The Feast of All Saints
November 1, 2026
St. Matthew 5:1-12
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
This morning’s Gospel comes from the well-known Sermon on the Mount. These first twelve verses of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus’ words, are known as the beatitudes. A beatitude is a blessing.
With these beatitudes, these words of Jesus, we might be inclined to see them as a description of the Christian’s life in the present. I believe this is how we like to hear them, or how we have grown accustomed to hearing them, as a commentary on how to live the present life. However, if you reread the last verse of the gospel reading, you’ll see that these words also highlight how narrow the separation is between living today and every Christian’s future promise.
Jesus says, “Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven.”
The Feast of All Saints often focuses us, the living, on the eternal reward in heaven. This day also gives the Church time to pause and remember those who have fallen asleep in Christ, especially throughout the past year, and who now enjoy the eternal reward of heaven.
In a few moments, we will continue the tradition in the Prayer of the Church by reading the names of those who have received the eternal reward of heaven and have passed from this veil of tears, the Church Militant, to the gladness of the Church Triumphant.
It’s a difficult thing, isn’t it, to hear the names of those who have gone before us, but it also reveals just how thin the line is between living among the militant and the rejoicing among the triumphant.
Truthfully, our whole lives traverse the boundary between life and death, whether at the font as you enter into the death and resurrection of Jesus, or at this altar as heaven comes to earth with the food and drink of eternal life, or as the casket of your loved one is brought forth to the foot of these steps.
And for this reason, every word read, spoken, and confessed in this sanctuary, whether on a Sunday morning, at a baptism, wedding, or at a funeral, must derive from the words and beatitudes of Jesus, so that you, the hearer, will receive the gift of eternal life He desires to give you when your last day on earth comes.
One author wrote regarding the use of words at the funeral,
Words matter at funerals because a funeral is a liminal experience. You are bringing a family to the thin place where two realities intersect. One perfectly natural and appropriate way to speak of those realities – the communities of the living and the dead… another way, using perhaps even more important language for this transition, at least for believers, is this: the church militant and the church triumphant.
While “liminal experience” may not be part of our everyday vernacular, it describes a threshold between two realities—a point at which a person’s status changes. For example, when a teenager walks across the stage at high school graduation, we now call them an adult. That moment marks a liminal experience. Though it may seem exciting, such a change can also bring anxiety, uncertainty, shifts in relationships, the end of relationships, grief, and mourning.
We know other examples of liminal experiences well. A man and a woman enter a sanctuary to be married; they leave as one flesh. Their lives will never be the same.
A husband and wife go to the hospital to have a child; they drive home with extreme care, now carrying precious cargo strapped into a car seat.
A loved one’s funeral is also a liminal experience, because you, the living, leave as a changed person.
The author of the quote I read a moment ago calls funerals a liminal experience because, for some, it is the closest or only time a person will experience the crossover of heaven on earth, where the ordinary is stripped of its structure, and the most sublime heavenly experience approaches them in the Words they will hear from the Shepherd’s voice.
Have you considered how important the funeral service is in telling this story of the Christian, how one transfers from the Church militant to the Church triumphant?
The same author I mentioned a moment ago went on to recount an experience at the end of a friend’s father’s funeral that poignantly brings these points to a climax. He wrote,
At the conclusion of the funeral of my best friend's father, a local pastor stood in the midst of the congregation and announced, “I move that we strike Ray's name from the membership roll. He has taken his membership to another, bigger congregation.” The motion was seconded and passed unanimously. Words are the means by which we bring this liminal experience into our shared reality. Words help us journey with the dead to their new community and then bring us back again to the land of the living.
It’s an interesting practice. While most congregations have kept membership books with each name written by hand, there has been a custom to remove the name from the side of the book containing the Church militant and, upon death, to write the name in the opposite portion of the book that contains the names of the Church triumphant, those who rest and rejoice with Jesus.
We don’t do this at Good Shepherd. But I do wonder, for the outsider, how they would respond to such a practice: calling the name of a deceased brother or sister in Christ, removing them from membership, and audibly transferring them to the Church triumphant at the end of a funeral?
