Sunday, November 2, 2025: "All Saints' Day"
The First United Presbyterian Church
“All Saints' Day”
Rev. Amy Morgan
November 2, 2025
Psalm 139:1-18
O Lord, you have searched me and known me.
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from far away.
You search out my path and my lying down
and are acquainted with all my ways.
Even before a word is on my tongue,
O Lord, you know it completely.
You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is so high that I cannot attain it.
Where can I go from your spirit?
Or where can I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there;
if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
If I take the wings of the morning
and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me fast.
If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,
and night wraps itself around me,”
even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is as bright as the day,
for darkness is as light to you.
For it was you who formed my inward parts;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
that I know very well.
My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.
In your book were written
all the days that were formed for me,
when none of them as yet existed.
How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
I try to count them—they are more than the sand;
I come to the end—I am still with you.
1 Corinthians 13:8-13
Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part, but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see only a reflection, as in a mirror, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love remain, these three, and the greatest of these is love.
The New Orleans Saints are objectively a terrible football team. So far this season, they’ve won only one of eight games, and they’re last in their division, a division where only one team has a winning record. Yes, they won the Super Bowl in 2009, during the glory days of Sean Payton as head coach and Drew Brees at quarterback. But after Brees retired and Payton left, the team hasn’t had a single winning season. Right now, they are ranked in the bottom 5 teams in almost every category and statistic, including an offense that is ranked 30th out of 32 teams.
Other than some brief spurts of mediocrity mingled with a few singularly glorious moments, the Saints have been mostly awful since they were founded. Their first game was on November 5, 1967, which just happened to be All Saints’ Day. And so, this team is the perfect reminder that all saints are not perfect.
Their fans, however, don’t seem to care. “Who Dat Nation,” as Saints fans call themselves, loves their team through wins and many, many losses. They’ve had decades of sellout games and pass season tickets down through generations. They wear elaborate costumes and have shrines in their homes where they light candles and pray for the Saints – the football team. Some fans even have Saints-themed funerals, with their caskets draped in team colors and pallbearers wearing jerseys. “Heaven got a new Who Dat today” often appears in obituaries. And so, these fans are a perfect reminder that Saints can be loved perfectly, even if they aren’t perfect.
When we talk about the saints of the church, or when we remember the life of a loved one who has died, we often lift up their accomplishments and their best qualities. We play through the highlights of a life well-lived, remembering moments of joy and connection, contributions to the community and milestones achieved.
And this is all very appropriate. People deserve to be remembered as their best selves and for their best intentions.
However, we sometimes forget the full humanity of these saints, the complicated lives and relationships they had. We forget that they were just like us – messy, imperfect, vulnerable human beings.
The problem with this glossy depiction of the saints is that we get the impression that saints are those who loved God perfectly, who lived exemplary lives, who changed the world exclusively for the better. And that would mean that most of us would not consider ourselves to be among the saints of the church or even in the running. We know that our love for God is not perfect, that we sometimes act out of our worst impulses, and that our legacy will be mixed at best.
What we need to understand is that the mark of a saint is not how perfectly they loved God, but how perfectly God loves them. Saints can be imperfect. Saints can even fail more than they succeed, lose more than they win. Because God will love them anyway. God will love them to the core, from the beginning to the end. God will go to great lengths to show the saints how much they are loved. The church saints – not the football team. I can’t speak authoritatively about God’s love from those Saints.
Psalm 139 depicts the human condition beautifully – we rise and fall, we run from God, we run toward God, we reach ecstatic heights, we’re in the depths of despair, we are “fearfully and wonderfully made,” which is one of my favorite phrases in all of scripture. There is something awesome and terrifying about every human being. There is something mysterious about us, and we’re also terribly confounding.
And no matter what, no matter where we are, what we’re thinking or saying or feeling or doing, God is with us. God was with us before we were born, and God will be with us through the end of this life. God knows us better than we know ourselves. God knows us inside and out.
And God knows that we are not perfect, that our love for God is not perfect. And God loves us anyway. God loves us with a love that never ends, a love that is whole and complete. God loves us in our messy, immature, imperfect humanity.
And that is what makes us saints. Not because our lives or our love for God is perfect, but because God’s love for us is perfect.
Today, we remember all the saints of the church. The saints who gave their whole lives to God, who lived exemplary lives, who changed the world exclusively for the better; and the saints who lived through dark nights of the soul, when they questioned God’s very existence or were angry at God; the saints who gave in to greed or were overwhelmed by their own egos; the saints who became bitter and cynical; the saints who hurt people, intentionally or unintentionally; the saints who took things too far or didn’t push far enough; the saints with guilt and regrets galore.
All these saints are celebrated today. All of them gather with us at this table today. Because all of them are perfectly loved by God.
As we remember and celebrate the saints of the church who have died, those who have made the transition from life to more life, we’re invited to reflect on our own role as saints of the church, as those who are perfectly loved by God.
You were handed a little notecard when you came in, and if you didn’t get one, just raise your hand and we’ll bring one to you. If you need something to write with, again, just raise your hand and let us know.
In church traditions that canonize individual saints, you’ll sometimes see little saint trading cards that list the person’s characteristics, things they were deeply connected to in life and can intercede for us around in the afterlife.
I am inviting us to create our own saint trading card today. Take a few minutes to reflect, not on your successes and best characteristics, but on all the ways you’ve experienced God’s love, God’s presence with you through highs and lows, times of success and failure, in darkness and light.
For example, maybe Saint Bill experienced God’s love in his journey through cancer, in his long, loving marriage, in the miracle of witnessing the birth of his children, in the injury that ended a promising career in sports, and in the grace of being gifted in managing people, which led to a fulfilling career. You’re encouraged to write your name on the card with the title Saint in front of it. You can sketch a self-portrait if you like. And then on the back reflect on these questions:
When have you felt loved in spite of doing or experiencing something unlovely?
When have you felt God’s presence very powerfully and tangibly?
What are some difficult experiences you lived through, and you really don’t know how you made it?
What are some bright spots in your life, even if they were dark moments?
When did you learn something that changed your life?
You don’t have to answer all these questions. They are just guides for helping us think about how God’s love has shown up in our lives. And when you’ve written down some of these experiences, look them over, and ask yourself, “What theme runs through these experiences?” In other words, what are you the patron saint of? Saint Bill might be the patron saint of career changes, or the saint of recovering from illness and injury. List whatever comes to mind for you. Not so that you can intercede for others after you die. But so you can encourage and pray for and guide and mentor people in your life right now.
Saints give back because they are grateful. This year, the Saints football team got hands-on in refurbishing the Trinity Community Center in the impoverished Hollygrove neighborhood of New Orleans. They painted and landscaped and assembled new furniture. They also leverage their on-field performance to donate to local community and environmental restoration efforts. For every receiving yard during the season, $10 is donated to a local nonprofit.
And we saints give back, too. Because we are grateful. We are grateful for the many saints who have come before us. We are grateful for their love and legacy, for their complicated lives and imperfections. We are grateful that, by the grace of God, those saints still gather with us at the table, every time we come to it together. We are grateful for the life experiences and characteristics that make us the saints of God. And we are grateful that we can love and support other saints along the journey of life and faith.
When you have finished creating your saint trading card, I invite you to bring it forward, and we’ll put them up on our veil here, reminding us that we are part of the great community of saints, we dwell with those who have gone before us, and we give to those who will come after. God bless all the saints. Amen.
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