All Saints Day: Ordinary Clay, Extraordinary Light

(You can watch the rest of the service in this video, including the incredible music provided by Shan Jiang and Elina Christova. You do not want to miss it!)

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable to You, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

I don't know about you, but whenever the church calendar turns to All Saints' Day, my mind naturally drifts toward some of the luminaries of ancient times: the martyrs who faced down empires, the desert fathers and mothers whose prayers pierce through time, and the theologians whose words fill leather-bound library shelves. We tend to visualize saints carved into pristine white marble or set in stained glass, like the saints that surround you right now. They're beautiful, but they're also a little distant. They feel like they're lit from behind with an unearthly, magical glow.

Yet today, as we celebrate our church's feast day—happy 128th, may I point out; none of you look very bad for 128 years, you don't look that bad for 128 years—that's what today is. We're marking 128 years of worship, fellowship, and ministry on this corner of Harrison and Webster.

“In Matthew's Gospel today, Jesus does not ascend the mountain to summon some elite circle of the flawless. No, he sits down with weary disciples, fishermen, grieving families—ordinary people who have gathered simply because they need mercy and grace.”

As we do that, I think it's important for us to see how Christ gives us a radically different definition of what it means to be holy, what it means to be a saint. In Matthew's Gospel today, Jesus does not ascend the mountain to summon some elite circle of the flawless. No, he sits down with weary disciples, fishermen, grieving families—ordinary people who have gathered simply because they need mercy and grace. They've heard what this Jesus of Nazareth has done, and they want to see it for themselves. They want to learn from him.

When he opens his mouth, he does not just give them a checklist of all the things that they must do and a checklist of all the things that they must never do to achieve some moral standing. No, he pronounces his blessing upon them, and even perhaps upon that which makes them feel fragile, that which makes them feel smaller: Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are those who mourn. Blessed are the meek. Blessed are the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, and those hungering for justice.

Notice what Jesus is doing right here. He's not describing virtues that can somehow be achieved through human ambition. He is naming the reality of human life in a broken world and declaring that God's grace resides right in the midst of it—right in the midst of it.

“Sainthood, according to Jesus, is not moral invulnerability. Sainthood is the posture of having hands empty enough to receive God's abundance, open enough to then give it away to those who need it the most.”

Sainthood, according to Jesus, is not moral invulnerability. Sainthood is the posture of having hands empty enough to receive God's abundance, open enough to then give it away to those who need it the most, and possessing the wisdom to know that that abundance is not a finite resource. No matter how much they give away, God heaps that much more upon them: the abundance of mercy, the abundance of grace, and the abundance of love.

I think this truth is one reason why this feast day is so intimately tied to the way we remember our dead. In our Christian tradition, All Saints and All Souls belong to a tradition of remembering not just distant figures of antiquity, but one where we speak the names of our own mothers and fathers, our children, our spouses, our fellow parishioners, and all the other departed souls who have shaped our lives and finished their earthly course.

“When we read their names, we do not pretend that they lived lives without struggle, without heartache, without doubt, or without shame. We remember them, hopefully, as they truly were... people who stumbled, yet clung to the promise of the resurrection.”

When we read their names, we do not pretend that they lived lives without struggle, without heartache, without doubt, or without shame. We remember them, hopefully, as they truly were—because as they truly were, they were people who knew what it was to mourn, people who knew what it was to hunger for righteousness, and people who stumbled, yet clung to the promise of the resurrection. For we proclaim that death does not sever the fellowship we share with them in Christ.

When we gather here, especially for communion, but really for the whole service, I believe the veil between heaven and earth grows thin, and we join our fragile voices with angels and archangels and with all the company of heaven.

This, I believe, is what again marks our celebration of our 128th birthday here. One hundred and twenty-eight years ago, 19 devoted worshipers gathered first in a local firehouse to plant an Episcopal mission in Harrison. I wasn't around back in 1898—surprising, I know—but I have a feeling that the streets, the skyline, and even the daily circumstances of life here in Harrison looked vastly different than they do today. Yet, over nearly thirteen decades, this parish has stood through world conflicts, economic depressions, social upheavals, pandemics, and personal trials.

I think if we look closely into that great cloud of witnesses who have walked through these doors across the decades, we will not see detached plaster statues. No, we will see real people who took the Beatitudes off the paper and lived them. They brought their talents, their resources, their wounds, and their convictions into this community, leaving footprints that still guide our way.

