The Risk of Saints - All Saints Sunday 2025

Luke 6:20-31

Then Jesus looked up at his disciples and said:

“Blessed are you who are poor,

    for yours is the kingdom of God.

 “Blessed are you who are hungry now,

    for you will be filled.

“Blessed are you who weep now,

    for you will laugh.

“Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice on that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven, for that is how their ancestors treated the prophets.

“But woe to you who are rich,

    for you have received your consolation.

 “Woe to you who are full now,

    for you will be hungry.

“Woe to you who are laughing now,

    for you will mourn and weep.

“Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets.

“But I say to you who are listening: Love your enemies; do good to those who hate you; bless those who curse you; pray for those who mistreat you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who asks of you, and if anyone takes away what is yours, do not ask for it back again. Do to others as you would have them do to you.

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There is a patron saint for almost anything. If you have a fear of caterpillars, meet St. Magnus - the Patron Saint for Protection against those creepy crawlers. Work at a gas station? St. Eligius is your saint. He was the patron saint of horses and blacksmiths, until cars came along and someone decided he should cover gas stations too. 

If you are a beer lover, Arnold is your saint. The tradition goes, some thirsty people prayed to him to give them what they lacked and a pot of beer appeared. And if the morning after gets rough, there’s even St. Bibiana,  the patron saint of hangovers. I’m not making that up. 

Then, there’s Drogo, patron saint of unattractive people, not that any of you need to pray to him. I think you get the point. There is a saint for nearly every situation. 

One of my favorite saints, and the one I think we need inspiration from today, is Saint Aelred of Rievaulx, the patron saint of friendships. You’ve probably never heard of him, which is part of why I love him. Aelred wasn’t known for miracles or dramatic conversions, but for the way he understood and practiced friendship as a path to God.

He was born in northern England, the son of a married priest before that became outlawed, and he was well-educated and well-liked from an early age.In his twenties, he served in the Scottish court under King David I: respected for his intelligence, diplomacy, and trustworthiness. 

But at age twenty-four, he walked away from what was surely a promising career and entered the monastery at Rievaulx in Yorkshire. I’m sure his parents were thrilled since monking makes such good money. 

He quickly became known for his warmth and wisdom. He eventually rose through the ranks and became the abbot of the whole monastery, overseeing more than 600 monks. But he didn’t lead the way we usually imagine leaders do—commanding, strict, or heavy-handed.Aelred was gentle and empathetic, rarely a harsh disciplinarian, and always attentive to the spiritual and emotional needs of the people entrusted to him.

He’s best known for his writing and preaching on friendship. Aelred had a gift for befriending the people others overlooked, those who were weak, temperamental, or thought to be less than holy. In his most famous work, Spiritual Friendship, he describes a true friend as:

“the guardian of my very soul” the one who  protects all the secrets of my spirit in loyal silence, the one who bears and endures anything wicked they see in my soul. For a friend will rejoice with my soul rejoicing, grieve with its grieving, and feel that everything that belongs to a friend belongs to themself”. 

That kind of definition might make us rethink who we call a friend.  Aelred’s idea of friendship isn’t casual or convenient; it sounds more like the love of a spouse, a parent, a sibling, or that one person who walked with us through the best and the worst. And for many of us, that’s the person we remember today on All Saints Sunday.

Today is unusual in the church year. Instead of primarily giving thanks to the God we know in Jesus Christ, this Sunday is set apart to remember the people we have known and loved in Christ, the ones who have gone before us and now rest in him.

And whether we realize it or not, we’re also honoring the love shared between us: the risk of loving and being loved, or as Aelred might say, the holy work of friendship.

On All Saints Sunday, we remember not just the people we loved, but the risk it took to love them  and the risk they took in loving us. Every real relationship carries the possibility, maybe even the certainty, of hurting and being hurt.

And that’s true of the saints we remember today. Some of them were anything but saintly. Some were difficult. Some were wounded, and some were wounding. Even the best of them didn’t consistently love their enemies, pray for those who hurt them, or give generously all the time.

But in the Lutheran tradition, that’s not what makes a saint. A saint isn’t someone who got it right. A saint is someone who tried, failed, and is forgiven by God. That is what makes a saint: a forgiven sinner.

Which means this loving and being loved is risky business, no matter who it is. C.S. Lewis puts it this way:

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken.  If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe and dark, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.

To love is to be vulnerable.”

