THOUGHTS FROM PASTOR LIZ DAVIS
November 2021
Dear People of God,
We begin November with All Saints’ Day. For Lutherans, saints are all of God’s people. We are baptized into Christ and given his righteousness as a gift. There’s nothing holier than thou about us saints, we’re just ordinary people loved with the extraordinary love of God. While there might be some people who have lived into their faith in ways that encourage and inspire us, we don’t believe that there are people who because of what they’ve done are somehow more special or more close to God than others. On all Saints’ Day, we celebrate that it’s through God’s work that we are made welcome in God’s love.
In today’s world, it’s hard to be a hero. We’re quick to call out people’s mistakes and their sin. Maybe in the past, we overlooked the bad choices of our heroes, or we simply didn’t know the complexity of the people we honored. As Lutherans, we are ok with complexity. We know things aren’t so easy as to call one person good and another bad. We can honor some things about what a person has done while also naming the ways they have been harmful to others and need to change.
Lutherans say that all people are saints and sinners at the same time. We are justified (made right) in our relationship with God because Jesus in his love and mercy has made us so, and God has declared us so. We are stuck in sin because we continue to choose the ways of life that are selfish, hurtful, and draw us away from God and loving the world and all living beings as God loves.
Sometimes people talk to me about feeling like they can’t pray or go to church or expect anything from God because they’ve done things they know are wrong. Or maybe they think they’ve crossed the line with something they’ve said. This comes from an image of God that is more like how we live than how God is. They’re believing that God has a line we can’t cross- or else. As if God has decided what is too bad for us to do, if we do that thing, forgiveness is off the table.
Remember that Jesus died on the cross, and even as people were killing him, he said, “Father, forgive them” (Luke 23:34a). We have the ability to be horrible things, and yet God still has the power to forgive us. “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). God has made the choice to be faithful to us, no matter how faithful we are. “(Nothing)…can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:39b). In love, God reaches out to us and claims us as God’s own beloved ones even and especially when we are turned away from God.
On All Saints’ Day we celebrate all the baptized, especially those who have been baptized in the past year, and we remember all who have died, especially those who have died in the past year. We think of all these people we love in order to remember how much God loves them and us. In God, we are all united and loved. God is not bound by time, so even those who have died are united with us through Jesus. We all wait for the day of resurrection, when all that is sinful about us will be washed away and we will be healed, whole, and forgiven in the love and life of Christ. Then we will be fully and completely God’s saints, sinners no longer. Until then, we continually live by the grace of God, relying on God’s mercy and faithfulness, rejoicing that God loves us, no matter what.
God is with you!
-Pastor Liz
