Sermon preached by Rev. Margie Quinn on Sunday, November 2, 2025
Good morning. Today I am going to offer a shorter meditation, which might be exciting for some of you. But I’m doing this because we have many saints we want to honor — saints we want to name. And their names, whether we know them or not, deserve our attention, our listening, and our prayers.
Because this doesn’t happen individually. The Body of Christ happens in community and even in ways we may not understand. It happens with our saints — with a cloud of witnesses that surround us. It’s the presence of those whose singing voices and kind hellos, whose contributions to this place and unique personalities are threaded into the very makeup of Vine Street. And it’s not just our members who have passed away this year — Alex and Sarah, Ruth and Eva — but it is also the saints who are threaded into your own life.
Maybe you are named after one of them. Is anyone named after someone? Yeah, I’m named after my Aunt Alda — a name I was very embarrassed by growing up. But Alda — I take such pride in that name and in who my family has told me she was.
Maybe you are wearing something from a saint. Is anyone wearing a piece of jewelry, or a wedding band, or an old jacket found in the closet as you cleaned up a life that meant so much to you?
And maybe the very hymnal that you just held. Maybe the very seat in the pew where you are sitting. Maybe the very chalice that you dip your bread into today. I think saints have held that book. I think they have sat where you are sitting. I think they have broken bread where you do. I think they have marveled at the changing of the seasons as they looked through this window. I think they spaced out during a sermon — maybe daydreaming about something or troubled by something or touched by something.
And I think they have graced this place and this worship in ways that really transcend our understanding. And that’s okay — that we may never fully understand this picture of what the witnesses of this place — both community members who have gone before us and those you are thinking about today — how they have surrounded us.
I want to give a little bit of history of this day — All Saints Day — because I myself learned more about it this weekend. It’s actually a three-day feast of remembrance. The first day is called All Hallow’s Eve, or Halloween.
Halloween is kind of a complicated holiday for some Christians. People think that in dressing up in scary costumes, we might be welcoming evil or demonic spirits or inviting some kind of darkness to sit within this earth. But back in medieval times, when Halloween was created, it was actually to remind each other that the forces of evil are limited, and they are fleeting, and they are actually silly in light of the resurrection. Preston Sharp writes that on Halloween back then, the church would dress up in costumes to poke fun at the forces of evil because we know that evil is only experiencing its last grasp in this world. A new day has dawned in Christ and light has come into the darkness.
I think that’s a really beautiful way of thinking about Halloween. And even last week as I watched some of our children process down in their superhero costumes, I thought, “Yeah — we’re poking fun at evil, because it doesn’t have the last say here.”
And then we have today — All Saints Day.
This is a day that pushes against the myth of individualism. It is a reminder that we don’t do this faith journey alone — that we’re part of a larger story. It’s a reminder that we as Christians believe that there is a connection with the Church — a cloud of witnesses who are cheering us on and encouraging us with whispers and yelling “Yahoo!” as we wrestle with scripture during Sunday School, as we bring in items to be donated to our homeless neighbors, as we call our senators pleading for them to feed the hungry, as we lift our voices up in choir rehearsal.
But as Preston Sharp also reminds me, All Saints Day is not just a fond remembrance or a general sense of connection. It is attached to hope — and not just any hope, church, but resurrection hope.
When Paul writes this letter to the Ephesians, I think he’s hinting at this kind of hope — this kind of resurrection hope. As Quinton just read, Paul has already heard of the Ephesians’ great faith in Jesus. And I love how he starts some of his letters: “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Grace to you and peace to you. And I’m praying ceaselessly for you, and thank you for what you have been doing.” And he says, “I pray that God would give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation — that if you haven’t, that you would come to know Jesus.”
Why? So that with the eyes of your hearts enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which you are called. What are the riches of Jesus’s glorious inheritance among the saints? And what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe?
Paul wants us to know Jesus because he wants us to know the hope to which we are called. It’s hard to remember that these days — that there’s a hope to which we are called. A hope, he says, that’s rooted in the power of God who raised Christ from the dead, who seated him in heavenly places. God seated Jesus far above the powers of evil. Paul writes — far above authority and power and dominion — knowing that Jesus is the one who overcame those powers, who was the greatest example that love has the last word.
That’s the resurrection hope I think he’s talking about.
And it’s a reminder that we don’t do faith alone. It doesn’t have to be this individual task that I grapple with — that I have to have more of. But no — there are saints and witnesses to this communal faith, too. Like I said earlier, we’re part of a larger story, too. It’s not just up to me — but it’s about us.
It’s a story that centers on hope. And that might be kind of an oversaturated word these days — “hope.” But I don’t think Christian hope means naïve optimism. I don’t think it means this belief that every single thing is going to work out. I don’t think it means this free pass to bypass grief and move on to just the happy and sunny moments.
I love how my old preaching professor Luke Powry put it. He said, “There’s a difference between cheap hope and deep hope.” And between candy theology and real theology.
He said candy theology is like when you’re eating a lollipop and it tastes so good — but then it gets stuck in your teeth and you might get a cavity. It feels really good to hear certain kinds of theologies — and certain kinds of cheap hope — that promise something. And then there’s deep hope — which actually knows loss, which has read the story of a crucifixion, and which has come to see a love that comes from beyond it.
He writes, “Hope is dynamic. It’s expansive. It’s communal. It’s eternal because it is rooted in God.” He says, “And hope is not cheap. It cost God’s Son his life.” And God’s hope persists and refuses to resign to suffering despite all of the despair. God’s resurrection hope rises out of the ash heap of hell. Hope refuses to die, and it is not defined by the present state of the world — it is defined by God.
I want to say that again: it’s not defined by the present state of the world. It is defined by God. A God that I believe in — and maybe you do too — who knew what it meant to die and who knew what it meant to rise and find a seat in a heavenly place.
Today, as we read the names of our saints — even if you know who they are or not — I pray that you, like Paul, give thanks for them. That you are reminded of Paul’s words: that in Jesus we may know the hope to which he has called us. It’s a resurrection hope. It’s a larger story unfolding. It is a cloud of witnesses and a community of people who have held your hymnals, who have graced these pews, who have broken bread, who have laughed with us and baked for us and cried with us and worshiped with us — showing us that even in the darkness, God’s eternal light — if you look for it — it shines.
Amen.