All Saints 2025 sermon
I was invited by my church to kick off a sermon series on All Saints. My sermon begins at 42:00:00, or scroll down for the transcript with hyperlinks.
I. Introduction: Seeing the Saints Among Us
Good morning! For those who don't know me, I am Logan Martin Isaac and I've been invited to kick off a sermon series on All Saints, an annual feast that Christians celebrate on the first day of November. You're probably more familiar with its younger, more popular vigil, All Hallows Eve. Halloween, after all, is one of the most widely practiced of Christian holy days, one every saint can get behind, regardless of whether they believe in Christ.
This series explores how we perceive holiness through our senses. Today we focus on sight - what we fix our eyes upon, our skopos, the mark or goal we aim toward. Our text is Philippians 3:17-21, the text of which I’ve altered to reflect the military context of the Paul’s audience. He clearly put in the time to understand something with which he was not personally familiar, an impulse all saints should imitate.
II. The Frame: Philippians and the Hagios (1:1, 4:22)
The word Paul uses for saints is hagios. He uses it to mean all those following Christ, whose Hebrew name is Joshua - yes, like the military commander in the sixth book of the Bible who led Israel in the campaign to invade and occupy Canaan.
Paul - whose Hebrew name is P(s)aul, like the King - begins his epistle by addressing "all the hagios in Christ Joshua who are at Philippi" (1:1) and closes with, "All the hagios greet you, especially those of Caesar's household" (4:22).
Saints? In Caesar's household? If your faith is anti-imperial, that line may sting a little. Psaul is a sharp dude. He knows his inclusion of the imperial cult will rub many of his more ardent supporters the wrong way. His ideal community is radically inclusive - it includes military families.
Before Philippians was the title of an epistle, they were people living in a Roman military colony established by Caesar Augustus in 43 BCE following the Battle of Philippi. It was there that the once proud Roman Republic breathed its last and the new Empire was born. Psaul knew full well that an evil force had prevailed at Philippi, but he calls all of those willing to listen to him Saints.
The first Philippians that Psaul and Timothy encounter are women, of whom Lydia stands out. Many translations insert a misleading subtitle: "The Conversion of Lydia." But a few verses later, we learn that Lydia was already a "worshipper of God." There is no conversion - baptism is just an outward sign of what she has already been doing.
After the missionaries are imprisoned for healing an enslaved girl, they meet Dez, the military jailer of Philippi. When an earthquake releases the political prisoners, Dez prepares to end his life to preserve his honor. Psaul convinces him by offering a better way to see, by giving him a more Christ-like worldview. Not only is Dez not a failure (all the prisoners were still accounted for), but he could be saved from equating his dignity with his worth. Even the worst people have divine value.
Dez is military police, so he isn't turned off by the proximity to violence represented by Joshua son of Nun. Nor would he be ashamed to call Joshua, son of Mary, his new commander, even if some Christians feel uncomfortable doing so, because the community of faith has always included military communities like Philippi. Anyone who tells you differently hasn't read their Bible - at least not without someone else's interpretive discomfort.
In our polarized times, it is crucial to understand that the family of God transcends political, economic, and social boundaries. There are saints in Caesar's household, in the military industrial complex of Psaul's time, and he addresses them as equals. Power is not holy in the eyes of God, but people are - humans are hagios, the saints. And if the family of God includes those in Caesar's household, then the rich and powerful are no less holy than the poor and dispossessed. The political class must not lose sight of the fact that they may take commands from a worldly leader - in this case Nero, before he went crazy - but God is with all people.
III. What We Fix Our Eyes Upon (Philippians 3:17-21)
Years after first traipsing through Europe, Psaul writes to Lydia, Dez, and all the saints of the military colony. He leans into the martial imagery to appeal to the best military families have to offer: virtues like perseverance, allegiance, obedience, and honor.
Listen to what Psaul says: "Friends, fall in beside me, and look closely at those marching in formation with us." This is skopeō - to look closely, to keep your eyes on. And typos - the pattern, the formation, the standard. We become what we behold.
But there's also a warning: "Many of the folks we all know, who I remember with tears in my eyes, walk out of step with the standard of Christ. They're headed to destruction because they worship insatiable appetites, and their only concern is for embarrassment, of what the world thinks of them."
There is danger in gazing upon what is unholy, what doesn't follow Christ's pattern. There are people walking out of formation.
In my experience, religion and politics have never been distinct. I enlisted in 2000 assuming that Christianity was inherited, that being American was necessarily to be Christian. President Bush invoked God in justifying his intervention in Afghanistan and an invasion of Iraq. I deployed wanting to be the best Christian soldier I could be, a commitment that alienated me from my infantry platoon on numerous occasions. When they expected me to fire indiscriminately into a crowd, or rough up civilians violating curfew, I refused. My orders - and my faith - were clear: if there is any discrimination that is good and right, it's when I have been entrusted with a deadly weapon and my nation's sovereign authority. Being a good soldier means that, if the paths of Christ and country ever diverge, I follow God no matter how frantically my comrades beckon elsewhere. Being Christian may mean I'm killed for doing the right thing, and it may not be my so-called "enemy" who pulls the trigger.
