All Saints Day (C)
November 2, 2025
Luke 6:20-31
INTRODUCTION
The Festival of All Saints is a beautiful day on the liturgical calendar in which we not only remember those who have died in the past year, and those who were baptized, but also think more generally about the promise of everlasting life, even as we continue to struggle in this life. Our readings reflect this. I’ll be preaching on Luke and giving some insight into his Sermon on a Level Place (not to be confused with Matthew’s version, the Sermon on the Mount), but in this time I want to say a bit about the strange passage we’re about to hear from Daniel.
This passage, as Daniel will tell us, is a vision. So, it is full of symbolism and in its weirdness, it also gives great hope to a suffering people. If you don’t think it is weird, and you want a little post-Halloween scare, go ahead and find it in the Bible so you can read those missing verses. It describes some truly terrifying beasts, which, we’ll come to find out, represent four political rulers who arise and bring fear to the people. The promise in this passage is: earthly kings will come and go. They may be really, truly terrifying and awful. But they are not the end of the story. God’s kingdom will reign in the end, and God will win! How’s that for a good word??
As you listen, think about what gives you hope when life is difficult. Is it the faithfulness of the people we remember today for All Saints? The strong, life-giving word of God? Both? Something else? Let’s listen today for the hope.
[READ]
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
The lectionary leaves out the set-up for Jesus’ sermon today, so I want to read it for you. As I read, I invite you to close your eyes and try to imagine the scene: the sights, the smells, the feeling, the mood. Fair warning, I’m going to ask you to share with a neighbor after. Ok, listen: “[Jesus had just been on a mountain, praying with his 12 apostles, but now] he came down and stood on a level place, with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea, Jerusalem, and the coast of Tyre and Sidon. They had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases; and those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. And everyone in the crowd was trying to touch him, for power came out from him and healed all of them. Then Jesus looked up at his disciples, [the crowd gathered,] and he started to speak.”
What do you notice about this scene, as you imagine it? Turn to someone sitting near you and tell them something about what you noticed…
Here are a couple things that I notice. First, it’s chaotic. Did you notice that too? I hadn’t really thought of that before, but the crowd is huge, and they are all in need of something. They are desperate, they are broken, they are longing for healing. I also notice that it is close – the people are all touching Jesus, grasping for his power and healing, and he is right there with them, close enough to touch.
So, then I wonder: why do these things strike me?
I think it’s because when I imagine the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew’s version of this sermon, I guess I always imagined Jesus as up, away, ready to help even as he is sort of a safe distance from the needs of the crowd, but Luke does not let us go there. In Luke, Jesus is accessible, he is in it with them, in it with us.
And I guess this is both a comfort and a bit unnerving. It’s a comfort because of course we want Jesus to be accessible to us. That was the whole point of the incarnation, of God becoming human, so that God would be close to us and we to God, and we would know that love more profoundly than we ever had before. But it is also unnerving because if Jesus is accessible to me… then that means I am accessible to Jesus. And there are parts of me that I’d rather keep hidden – from you, from Jesus, even from myself. Having Jesus quite so close as this makes me feel a bit vulnerable.
Vulnerability. It’s not a warm fuzzy word, is it? To be vulnerable is to be exposed and unprotected against getting hurt. It is admitting we don’t have it all together. It is recognizing in ourselves where there is pain and brokenness, and then letting that be seen by someone else. And while I am an absolute proponent of vulnerability and authenticity and making genuine connection with one another… vulnerability is still just a scary word.
Yet I wonder if it is what we are called to explore on this All Saints Day, for a couple reasons. The first is that, based on the sermon Jesus preaches to this crowd, it seems that vulnerability might be a part of what it means to be a saint. Usually when we think of saints, we think of people who have been particularly faithful. But in fact, in the Lutheran tradition, we believe that everyone who is baptized in Christ Jesus is a saint (even as we remain sinners), because we are all claimed and loved by God, and promised forgiveness and eternal life, and we are all, in our baptism, called into a life of faithful living.
Faithful living means a lot of things. It means some of those things Jesus mentions in the second part of his sermon today – about loving your enemies, turning the other cheek, etc. It means reading scripture, and spending time in prayer, and study, and in fellowship with other Christians. It means being generous of heart and resources.
But another part of faithful, saintly living is recognizing our need for God’s grace and mercy. It is acknowledging that while we may put on a happy face and nice suit or sweater, we don’t really have it all together. It is coming into God’s presence not to prove to God, ourselves and everyone that we are good, but rather to say, “I’m not, and I need God’s mercy.” And that is what Jesus is getting at in his sermon on the plain. Blessed are you who are hungry, poor, grieving, accused, he says, because it is only when we are so physically, mentally, and emotionally compromised that we are able to recognize and receive God’s grace and mercy. As one preacher asks, “What is the promise of mercy to those who are not weak, forgiveness to those who have not sinned, grace to those who do not need it, or life to those not dead? It is at best meaningless, and more likely downright offensive.” You see, we can only truly appreciate the blessing Jesus offers, when we truly need it.
The woes go on to seal the deal. Woe to you who don’t have these needs, because as long as you are surrounded in comforts, you cannot receive what God has to offer. It is not until we are vulnerable, and recognize our brokenness that we will turn to God and be in a place to receive mercy. Now, comforts aren’t a bad thing, inherently, but Jesus’ sermon, especially those woes, the warnings, push us to ask ourselves: what if the things in my life, the very things I thought of as blessings, are actually diminishing my capacity to know God and receive his grace and mercy with a truly grateful heart? Maybe they aren’t getting in the way – but Jesus asks us today to take a good hard look to make sure of that!
There’s another reason I think vulnerability is a good thing to talk about today, on All Saints Day. Each year on this day, we remember those saints who have gone before us, who have died in the faith. So each year we remember together the ultimate vulnerability that we all share: we all will die. We all have or will experience someone we love dying. It’s a fact we desperately try to avoid or deny. Yet on this day, we celebrate that this ultimate vulnerability, the one we dread, is not to be feared, because Jesus showed us that death leads to life. When we are baptized, you see, when we become saints, we are baptized into Christ’s death and also into his resurrection, so, as Paul writes, “If we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.”
That’s a lot of churchy language – what it comes down to is this: when Jesus rose from the dead, he showed us that the ultimate vulnerability that many of us fear the most, death itself, is not to be feared. Not only is it not to be feared, but it is the very means by which God’s promise of new life comes to be. For the saints we celebrate today, and for us eventually, that looks like their entry into eternal life. For us day to day, as we still walk this earth and live this life, this ultimate promise gives us the courage we need to be vulnerable right now, in the more mundane things of our daily lives, to be real about our need for God’s grace and mercy in all those things we face. This sort of vulnerability leads to meaningful connection, with God and others, and that sort of connection gives us life.
All Saints Day is not just a day we look backward, remembering the saints whom we have lost. It is also a day for looking forward, toward the hope of new life that is promised to humanity in the resurrection, and to each of us when we are baptized into that promise. Thanks be to God!
Let us pray… Eternal God, we don’t like to admit when we are broken, even though you have told us and shown us that where there is pain and brokenness, there also is Christ. Make us courageous in our authenticity and vulnerability, so that our hearts would be ready to receive your grace and mercy. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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