[Sermon] The Company of the Imperfect

David Horton, Minister of Music & Worship

November 2, 2025 + All Saints Sunday

What if sainthood isn’t about glowing halos or perfect virtue, but about showing up—heart cracked open, faith barely hanging on? In Luke’s version of the Beatitudes, Jesus blesses the ones who struggle, weep, and keep loving anyway. These are the saints: people who didn’t earn salvation but lived like they already had it. Through stories of family, humor, and holy imperfection, we glimpse how grace weaves through every messy life. This sermon celebrates All Saints as a day of gratitude, grief, and hope—a reminder that we, too, belong to the cloud of witnesses.

Sermon Transcript

From YouTube's automatic captions, lightly edited by AI for readability.

Grace and peace to you from the one who meets us precisely where we are. Amen.

I've been a little obsessed lately—not in the way you might imagine. Not with a new hobby or a viral trend. I honestly do not know how TikTok works, and I'm okay with that. But the trend has been with death.

I know, I know—it’s not exactly Beach Reads, Volume 3. It’s a genre I didn’t exactly sign up for, but it’s starting to stalk me in many, many ways. And I’m not just talking about death in the simple sense. We’re talking the whole spiritual-industrial complex of mortality: the history of the afterlife, dense theological reflections on dying, how to make room for grief when you really, really don’t want to, and the sheer, weird logistics of treating the dead.

It got so intense that my husband Brett finally gave me that squinty-eyed look and said, “Is there something I should know?”

The answer is yes and no. No, I’m not facing a terminal illness. But yes—I am dying. We all are. Every one of us, on this slow, inevitable conveyor belt. It’s truly a fact that we are all dying. And the only person we know of who has gotten off this particular ride is a whole other beautiful—truly, truly beautiful—story that we won’t discuss today.

But as one of your spiritual leaders, I often think it’s my job to have all the answers—a spiritual M.D. dispensing certainty like an antibiotic. Turns out, my actual calling is to be a badly broken, highly caffeinated co-pilot for you and others during this most dreaded and ultimate act of God in our lives.

The really bizarre part is that I’m not scared of my own death. Maybe it’s denial. Maybe it’s faith. Or maybe it’s just that I’ll be dead, so it won’t be my problem anymore. Which is the whole point.

This work isn’t for the dead. The work is for us—the terrified, grieving, living ones. We are the ones who have to deal with the silence: how to make room for the gaping hole, and how to hold the ones who are so heartbroken they think they might actually break in half.

We are the ones who must wrestle with the tear in the fabric of existence—learning how to make room for death within our lives, how to hold the shock and the sorrow, and how to care for the mourning with presence, and most importantly, with grace.

I have to tell you—in a very quiet and somewhat, uh, embarrassing whisper—I love this stuff. It is a gift to be able to stand in that raw, precious space; to take a hand—take your hand—to be present, and to watch the grace that shows up when we have completely run out of fight. It is the purest human truth.

And this unfiltered truth—this radical presence, this beautiful, terrible vulnerability—is what brings us all, all of us who are still breathing and wondering what the heck is next, to this festival day. It brings us to All Saints Sunday.

Yes, today is officially the day we remember the dearly departed—our most beloveds. It’s the day we do the things that sound very solemn and churchy. We ring a bell (not sure where that tradition started, by the way). We say their names out loud—the names that feel both heavy and sweet on our tongues. We write those names on cards and place them right over there on that table.

We bring in pictures—often the ones where they look incredibly dashing, or maybe the slightly blurry snapshots that capture their particular, wonderful essence. And we light candles, because sometimes light is the only thing that makes any sense in the dark.

These are all rituals. They are all real, concrete things to do when everything feels like a terrible fog. But let’s be the most honest here: these rituals are not for the people we’re remembering. They’re for you—the living.

They are for the people who are still here, dragging themselves through the bewildering, endless stages of grief. They are for the ones who are desperately trying to make sense of the void left behind. They are for those of us grabbing hold of anything—a photo, a memory, a simple prayer—just to feel steady for one minute.

And look—maybe you’re the one who just wants to sprint past this whole memorial table business. Maybe you’re the one who is currently filled with a quiet, simmering anger and rage. Maybe the grief hasn’t settled into gentle sadness; it’s still hot, still raw, still full of hurt. Maybe you don’t want to remember today—because remembering hurts too damn much.

Well, this day is for you, too. Because the saints—the real ones—weren’t perfect or serene. They were complicated, clumsy, sometimes angry people who just kept showing up.

And the great miracle is at this table, this day, and this church: it has room for all your rage, all your reluct—reluctance—and your broken, beautiful, still-beating heart. You don’t have to clean yourself up before you come to the table. Just bring it all.

So, I told you I’ve been reading a lot, and I said that I don’t have all the answers. And frankly, after four—or how many?—years of seminary, you’d think I’d have at least three bullet points of certainty, right? Nope.

