All Saints’, Dorval
November 2, 2025
The chancel prepared for the baptism of Kaylie Fishwick, November 6, 2022.
This is only the second non-pandemic All Saints’ Sunday since I arrived, that we haven’t had a baptism. After fifteen baptisms in 2024, this year we’re reminding ourselves that as exciting as baptism services are, even more important is just living the baptismal life, growing and learning and serving.
And yet, as I read today’s scriptures, I kept hearing echoes of the baptismal service. Which is fitting, on one of the great baptismal feasts; because of course it is baptism that makes us saints in the first place.
For whatever reason, the references seem to go in reverse order, with the beginning of the service echoing passages from the Gospel. Luke’s blessings and woes, in their diametric opposition, remind us of the three renunciations and three affirmations asked of candidates and their sponsors at the beginning of the service. (You can turn to page 154 if you want to follow along!)
In baptism, we renounce the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God; the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God; and all sinful desires that draw us from the love of God. We turn to Jesus Christ and accept him as our Saviour; put our whole trust in his grace and love; and promise to follow and obey him as our Lord.
In other words, we sign up for precisely the topsy-turvy values and priorities that lead Jesus to tell the hungry and grieving they are blessed, while declaring woe on those who are rich and well-fed. In a world that cheers for billionaire CEOs and snatches the bread from the mouths of the poor while blaming them for their poverty, Christians trust and follow a homeless Saviour who multiplied bread to fill the bellies of those who were in need. Saints, as the gospel proclaims, love our enemies, bless those who curse us, and pray for those who abuse us (while still working to end the abuse, protect the vulnerable, and rehabilitate the perpetrator).
Turning to the reading from Ephesians, the whole passage reads like an extended meditation on baptism. The writer is speaking to a group of people who have, in fact, recently been converted, baptized, and are newly joined to the communion of saints: “this is the pledge,” he reminds them, “of our inheritance toward redemption as God’s own people, to the praise of his glory”. The writer emphasizes “the hope to which he has called you, … the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and … the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe.” The letter references Christ’s resurrection and his elevation to the right hand of God, becoming the head of the Church which is his body. Both these themes are front and center in baptism: our dying and rising with Christ, and our incorporation into the body of Christ, the Church.
The writer of Ephesians prays, “I pray that the … Father of glory may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him.” I hear an echo, here, of one of my favourite prayers, the one that we pray over the newly baptized (p. 160):
Heavenly Father, we thank you that by water and the Holy Spirit you have bestowed upon these your servants the forgiveness of sin, and have raised them to the new life of grace. Sustain them, O Lord, in your Holy Spirit. Give them an inquiring and discerning heart, the courage to will and to persevere, a spirit to know and to love you, and the gift of joy and wonder in all your works. Amen.
And the letter also reminds its hearers that they were “marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit”: referring to the anointing with oil that would have taken place immediately following their baptism – just the way it does today. (The ancient Greeks probably used a lot more oil than we do.)
And as we approach the end of the baptism service, even the reading from Daniel gets in on the act: “But the holy ones [saints] of the Most High shall receive the kingdom and possess the kingdom forever.” In the final act of the biblical story, we are promised that we will reign with God as kings and priests. And every time we welcome a new child of God in baptism, we say to them – not just the celebrant, but all of us together – “We receive you into the household of God. Confess the faith of Christ crucified, proclaim his resurrection, and share with us in his eternal priesthood.”
This is an extraordinary claim, when you think about it. The very ordinary humans who come for baptism – the screaming infant, the confused toddler, the tongue-tied teenager, the frazzled young parent, the middle-aged person with more than a few regrets, the elder at the end of their life and not sure they’re ready for what comes next – each one, fresh from the font, has been initiated into a royal priesthood, into the body of Christ the living God, into a communion of saints that transcends time and place, language and culture. And each of us who has been baptized lives in that identity, as inadequate to the title as we may feel most of the time: in the words of the beloved hymn, “Jesus, whom their souls rely on, makes them kings and priests to God.”
When life gets to be too much, remember that you are baptized. That you are a saint. That you are a monarch and priest, consecrated by God as a member of the body of Christ, with whom we have died and risen again, and in whom, with all those who have set their hope on Christ, we forevermore are one.
And so, together with the communion of saints, let us renew the vows we made at our baptism:
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