Homily | 🕯️ Safe in the Thin Places

All Saints' Sunday

Readings of the Day: Daniel 7:1-3, 15-18 | Ephesians 1:11-23 | Luke 6:20-31

So it’s All Saints’ Sunday. The day we remember our beloved dead with candlelight and tears and this more solemn liturgy.

And it’s also our 60th anniversary. Six decades of Holy Communion, baptisms, weddings, funerals, casseroles, and the best church coffee on the Central Coast.

And it’s also the weekend we’re recovering from Halloween. Which, depending on who you ask, is either harmless fun or a demonic gateway to hell.

Many of our Christian siblings are terrified of Halloween. They hold “Harvest Festivals” with Bible character costumes and Jesus-themed candy.

Meanwhile, we Lutherans? We’re carving pumpkins, dressing up for trick-or-treating, and handing out Snickers bars like it’s no big deal.

Like I mentioned last week on Reformation Sunday, on October 31st, 1517—All Hallows’ Eve—Martin Luther nailed 95 theses to the door of All Saints’ Church in Wittenberg. The Reformation began on the doorstep of a church dedicated to ALL THE SAINTS. On the night when the veil between heaven and earth is thinnest.

But our broader culture has lost the ability to do what we’re about to do this afternoon. We’ve lost the language for “thin places”—those moments when heaven feels close, when the dead don’t seem quite as far away as the grave suggests.

We sanitize grief. We medicalize dying. We keep death behind closed doors. Or we make death so solemn, so untouchable that we can’t imagine laughing anywhere near it.

Our modern culture doesn’t know how to hold both anymore. Death AND life. Grief AND joy.

So we compartmentalize. Grief here, celebration there.

Which is why today might feel awkward. We’re going to light candles and say names with all the reverence they deserve. Then we’re going to walk downstairs and eat ambrosia salad and laugh at each other’s 1960s costumes.

It can seem like, maybe... if we laugh too soon after crying, we’re dishonoring the dead. Like grief requires seriousness, and joy requires distance from death.

We keep the veil thick. We keep the dead safely in the past, ourselves safely in the present. We say “I believe in the communion of saints” every time we recite the Creed, but we treat it like a nice metaphor instead of a truth that could rearrange our lives.

Because if we really let ourselves feel how thin that veil is between this life and the life after our bodily perishing, we’d have to question whether death is what we’ve always thought it was. And beneath all our modern sophistication, we’re still just terrified creatures who fear what happens when our heart stops beating.

But what if the veil really IS thin? What if our beloveds really ARE close? What if the communion of saints isn’t just a doctrine but a reality we’re living in right now?

Which brings us to Jesus and his absolutely insane Beatitudes.

“Blessed are you who are poor. Blessed are you who weep now.”

This IS insanity... for people trying not to die. For people terrified of death, clinging to life and self-reliance with white knuckles.

But for those who are made MORE alive in their deaths? For those who discover that the way down is the way up, that self-emptying IS fullness, that life is made richer when we cling to it less nervously, this isn’t insane at all. This is just... true.

A seed has to fall into the ground and die to become wheat. It doesn’t die and THEN live. The dying IS the living. The falling into darkness IS the rising into light.

If this is true... In God’s kingdom, what we call ‘the dead’ are more alive than we are. The weak are strong. Those who mourn find comfort not because their grief is taken away, but because their beloveds haven’t gone anywhere.

The good news is that in Christ, God didn’t just defeat death. God ENTERED what we feared was death and showed us it was never what we thought.

In being crucified and raised, Christ TORE the veil. From top to bottom. His self-emptying IS his glory. His descent IS his ascent. His death IS his life. Not two separate movements, but one eternal act of divine love that enters our death and makes it a doorway.

The communion of saints isn’t a consolation prize. It’s the REALITY. The great cloud of witnesses, our mothers and fathers, our beloveds, all caught up in the infinite life of God, surrounding us, closer than our own breath.

When Christ rose, he opened up a new way of being human. A resurrected humanity where death is no longer a wall but a passage, where the veil is permanently thin.

And that means your mother, your father, your spouse, your child—whoever you’ve laid in the ground—is not far from you at all.

The Holy Spirit is bringing you INTO this reality right now. Not someday. Now.

The Spirit is simply opening your eyes to what’s already true: You are ALREADY part of the communion of saints. You are already being drawn into the divine life, the life that death cannot touch.

Your heart, with all its fear and grief, is being ushered into something beyond what the physical senses can make sense of. Not by your effort, but by grace. The Spirit is placing your trust where it belongs: in the God who wipes away every tear and makes every bad dream untrue.

So that means you can breathe. You can live freely in the thin places, because you’re safe. Not because death isn’t real or grief doesn’t hurt, but because in Christ, neither has the final word.

You’re IN the communion of saints. Right now. Surrounded by that great cloud of witnesses.

So this means... You get to hold both. Grief AND joy. Stand at that table of framed photographs with tears streaming down your cheeks and then walk downstairs and laugh at someone’s costume. Because THAT’S what it means to live in the communion of saints. That’s what resurrection people do.

You don’t have to sanitize death. You can sit with your grief, let it be as heavy as it is because you know it’s not the end. You can light that candle, say that name, feel that ache and still dance.

You can let your kids and grandkids dress up for Halloween. You can lean into the whole Triduum of Allhallowtide (All Hallows’ Eve, All Saints’ Day, All Souls’ Day) because you’re not afraid of the otherworldly anymore. You LIVE in the otherworldly. The veil is thin, and you’re safe on both sides.

You can talk about your dead without whispering. You can tell stories, laugh at their quirks, and feel them close. Not because you’re conjuring ghosts, but because in Christ they’re more alive than ever.

And when your own time comes to cross that veil—and it will come—you’ll know you’re not stepping into darkness. You’re stepping into light. Into the communion you’ve already been part of. Into the arms of the saints who’ve been cheering you on all along.

So today: grieve well. And celebrate well. Hold both. Live freely in the thin places.

Because in Christ, you’re already home.

And now, let’s eat together. Let’s gather at the table where the veil is thinnest, where all the saints—those in these photographs and those standing right here—share one bread, one cup, one Christ. This is what we’ve been talking about. This IS the communion of saints.

And so it is. Amen.