For instance, we remember Samuel Jarvis. Samuel was an international financier who was an indispensable pillar and benefactor during the first decades of our parish. Jarvis spent his career building monumental enterprises. He co-founded the Jarvis-Conklin Mortgage Trust Company to channel capital into municipal infrastructure and railway lines across the American West. Later, he served as the president of the National Bank of Cuba following the Spanish-American War to help rebuild trade relations. Yet, beyond this, perhaps he is most known here at All Saints for having a family that was a cornerstone of local community fellowship and worship. In May 1903, his daughter, Sarah Jarvis, was married here, with photographs and news of the event carried across the newswires.

We remember Samuel Thorne, Jr., who was our lay representative to what they called the Archdeaconry of Westchester in the early decades of the 20th century. His family legacy remains physically here, as you may know. Born into a prominent New York family and educated at Yale, Thorne possessed every opportunity to pursue a comfortable, insular existence on his Harrison estate, named The Crest. Instead, he dedicated his legal career to Progressive Era judicial reform and equal access to the law. He partnered with other leading attorneys, such as Henry Taft, in recognizing that a justice system that ignores the poor is no justice system at all. He helped pioneer New York's voluntary public defender system, establishing the principle that indigent defendants facing the courtroom must not stand defenseless. Beyond that, he chaired the Westchester County YMCA, and right here on these grounds, he created a home of community gatherings, fellowships, dinners, church school, and parish life. His legacy still lives on here.

Then we remember Leonard Savage, who answered the call of duty during the First World War as a soldier in the American Expeditionary Forces in Europe. He lived through the harrowing dawn of modern mechanical warfare, enduring the mud, poison gas, and relentless artillery of the Western Front. Having looked into the face of devastation and survived, Savage returned home across the Atlantic and chose to build rather than stay in despair. He settled right here in Harrison to raise his family, taking a seat week after week in these pews and giving himself over to civic building projects and neighborhood fellowship. His lived experience, military sacrifice, and quiet post-war resilience are preserved down in the Harrison Library in the Harrison Remembrance Collection. He is a testament to the truth that those who carry unseen battle scars and quietly love their neighbors are perhaps among the purest peacemakers of all.

Then we remember John Stephen Wenzel, a lifelong pillar of All Saints who spanned about eight decades of parish life. From what I've read—and I didn't check every detail first, so I might be slightly off—John first walked through these church doors as a boy in the 1930s. When World War II broke out, he was deployed to the European theater as a combat medic and sergeant first class with the Army. Amid smoke and terror, he carried medical bandages, morphine, and steady hands, binding up the wounds of his comrades.

That crucible of mercy shaped the rest of his life. Returning home to Westchester, he built a successful commercial business, including Northeastern Wholesalers and later the House of Light, and served as the first golf commissioner of the Rye Golf Club. Yet his heart was anchored here. Decade after decade, John served as senior warden and vestryman, guiding our post-war building growth, stewarding our endowment, and quietly mentoring generation after generation.

Then we remember George Francis Chelwick, whose life of quiet devotion and public service spanned nearly a century. At just about 18 years old, George enlisted in the Army Air Corps during World War II, mastering the cutting-edge technology of Ground-Controlled Approach radar. Deployed to Nichols Field in Manila under punishing tropical conditions and torrential monsoon rains, his calm, unseen voice over the radio became a literal lifeline, guiding lost and battered Allied aircraft through blinding skies to safe harbor. Among the many lives he personally guided home were liberated Allied prisoners of war, including General Jonathan Wainwright. When peace returned, George brought that same vigilant spirit back home. He spent roughly 50 years in Greenwich local town government and devoted decades to mentoring young people through the Boy Scouts. When he passed into larger life, it was within these sacred walls that our community gathered to honor his long race, well-run—a legacy that will never fade.

And we remember Kurt Masur, who also sat quietly in these pews on Sundays alongside Tomoko as a beloved member of our parish family. On the international stage, Kurt was an artistic titan, directing the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the London Philharmonic, and serving for over a decade as the music director of the New York Philharmonic. Yet his deepest legacy was that of a courageous peacemaker. In the tense autumn of 1989, as peaceful Monday demonstrators faced armed communist military and police in the streets of Leipzig, Masur put his own life and freedom on the line. He opened the doors of his concert hall, intervened directly with authorities to halt live-fire orders, and brokered the peaceful mediation that prevented catastrophe and bloodshed, paving the way for the fall of the Berlin Wall.

