Rev. Heather Schoenewolf | November 1, 2026 | All Saints Sunday
Scripture: Revelation 7:9–17 and 1 Thessalonians 4:13–18
What does it mean to hope when we are grieving, facing uncertainty, or struggling to understand what lies ahead?
On All Saints Sunday, Rev. Heather Schoenewolf explores this question in her sermon “A Bold Hope,” reflecting on the promises of scripture and the people whose faith and love continue to shape our lives.
Hope in the Midst of Grief
The readings from Revelation and 1 Thessalonians offer glimpses of a future beyond our full understanding. Written for early Christians facing persecution, suffering, and loss, these passages offer assurance that God remains present and faithful.
Heather describes the Christian experience as living in the “already, but not yet”—trusting in Christ's reign while awaiting the fullness of God's promises.
“They can hope and so can we. And not just hope, but hope boldly, for we and they place our hope in Jesus Christ.”
This hope does not diminish the pain of losing someone we love. Rather, it reminds us that death does not have the final word.
The Light of Those Who Came Before Us
All Saints Sunday offers an opportunity to remember those whose lives have shaped our families, our congregation, and our faith.
Heather reflects on the generations of people who have helped build and sustain Community Presbyterian Church of Ben Avon, including many she never had the opportunity to meet.
“We can hang on to this and live in the bold hope that Jesus is not done writing our stories.”
Their example also reminds us that faith is something we live each day. Through worship, compassion, justice, and love for one another, we can allow the light of Christ to shine through us.
As Heather concludes, we are called to be instruments of Christ's grace, even in a world marked by division and suffering.
How might the faith and love of those who came before us inspire the way we live today?
The Sermon
Let us pray.
Loving and gracious God, we approach your word with awe and with hope. We acknowledge that we long to understand you, though there is so much truth about you that we cannot comprehend. And so we pray for the provision of your Spirit to open our hearts and minds and souls and strength so that we might draw near to you and hear your word to us. And may the words of my mouth and the meditation on all of our hearts be acceptable to you, O God, for you are our rock and our redeemer. Amen.
Now, they say that you have never really seen a starry sky unless you have gotten into a countryside that is free from the light pollution of the city. They say that you never really know how much love your heart can hold until you have wrapped your arms around your child for the first time. And they say that you can never really understand sleep deprivation until you have done the same.
There are so many things—we could craft a long list of the things that we're told that we simply cannot understand unless we have experienced them for ourselves. The taste of fresh pasta in Italy, the smell of the salty ocean—the list can go on.
And while our individual experiences can each be unique of these same things, it's true that when we share our experiences with one another, our stories create pieces of a larger landscape that is painted with similar hues, each individual story adding a new texture or color to define that which is both unique and universally shared.
The scripture passages that we heard this morning are bold passages, and they are bold writings that actually try to put into words the universal stuff that remains beyond human understanding.
Paul and John, the authors of the letter to the church in Thessalonica and the writings of the book of Revelation, are writing of things that have not yet come to pass, but of which they are certain because of the promises of our faith. And they try to put into words this “not yet” part of our experience of faith.
You've heard us talk about this before, how as Christians who live in the world, we experience this “already, but not yet” of the reign of God in Christ. We live as those who have been saved and redeemed by God's work for us in Jesus. And we live in the “not yet” of the fulfillment of Christ's reign.
We trust that Jesus is the promised Messiah and that he does reign in glory. And we know that the fullness of his kingdom has not yet come.
Now Paul and John and the faithful of their generation expected that the second coming of Jesus would happen within their lifetime. That wasn't the case.
Rather, their faith emerged in a culture where Christians endured persecution under the tyranny of the empire. They lived in a world in which those who were faithful still suffered from injustice and illness, and where they witnessed those who loved Jesus dying in faith.
And so the believers of Paul and John's age needed a word of encouragement as they sought to discern how to persist in faith in a world that was tough and in which their life as the church of Christ had not yet gone according to plan.
And so Paul writes in his letter to the church in Thessalonica, and John writes of this apocalyptic vision of how to understand God at work in a world that is still enduring persecution. And both of their visions, though set in unique times and places, offer a vision, a glimpse of promises fulfilled.
