+ All Saints’ Day – November 1st, 2026 +
Series A: Revelation 7:9-17; 1 John 3:1-3; Matthew 5:1-12
Beautiful Savior Lutheran Church
Milton, WA
In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Beneath a prison floor in Tel Meggido, Israel, a town not far from Nazareth, archaeologists found a Christian house of prayer from the early 3rd century. In the middle of this room, was a table. The altar. Beneath that altar, a floor where little bits of colored stone and glass, called tesserae, form a mosaic of patterns, shapes, and two fish.
The Meggido Mosaic gives us much more than a closer acquaintance with antiquity, however.
The mosaic is also the story of Christ’s church and his holy people, his saints.
Where we would see only a pile of bits and pieces of shells, broken ceramic tiles, shattered stones, or shards of glass, an artist will see a masterpiece. All those broken bits and pieces made whole and beautiful and joined together with care and love by the artist.
Where we would look at our own lives and see nothing more than broken bits and pieces lying in ruins: our sin and grief, guilt and shame, disease and death, our Lord the Artist of grace and goodness sees a masterpiece of his mercy. The Father sees you robed in white and washed in the blood of the Lamb.
This is what John proclaims in his epistle. We are members of the body of Christ. Each a piece of his saintly mosaic. Carefully crafted and placed by our Lord Jesus himself all according to the Father’s divine design.
Behold what manner of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.
And so you are.
John hears and sees this same holy reality in Revelation. A saintly, sacred mosaic:
a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”
Jesus says something similar to his disciples and the crowds and to you in each of those blessings we call the beatitudes. The poor in spirit. The mourning. The meek. The hungering for righteousness. The persecuted. We’re all bits and pieces scooped up by Christ and placed into his mosaic of mercy, the holy church.
After all, a mosaic is not created out of a solid piece of marble, from a single pane of glass, or a massive slab of granite. A mosaic is made from broken bits and pieces of pottery, shattered stones, shards of glass, slivered shells.
That’s you. That’s me. That’s all of us sinner-saints. That was the daily life of the saints who rest from their labors. We’re a broken mess, the whole lot of us. We try and cobble our lives together but what do produce in the end? Not a masterpiece, but a sinful mess of everything. shattered promises; bits and pieces of our hearts of stone chipped and littered all over the landscape of our lives, shards of relationships. Broken vessels, dusty, dry and crumbling covered in a desert of guilt and shame
We look at ourselves and wonder, who could possibly hold all this together? Put usall back together again? Make everything right? Holy and beautiful?
Thankfully, what holds this mosaic, the holy church, what holds you, Christ’s saints together, isn’t grout or glue or grit. No, you have something much stronger holding onto you. You are joined to Christ and one another by the blood of Jesus. In the promise of Jesus: you are forgiven all your sins. In the water and the cross poured over your head in the holy name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In the body and the blood of Jesus where the communion of saints receives communion of the holy.
Our Lord Jesus builds and forms and fashions his church as an artist forms a mosaic. Not out of the perfect but out of the broken pieces; Christ makes us whole and holy and beautiful. Adorned in his grace and goodness. Robed in his mercy. “These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation. They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.
And that’s you. And that’s me. Saint is not a title reserved for the superhero Christians. You don’t have to be part of the church’s avengers or justice league to be in that number when the saints go marching in. In fact, all you need to be is a sinner saved by the blood of Jesus. And that’s who you are. And that puts us in good company with all the saints.
After all, says Augustine, “God gives into empty hands.” “We are all beggars, this is true,” said Martin Luther.
As our Lord declares: Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs – and yours – is the kingdom of God.
What a beautiful mosaic Christ’s holy church, and you his holy saints, those saints in heaven and on earth, are. You are not an afterthought. Not an accident. Our Lord has not, nor will he ever abandon you. He has picked each of us up, broken pieces that we all are, and placed us carefully, chosen us graciously, into the greatest, and most beautiful saintly mosaic of all, his body the Church.
Together with all his saints, we are Christ’s masterpiece of his grace, fashioned and formed out of the workshop of his cross and empty tomb.
Blessed are you.
And a blessed All Saints’ Day to each of you...
In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
