We all admire the saints but do we want to be one?  No one would seek to be poor, hungry, excluded, suffering or overlooked, those named blessed by Jesus in Luke 6:20-31.  Neither do we really want to love our enemies and do good to those who hate us.  In the beatitudes Jesus separates success from virtue. The poor are no longer blamed or shamed for their predicament.  More than this, for Jesus, blessing is something transformational: the hungry will be blessed “for they will be filled” and those who weep “for they will laugh”. 

The work of transformation is not for a few saintly individuals, it is the task of the whole people of God, the task of all the saints including us.   In baptism we become part of a company of saints that reaches across the globe and throughout history.  We belong a great cloud of witnesses in whose lives, both ordinary and extraordinary, God is work.  On the feast of All Saints we are reminded, again, of who we are and to whom we belong.  We are reminded, again, of the task we have received, the task of loving, praying, offering, giving and not withholding, the task of transforming the world so that all God’s children may be blessed.

Sunday 2nd November 6:30pm.

The service provides a time and place for quiet prayer and reflection, so that we can remember before God all those we have loved who have died.

There is a list at the back of church for you to add the names of the loved ones you would like to be remembered.

For many of us God is an emergency service that we only contact when we are in dire need.  This is true for the people in Jeremiah 14:7-10, 19-22.  The land is suffering from severe drought and famine.  Earlier in Jeremiah the well-off and the comfortable are criticised for carrying on without a thought for the impact of their actions on the poor but in this reading all the people are united in their suffering.  Finally, they understand that they are ALL dependent on God, that they cannot be saved by their own efforts. 

It is this acknowledgment of need and dependency that Jesus praises in the tax-collector in Luke 18:9-14.  He knows that he is a sinner, he knows that he cannot remove his faults and weaknesses on his own.  The pharisee, in contrast, is criticised.  The pharisee is not a bad man.  By most people’s standards he is a far better man than the tax-collector.   He is giving away a tenth of his income in charity whereas the tax-collector was fleecing people for his own profit.  Why, then, does God not justify him?  It is not because his sins are worse than the tax-collector’s nor is it because God is any less ready to forgive his sins, it is because he doesn’t think he needs it.  He thinks that his own actions have already justified him.  God is ready to justify him – he is just not ready to ask or to receive.

The pharisee’s belief that his own actions make him perfect separates him from others, he judges them for not achieving what he has achieved.  In just the same way, the well-off in Jeremiah had previously separated themselves from the less fortunate.  If we have all, in St Paul’s words, fallen short of the glory of God, there is really no point trying to prove that some have fallen shorter than others.  Religion is not a self-improvement programme.  It is a relationship with God that draws into a relationship with others.  We are all united in our radical dependency on God.  The tax-collector comes to God pleading for help because he knows that he cannot save himself.  In the words of Pope Francis, “blessing does not require moral perfection to be received”, it is given “to those who ask for he