Here’s the truth: the whole theological enterprise—I actually don’t think I have any answers, not the capital-A, definitive ones that will make the pain stop or the future more crystal clear for you. In fact, the more I read, the more I realize my job is just to point out all the places where God seems to be doing the best and weirdest, wildest stuff.

So, I won’t try to wow you with my seminary-trained theological exegenicalness—a term which, if I’m being honest, usually means I’ve read a lot of very dense books that make me want to cry. Instead, I will simply share some context: a little history behind this day and why it’s not just a nice, sad Sunday. A little bit about why we read this fabulous, upside-down reading from the Gospel.

Luke—truly, if you came to church today, you got the best reading. And finally, a little bit about my own saints in my life, particularly one who convinced me that God is, in fact, real.

But before we get to all that, let’s quickly contextualize this whole All Saints Sunday thing, because it is important. Not because it’s a feel-good holiday, but because it shows us how the church has always dealt with a lot of beautiful, frustrating—uh—disruptions about following Jesus.

So, historically, this feast day popped up because the church had a logistical problem: there were just too many martyrs and holy people—too many saints—to give them all a specific day on the calendar. It was a scheduling nightmare. So they basically said, “Look, we can’t keep track of all you amazing Godville people, so let’s just declare one giant party for everyone who lived for Jesus and is now singing in that celestial choir.”

It is the church saying, “We ran out of space, but we didn’t run out of gratitude.” And in that liturgical year, it’s a brilliant—although odd—reminder that we are surrounded by this cloud of witnesses.

It means that when you are, uh, tired and you’ve run out of grace, and you want to throw the hymnal across the room—you’re not alone. You have this long, beautiful, imperfect lineage backing you up. So the church figured out how to celebrate everyone. Bless their hearts.

But it begs the question: what exactly is a saint?

If you grew up mainline, you might think of the fancy stained-glass kind—serene, usually white, often holding a palm frond, or looking mildly constipated. But the Bible—and Jesus—had a much wider and more expansive definition.

This is why we read a gospel text like the one from Luke 6 today. This is Luke’s Beatitudes. This isn’t the gentle, mountaintop version that we get from Matthew. This is Jesus on the plain—which feels more grounded, more meeting us where we are.

And he drops this beautiful, radical, and frankly terrifying truth: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.”

This passage, and the others, is a total upside-down reversal of the world’s success manual. Jesus is essentially saying the people who are truly blessed—the saints—are the ones who are suffering, hungry, weeping, and hated.

Right now, the saints—the real ones—are not the people who get it all right. They are the people who embrace the blessedness of the bottom rung. They were the people living those final verses in this passage. They loved their miserable enemies. They turned the other cheek. They were generous when it hurt. And they didn’t keep score.

This is the whole chaotic point of the cloud of witnesses surrounding us. They are the ones who managed to live this impossible way, choosing radical love and vulnerability over power and certainty. They chose the way that guaranteed they would weep and be poor in spirit.

So, when you look at the saints’ table, you aren’t just looking at sweet memories. You are looking at the evidence of people who, in their own broken, beautiful, utterly human way, tried to live this insane, countercultural call. They tasted the desperate, sacred struggle that makes us saints.

Now, I want to be super clear about something. This radical list that Jesus just rattled off—all this talk about being blessed when we’re poor and weeping and hated—if your gut says, “I need to go volunteer more and be absolutely miserable so I can earn a spot in the heavenly VIP section,” stop. That is the exhausting old system talking.

We do not do this loving-enemies, cheek-turning, coat-giving chaos in order to earn God’s love or guarantee our salvation—because that’s impossible. This miraculous work has already been done on the cross, once and for all. It’s a free gift, friends. The price was paid.

So what is this passage, Luke 6, actually about? It’s a blueprint for the living—a user manual for how to properly function once you realize you’ve been given this enormous, unbelievable gift of grace.

Look, the love and the acceptance of God—the grace—is the beginning of the story. It meets us where we are, even when we’re a total wreck. But then the mercy starts moving in. And it doesn’t just leave us where it found us.

When God pours out that grace—the radical, unearned, utterly reliable love—it’s like a massive, disruptive force. And these Beatitudes, this “love your enemies” stuff, this is simply where that force goes. It moves us. It nudges us—often quite uncomfortably—toward the kind of life Jesus led.

It’s not a list of works for salvation. It’s the fruit of a soul that has finally, mercifully accepted that it is saved.

The saints we remember today—the ones on this table—they weren’t perfect. They just realized that since they were already loved, they could stop worrying about saving themselves and start practicing radical, and sometimes clumsy, extravagant love for others.

So, we’ve established what being a saint is about. It’s not about being perfect—it’s about being busted open by grace and letting that love pour out right where Jesus said it would: on the poor, the hated, and the enemy. It’s the result of salvation, not the price of admission.

