Good Shepherd Sermons & Blogs

2026-57
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
by the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector

All Saints’ Day (Year A), November 1, 2026

Revelation 7:9-17; Psalm 34:1-10, 22; 1 John 3:1-3; Matthew 5:1-12

I have come to imagine that dying might feel a bit like being pulled backward into a swimming pool. When the moment finally comes, will I resist? Will I flail and struggle? Or will I just let go and fall, so that there’s no need to pull me in? Either way I’ll get there. But I hope I choose just to fall back into the baptismal waters of creation that birthed me in the first place.

Last month at St. Mark’s Cathedral, Bishop Phil ordained one new priest and three new deacons, including the Rev. Tamara Lamb, who is now serving at St. James in Kent. As I read her bio in the service leaflet that day, I was struck by a quote she had included from Ram Dass: “We’re all just walking each other home.”

Well, I caught up with Tamara at Diocesan Convention last weekend and thanked her for this quote. I don’t know that I’ve heard a more concise and lovely explanation of what it means to live a life of faith. We don’t know what happens to us when we die. But can just decide, based on whatever we consider to be evidence—ancient sacred stories, modern sacred stories, perceived divine revelation, near-death experiences, dreams that feel more like promises, or straight-up hope against hope—we can just assert that whatever happens, it will be good. It will be right. It will be home.

And then we can choose to live our entire lives believing that, because why would we do otherwise? Furthermore, it gives us a wonderful base on which to build all our relationships with one another. We’re all going home. We’ll all get there eventually. And then we will be together in some way. Assuming that as the Supremes once sang, “Someday We’ll Be Together” … how shall I choose to treat you now? How could I possibly treat any other person with scorn, rejection, contempt? How could I not commit to love my neighbor as myself—simple, not easy—and in so doing, fall more and more deeply in love with God who created all of us?

Today is the Feast of All Saints, the Church’s annual celebration of those who have gone before us into the nearer presence of God. Death is the end, right? Yet today we assert that death means we’ve barely begun. The calendar of the church year is winding down, too, but in four weeks we will come back around to the season of Advent. And then we’ll be looking forward, not backward—forward to Good News. We’ll start the cycle all over again.

Here we are, rotating through the years, sunrise, sunset, sunrise, sunset … what are we doing with our time? How are we spending it? We smile, we cry, we laugh, we suffer. We all suffer, at the very least because we know death will eventually come. Our time is limited. Will you spend your energy on the denial and avoidance of death? Why? Instead, Jesus calls us to notice the time passing by, and to use it well—even to put our suffering to good purpose. Today we hear Jesus’ Manifesto, also known as the Beatitudes, because “beata” is Latin for “blessed.”

I’ve preached before about how we tend to misuse the word “blessed.” Many people stick a hashtag in front of it and attach it to a scenic vacation photo, or a cozy image of a happy family gathering for the holidays. Well, Jesus did say, “I came that they might have life, and life abundant.” I would love for all of us to have such things in this beautiful world, and I’ll do whatever I can to help make it so. But many people just don’t get experiences like these. So Jesus also wants us to understand that being “blessed” has nothing to do with being wealthy or privileged.

On the contrary, Jesus tells us how we can know when we’re blessed. We’re blessed when our spirits are crushed … when we are racked with grief … when we commit to make the world better … when we refuse to take advantage of others … when we show mercy … when we act without guile … when we deescalate violence and work toward understanding … when we are actively harmed because we do all of the above.

Be these people, says Jesus. Allow that sometimes your spirit will be crushed, and that because you have loved well, you will also feel loss and sadness. Adopt principles and rules for your own behavior, based on how you treat others, and stick with them even under duress. Stand up to the bullies. Yes, they will probably hurt you. They might even kill you. Stand up to them anyway, and never let them win. See, the bullies only win when they get you to hate. In the long run, then, we pray that even the bullies in this world will come around to the Way of Love.

This is what it means to live by Jesus’ standards. This is what it means to be blessed. It means we’re participating in both the joy and the pain, and running away from neither. All our lives, we continue to become who we really are. We are formed, and we take part in forming ourselves. We don’t know what we will become. But we know we will be like Jesus. For we Christians understand that to be the end point of all this.

You know, when I get going into poetic territory like this, sometimes it feels wrong to talk about anything concrete at all. Yet a lot of very concrete things are on my mind. Today is the final day of our annual pledge campaign on the theme “First Fruits.” And this year the campaign has taken an unexpected last-minute turn. One anonymous member of the Body of Christ has increased their pledge by $50,000 and has also committed to match the gifts of others up to another $50,000. This matching challenge applies to first-time pledges and pledges that go up at least 25% over last year. The moment the offer was made, it already applied to nine of the 40 pledges that had come in.

Today, someone is inviting you into greater generosity. You can change a pledge you’ve already made by turning in a new pledge card and writing “UPDATED” on it. Or you can make your pledge today—we have still been waiting on 40 more pledges to hit our goal of 80. Not everybody will be able to take part in the matching challenge, I know. But many already are. Consider this carefully and with lots of hope as we conclude the formal pledge campaign.

Many of us have been conditioned to treat money as a taboo subject—like it’s a dirty thing that really shouldn’t be talked about publicly. I think this is nonsense. Money is a system we humans set up, for better or worse, to manage the things we need in life. So we are not to worship money: we are to use it for the good of the world.

Now, every year I tell you what Christy’s and my own pledge is: every year we calculate 10% and give that. This year, for the first time, it hit $20,000.  I know that’s larger than most of yours, because we’re not retirees living on a fixed income. Nevertheless, when you sit down and calculate your percentage, do you find that you might be able, this year, to take this matching challenge? There’s no minimum dollar amount on it. If your pledge of $100 becomes a pledge of $125, that counts!

Every one of us, someday, will fall back into the cosmic swimming pool. We’ll set down our checkbooks and credit cards and never need them again. Today we have the ability to use them. I invite you to support the work of the Holy Spirit in the world, starting with the Church.

Money is one concrete concern in our lives. Another is how we choose to govern ourselves. We have elections this Tuesday, and I sure hope you’ve all voted by now. We don’t know what chaos may accompany that day and the days that follow. We do know that if the elections don’t go the way our president wants them to, he will do everything in his power to try to cheat. He did it before, and he’ll do it again. He’s already doing it by casting doubt on election processes all over the country, which are managed by each state and are constitutionally off-limits for him. Meanwhile he and his family are raking in billions of dollars that they will never share. None of this is speculation—it’s all objective fact, well reported and easy to understand. It’s had me feeling anxious for months—years—make that a whole decade.

But on this Feast of All Saints, I invite you to look at these concrete things—money, elections, whatever else—and view them with hopeful eyes. Why? Because we are still alive! Those who have any money at all can decide to use it for good and not evil. Those who have the right to vote can choose what kind of country we want to live in. And we have a power that the bullies and grifters have yet to discover in themselves: we have the power to love.

This is what I see in the First Letter of John, when he writes, “All who have this hope in him purify themselves.” When we purify our motives and our decisions about the power we have, we don’t do it to earn God’s love. God’s love is a given. We do it to share God’s love—to reveal it at work in the world—to spread it—to help it take root even in unlikely places.

Because this is how we walk each other home. We encourage one another’s generosity in life, whether that has to do with money or voting or simply treating others with patience and grace. Amen.