Prayer: Come Holy Spirit, come.  Take my lips and speak with them.  Take our minds and think with them.  Take our hearts and set them in fire with love for you.  In Christ’s name, we ask it.  Amen.

If you have food in the refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof overhead and a place to sleep...you are richer than 75 percent of this world of ours.  If you have money in the bank, cash in your wallet and spare change in a dish someplace...you are among the top 8 percent of the Earth's wealthiest people.  If you woke up this morning with more health than illness...you are more fortunate than the one million people who will not survive this week.  If you have never experienced the danger of battle, the loneliness of imprisonment, the agony of torture or the pangs of starvation...you are better off than 500 million people in the world.   If you can attend this worship service, or any other religion-related meeting, without fear of harassment, arrest, torture or death...you are blessed. Billions of people in our world cannot.

It's not hard for us to count our blessings, is it?  Most of us could quickly and easily jot down a rather lengthy list of blessings.  Although everyone’s list would be unique to each person, perhaps you might include on your own list thanks for family, for friends, for food, for clothing, for transportation, for a roof over your head, for a job or education, for health, for freedom, for opportunity, among many other things.

In his letter to the fledgling Christian church in Ephesus, the apostle Paul gives thanks for two things that may or may not be at the top of your own list of the many blessings in your life.  Paul writes, “I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, and for this reason I do not cease to give thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers.”  Paul gives thanks for the Ephesians faith in the Lord Jesus and their love toward the saints—faith in God and love toward others.  It is for these two that Paul expresses profound Gratitude to God.

Today is All Saint’s (Day) Sunday.  On this day, we remember and give thanks for the faithful witness and the self-giving love of all the saints, both those living today and the faithfully departed who have already passed into the nearer presence of our Lord.  Just a few moments ago we sang (in a dew moments we will sing) one of my absolute favorite hymns, “I sing a song of the saints of God.”  Every time I hear the song, I think of my home church in Houston.  Each All Saints Sunday all the children in the parish dress up in costumes that represent their heroes or the people they want to be when they grow up.  Then during the service as the congregation sings “I sing a song of the saints of God,” the children process down the center aisle of the church behind the cross.  The children are dressed up as an infinite variety of people.  As the hymn says…one was a doctor, and one was a queen, and one was a soldier, and one was a priest.  The point of the hymn is that the saints of God are not just those Christians lifted up by the church for their heroic faith—the Martin Luther King Jr’s and Mother Theresa’s of Church History.  But the saints of God, as the hymn concludes, are just folk like you and me. 

When Paul uses the term saint, he is referring to every person in the Body of Christ, which is the Church universal.  When a person, child or adult, is baptized in the Episcopal Church the priest makes the sign of the cross on the newly baptized person’s forehead and says, “You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever.”  In the water of Baptism, we are forever made a part of the Body of Christ.  Whether we always feel like it or not, whether we always realize it or not, and whether we always act like it or not, each one of us is a saint.  Together in this church tonight, which is appropriately named All Saints’, we are a gathering of the communion of saints intimately connected to all who name Jesus as Lord whether Catholic or Protestant, whether Episcopalian or Baptist, whether man or woman, whether black or white, whether conservative or liberal, whether living or dead.  As disciples of our Lord Jesus, we are all saints. 

I began this sermon with a laundry list of things for which we should give thanks to God.  As I said, the list of things to be grateful for should be easy to form in our minds.  One classic prayer and testimony, popular in the contemporary Black Church, goes something like this: “Thank you, God, for waking me up this morning; for putting shoes on my feet, clothes on my back and food on my table.  Thank you, God, for health and strength and the activities of my limbs.  Thank you that I awoke this morning clothed in my right mind.”  All things in creation come from God and in the fullness of time all things will return to God.  Indeed there is much in this life for which we should be grateful.  And perhaps today on All Saint’s (Day) Sunday, as Paul expresses in his letter to the Ephesians, it is most appropriate to give thanks to God for out sainthood…which come through our faith in Jesus and is expressed in our love and service toward one another. 

You see in the fullness of time, when your life has run its course, all of the material blessings you have amassed and collected will lose their value and meaning because they are passing away—they are forever tied to the reality of this world.  I am sure you are all familiar with the slogan that pops up around Christmas time, “the gift that keeps on giving.”  The only true gift that keeps on giving is our sainthood.  Our sainthood is not tied to the reality of this world.  Our sainthood is eternal.  In fact, all of the wonder and joy of the Christian life we experience today is just a foretaste of the riches and glory that will be revealed to us in the life that is still to come—the eternal life beyond the grave and gate of death.

After Paul gives thanks for the faith and love of the Ephesians, he begins to pray a prayer for the Christians in Ephesus that emphasizes the glory and majesty of sainthood.  He begins, “I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation…so that with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe.”  The saints of God are offered a treasure of infinite more value than anything the world can offer.  However, to discover it, you have to look with the eyes of your heart to see beyond the temporal to the eternal.  Each of you, as a saint of God, shares with Christ in a life that is both eternal and everlasting—even beyond the end of time.  Each of you, as a saint, has the gift of hope even in the midst of a world that at times seems irreversibly corrupt and in decay.  And, each of you, as a saint of God, has the gift of power—unimaginable power—the power of God that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus Christ.  This resurrection power is yours to change and heal the broken lives and broken world that surrounds you.          

In the classic children’s book, The Little Prince, the fox character is saying goodbye to the little prince, and as he leaves he says, “And now here’s my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”  “What is essential is invisible to the eye,” the little prince repeats, so that he will be sure to remember.  The fox’s insight underscores the miracle and marvel of sainthood.  Though no halo visibly hovers just a few inches above your head and there is not a day in the church year when we remember and celebrate your life, you are a saint.  The rewards of your sainthood are unseen—invisible to the eye, but they are essential and eternal.  You are a co-heir with Christ to all the glorious riches of God’s eternal majesty.  You have a source of hope in a world that’s full of darkness.  And you have real power to do good and make a difference in a broken world, as Paul says, by loving others in particular loving the loveless.  Use your sainthood to bear witness to the life-transforming Good News of Jesus Christ and be grateful.  There is no higher calling…no greater gift…no better blessing than to be numbered among the saints of God.  Amen.

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