And this, right here, is why today is a festival day for the living just as much as it is for the dead. Because look around—you are sitting in the company of people who are trying, really trying, to live out that insane blueprint.

We are surrounded by people who are grieving, who are trying to turn the other cheek, who are praying for people who drive them absolutely bananas. That messy, clumsy, hallelujah anyway attempt to follow Jesus’ instructions—that’s us. That’s our sainthood in process.

The truth is, the great gift of All Saints Day is that it demands hope. The names on the table remind us that death is real and terrible and utterly final on this side of the veil. But our faith—this strange, resilient thing—insists that the story doesn’t end with a name card and a framed picture.

The communion of saints—the big, sprawling, celestial family reunion—means we are still connected. And the living part of that communion, that’s you and me. We are the ones now tasked with carrying the torch: to weep with those who weep, to feed the hungry—literally and spiritually—and to be the evidence of God’s raw, relentless love in a world that desperately needs a sign.

Can I get an amen?

Amen.

It is a celebration of what was, and a fierce calling to what is—a mandate to stop flailing and start living like people who have already received their inheritance.

And when I think about what the fruit of that impossible, radical blueprint looks like, I don’t crane my neck toward the ceiling searching for perfect, distant heroes. I look for the evidence right here, on the level ground—right where we are—in the people who are near enough to touch.

I do look to my great-aunt Gertrude—or Trudy, as we called her. I’ve got a picture of her. Trudy Ellen Sour was born way back on December 18, 1919, in California—the big sister to my grandpa, William Dave. Go ahead and take the next picture.

She was such a dashing woman—look at that! But the dates, honestly, are just footnotes, because what matters is her life itself.

Trudy wasn’t a stained-glass saint. She was the earthy, hilarious, slightly-too-honest kind. The stories about her are legendary in my family. She had this booming voice that I really don’t think was capable of whispering, and she smelled perpetually of Estée Lauder’s 1953 Youth Dew. I can still smell it.

Yes, she was classy—yet completely unfiltered. Her faith, the way she talked about God and to God, was remarkable and still influences my own relationship. I can still hear her voice booming over it all:

“Honey, you know you have a special connection with God.”

It was a mandate, an affirmation, and a big kick in the pants all at once.

And my absolute favorite Trudy-ism—the one that really defines her radical theology—was when she would say, without any sort of hesitation:

“Honey, we all know God doesn’t make mistakes, but—”

That’s real theology right there. It was permission to see the chaos, to name the brokenness, and to still believe in a God big enough to handle our complaints and our doubts.

But more than anything—more than the booming voice and the Estée Lauder—was the way she treated my family, and especially my mom.

Families are complicated. Can I get an amen?

Amen.

Family systems can really do a number on people—leaving scars and creating a lot of outcasts. But Aunt Trudy—she had this unquestionable, radical love for my mom and my brothers, the kind that flew in the face of all the petty family drama.

She would often pull my mother close and say, with all the conviction of a prophet:

“Honey, we all know God doesn’t make mistakes, but you should have been mine.”

And that’s it. That’s the whole sermon right there.

In her no-holds-barred love toward the outcast, she was living Luke 6. She was weeping. She saw the hurting, and she simply opened her home and her heart and declared:

“You are blessed. You are ours. You are loved.”

She didn’t try to fix the system. She practiced that extravagant, immediate mercy right inside the mess.

The legacy of saints isn’t just in the big things. It’s in the small, weird ways they stick around—in a very real, non-theological but utterly persistent way.

Trudy still lives with me—because the name I gave my recently adopted (actually one year today), occasionally feral-acting but incredibly sweet kitty… is Trudy. And I’ve got a picture of her.

Even in the form of a small, furry dictator, that booming, demanding love lives on. I’ve got one more picture of her. Yeah.

This saints’ table—it’s holding the legacy of Trudy Rae Woods, who was my choir director in high school, my grandma Wilma, and countless other names that we will recall as our sacred, concrete evidence that the Beatitudes were—and are—true.

Their lives were the proof. They were the ones who were broken wide open by grace, and the ensuing love burst forth like a beautiful, booming perfume, embracing and covering the world.

So today, as we transition to the final moments of our service, we return to the saints’ table. I want you to look at the names. And if you brought a photo, this is also another time to place it there—or a card that you were given to write a name on.

I invite you, if you haven’t already, to bring it forward during communion time. Place your memento gently on the table. Speak the name of your loved ones during our moment of shared prayer. Light candles.

This is an act for you. It’s simple—but it’s for the living.

And as you come, you are placing their memories and your loved ones back into the hands of the God who created them, the God who loved them, and the God who has them right now. A moment of release, and a moment of profound connection.

And remember—whether you are weeping with sorrow or secretly wrestling with rage—you belong here.

You are surrounded by this vast, imperfect cloud of witnesses.

So go from here as a saint. Go and live that messy, beautiful, blessed, impossible life.

And for that, we can say—

Amen.