Is there anyone who knows this risk — this vulnerability — more than the God we know in Jesus Christ? He left heaven, only to be betrayed by his own people, abandoned by his friends, and to have his heart beaten and broken until it stopped on the cross. And he did it so that we might be made into saints — forgiven sinners. Truly, there is no greater love than that.

This morning we don’t just remember the saints in our lives, we remember the love it took to be in relationship with them, and the risk that love always requires. Saint Aelred reminds us that to love is to risk. And to follow Jesus is simply to keep risking love again and again. Which means this life of faith is never without risk.

Today is not only All Saints Sunday; it’s also the launch of our capital campaign. You’ve seen the plans, the pictures, and you’ve given feedback along the way. And today we want to show you where all of that has led us.Because at the heart of this campaign is not just more seats in a sanctuary, or a bigger building. At the heart of it is more relationships. Buildings don’t make a church. Relationships do.

But buildings can give us the space where those vulnerable, holy friendships can take root. That’s what we’re after: a sanctuary that makes room for more people to experience the grace of Jesus Christ, and one that finally allows everyone to enter, serve, and participate fully in worship. And a Community Hub: a space where neighbors can connect, where learning and conversation can happen, where kids can play and grow, where anyone can meet, make, or find a friend.

Does this involve risk? Absolutely. Not just financial risk, though that’s part of it. The deeper risk is opening ourselves to the people around us.

We risk people coming into our space simply to use it — and nothing more. We risk people learning what we believe about God’s grace and deciding they want nothing to do with it.

And we risk forming new friendships that will stretch our hearts and our community to make room for the people God sends our way. We could get really attached to these people. We could give our hearts to them. And that requires vulnerability.

But that’s the life Jesus calls us to — a life of risk, of friendship, of love.

And if that is not at the heart of why we’re doing this — if all we want is a bigger building with more empty chairs and tables — then this campaign can be damned. But if we are willing to take the risk — to open ourselves, to make the kind of friends Aelred made, the ones others overlook and dismissed, and to share the love of Jesus with a community who needs to see it, hear it, and feel it — then we are truly rooted in grace and growing in mission.

Since there’s a saint for nearly every situation, let Aelred be our saint for this moment. 

Not because he built anything, but because he loved people others ignored. Because he believed friendship was holy work. Because he knew the work of grace was making room for the overlooked and the imperfect.

This campaign is not about numbers or square footage. It is about making more room for that kind of love: the kind that turns strangers into friends, and friends into saints.

Because as Aelred wrote, “True friendship draws us right up to the edge of what it means to know God and experience God.”

Amen

Free Indeed - Reformation 2025

John 8:31-36

Jesus said to some of the Jews who had believed in him, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth and the truth will make you free.” They said to him, “We are descendant of Abraham, and have never been slaves to anyone. What do you mean by saying, ‘You will be made free.’?”

He answered them, “Very truly I tell you, anyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not have a permanent place in the household, but the son has a place there forever. So, if the son makes you free, you will be free indeed.”

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Did you hear the breaking news this week about King Charles praying with Pope Leo in the Sistine Chapel on Thursday? It was breaking news because a Pope hadn’t shared space in worship with an English monarch since Henry VIII broke up with Rome in 1534 because, among other things, the Pope at the time refused to annul Henry’s first marriage to Catherine of Aragon.

Anyway, on Thursday, King Charles, who’s considered the supreme governor of the Church of England, sat near the altar in the Vatican as Pope Leo led worship that included two English royal choirs sharing space and song with the Sistine Chapel Choir. It was apparently, quite an occasion.

The fact that this was “breaking news” at all – in light of everything else going on in the world these days – was as fantastic as it was frustrating for me to hear in the week leading up to Reformation Sunday, which I never heard mentioned, by the way.

For one thing, it’s a good reminder that Martin Luther never meant for his beef with the Roman Catholic Church to split or divide or start new denominations of Christianity. Luther’s hope was to merely, but profoundly, change – to REFORM – the church he loved by expanding the way it practiced, proclaimed, and promised God’s grace to believers. It’s good to know that 508 years later, some the Pope and the King seem to be getting on board. Fantastic.

But it’s frustrating, too, because, if I weren’t a believer – let alone a Lutheran-flavored believer – I’d wonder what the heck was up with those Christians?

They believe in this Jesus who gave his life for the sake of the world, but it’s breaking-freaking news when two of his followers share space in worship? They preach a Gospel of grace, but they disagree about who’s allowed to receive it at the communion table? They say we’re all God’s children, but they have different sets of rules about which men or women are allowed to preach that Good News – or not? They say and sing “they will know we are Christians by our love” but they police that love when marriage isn’t “traditional?”

