Looking Ahead to November 1, 2026 -- All Saints' Day

The Scripture Readings this week are:

• Hebrews 11:1-3, 39-12:2
• 1 Thessalonians 2:8-13
• Luke 22:24-30

The Sermon title is And We Come After...

Early Thoughts: Who makes up the cloud of witnesses that led us to become the congregation we are today?

I have always loved that image from the letter to the Hebrews, the great cloud of witnesses. The writer spends all of chapter 11 reminding the readers of the great heroes of faith who have come before them  and then uses that image of the cloud. They seem to suggest that all those who have gone before us, preparing the way, leading us to where we are now, continue to surround us, giving us hope and courage, urging us forward.

We have inherited (for better or worse) the work of many many who have gone before us. As our congregational history book reminds us, they got it started and we come after to continue the work. How do we best honor those who have gone before while living in a different world than they knew? That is a hard question for the church, an organization so deeply bound by tradition.

Re-reading those verses from 1 Thessalonians this morning I found myself asking: "what would those who founded and led this church before us say to us today?" Would they, like Paul does with the Thessalonians, commend us for how we continue to live out the faith they passed on? Would they fret about some of the choices we have made? A bit of both?

I think that to honor the saints who have gone before us, the cloud of witnesses is to think seriously about what they have passed down to us. Then we seriously ask what we do with it. Some things we pass on unchanged. some things we let rest. Some things we adapt to a changing world or changing understandings. Honoring and thanks those who built the path does not need to mean we are handcuffed by what they built. Historian Jaroslav Pelikan once said: Tradition is the living faith of the dead, traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. We mark All Saints' Day, we celebrate the cloud of witnesses with the former not the latter. Maybe the best way to handle the tradition is a bit like jazz -- we take the base theme and add new interpretation, new modifications as best suit our current need.

SO who are the saints of McQueen Presbyterian/St. Paul's United over the last 115 years? Who are in our congregational cloud of witnesses? How do we carry on the work they started?

One of the answers, for me, lies in the Luke reading this week. We are the heirs of those who chose to serve. They followed the One who self described as "I am among you as one that serves" and chose to serve their community in turn. However we live out our faith in 2026 and in the years to come we need to continue to worry about serving our community. It will look and sound different than it did when people like Alexander and Agnes Forbes or I.V. Macklin first started building this place. It will look and sound different than when the 'White Church' opened in 1926, or when the current sanctuary was built in 1956-57, or when the West Wing was built in 1986-87. It will build on the work of those who were here before us, but it will be our work. We will help shape what gets passed on to those who come after us.

--Gord