Category: Events

Sermon Delivered at Church of the Good Shepherd
Fort Lee, New Jersey,
All Saints, November 6, 2022, at 8:00 &10:00 a.m.
By the Rev. Stephen C. Galleher

ALL SAINTS MEANS US!

“Give us grace so to follow your saints…that we may come to those ineffable
joys that you have prepared for those who truly love you.”

(Collect for All Saints)
“For the Lord takes pleasure in his people and adorns the poor with victory.”
(Psalm 149:4)
“In him you also…were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit; this is
the pledge of our inheritance.” (Ephesians 1:11-23)
“He by himself hath sworn: we on his oath depend; we shall on eagle wings
upborne, to heaven ascend.” (Hyman 401, 2 nd v.)
Good morning, saints! Do you know of all the holy days on the Christian
calendar, this is the only one that does not celebrate some aspect of Christ’s life,
from birth to resurrection. It is the only festival that celebrates us, you and me!
What a turnaround, eh? It celebrates us and uses a very honorific name for
us—saints!
Saints? You ask. Yes, saints! Notice that this is who and what we are. No, no,
no, you reply. Saints are extra special people, people who have been canonized.
You know, that long process the church has of declaring a special Christian person
a saint. Those canonized folk, the so-called “saints,” must have performed
goodness knows so many verified miracles and they must be attested as being

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above most of the rest of us. This is all, if you’ll excuse my opinion, ridiculous and
puts in our hands or the hands of those who judge whether someone is worthy of
being declared a saint, something that can only rightly be ascribed to God. How
dare we say who is better than anyone else?
No. All Saints means all, not just of people whom we honor on the numerous
designated saints days, but literally all—certainly all Christian people and more
than likely all human beings, all those born of human mothers. If this sounds too
inclusive, then I ask you to tell me just who do we think we are that we can make
judgments as to who is and who is not a saint?
Sure, there are tons and tons of people we know about and whom we know
personally who are most definitely not among our favorites. I’m sure you could list
historical figures and personal friends that you would never consider a “saint.”
Good for you, but not good for God. Because God is judge and I wonder just
whom God would exclude from this title?
We do, in fact, use the word saint to point to extra special people who
illustrate special gifts of love and service; and we’ll probably continue to use the
word in this way. But the glory of the gospel is that our Lord Jesus reached down
into every level of society and named and called out the beauty in the humblest

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human beings, those, in fact, that we would find least likely to be called “saints.”
This is part of the beauty and the majesty of the incarnation, and part of the scandal
really, because the Christ does not judge human beings the same way we do; in
fact, I don’t see him ranking people at all, a trait all too common, and perhaps in
some ways necessary, to us human beings.
The great All Saints hymn I quoted at the beginning of this meditation pretty
much says that every one of us is going to heaven. Is this too much for our
judgmental minds to take in? Perhaps, but it’s a pretty good bet this optimistic
picture of our God far outshines any god that would consign any one of us, no
matter how villainous and unworthy, to an everlasting torment. How dare we here
on earth ever assume the position of judging the eternal fate of an individual?
Shouldn’t that job be better left to God and not to our bloodthirsty hands?
The God I worship is a God of love, and God’s punishment is used only as a
corrective, like a spiritual governor to keep us upright and living the life of joy and
grace that we are promised.
I ask you to reflect on those people in your life whom you might consider
saints, forgetting for a moment that we are all saints. I can think of quite a few, and
I’ll bet you can too. Perhaps a member or members of your family. A person who

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particularly helped you in your early life, showing you how to overcome a difficult
situation. Or a person who was so kind that you got a clearer understanding of
what God is. A person who went out of his or her way for you. Or how about a
person you thought little of who you came to see as very, very special to you.
What I suggest is that that choir of extra special people in your life, whom we
might designate saints, point to something quite startling: namely, that no one is
left out of this parade of celebrities. Aren’t we urged to pull just about everyone
whom we have known and now know up on the stage with us to be recognized?
This is what canonization of those special people we think of does to us. It
canonizes everyone. (Well, let’s leave alone those people, political figures and
personal friends to whom we can focus no good feelings. They are God’s concern,
not ours!)
I believe that this kindly feeling we generate towards just about everyone on
All Saints (the living and the dead) is generated from the feeling, from the deep,
deep feeling that we are loved. We are loved by the one who created us and gave
up his beautiful, innocent life for us. Life erupts out of this exhilaration of knowing
we are loved.

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I want to recite a lovely poem by Derek Walcott. It is called “Love after
Love.”
The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Ask yourself who are the saints in your life now? Do you count yourself
among them? Do you count the person sitting next to you? And if you are
having trouble answering yes to these questions, then ask What do you think
God thinks of you? What do you think God thinks of the person sitting next to
you?
Amen.