All of this is to say, things haven’t changed much – and certainly not enough – since that day Jesus reminded some of the Jews who believed in him about what it meant to be slaves to sin. The willful ignorance or spiritual amnesia evident in their response to him is shocking – “We’re descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone…”

Their Jewish identity as descendants of Abraham … and Isaac … and Jacob … and MOSES, too, was wrapped up in, and very much defined, by their historical slavery in Egypt, under Pharaoh. Sure maybe THEY, THEMSELVES, generations later, had never been slaves in the same way. But for them to forget about or to deny that piece of their history and – even more – to deny the freedom that was also theirs because of God’s deliverance, was part of Jesus’ point.

If it was that easy for them to forget or to deny the historical status of their ancestors as enslaved people, how easy was it for them to forget or to deny their own spiritual enslavement to the sin Jesus came to redeem? And, are we the same … or better … or any different?

On days like today – and very often as progressively Lutheran-flavored people on the planet – we like to see ourselves as being on the right side of history, as ones who “get it,” as the faithful ones who do grace with no strings attached, in ways others don’t. And I think that’s true a lot of the time, when we get it right.

But when we get too comfortable in that skin… when we blow our own proverbial horn too proudly… when we forget to look in the mirror and to the cross every now and then… we risk forgetting – like our ancestors in this morning’s Gospel – that, just like everybody else, we are slaves to sin, and need to be set free by the same mercy, grace, and love we know in Jesus.

This is Martin Luther’s understanding of grace that the Reformation set loose in the world … that we are all sinners, all beggars, all broken, all in need of forgiveness and redemption … in order to experience the fullness of life on this side of heaven and the next. But too many haven’t heard this good news. Too many deny the fullness of it for all people. And too many refuse to accept it for themselves and to share it quite so fully with others.

President Trump seems to be wrestling with a spiritual, existential crisis of sorts these days. More than once, recently, I’ve seen him imply that he’s not sure he’s getting into heaven. I’ve heard him ask reporters if they thought he was getting into heaven. I’m aware of what a lot of people might say, or desire, or even pray for in that regard. But I think Jesus would say, simply, “If the Son makes you free, you will be free, indeed.” Free from the sins you think will keep you from heaven. Free from the Sin that keeps you bound by fear and concern, right where you live. And free from the sins so many believe to be insurmountable and unforgiveable.

I had a couple of conversations this week about whether someone who dies by suicide is worthy of God’s heaven. Someone I care a great deal about was curious and concerned about a friend. Another person I know is sure that suicide is an unforgiveable sin. I’m certain Jesus would say, “If the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.” Free – on this side of heaven – not to be bound or afraid or ashamed or enslaved – outside of clinical depression, of course – by whatever might tempt a person to such a fate. And free – on the other side of eternity, too – if all else fails – free to be redeemed, saved, and showered with a love you couldn’t find or feel on this side of it all.

And I’m convinced, if we could embrace and buy the good news of this kind of grace – in all of its fullness for all of God’s people – our concerns and conversations could change the world.

I mean, if we could see in all people the common ground we share where our sinfulness is concerned – EVERYONE WHO COMMITS SIN IS A SLAVE TO SIN, remember – then we would live and move and breathe and support policy and promote laws and do justice and share the Gospel and do God’s bidding – with more of a WE and US mission, than a THEY and THEM mentality.

And if we could see in all people the common ground we share where our promised redemption is concerned – IF THE SON SETS YOU FREE, YOU WILL BE FREE INDEED (yes, you and him and her and them, too) – than we might live with such astonishment and so much gratitude at the abundance of this gift, that we would live more generosity, more humility, more selflessness, more of the same kind of grace that has first been given to us. And wouldn’t that be a change, a transformation, a reformation the world could use right about now?

As part of the festivities at the Vatican last week, King Charles was gifted a special chair – for him to use during his visit and that will be reserved for use only by British monarchs in the future. It’s decorated with the king’s coat of arms and a phrase in Latin which means, “That they may be one,” which is a lovely gesture of hospitality, welcome, and Christian unity.

May we all imagine – not just popes and kings – but ourselves and each other – our neighbors and the strangers who surround us – sinners, all – sharing such a seat of welcome, hospitality, mercy, and forgiveness.

And may that change us for the better, change us for the sake of the world, and transform us into the saints God calls each of us to be in response to the savior we know in Jesus – the Son who has a permanent place in the household, who sets the table for the sake of the world, and who saves us all a seat, by way of his amazing grace.

Amen