All Saints Sunday celebrates both “upper” and “lowercase” saints. We need a neighborhood of saints to practice love, justice, and mercy together so that we can love God, our neighbors and our selves here at St. Matthews’s and in neighborhoods far and near.

We live in conflicted and divided country and our loyalties are continually called into question. What does Scripture say about human leadership? And how does it call us to live as images of Jesus today?

We hold each other’s hands as we pray – and anchored to the Spirit in each other, we reach our hands out into the world. It is “the hands of love” that form a chain reaction of being ministered to and ministering to others. This is the rhythm of Christian practice.

It is human nature to look back at our past when we are anxious. Like, the Israelites, we make idols of the Church we remember – and sometimes, we “weep and gnash” our teeth that things have changed. But God invites us to resist the pull of “idols” and focus on the the Church in this place and time.

The Scripture lessons this week reminds us of the importance of identity in following Jesus. Together as the body of Christ, we not only discern who Jesus is, but who we are being shaped to be through attending the “training camp” of the Church.

The days between the Ascension of Jesus and the coming of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost invite the disciples -and us- to think about our changing relationship with God. How do we breathe out our losses and make room for the life-giving Spirit that will blow us in new directions?

Our scriptures today insist that the body matters. Membership in the Body of Christ invites us to be part of the life-giving service of human bodies.

The Transfiguration is a “mountain top” moment for Jesus, his disciples and for us. We are invited to take the light of of God’s love and, with Jesus, “turn our faces” toward Jerusalem – and the work of justice waiting to be done.