Trust cannot rest entirely upon citizenship. Nor can it rest entirely upon baptism, as fellow believers in every era have twisted scripture to justify unspeakable evils. I hesitate to call these folks "saints," but humility forces me to leave it to God. That's what Psaul seems to do, referring to people he isn't sure deserve the title as hagios.
So who are we to trust if the rite of baptism leads some Christians to defend their influence and privilege more than they do the common good?
IV. Icons and Examples: Our Extra-Biblical Saints
Hagiography is known as the study of the saints, but I like to think of it as the sum of ethics plus history. Given enough time, the histories written by so-called victors always fade. In our family we have a saying: "There are no secrets, only surprises." The best stories may have been told over the cries of sexual assault, our royal families marred by indiscretions and abuse. I trust time to tell us whose goodness remains after rockets' red glare fades to black and all we're left with is the stories that lit the way in dark times, the memories that kept the fire in our eyes ablaze despite the freezing cold.
Icons direct our gaze toward holiness. We each have our own "apostolic succession" - mentors, examples, saints who guide us. These may include military saints, unsung heroes, those often overlooked.
My favorite saint outside the Bible is Martin of Tours, a fourth century conscientious objector and reluctant spiritual healer whose feast is shared with Veterans Day. Martin still serves in the unit, the praetorian guard, two centuries after Psaul mentions it to the Christian military community of Philippi. On paper, the imperial guard protected the lives of the Caesars, but in 356 Caesar Julian, known to historians as the Apostate, decided to use them in battle. Martin refused to shed blood indiscriminately, quoting from Psaul's second pastoral letter to his Philippi companion, Timothy, telling the most powerful man in the known world, "I am a soldier of Christ, I cannot go to battle."
Martin helped me refine my understanding of Christ, especially where Psaul seems to fly too close to the ground, like when he told Roman Christians to subject themselves to authorities in their own city. Other military saints became all the more clear when I saw how religion and politics were distinct without being entirely separable. Before meeting Martin, it was the military martyrs who schooled me in serving For God and country (in that order). My book about them was published by the Mennonites; turns out honest pacifists know a good soldier when they see one.
But we must choose our saints carefully. Being selective is not the problem, any more than discrimination is. The problem lies in the particulars. Who you choose as your saints, as your apostolic succession, says as much about your faith as it does about your fallibility, your own apostacy.
Sorting the trustworthy from the untrustworthy is difficult if you’re only doing it in the moment, so you have to make it a habit as early as possible. Psaul railed against those believers who thought they could earn a spot in heaven. He knew that, if salvation were a currency, it could be hoarded by snake oil "saints" out of step with the standard set by Joshua, son of Mary. The desire for ideological purity drove Psaul as a young man to watch the garments of those doing work he admired, of stoning so-called heretics and apostates like Stephen. He was just one or two missteps removed from throwing stones himself.
Labeling individual soldiers as guilty for serving their country is like condemning Psaul for Acts 8 without reading Acts 9; it reveals more about selective hagiography and the "saints" who are not as mature in the faith because they cannot see the radical inclusivity of the gospel Psaul preached and Joshua displayed. The danger is in erasing or ignoring military saints and military families - those who want to get rid of canonical saints and scriptures they do not even try to understand.
When troubling details emerge about our chosen saints, do you double down and circle the wagons around your golden boy (and why does it always seem to be males)? Or do you integrate new information in order to weigh the hagiographical value of your personal canon? You can't forget the faults a saint does not repent of, but you should remember those faults one does. Forgiveness, as they say, begs for itself. If your saints can't get on their knees, that might be a sign they're still working on being like Christ. Better to focus your attention on those in whom Christ is recognizable.
V. The Fullness of Perception
To do that, we must engage all our senses. Some Saints, after all, cannot see. Even Psaul suffered some blindness.
Around the sanctuary and in the fellowship hall you will see some of my favorite saints, some of whom never served in a military. Feel free to meditate on these icons, to lose yourself a little in the details you see. But do not forget your siblings in Christ for whom sight is a challenge rather than a gift. Some cannot look closely, so they depend on the rank and file believers around them.
Drill and ceremony is not silent, there is a cadence to marching in formation with the saints. As we progress through this season before advent, you will be encouraged to engage the rest of your senses, because the good news is meant to be heard, tasted, even touched. It is only by relying on the input from the whole body of Christ that we can be assured we are moving along The Way without diverging from God.
VI. Conclusion: Walking the Way to Wholiness
Psaul reminds us: "Our membership is in higher places, looking toward a Savior, the anointed One, Joshua, who will absorb our regular bodies into his glorious body, by the Forces that place him in command of all things."
We become what we behold. Choose your skopos carefully. Let's honor all our senses, all our Saints, rather than the loudest or most powerful. Let us look toward the heart, not just with our eyes but with all our senses, all our Saints, as we walk The Way to Wholiness together.