This morning, we mark All Saints Day. At the heart of All Saints is that the universal church is united in time and space. In the New Testament, the word “saint” appears 64 times, always in the plural.

This All Saints Day is about being a community of faith. This, of all days, is where we might ask ourselves, “what does it mean to be this community of faith?” This is more than a ‘church’. This is more than a building; but does take both of those things. It also takes 150 years almost of those who have gathered here as the Parish of Fendalton, in whose footsteps we walk, on whose shoulders we stand, and from whose decisions we benefit even now.

There are eight ways we can be All Saints together

The first thing I’d want to say about today’s gospel reading is that we should all follow the example of the Pharisee.

Seriously.

That’s where we begin.

If we think somehow that we shouldn’t because, say,

we think we’re not at all like the Pharisee,

that we never look down on people,

that we never pray with ourselves as the centre of our prayers,

that we never compare ourselves with others so that we come out on top,

that we never list categories of people in our prayers as a way of making ourselves feel better,

then, well, we are exactly like the Pharisee.

Goodies & baddies - just who does God welcome?

In today’s gospel, we have before us a persistent woman and a Judge

At one level this is a story about why persistence, especially persistence in prayer, is something that is worth pursuing.

And it’s also about a widow. Widows in the Bible are held out for our special attention, along with orphans and strangers.

We also have the story of Jacob from Genesis.

Jacob’s struggle appeared to be with Esau and his parents, but his struggle is really with God. This is not just sibling rivalry, which we find in every family. This is something more profound. This is a story for those for whom life is a battle, for whom resolution never fully comes but is only ever experienced as a limp.

In the gospel reading today we meet the Samaritan once again in Luke’s gospel: the first time is in Luke 10 with the parable of the “Good Samaritan”, the second time is here. The Samaritan is both an actual figure and a representative one: representative of the outsider, the outcast, even the enemy. In this gospel reading, as in the Good Samaritan story, it is the Samaritan who is held up as the exemplar: the only one who returned to give thanks.

Today’s readings have a multitude of images in them: there’s mustard seeds, mulberry trees being thrown into the sea, slaves at work, and tablets with visions.

There’s all sorts of threads that tie them together – the size of our faith, the size of our vision, even the size of our ego, particularly if we feel we’re being compared with mere servants. And one of those thread’s is humility.

I think the first thing to say about today’s gospel is it’s not about the hereafter. It’s about the here and now. It’s a parable, not a prescription about how to get into heaven. And it’s a parable about wealth and poverty, about a rich man’s table and a poor man covered in sores. It’s about a man who enjoys a feast and a man who lives in famine. And read alongside the reading from Amos, it’s a wider message about too much comfort and too little discomfort, about being preoccupied with material possessions such that the agony of those around them is ignored. It’s a parable and a prophetic word that could just as easily have been written today.

It’s the little things that matter. Welcoming the stranger, orphan and widow. Pursuing peace and seeking justice. Caring for the poor and the needy.

We are continuing in the gospel of Luke, where we are right through until Advent, and this week it’s all about how good it is to be lost. Jesus in the parable here does something he so often does; he turns everything upside down: If you’re lost, you will be found.

Luke 15:1-10 This sermon explores Jesus’ parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin as sharp, funny, and even outrageous stories aimed at the religious elite of his day. Jesus imagines God as a reckless shepherd and an extravagant woman, turning social expectations upside down to show how deeply God values the lost. The humour - like a shepherd abandoning ninety-nine or a woman throwing a huge party for one coin - highlights God’s excessive, almost absurd love. For the lost, this is comforting; for the complacent, it is a challenge: God’s circle of welcome erases every boundary of “us” and “them.”