How would this be received by an outsider? How would you receive it?
In a way, we already do this, though not as immediately. Each All Saints Day, we gather to give thanks for those who have gone before us, who have been examples in the faith, and whose lives show us how God has worked. We receive their names, toll the bell, and give thanks that they are now numbered among the ranks of heaven.
Outside the funeral, today is that liminal day when we remember that two realities exist here: heaven comes to earth, and the Church militant and triumphant meet here in this place, and around this rail.
Speaking the names of our deceased brothers and sisters in Christ aloud forms a ritual that brings us into the liminal experience between heaven and earth. While it may feel awkward or unnerving because of the deep grief we feel at the death of a loved one, the ritual of speaking the names of the deceased, the liturgy of a funeral, is meant to aid the Christian in processing their grief and sadness.
As a nineteenth-century author wrote,
Death is a private affair. A funeral is a public occasion. Grief is borne by the immediate family and close friends, that little band of the bereaved clustered around the remains. The funeral provides the liturgy where, for a brief interval, grief can be contained while the final separation takes place. It employs a language, chiseled out over centuries, to comfort the grief-stricken where ordinary words fail. Ritual, mercifully, accommodates private grief and public sympathy. (Liam Swords)
I appreciate that last sentence, “Ritual, mercifully, accommodates private grief and public sympathy.”
And why does this matter? No one leaves a funeral as they arrived. Like any liminal experience, the funeral ritual publicly transfers the deceased from the Church Militant to the Church Triumphant and also changes you, who remain among the Church Militant.
You cross the sanctuary threshold and make your way to the grave as a changed person, because death has altered your relationships. Your steps are accompanied by anxiety, uncertainty, shifts in relationships, the ending of relationships, grief, and mourning.
So what does this mean for you?
Well, for you who continue to dwell here on earth, read the beatitudes in today’s Gospel and take them to heart. In a sense, verses 4-6 are for you,
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”
“Blessed are the meek (the lowly and humble), for they shall inherit the earth.”
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.”
In your sadness, God has not cast you aside; instead, He has made a promise to bless you: for those who mourn, who find themselves lowly and humbled, for those hungering and thirsting for the righteousness of God in their dark despair, He has you; God cares for you and will continue to provide for you throughout this life.
However, as you continue to live in the now and not yet, there will be sadness; you will be brought low, and you will continue to hunger for forgiveness in a sinful world.
But Jesus abides with you; His Word provides hope and assurance. He doesn’t leave you empty or wanting, which is why His words at the end of the Gospel give you promise and hope: “Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven.”
Each time you enter this sanctuary, you place your right foot before your left, expressing faith in Christ Jesus: faith that His Words are true and will not return empty. Though you mourn in this life, are brought low and humbled, and long for Him, He cares for you here in this place. He sustains you with His Word and feeds you at this rail, where the whole company of heaven, including the saints and angels, descends and gathers as you receive a foretaste of the joy and reward awaiting you in heaven.
And as you depart this rail, as you depart this sanctuary, you leave as a changed person because of this foretaste of heaven. In the Lord’s Supper, Christ takes your anxiety and uncertainty into Himself. You are reminded that even as your relationships on earth change over time, you are not alone, for you are bound to one another because you were united to Christ in Holy Baptism.
For your grief and mourning, God will wipe away your tears. When the last day comes, and you are brought from the Church Militant to the Church Triumphant, He will bring you into the midst of the Lamb, whose kingdom has no end, because it is there you will gather with all the faithful departed to “Rejoice and be glad, [because] your reward…it, is… in heaven.”
And because of this, every time you enter this sanctuary, see it as the gate of heaven, see this as a place where your lives are changed forever, so that as you depart not only today, but on your last day, you do so with the confidence and joy of the heavenly reward and blessing that awaits you all. +INJ+
Rev. Noah J. Rogness
Good Shepherd Lutheran Church
Tomah, WI
The Sermons of Pastor Rogness can be found at www.RognessOnTap.com
Learn more about Good Shepherd Lutheran Church at www.goodsheptomah.org