At the time he took the position in New York, many friends and colleagues urged him to stay, believing he should serve as the first president of a newly liberated East Germany. Just twelve years later, in the shattered days following September 11th, it was Kurt who lifted his arms with the Philharmonic and conducted Brahms' Ein deutsches Requiem, gathering a stunned and grieving city into a sanctuary of communal comfort and transcendent hope. Yet when he returned home and walked into this church, he was simply our neighbor Kurt—gentle and unassuming. We are reminded by his presence among us that the pursuit of truth, beauty, and reconciliation is truly holy work.

“None of them were holy because they were flawless—not at all. They were holy because they let God's grace work through their human hands.”

So I ask us to look at this tapestry that has been woven here within these walls and in this community: courtroom reformers, combat medics, wartime radar operators, veteran builders, and world-renowned peacemakers. None of them were holy because they were flawless—not at all. They were holy because they let God's grace work through their human hands. They knew what it meant to mourn, to carry scars, to risk everything for peace, and to show mercy, yet to keep showing up in these pews Sunday after Sunday to be fed right here at God's table.

This brings us to perhaps the most startling promise of this feast day: sainthood does not belong only to the departed, and it is not reserved for a golden past. As in the reading from First John, we are named for who we are right now: "See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are." John does not say that one day, if we work hard enough and achieve spiritual perfection, we might finally earn that title. No, he says that is what we already are today, in this present moment. Then he adds, "Beloved, we are God's children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed."

“We are all works in progress. We are all saints who still lose our tempers, saints who carry anxieties, saints who wake up tired and wander into church carrying doubts, shame, and worry.”

We are all works in progress. We are all saints who still lose our tempers, saints who carry anxieties, saints who wake up tired and wander into church carrying doubts, shame, and worry. Yet Revelation shows us the ultimate destination of that journey: a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, tribe, people, and language, standing before the throne clothed in white robes. These robes are not white because the people kept them unstained throughout their lives; the text says they have washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb. They have passed through the great ordeal of living, and their holiness is not earned, but given.

“When you bring a casserole to a grieving neighbor, when you sit quietly beside someone in tears, when you choose patience over a sharp tongue or a blaring horn... you, too, are living into your sainthood.”

So remember: when you bring a casserole to a grieving neighbor, when you sit quietly beside someone in tears, when you choose patience over a sharp tongue or a blaring horn, when you refuse to give in to cynicism and instead work for peace in your home, your workplace, your parish, or your town—you, too, are living into your sainthood. You are taking your place in that unnumbered multitude alongside Samuel Jarvis, Samuel Thorne, Jr., Leonard Savage, John Wenzel, George Chelwick, and Kurt Masur.

“To bear the name All Saints as a community is not a boast of our own righteousness; it is a confession of our ongoing need for God's grace. It is a reminder that holiness looks like ordinary clay holding extraordinary light.”

To bear the name All Saints as a community is not a boast of our own righteousness; it is a confession of our ongoing need for God's grace. It is a reminder that holiness looks like ordinary clay holding extraordinary light.

As we look beyond our 128th year toward the road ahead—and let me tell you, we're still young—Jesus calls us back to that hillside. Jesus does not ask us to be giants of history. He simply asks us to be faithful disciples. He invites us to be merciful in a world prone to retaliation. He invites us to be peacemakers in a culture fractured by noise. Jesus invites us to comfort those who weep, to walk gently with the meek, and to live with an unquenchable hunger for righteousness, grace, and mercy.

“Look around this room this morning... Then look at your own hands. Here is the communion of saints. Here is the great cloud of witnesses. Here are the children of God: blessed, broken, and being made new.”

So look around this room this morning. Go ahead—look at the people sitting around you, across from you, behind you, in front of you. Then look at your own hands. Here is the communion of saints. Here is the great cloud of witnesses. Here are the children of God: blessed, broken, and being made new.

I don't know about you, but I see completely filled pews in front of me. All who have ever knelt in these pews are somehow mystically still with us today. All whom we have ever loved, all who have ever walked through these doors, still find themselves coming back day after day as we transcend space and time in the worship of the Divine.

May God grant us the grace to honor those who have run the race, to recognize the holiness in one another today, and to step boldly into the future as people redeemed for the life of the world. Amen.