All Saints Sunday is the annual Christian celebration of the memory of all the faithful who have gone before us. Human societies throughout history have all found it appropriate to remember those who established or contributed to the development of their order. It is a recognition that all of us are in this life together. The church has from its earliest days made it a point to remember those who established and served the Christian community.
Through the year we remember some of the “big names” in church history: the apostles, the early church fathers, the missionaries and those known to individual congregations. However, there have been so many who have done so much to teach and spread the faith, so many who have helped individuals as well as communities that it has become impossible to remember each of them. The church created this day for us to give thanks to God for all the faithful who have kept the faith so that we too may learn to love God from their examples. Each congregation, each family, everyone has memories of those whose faith and lives have taught us the faith. Today we celebrate all those who have come before us in faith even as we ask God to help us be examples for the next generation.
Thanks be to God.
Pastor Bill