Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God Ps 43:5

Today we celebrate the ancient Christian festival known as All Hallows, or All Saints. Children around us dress in scary costumes, mocking the empty and apparent victory and sting of death. We enjoy sweet treats since death now is sweet for us, because we can no longer mourn as the world mourns. And we gather together at church to remember who we are and what our hope is in Jesus our Lord.

All of us heard the good news from someone. Perhaps from our parents or godparents as children we heard the stories of Jesus, God among us, who had come to lead us through the sufferings of this world and prepares a way for us to an eternal hope. Perhaps at church camp we heard that Jesus had died and suffered the just punishment of our sins that we might receive mercy without God abandoning his justice. Perhaps a friend’s life radically changed and we became attracted if scared by how they changed when they encountered Jesus but we followed them. Somehow the Holy Spirit worked in us, and those around us, to lead us here to this place today as Jesus’s people united together in him. On the feast of All Saints we give thanks to God for those who taught us the faith, those who showed us how to follow Jesus. Praise be to him who provided for us in their example.

We give thanks to God for the teachers in our own lives even as we give thanks to the big teachers in history, for evangelist and martyrs, for bishops and doctors, for virgins and monks. We give thanks for Augustine of Hippo and Polycarp of Smyrna, for Edwin the Confessor and for Monica Storres, for Martin Luther and Thomas Cranmer, for John Stott and CS Lewis, for all the saints who from their labours rest and have helped us grow as followers of Jesus. Today we thank God for all the saints.


When we are called to be Christian we are knit together into a community we call the church. Church in the bible is just the greek word ecclesia which means the congregation, the gathering, the crowd. But Jesus has gathered us together into a congregation, a gathering, a crowd which we are told in the bible is not meaningless. He fed the thousands with bread pointing to his own body and death given for them. He gave the apostles the mission of making disciples through baptism and making them strong through feeding them with what they had seen and with the Lord’s Supper. Sunday after Sunday we are called here, we bring our trials and our responsibilities, are inadequacies and our yearning, and we offer our lives to God. He feeds us with hope in his promises and he works something amazing among us. 
Paul tells the Christians who worship together in Ephesus, in Ephesians chapter 2 verse 22, that Jesus is building them up together into a building in which the Holy Spirit lives.Paul tells the Christians in Collosae that Christ reconciles the gathering together into one body with Christ as the supreme head (1:18). Peter also in 1 Peter talks about the Christian community as being built up into a spiritual house with Christ as the cornerstone. He says this about the process of becoming the church, the Christian community(2:9-10): “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God.” Those who are chosen are his elect, those given faith and grace from before the foundations of the world. By faith you are joined together into the mystical body of Jesus, into the house where the presence of God dwells. We give thanks for this mystery, for the communion of the saints, on the feast of All Hallows.

We do not get to choose those with whom we are placed in community. And all the saints you have ever met are sinners. You also being placed into that community come as a sinner brought there by the righteousness of Jesus. This means that living together as a Christian community this side of paradise will be done with an arm tied behind our back. We will sin against each other. May the mercy of God prevent us and help us when we do. We will be sinned against, may the grace of God give us forbearance when we are. We are iron sharpening iron. Sometimes this hurts. We are imperfect ore in a refiners fire. We will burn. God places us together in a community that we may provoke one another to righteousness, that we may build one another up in hope in his promises. Remember that as you strive together, imperfect as you are, God has placed you together under his authority so that he may make you through the trials you cause each other more and more in his image.

For we are knitted into one communion, one fellowship. God does not call us to be lone rangers, that is not what a Christian is. We are not to forsake the fellowship as some are in the habit of doing because this communion, this community, is the mystical body of Christ Jesus. To forsake the community is to abandon Christ, in whom we have our only hope. The hope given to us by the saints who came before, and by the faith that elected us and gathered us here. May grace knit us together in a robust and hearty fellowship. One of the early prayers of the didache goes like this: coagulate us together Lord as you coagulated this block of cheese.

The hope of the saints is the hope we desire. We pray that God will give us this hope. It is the hope of them who love God without reservation by his power working in them. Jesus died to save us. Jesus rose again that death would not have power over us. Jesus ascended into heaven to prepare a place for us in the presence of God. Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to gather us together into his mystical body to prepare us for that hope. One day we will exchange our Halloween costumes for white robes dipped in the blood of the perfect lamb. For all this, on the feast of all saints, may we say together with the cloud of witnesses into whom we are being gathered, thanks be to God.

Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God Ps 43:5