Saints on the Way
This sermon was preached by Pastor Ted Carnahan for the Feast of All Saints, November 1, 2025.
Grace, mercy, and peace be with all of you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Jesus was starting off great, wasn't he? Saying all sorts of stuff that I like and feels good: blessed are those who are poor, who are hungry, who weep, when people hate you. Rejoice in that day! That's a good thing because you're on my side!
But then he says things that are a lot harder: Woe to you who are rich, who are full, who are laughing, and when people speak well of you.
That's tough. It's a hard thing to put into practice. It calls us to be the kind of people that, frankly, most of us are not already. It shows us that there's this idea of sainthood that is difficult for us to attain.
Have you ever met somebody that you would genuinely say, "Man, that person is a saint!"? I have. I know a few people like that in this congregation who I'd say seems like one of God's saints on earth because of their love and their self-sacrifice. You might even know who I'm talking about.
We reserve this word, "saint," for people who seem to be able to do what seems to us to be fairly impossible. Blessed are you who are hungry and weep and who hate you. Love your enemies? Bless those who curse you? Pray for those who abuse you? If anyone strikes you on one cheek, give them the other also. And from anyone who takes away your coat, do not withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who begs from you. Everyone who begs from you?! It seems almost impossible.
A Famous Saint
If I asked you to name a famous saint, and I said we have to exclude all the biblical saints, so we're not talking about St. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Peter, Paul, etc. A modern era saint? I'm going to guess that many of you would think of, pretty quickly, Mother Teresa.
Teresa of Calcutta, now St. Teresa of Calcutta, according to the Roman Catholic Church. I agree with that. I think that makes a lot of sense to me. She gave her entire life to serving in one of the most squalid, poor, and disease-infested places in the world, offering care and compassion to children dying of famine and disease.
What an incredible saint! A woman who traveled the world and used that platform never to prop herself up, but always to point to the needs of her neighbors. What an amazing woman, willing to give of her whole entire life for the sake of people whom she was not related to and who didn't live anywhere near where she grew up!
Teresa was an amazing saint! Such a woman, always living in the presence of miracles, and of God's action being poured out through her. You would think, what a woman to have such faith and to always hold it dear and to always trust God and to never doubt anything that God said. To be so wholeheartedly devoted to God really is what makes Teresa a saint, isn't it?
Except we found out after she died that she was a very good person, but she struggled with doubt. She struggled, not through a day or a week or a month of struggling with her faith, but if the reports that I've read are correct, her diaries reveal that she struggled with her faith for thirty straight years, wondering whether God was even there, even listening when she came to Him in prayer.
Kind of an amazing thing. And there were all sorts of commentators on the internet who liked to use that as an example of, "see, her faith, it wasn't real! She had doubt! She struggled! She was no saint!"
And those people are dead wrong. Because the ones who we should call saints are all those who have been made holy by our loving God. In fact, I think that we should start getting in the habit of using the term saint more loosely. Teresa was a wonderful saint, an amazing woman of the church who did incredible things and who did those things even though she daily struggled with faith itself. And we can be very assured that she is in the presence of our God now. I believe that very wholeheartedly.
Who Are the Saints?
But what of you here in this room? Are any of you among God's saints? Yes! All who have been baptized into Christ are part of His church, have been made holy, have been sanctified. (Saint and sanctified come from the same root word.) Have been sanctified, saint-ified by God and Jesus Christ. It is not making too much of it to speak of Saint Wayne or Saint Anne or Saint Al in the back. You are saints!
You have been sanctified by the blood of Jesus Christ, given for you for the forgiveness of your sins. Not because your behavior is perfect and good, but because our Lord Jesus Christ has chosen you, elected you, chosen to save you, to give you His body, His blood, to sacrifice for you.
The Road of Faith
And then He gives you a Way. We're fond of saying, Jesus is the way and the truth and the life, that no one comes to the Father except through Jesus Christ. And that's true. But the word "way" there also means "road".
He's given you a path to walk. He has saved you by grace. He has chosen you by His own sovereign choice. He has made you His own. He has washed you in baptism. And now He has plopped you down on The Way. And He's set you down a road, a path to follow.
And that's what He's doing here. He gives us these beatitudes and these woes. The beatitudes, the traditional word we use for the blessings:
- Blessed are you who are poor.
- Blessed are you who are hungry.
- Blessed are you who will weep.
- Blessed are you when people hate you. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy.
Not because these things are signs that you're not on the road. No, they're signs that you are on the road, that you are walking with Christ, that if you're suffering in this life, you can be assured that God is with you. Right next to you. You're being sanctified by that struggle.
And then the woes:
- Woe to you who are rich.
- Woe to you who are full.
- Woe to you who are laughing.
- Woe to you when all speak well of you.
Because that is an example of a sign that you aren't on the road. When you are walking your own way instead of the road which Jesus Christ has laid out for you.
These are the guidestones that God has given us along the road. The markers that show us where the road is.
Like driving down the highway, you've got your yellow stripe down the middle. That shows you where the center is. Those are your beatitudes. The beatitudes that keep you on the path.
But then, the white line on the outside, those are the woes. And they show you when you're about to leave the surface of the road.
Commands for the Journey
Then he gives us these crazy, difficult, upside down way of thinking commands. He says, I say to you that listen,
- Love your enemies.
- Do good for those who hate you.
- Bless those who curse you.
- Pray for those who abuse you.
He says, recognize that you who have been called to drive this road, to walk this path, to live this way, this truth, this life, that there are those who are not on that path. Those for whom the woes are a line that they left long ago, who have gone their own way.
And when they mistreat you, don't follow them off the road. When they mistreat you, don't use that as your excuse to make a hard right and leave the surface of the road and crash.
Give generously to everyone who asks of you. When somebody takes things from you, do not demand them back again. Because you have been redeemed by a price. You have been bought by our Lord. You are not your own, but you are God's person. God's servant. God's saint!
Communion of Saints
So when we gather around the altar, we gather not as the perfect people who have finally left the world behind, but we gather as those who are in common, in communion, walking together a path.
And we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses. The living and the dead in this time and in all times. The communion of saints across time and space which gathers with us so that we may walk the road that we are walking with them cheering us on.
With them showing us by the life that they lived that we, witnessing to us where the center of the road is and how to get from point A to point B. How to navigate this tricky, difficult, challenging thing we call life.
And as we do so, surrounded by all the saints, we do so in the hope that we do not live solely for this life alone, but we live for the life that is to come.
That one day those who have died in the Lord will not remain in their graves, but they will rise. At the resurrection when Jesus returns, he will call them forth from their graves and like Lazarus called out of the tomb, they will hear the sound of their master's voice and they will rise and we will all be reunited at the coming of Jesus.
And he will be our great judge. Judging us not by how well we kept the road, but by how intently we desired to find its center. He will gather us together and welcome us into the new heaven and the new earth.
And we will join our lives and songs to the lives and songs of those millions and millions of followers of Jesus gathered around the throne of God giving thanks and praise and saying, "glory and honor and power and blessing and might be to God and to the Lamb forever. Amen."
Conclusion and Benediction
And until that day, we walk this road. We walk this road and we know that what we experience in this life is but a shadow of the reality to which God calls us.
We walk this road and we join together on the weekend to sing the songs of God. By the way, did you hear? This is the Feast — some of the verses, they came right out of our reading from Revelation. Every time that we gather and sing this is the feast, we're singing the Bible together.
And we're singing that reality that is already true in the communion of saints that we're all gathered around the throne of God and yet it's not yet here for us because we still must walk this road in this life.
May you be a part of the communion of saints, having the forgiveness of sins, looking ahead to the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. May you be striving always to be a modern day saint. Not because you are always good but because Christ is.
And may the peace of God which surpasses all understanding keep your hearts and minds strong in Christ Jesus our Lord until life everlasting. Amen.
