All Saints Sunday A: The Sermon I Need to Hear

Dear Partner in Preaching, You’ll know what to say to your congregation on this Sunday. I know that and trust that. But for what it’s worth, I’m going to share with you in this letter what I want, even need, to hear on All Saints’ Sunday this year. Our custom, of course, is to remember those who have died in the last year. And I believe that practice is, to borrow the old words, “meet, right, and salutary.” It gives us a moment to grieve those we have lost but also to move to thanksgiving for their life and, even more, for their place now among the saints gathered in the nearer presence of God. And so by all means, read the names...

Matthew 11:16-19

“But to what will I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the market-places and calling to one another, ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn.’ For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a...

Philippians 3:7-9

Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may...