All Saints Sunday November 2nd, 2025 Worship

I have spent countless hours delving into the depths of grief resources in the last few months. Even without reading the books, this experience of grief resides within my body from personal experience, but also within the numerous stories that I have been trusted to hold during the years of my ministry. And, what continues to be highlighted in all my research and experience is the recognition that we in the United States have a difficult time grieving. By that, I don’t mean that it is necessarily harder for us, but we have pushed it out of the realms of public activity into the privacy of our homes. Grief becomes an individual thing to endure, rather than a collective experience that we all experience as a part of being alive. I’m sure that many of you can relate to the fact that there is often a lot of support right after a death, but then most of the people around you expect you to just get over it and move on, or at least that is what society seems to tell us. Life has to keep going, and we are reluctant to give it the chance to slow down. Which is why I love the disruption of All Saints Day!
I don’t want All Saints to be just another day in the church, but something that shocks our system, in a good way. To pull us out of the monotony and reconnect us with the reality of what it means to live, love, and lose during our time here on Earth. Even as people of faith, we often want to skip over the heaviness, the liminal space of grief, instead jumping right to the end with the story of Easter morning: the Resurrection and the empty tomb. I don’t want to dismiss the value of that within our lives and our faith, but I also don’t want us to miss out on what is happening in those hours when the stone is still rolled in front of the tomb; when the spices are being prepared and the tears are spilling over, the numbness is lingering and we don’t know which way is up or which way is down. When the grief and the shock feel so visceral that our bodies are struggling to take a full breath. When all of our emphasis is on the Resurrection, we miss the experience of wrestling with the emotions of grief that don’t just disappear because the Risen Christ shows us his scars. The Resurrection didn’t mean that those experiences in the days before were forgotten.
I started the grief group here because I have seen the way that grief has hit our world and our community hard, especially this year. Instead of shying away from grief, I want to give us the space to lean into the ways grief is both universal and also specific to our lives. I found a beautiful quote from the writer Anne Lamott when I was preparing this week’s grief group materials. She writes, ““You will lose someone you can’t live without, and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up. And you come through. It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly—that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp.” When we experience the death of a loved one, we are forever changed. It is something that resides deep within us, even on the days we aren’t consciously thinking of it. In those times when we may be walking with a limp that is unnoticeable to us but is seen by the people who truly take the time to walk alongside us.
So, when I think about these readings the lectionary chose for All Saints, it doesn’t always make sense to me. I want the stories of comfort and the Good Shepherd. I want Psalm 121 or 23 and Romans 8: 31-39; this reminder that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Yet, there is a part of me that loves the lectionary readings for today too because it encompasses the reality that God is so much bigger than what we can even fathom. That when mortal rulers and earthly challenges feel unending, when the broken bone of grief feels like it is always going to remain shattered, there is the promise of God’s kindom that far surpasses any of those things. These promises don’t mean the pain of life disappears, but it does give us something to anchor our trust in, when we need help envisioning how to take that next step forward. It is a promise that God resides with us, even when we have a hard time imagining how God can be present with us in the pain and confusion of our complicated realities.
When we hear the “Blessings and Woes”, as they are often called, in today’s Gospel, it’s sometimes difficult to wonder what we are supposed to make of them. Are we on the side that is about to receive a blessing or are we waiting for the other shoe of woe to drop? Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think that we are supposed to read it that way. In all that Jesus is teaching, it is about turning the social order on its head. He is challenging the world to break away from the things that cause harm to others and ourselves; “Do to others as you would have them do to you” (Luke 6:31). This isn’t just a nice little statement that we tell kids when they are fighting over a toy on the playground. This is a command for how to live our lives. It is a recognition that we can help create the world we so long to see; one of care, compassion, and mutual support, through our joys and our darkest days.
It is a challenge for us to show up for one another, on the good days and the difficult days of life because the reality is that we are all going to experience them. We are going to experience days that feel like they are going to break us, and days when we experience so much joy that it feels as if nothing else in the world matters. We are invited into accompanying people through life because that is what helps us get through the heart-wrenching days. We support one another, taking turns being the one doing the caring and being the one who receives care because our lives are constantly ebbing between these proclamations of blessing and woe. Neither is a sign of God’s love, or lack thereof, but they are preparing us for the realities of our earthly existence. There is so much beauty in the world, but there is also an incredible amount of pain. These blessings and woes then feel like a promise that we aren’t going to be stuck feeling a certain way forever. It is a radical naming of the human experience. s
On this All Saints Day, I want to challenge us to sit in the discomfort of this time together. The times when our hearts feel like they are breaking. The times when we want to yell at God and demand answers for where God is and why these things are happening in our world. The times when we feel outside of ourselves, not sure how we are managing to get through the day-to-day tasks of life while we feel the way we do. We might be grieving for specific people or for the reality of our world, either way, our grief is valid and has a place here. This is a space where we get to name it, to honor it, to feel it, together.
We get to live into the paradoxical nature of our faith, that we trust in the Resurrection and the promises that God has gathered our beloved in the glorious company of the saints in light, AND, at the same time we are given space to grieve. To weep, to laugh, to try to navigate our way through this life without our beloveds by our side. We don’t have to cast one aside for the other. Our life will be constantly flowing through this feeling of blessing and woe because our experience consists of both. By gathering together on this All Saints Day to tell stories, light candles, and read aloud the names of our beloveds who have joined the saints, we get to witness to our trust in that reality. That in this space, we are able to be surrounded by people who love and care for us, hearing again these promises of God’s kindom, while we acknowledge the various ways that today is difficult and challenging for us too.
Our society, and even our churches, may not always be the best at giving us the space to grieve. But, by showing up today, by entering into this ritual together, it will continue to shape us and teach us that we are allowed to live in the space where the promises are true and the grief doesn’t need to be neatly packaged up and set aside. Where we get to show up authentically, recognizing the ways that we are made stronger as a community, when we look to the saints for guidance, and support one another along the way. Where this holy disruption doesn’t just have to come on special days like All Saints, but gets embedded in the life and ministry of the church, as we journey through life together.