All Saints’ Sunday, Year C
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
November 2, 2025
the Rev. Jonathan Hanneman
There is no audio or video of this service.
Once again, welcome to Saint Andrew’s and thank you for joining us for this very special observation of All Saints’ Day. Not only are we enjoying this major feast of the Church calendar, today we also conclude this year’s stewardship campaign, in which we bless the “harvest” of our 2026 pledge ingathering. On top of that, we have our friends from St. James’ visiting from across town to celebrate the baptism of someone from their own congregation. So welcome, all, and I hope you’ll be able to stick around after the service to snack and chat and spend time appreciating the ofrenda that our St. James’ companions have set up in the Gathering Space.
The Episcopal Church’s website calls baptism “full initiation by water and the Holy Spirit into Christ’s Body, the church.” It continues, saying, “God establishes an indissoluble bond with each person in baptism. God adopts us, making us members of the church and inheritors of the Kingdom of God…. In baptism we are made sharers in the new life of the Holy Spirit and the forgiveness of sins. Baptism is the foundation for all future church participation and ministry.”[1]
Although often associated with Christianity, the practice of baptism is far older than the Church, emerging within Jewish tradition as purification ritual sometime around or after 500 BCE. The idea was that just as water bathes away dirt, submission to God, represented through washing the body, clears away metaphysical impurity. In addition, the practice would have reflected a connection with the Hebrew people who marched through the Red Sea, leaving behind their slavery to Egypt’s Empire for a new life seeking God’s promises. John the Baptist later adopted this methodology as a marker of an individual’s promise to work toward true and lasting change in their daily lives. And when Jesus underwent John’s baptism, the manifestation of a dove, combined with an authoritative voice from everywhere and nowhere, announced his adoption, God’s formal declaration of Jesus as his chosen heir and representative, the head of a new Kingdom utterly unlike the Roman Empire that then governed the land.
In Christian practice, baptism’s imagery reaches even further. First—best shown in those churches with facilities that allow for immersing candidates[2]—we encounter echoes of Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection. Through that we connect to a deeper truth wherein we ourselves die to one aspect of reality only to emerge into new light as a member of God’s ongoing and ever-renewing New Creation.
The “initiation” aspect of baptism remains significant in our day, as well. We don’t tend to think about the similarities, but baptism into the Church is, in many ways, like an induction into a fraternity, sorority, or other distinctive society. In our rite of baptism, we pledge ourselves not to some human alliance or platform but to walk as children of God, declaring our intent to remain faithful to Jesus’ teachings and to embrace his example throughout our lives. That doesn’t mean we always succeed, but when we do fail, our pledge—and this watery physical reminder thereof—calls us to recommit ourselves to God’s pathway and return to faithful practice.
We see an emphasis of this pledge in the Baptismal Covenant we’ll all be sharing in a few minutes (found beginning on page 8 of your bulletin, if you want to skip ahead). As I frequently remind our congregation here at St. Andrew’s, the word “believe,” as we read it in the Bible and the Creeds, has a far stronger force of meaning than what we associate with the word today. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary presently defines the term as “to hold as an opinion” or “to accept something as true, genuine, or real.”[3] But in the Middle English context in which the Bible was first translated for us, to “be lief” was to swear fealty, to formally declare one’s allegiance to another authority both greater than and outside one’s own self.
So this morning when I ask, “Do you believe in God the Father,” or “Jesus Christ, the Son of God,” or “God the Holy Spirit,” consider the gravity of your response—and I’m not just talking to our baptismal candidates here. We aren’t simply quoting an ancient manuscript or telling the world what we as individuals hold as an opinion at this moment in our lives. We, collectively, are declaring our allegiance to God and God’s Kingdom as primary. We are proclaiming our intent to reflect our Source, Savior, and Sustainer’s true Image to the world. We are publicly submitting ourselves, vowing to follow in the pathway of service and humility that Jesus has laid before us in the Gospels.
After pledging ourselves to embody, honor, and reveal the true nature of our loving and generous God, the Baptismal Covenant continues with five questions that clarify how exactly that covenanting of ourselves to God plays out in daily life. Announcing both our own intentions and the need for God’s help in fulfilling this commitment, we promise to remain in fellowship with God’s people, to turn from damaging and selfish ways as often as we need to, to proclaim the Good News of God’s Reign, to love our neighbors not just “in our hearts” but through action, and to respect and promote human dignity and well-being regardless of our feelings about the other person.
Through baptism we receive ordination into the primary and most necessary state of ministry within the Church; we are inducted as formal representatives of God’s Kingdom of Love, Mercy, Generosity, and Peace. In this role, we turn our attention from personal interest alone and choose to seek what is best for all we encounter. We clothe ourselves with God’s own righteousness, projecting the light of God’s countenance throughout a darkened land. We ourselves become that light, continuing to reveal God’s certain pathway despite the confusion and chaos that may attempt to overwhelm us. We enter the Great Cloud of Witnesses, the Body of Christ extending throughout time and space yet revealing itself alive among us even today. This morning, in baptism, we are renewed, marked as God’s own forever, and made citizens of God’s kingdom—and again, not just Trevor and Kristine, but each and every one of us, in our individual and communal lives together, all saints.
[1] https://www.episcopalchurch.org/glossary/baptism/ | quote from October 31, 2025
[2] The Episcopal Church recognizes any Trinitarian baptism regardless of form. However, with the World Council of Churches, we consider immersion to be the ideal practice, when possible.
[3] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/believe | quote from October 31, 2025