Sermon for Commemoration of All Faithful Departed (All Soul's 2025)

Commemoration of All Faithful Departed

(All Souls’ Day)

November 3, 2025

Deacon Rebekah Hays Estera

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my lips be pleasing to

you, O God, my Rock and my Redeemer.

A few times a year, our shared and ancient liturgy calls us to gather together

to do something that isn’t very popular in our youth obsessed culture. A

culture that is always after the one easy trick to look like you’re in your 20s

when you are 50. A culture that promises one surefire way to curate a body

that looks like it hasn’t seen joy or pain, childbirth or cancers. A culture that

is always seeking immortality.

Today is one of those times. Today, we face death. The death of those who

we have loved and who have gone before us into the nearer presence of

God. And in doing so, we face our own mortality, trusting that those who

come after us will remember us when we someday become ancestors whose

stories are part of our collective family stories, pointing them, God willing,

towards Christ.

And though we mourn, we do not mourn without hope, as Thessalonians

tells us, because we remember that we are in communion with all the

faithful stretching across eternity.

We say we are mortal and that is ok with us. We are here now. We get to

remember now. We get to love and be loved now. We get to do good now.

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We have two origin stories. One is science. One is spiritual.

You are made of stardust and the very same elements as the world around

you. Your body is made of water and minerals and cells that are constantly

turning over. We live in harmony with the trees as we breathe for each

other. And someday, we will be returned to the earth. Walk gently on the

earth now, for you are a part of her.

And yet, you are ensouled. Several years ago, author Jeff Chu, who would

become the first openly queer minister in the Reformed Church of America,

spoke at an event Called “Why Christian” held at Grace Cathedral. Among

his characteristic shy and unassuming lecture, he suddenly and

passionately wondered “if my soul does not reside in my body, then I know

not where it lives.” Orthodox Judaism sometimes speaks of a complex soul.

All of creation was made to proclaim God’s glory. And with your very

ensouled body, you are made to proclaim God’s glory as you walk on this

earth here and now.

You are made in the very Image of the Divine. God created humans and

proclaimed God’s work “very good.” You are made in goodness and for

goodness and are constantly being called back to that goodness. We are

called to live in harmony with every other Imago Dei. Walk gently through

this world now, for we are all bearers of the Divine.

And someday, when our bodies no longer walk on this earth, our souls will

go on proclaiming God’s glory. And someday, the refining fires of God’s

love will burn away all that is spurious and contrived in us – all that is not

of God and for God will be like burnt straw left behind as we join that great

sparkling cloud of witnesses.

In the Wisdom of Solomon, we read “God tested them and found them

worthy of himself; like gold in the furnace he tried them.” Scottish author

and activist Alastair McIntosh describe this refiners fire not as a God who

puts us through trials that we may prove our worthiness to God, but rather

a God who loves us with such intensity that all that is inauthentic will be

burned away in God’s presence, leaving only that which is true gold.

In the rainforests of the Pacific Northwest, the damp soil shaded by trees

and covered by thick blankets of flowers and smaller plants, can be a

difficult environment for saplings to find their own place among the

complex ecosystems. So when an old tree falls, it often becomes a nurse log

to new life. Saplings grow along the fallen tree, feeding off its nutrients,

their roots extending down and hugging the nurse log until they find their

own firm footing in the soil. Eventually, the nurse log decays and returns to

the earth. But even when it has decomposed and is gone, the evidence of its

life is still there. You’ll find a row of new growth almost in a straight line.

You’ll see the evidence of the support the nurse log provided in the exposed

roots of the new growth.

Our lives are like this too – echoes of goodness passed down from our

ancestors who form us into who we are. Echoes of trauma too that we have

the opportunity to begin healing from, begin new growth from. On All Souls

Day, we remember and we name the people who formed us. Our roots our

exposed. Even when these people who formed us, who loved us and who we

loved, have been caught up in the cloud of eternity, they have left their

marks on us. In our smiles and our mannerisms, in our humor and perhaps

in our faith.

I have long yearned for the union of my body and soul through the

physicality of worship. Throughout our prayers, we mark our bodies with

the sign of the cross. Once a symbol of death, the cross now surpasses

death. It tells the story of a God whose very nature is community in the

Trinity, a God who so longed to be with God’s own creation that God

experienced death with us. And in that, we experience life with God. The

Gospel of John tells us that that life in God is here, now.

We mark our mortality with the sign of the cross in hope of our salvation.

We remember those entombed while believing in the Empty Tomb. We

build God’s kin-dom on earth as it is in heaven, here and now. When we

take our place in the great cloud of witnesses, the work we began continues

to find its roots and to sprout and grow and flourish in and for the next

generation. Like the nurse log, we may never see the fulfillment of the work

we do on this side of Heaven.

You are made of the very same stuff of this earth and in the very image of

God. And God will