All Saints’ Sunday
November 2, 2025
Psalm 149

All Saints’ and All Souls’ Days, these are some of my favorite holy days in the church year. We give thanks to God for the heroes of the faith that have come before. We reflect on the people in my life that have gone on, the people who showed us how to follow Jesus. I love the hymns and the readings and the joy of this day, as we thank God for the people who mean so much to us. 

But of course, this joy is tinged with something else. Memories, and loss, and grief. Over the fifteen years of my ministry, I have officiated at eighty eight funerals. But of those eighty-eight funerals, forty-seven have been in the four years I have been serving here at Trinity. Those are your fathers and mothers, your wives and husbands, your brothers and sisters, your friends. As many of them had become my friends, too. It has been a heavy, heavy season for us. And on days like this, All Saints’ and All Souls’ Days, those memories, those people come to mind. Because we remember them. And much more clearly on days like today.

And it is the words of the psalms that catch in my throat this morning. “For the Lord takes pleasure in his people; and adorns the poor with victory” (149:4). Despite all the loss, despite all the memories, the Lord takes pleasure in his people. For the people who passed away quietly in their homes; for the people who were taken from us all too early; when people crowd this church for a funeral; and for when it is just a handful of mourners; when the final remains are here in a casket or an urn; when a body is given away for others; the Lord takes pleasure in his people. The Lord sees us, and chooses to love us, because the Lord knows full well our frailties and mortality. When we gather to remember, as we read the names of those who have ended their earthly life over the past year, we are surely confident, that the Lord takes pleasure in his people.

And the Lord adorns the poor with victory. Victory. Yes, part of the Christian life is to struggle and serve and advocate for the poor, so that they, too, could live quiet and peaceable lives. That is why we give money and bring food and raise awareness of the poor in our very midst, who have no hope. That the Lord would adorn them with victory, victory over the powers of hunger and despair. And also, the poor in spirit, the bereaved, the lonely, the lost. The Lord adorns them with victory, too. That is the subversive nature of All Saints’ and All Souls’ Days. To the world, victory looks like a baseball team winning back to back World Series in the eleventh inning; to the world, victory looks like your side winning all the political points. To the world, victory looks like the absence of pain and sorrow; it looks like conquering. But to us, to the saints in heaven and on earth; victory is a gift of God. Victory is made known in the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ from the dead, who is the final enemy. By Christ, and through Christ, and with Christ all the saints of God, all the souls whom we love but see no longer are also made victorious, as the Lord pulls them up from their own graves. We believe that what happened to Jesus on Easter morning is what will happen to us through the power of the Holy Spirit – raised to new life, raised not only with our spirits but also with new bodies. Like Jesus, all of us, poor, frail creatures that we are, would be adorned with victory. That’s what we are celebrating today, that’s what we are remembering today – that the great heroes of the faith, those whom we love but have died, and those whom the world has forgotten – the Lord adorns them all with victory. The victory that only God can give; the victory that is the glorious inheritance among the saints in light. 

Victory in the face of death. That’s the other thing going on with All Saints’, All Souls’ Day. Yes, we remember our ancestors, but at the same time we are pulling new people into this family of God. Through baptism, we are marking them with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit; the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption as God’s own people, to the praise of his glory” (Ephesians 1:12). That is why we celebrate baptisms on All Saints’ Sunday. We honor the past, we celebrate the present, and we look to the future. Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit: as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever. Ava, and Rick, and Faith are all being baptized today in this great cloud of witnesses. By the power of the Holy Spirit, made known to us in the water and the oil, we all get to see how it is that the Lord takes pleasure in his people. The Lord is adorning them with victory. 

As I have also seen over the course of my ministry. In those same fifteen years, I have been honored to baptize sixty-four people, with today being sixty-five, sixty-six, and sixty-seven. Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit: as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever.

And perhaps, perhaps the great victory that Ava, Rick, and Faith are receiving today, is the promise they will never be forgotten. By virtue of baptism, God is claiming them as God’s own. And Ava, Rick, and Faith, no matter where you go, no matter what you do, the Lord takes pleasure in you. Your whole life, from this point forward, is now to be a gift back to God. You have been given victory – victory over the powers of sin, loneliness, and death – the only reasonable thing is to render that service back to God and to God’s people. To work on your own sainthood from this day forward. And then, one day, some day, on some All Saints’ Day in the future, there will be a church, perhaps this one, that will read your name aloud. By virtue of baptism, through the communion of saints, you will not be forgotten. That is victory. 

A victory for all of us. Because today, All Saints’, All Souls’, it’s a reminder, that one day, it will be our names read aloud on this Sunday. And so it is our call, our discipleship, to live every year until then as a saint of God. So that when that crowd gathers for you, they can reflect on your life, and remember how the Lord takes pleasure in his people. And with one voice they can all say, Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit: as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever.