All Saints’ Day was established as an opportunity to honor all the saints, known and unknown.
All Saints’ Day has a rather different focus in the Reformed tradition. While we may give thanks for the lives of particular luminaries of ages past, the emphasis is on the ongoing sanctification of the whole people of God. Rather than putting saints on pedestals as holy people set apart in glory, we give glory to God for the ordinary, holy lives of the believers in this and every age. This is an appropriate time to give thanks to members of the community of faith who have died in the past year. We also pray that we may be counted among the company of the faithful in God’s
https://www.presbyterianmission.org/ministries/worship/christianyear/all-saints-day/
All Saints Day, All Souls Day, liturgy, Christian Calendar and numerous other terms familiar in church history were not a part of my spiritual heritage. Engaging death and dying has produced an appreciation for them, particularly as related to confronting our finitude. Death avoidance is revealed when All Saints Day is not acknowledged. I had the opportunity to watch a video of an All Saints Day service and found it to be meaningful and helpful in understanding a different perspective. You can watch the entire video below.
Here are some excerpts from Nadia Bolz-Weber’s sermon “Death After Life”
DEATH AFTER LIFE
…my two favorite days in the liturgical year are Ash Wednesday and All Saints …the former being the day you are reminded that if you are not in your grave, you are one day closer to it, and the latter being the day when we speak the names of those who have died and offer thanks for their lives.
I’m so grateful that the Christian calendar has days set aside to just call a thing what it is; days where we confront the truth of our mortality. And I love that we have the gall to do it right smack in the middle of our death-denying culture, a culture where we are so often offered the message that we can live forever with the right combination of yoga, injections and elective surgery. But while the false promises of immortality through self-improvement might sell product, they do nothing for us in any real way other than to make us feel like we can avoid the most inevitable thing in the world:
That you will die.
And I will die.And so will every human being ever born.
I’m so sorry to be the one to say it, but there are no exceptions, I’m afraid.
We who gather today and speak the names of those who have died this year will one day be the ones whose names are spoken on a Feast of All Saints in a year to come.
It stings a bit, does it not? Like, how dare I say this.
But the truth about our mortality is only offensive if it’s heard as an insult and not a promise.
I mean, to my ego immortality sounds great, but to every other part of me it sounds exhausting. And kinda boring, honestly.
Because it is the fact that we do not live forever that makes life so precious.
And Rare.
…none of us has been promised another day. We have this day only. But we have been promised the impossible – that death is not the final word. I am reminded of that line from a famous Auden poem – Nothing that is possible can save us, We who must die demand a miracle.
Nadia Bolz-Weber