aren’t people who conquered life by their own strength. They are those who, in hardship and in joy alike, refused to let the world’s ways define them. They lived by God’s strange, life-giving love.
And hear this as well: the saints remind us not of what they achieved but of what God has already begun in them and is still doing in us.
That is our comfort as we grieve, our calling as we live, and our hope as we look ahead. The God who held them holds us. The God who carried them carries us. And the God who raised them will raise us too, until the day when saints and sinners, past and present, are gathered as one in the joy of God’s endless love, in the New Jerusalem—the eternal city whose very name means “God’s peace.”
And that includes you. You are saints. You are holy, set apart, called by God into the communion of saints, the fellowship of believers, the bond of the family of God—past, present, and future. You are part of the great cloud of witnesses, joined to those who went before and those who will come after, all those whom God has called through the promise of Jesus.
And so the promise is personal, for you: goodness is stronger than evil; love is stronger than hate; light is stronger than darkness; life is stronger than death. That’s God’s gift to the saints who rest. That’s God’s gift to you now. And that’s God’s gift forevermore.
The Rev'd Daniel W. Spigelmyer, Jr. 