November 1, 2026
+ Well, of course it’s All Saints Day.
And you know how much I love this
feast!
Last Sunday some churches were
celebrating Reformation Sunday
Even some Episcopal churches, which I
think is a bit unusual.
But. . .we of course have to be
rebellious.
We here at St. Stephen’s go, as we do,
in the opposite direction.
We have relics today.
Yes, actually fragments of saints’
bones.
Actually I think we’re the only
Episcopal church anywhere in our vicinity, for hundreds of miles, that had
actual relics in our altar.
And every year on this feast we bring
them out.
Yes, So, in case you’re curious: we
have relics of St. Frances Cabrini, better known as Mother Cabrini, an American
saint born in Italy who worked tirelessly among immigrants in the US
We have St John Neumann.
Not the Newman of Newman Center fame.
This one was the bishop pf
Philadelphia, who was born in Bohemia.
We have St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, who
was baptized and raised an Episcopalian, became a Roman Catholic and, following
the death of her husband, founded an order of nuns.
And finally, we have St. Incognito.
That’s right---Incognito.
We have no idea who they are.
But we love them just the same.
So, I know.
Some of you are sitting here this
morning groaning a bit to yourself (as many people often do when it comes my
seermons).
Let’s face it, there’s something a
little strange about relics.
I think we can admit that.
This piece of bone.
A fragment of cloth.
Something that belonged to someone who
died a very long time ago.
Put it in an ornate container, place
it in an altar, light a candle in front of it, and guess what?
People are gonna to have questions.
Or start a Reformation.
And that’s all fair.
But before you groan too deeply or
sigh too loudly or nail some statements to a door somewhere, I invite you to do
one thing.
Take a looksee around your own home.
That wedding ring in a drawer.
That recipe card in our mother’s
handwriting.
(I just came across my mother's lefse recipe)
That old photograph we would grab if
we had to leave the house in a hurry.
A jacket or tie or cap we can’t quite
bring ourselves to give away, even though the person who wore it has been gone
for years.
We understand these things.
We understand how an ordinary object
can become precious because of the person who touched it.
We can hold that object in our hands.
We can trace the handwriting with a
finger.
And for that sacred moment, the
distance feels a little less overwhelming.
Love gives ordinary things a
particular weight.
And that is one way to understand what
relics are.
In the Church, relics are the bodily
remains of saints, or objects associated with the lives of saints.
We honor them because the people whose
lives they touched mattered.
Their bodies actually mattered.
What they did with those bodies
mattered.
Those hands fed someone.
Those feet went somewhere difficult.
Those lips prayed, or spoke the truth,
or offered forgiveness.
God’s love took flesh in an actual
human life—in Jesus himself.
And today, on All Saints, we celebrate
that love.
We remember the saints whose names
appear on church calendars.
The ones in our stained glass.
The ones with feast days and familiar
stories.
But we also remember the saints whose
names we know because we sat beside them.
The saints who sat in these very pews.
Who knelt at this altar and received
Communion beside us.
We heard them laugh.
We watched them struggle.
We knew what they were like when they
were tired, or impatient, or frightened.
And somehow, through those very human
lives, we encountered something of God.
Most of us learned something about
holiness long before we could explain it.
Someone made room for us.
Someone listened to us.
Someone showed up when other people
stayed away.
Someone loved us through a period when
loving us required maybe a bit of patience.
We might never have called that person
a saint while they were alive.
We might have been too busy arguing
with them.
But now we recognize what they gave
us.
We recognize the mercy we received
through them.
And we miss them.
All Saints Days allows us to miss them
in a healthy and holy way.
There can be a temptation sometimes to
rush people through grief.
To offer a reassuring phrase before we’ve
really listened.
To speak about eternal life as though
it should make the empty chair at the table easier to look at.
But that chair is still empty.
There are still voices we would give
almost anything to hear again.
Christian hope allows us to tell the
truth about all of that---to live with that.
Jesus knew what it was to love someone
who died.
Jesus wept at a grave.
Our tears belong here, in the presence
of the God who knows what tears are.
And our hope belongs here too.
Because today we proclaim that those
we love are held by a love greater than our own.
They are held by God.
Their lives have a future in God, even
where our sight fails.
They are there---on the other side of
that veil.
That’s part of what we mean when we
speak about the communion of saints.
When we gather at this altar in which
the relics of saints lies, we realize we belong to something bigger than us.
We pray with the whole Church, with
the living and the dead, with people whose names we treasure and people
whose names have disappeared from every memory.
But. . .God knows them.
The forgotten are always known.
The unclaimed are claimed.
The people the world could find no use
for are truly beloved.
Here at St. Stephen’s, our Memorial
Garden gives that faith an actual physical place.
A place to walk and read the names and
to tend the earth.
We remember names.
We commend human remains to God with
prayer and love.
There’s something profoundly Christian
about taking that love and care.
The body that grew old, the body that
needed help, the body that suffered, was the body of someone loved.
And because it was, it deserves
tenderness.
And the reverence we bring to the dead
should also teach us how to treat the living.
Because there are holy lives all
around us now, in bodies that are hungry and lonely and exhausted and afraid.
There are people waiting right now for
someone to recognize their dignity, their worth.
Our care for the saints who have died
calls us into care for the saints who are still here, with us, right now.
Including us!
Now, that can be harder to believe.
After all, we know ourselves too well.
We know our resentments, our failures,
the things we wish we probably should’ve handled differently.
But the saints were human too.
They needed forgiveness as well.
They also, like us, needed other
people.
They also had to begin again some
times.
Just like us.
Holiness grows in those beginnings: in
the apology we finally offer, in the meal we bring, in the welcome we extend, in
the decision to stay beside someone in their sorrow and their pain.
God works through these small, bodily
acts of love.
Which brings us back to relics.
Someday, someone may keep something
that belonged to us.
A photograph.
A handwritten note.
Something utterly ordinary that
becomes precious because we touched it.
We can’t know what someone will one
day treasure.
But we can attend to and take care of the
life we are living now.
We can give someone a memory of
kindness.
We can leave someone with the
knowledge that they were truly welcome.
We can love in ways that help other people
trust, however tentatively, that God truly and fully loves them too.
Today we give thanks for those who
have done that for us.
We bring their names, their faces, and
our unfinished grief to this altar.
And here, with bread and wine of the
Eucharist in our hands and the promise of Christ before us, we entrust them
again to God.
May light perpetual truly shine upon
them.
And may the love we received through
them bear fruit in us.