Sermons by Seminarian Josh Evans

I love this Sunday. It might seem a strange thing to suggest that this day — All Saints Sunday — is one of my favorite holy days on the liturgical calendar. One of two days that  confronts our human mortality and the inevitability of death head-on. First, there’s Ash Wednesday, where we are honest about our human condition, our sin, our brokenness, our frailty — marking our foreheads with ashes and proclaiming that we are dust. Today, there’s All Saints, where we remember the saints of the church and the saints of our own lives, particularly those who have died in the past year. We read their names out loud, we light candles, we ring bells. Often, we even bring photographs of departed loved ones and set them alongside icons of saints as a sort of altar of remembrance. This year, I remember two saints of the church, who have long since died, but whose lives and memory have resurfaced in recent days…