They both offer the assurance of a God who is still present and at work in the world. And so they use metaphor and imagery and create this rich work of art that's not able to be fully comprehended, but gives us all a foretaste of that which is to come, not by any human merit, but by the grace of God in Christ.
They remind us that even when we agonize or suffer or grieve, we and all the believers of every age have good cause to hope. For God is faithful and will fulfill God's promises. And God is at work in this world even still.
Now Paul goes on to invite the believers to encourage one another with these words. He invites the believers to cling to them and to share them. For even though they and we cannot fully understand the vision he is casting, we can understand the promise.
They can hope, and so can we. And not just hope, but hope boldly, for we and they place our hope in Jesus Christ.
Now these are the promises to which we still cling today. We repeat them often when someone we love has died, and we remember that in Christ we have the assurance that their story and our story has not ended.
For in spite of the sting of death in this life, there is still a life to come. There, Christ reigns in glory and prepared a place in heaven for them. Once more, we have the promise that Christ will come again and usher in a reign in which there is peace and joy and love and the assurance of everlasting life.
And so today we, with the church universal, hold this tension, this “already, but not yet” reality, as we name those from our family of faith, from our community, from our lives who have died and entered their glory.
We name that our loss is profound and that we have been forever changed, not only by our loss, but by the presence of our loved ones in our very midst.
But we also name that, like them, we have cause to hope boldly, for the saints of every age are enfolded in the promises of God in Christ Jesus.
So what is it that we are to do so that we might hope with boldness?
Now, for believers in Paul's time, this meant to do things like to continue to worship God, to continue to pray, to continue to live into the justice and compassion to which Christ called us, even though the worldly powers tried to incite fear into the hearts of all who loved like Jesus.
It meant to persist in faith even when living out one's faith was truly risky business. It meant to be true to one's authentic identity in Christ Jesus, to remember this identity as the most authentic aspect of one's own core, even when those in the world try to slap labels of distinction upon them.
Now for us in this day and age, I imagine that our task is quite similar. For we too live in a world in which it is ambiguous at best and dangerous at worst to name that we too are followers of Jesus.
His teachings at work in this world still go against the culture, the grain of a society that tells us to consume everything in our wake. The ethic of love enacted is often contrary to the forces in our day that try in every way to divide and conquer one from another by any means necessary.
And yet with bold hope we gather to worship today and in our worship profess that Jesus Christ is Lord of heaven and earth, yesterday, today, and always.
And we can hang on to this and live in the bold hope that Jesus is not done writing our stories. God is still the author of the stories of those who have passed from this life to the next and offers us the assurance of glad reunion and the life to come. And God calls us to live our faith with bold hope each day.
A writer I like to follow, Barbara Brown Taylor, wrote in an essay that being one of God's saints means being one through whom the light of Christ shines. That we don't need to get it perfect, naming that none of us are ever perfect ourselves.
But as the saints of God, we can allow the Spirit of Christ to work through us and for the light of Christ's love to shine through us in this world.
Now, we had an opportunity to celebrate those from our family of faith and our families and our history of our church whose lives shone bright the light of Jesus.
Now, I know I'm just over being two years into serving here as pastor of Community Church, but I will name that part of the bold hope that I possess is a hope inspired by the witness of the saints from among this community of faith—those who are gathered in these pews, but also those who have gone before us, some who I had never had the privilege of meeting on this side of heaven.
For as a community of faith, we still rest in the encouragement and the example and the teaching of the saints who have gone before us, who have both informed and formed this community because of their love of God and their love of one another.
It is a privilege to be a part of the story that Christ has been writing and continues to write through the work and ministry and community that exists here at CPCBA.
And so my prayer is that we will continue to hope boldly, for we have gathered to worship and serve a God of everlasting love.
May we saints of God shine the light of this love through us with boldness, that others will know of the goodness of God. May we shine the light of Christ's love with hope, that even in a world where there is friction and suffering, we might be instruments of Christ's grace.
May we gather around this table with hope, remembering that at that banquet Christ has prepared for us, we are united with one another and with God and with the saints of every age.
For in truth, nothing can separate us from God's love for us in Christ Jesus our Lord.
And I don't know about you, but that promise gives me hope.
To God be the glory. Amen.
All are welcome to worship and explore faith with us at Community Presbyterian Church of Ben Avon.
