For many years, the liturgy for All Saints’ Day has been one of the most meaningful services of the year for me. I like to move the liturgy to the first Sunday of November, so that the whole gathered community can take part, and also because of the practicality of how people like, or don’t like, coming “back” downtown, especially now, for a weekday or Saturday night service. Sunday morning is the time we most regularly gather.

All Saints’ is part of the trio of days that include Halloween, All Saints – a rhythm for the church to honor so many traditions of how we remember those who have died and how death interests and impacts our cultures in many ways. All Saints Sunday is the day to memorialize, through prayer, scripture, and music, those we love but see no longer – the saints of our Christian journey; saints being those we knew, and those the larger church remembers and honors from centuries or years past. It is a day for contemplation, consideration, memories, and often, grief work and tears. I often say to those who cry in church – if you can’t cry in church, then I don’t know where you can cry! Calvary has held 162 years of tears, grief, anxieties, worries, and relief and joy. The witness of our saints, those who fill our liminal and holy nave here through one of God’s mysteries of time and space, can certainly hold onto and bless our tears and our joys on All Saints’, and on all days.

Many of you have offered names of loved ones for our prayers, and also have given generously to special flowers that will fill our space with color and perfume. Our wonderful Motet Choir will fill our hearts with their sacred music.  I invite you to attend and bring a friend to this most beautiful and meaningful worship service.

There will be two other, shorter but nonetheless meaningful times of prayer this Sunday. At 9:30 am, we will gather in the memorial garden to offer prayers for those whose ashes are interred there, ask God’s blessing on our new plaques, and give thanks for our memorial garden committee and the over 5 years of work they have done to make these new, much more permanent plaques, be a reality.

At 4:00 pm, you are invited to gather again, this time with our prayer wall team, as we burn old ribbons that can no longer be recycled for our prayer wall. There is a long tradition of burning ribbons like this, and we will use our fire pit for the job, as we take part in a liturgy of blessing and healing and give thanks for the people from around the world who have offered their prayers on our corner for the past few years.

I invite you to take part in all, or just one, of the liturgies that we will be offering this All Saints’ Sunday. It will be a very special, perhaps poignant, day to be in this beloved community, remembering the loved ones we have committed to God’s care.

Rest eternal grant to them, O Lord; and let light perpetual shine upon them. May their souls, and the souls of all the departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.  Amen.

In the faith of our living Lord Jesus Christ,