Sermon for All Saints Sunday, November 2, 2025

November 2, 2025, All Saints Sunday

By Kristin Berkey-Abbott




Luke 6:20-31



What a strange Gospel reading to have chosen for All Saints Sunday. There’s no mention of the afterlife at all. There’s no mention of the saints that have come before us, at least not in the Gospel reading. We might wish we had a different Gospel reading.


It’s a strange time to be preaching a sermon for All Saints Sunday. In the weeks leading up to this day, politicians have declared their willingness to let SNAP benefits expire on their watch. Let’s be clear—the SNAP program gives food to poor people, and after the various welfare reforms of the past decades, it’s only the poorest of the poor who get this free food. In Bristol, you’re eligible for these benefits if you earn less than $21,150 dollars a year for a two person household; roughly 14% of the population of Bristol is eligible. Nationwide, 1 out of every 8 Americans gets SNAP benefits—that’s 42 million people, many of them children, the elderly, and the disabled. A government report “in 2020 found that about 70 percent of adult wage earners in the program worked full-time hours, most commonly in education and health services, hospitality and retail” (from this article in The New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/31/upshot/snap-food-shutdown-trump.html) . They worked full-time hours, but still didn’t earn enough money to make them ineligible for SNAP benefits.


Once upon a time, politicians wouldn’t want to be seen as denying food to the poor. Those times are not these times.

And suddenly, just like that, the Gospel speaks to us across two thousand years:

“But woe to you who are rich,
  for you have received your consolation.
 25 “Woe to you who are full now,
  for you will be hungry.”



In the time of Jesus, religious authorities studied their texts and came up with the arithmetically correct way of making sure that widows and children got enough to eat. The politicians in charge, the Romans, studied the situation and figured out ways to squeeze even more money out of the people they conquered, which led to more hungry people who had been robbed of their land and resources.

Jesus comes along and reminds us of God’s arithmetic. But he does more than scold us. Jesus shows us the way that God wants us to behave. Jesus feeds people. He calls on us to do the same. As we know, Jesus also calls on us to do more. It’s not enough to feed the hungry. We need to change the systems that keep people hungry. Sadly, many systems are now colliding in ways that make people worse off, not better.


In terms of this current SNAP issue, make no mistake—the money is there. There have been several federal judges who have ordered the funds released, and some states are looking for ways to fill the gap, so hopefully, this crisis might have a temporary fix this week, although the fix won’t be uniform. The governor of Tennessee has said that he will not take steps to address the SNAP issue, for example. Sadly, I have no doubt that this crisis won’t be the last one. We have seen this story play out over and over again, across the decades, across the millenia, regardless of who is in charge.

Throughout the Bible, we see the same dynamic at work across the centuries: people who are in charge, people who have resources to distribute, and people who do not do the task. Today’s Gospel tells us what God thinks about it all. Jesus says, “Woe to those who behave badly” . . . and leaves us to decide whose side we are on.


Today’s Gospel gives us a clear choice. As he always does, Jesus calls us to be our better selves. He tells us—and spends his whole life showing us—how to behave to help bring the Kingdom of God into being. It’s all there, summed up in those 2 last verses: “Give to everyone who asks of you, and if anyone takes away what is yours, do not ask for it back again. 31 Do to others as you would have them do to you.”


It’s not unfamiliar to us, is it? And let’s be honest—it’s not unique to Christianity. All major religions and many branches of Philosophy give us this type of golden rule. And the good news is that I have seen our community in action. We have given to all sorts of people in need in our community and beyond. We cook for our community and give the proceeds to the ministries that feed the poor. We create shoeboxes full of resources that will be shipped across the planet. We pray for those who are suffering. We visit the sick and send cards.


And we are surrounded by reminders of our ancestors who have done the same. Some of you know that my grandfather’s first call was to this very area in East Tennessee. He served five parishes, and two of them eventually merged to become Faith Evangelical Lutheran church. And the name Crumley is familiar outside of this area—Steven Crumley and I have a great uncle named Jim Crumley, who lived down the road from here. He was nourished in this faith community, and went on to be one of the nationwide bishops who would create the ELCA out of the earlier incarnations of the Lutheran faith in the U.S.


There are physical reminders of those ancestors all around us, from the plaque on the wall by the door, to the engraving around the offering plate. And of course, this very building and the land around the building—these are the biggest physical reminders of those past saints who invested in this congregation.


The writer of the letter of Ephesians reminds us that we have a physical inheritance, like this building, and a spiritual inheritance. The writer of Ephesians encourages us always to be looking for ways to nurture that inheritance, so that the ones coming along after us will be nourished. My hope, of course, is that future generations will give thanks to us the way that I am giving thanks for our spiritual ancestors today.


But here is the challenge of All Saints Sunday, and every day. It’s not enough to celebrate and give thanks. We must build on what we have been given. We must look for ways to use our inheritance for those who have not been born into circumstances as fortunate. We need to be bold in proclaiming that taking food from almost 4,000 people in Bristol alone is not acceptable.


Sadly, the challenge goes far beyond food insecurity or lack of affordable housing or the mess that is our healthcare system or any other area we might wish our leaders would solve. We need to be bold in our vision of a world committed to justice, not just for those who can afford it, but justice for ALL. And by now, hopefully you know that when I talk about justice, I’m not talking about our justice system that decides who broke the law and how they should be punished. I’m talking about a vision of justice that demands that people should not have to decide whether they can afford food or medicine or decent housing. People shouldn’t have to decide that they’ll cut back on food to be able to afford their medication—and it happens far too often.


We live in a time of a loss of belief in the greater good. Even if we believe in the greater good, many of us feel powerless to move in that direction. In so many ways, this situation is the existential crisis of our time. Our nation is beset by many perils, but this loss of care about those beyond ourselves may be the one most likely to destroy us, both individually and collectively.

Our world needs more than a charitable handout, although a week like this past one reminds us that so many still need that basic protection. However, charity is not enough, because the events of the past week remind us that we can’t count on charity to be there for us. We need a world built on the justice that prophets like Daniel demanded, that the Psalmist sang the hope of, that the arrival of Jesus ushered in.

Our spiritual inheritance has equipped us for such a time as this. We can join forces with others in the community, as our ancestors did before us, to create the world we want to live in. Let us join with all the saints to do unto others as we would have them do to us. Let us go beyond the borders of our families, the borders of this church wall. Let us transform the world in the way that Jesus and the prophets before him implored the people to do.

As we do the work of transforming the world, we must continue to dream of a day where we will sing for joy in our beds, as the Psalmist says, remembering the steps we took to build a world where people do not go hungry, where people do not have to make painful choices. That’s a spiritual inheritance that will make those who come after us sing for joy. When they put our names on plaques that will hang on the church wall of the future, let it be for the work that we did to make sure that oppressive systems have been bound so that they can no longer inflict suffering on the people. When they put our pictures on tables of the dear and departed, let them say a prayer of thanks for the work we did to make the world a place of justice for all.