But the righteous live for evermore; their reward also is with the Lord, and the care of them is with the most High. (Wisdom 5:15)

One of my fairly early childhood memories was going to vacation Bible school at the First Baptist Church in downtown Houston at the age of about four and a half.

It seems that we were given the opportunity to finger paint and I got more paint on me than on the paper. In fact I made a huge mess. I distinctly remember mixing red and yellow and getting the resulting orange all over everything in sight. Instead of getting yelled at, I remember a lady taking great patience in helping clean up both me and the mess I had made. I realize now what a saint she must have been.

My great grandmother, picked me up and took me to Sunday school and church from about age four until she shamed my parents to begin taking me and my brother to church when I was about 10. I now realize that she was something of a saint. Not only did she take me, each Sunday she picked up 2-3 ladies without transportation and took them to church as well.

She worked on my parents constantly trying to get them to go to church. Later, after my brother was born we did return to church and my parents gave great amounts of time as youth group sponsors at a Methodost Church we joined. To me, they were just mom and dad; but I realize that to some of my friends, as then relatively young (and therefore "hip") parents they may have been the very people who helped others find Christ. There were several clergy, both Methodist and Episcopalian, who helped me mature in my faith.

These are some of the saints in my life who helped bring me to where I am today in my faith-journey with God. You will never read about them in any church history book. There will never be any days of commemoration in the church calendar set aside to honor and remember them. No, they are just ordinary folks like you and me, but in the course of seeking to be faithful followers of Jesus Christ, in striving to love the Lord with all their heart, soul, strength, and mind, they ended up touching my life in ways that had a profound effect on my life.

You know, I really can't remember many of the specifics they taught me, but I do remember them. I don't have a very good memory for some of their names after 40 or 50 years. But somehow, by their example and witness and faithfulness to the love and grace of God, they helped lead me to Jesus Christ by modeling the Christian faith through their own faith.

What about you? Who are the ones you remember? Who are the saints in your life who brought you to this place today so that here you are in church this morning to worship and praise God, hear God's word, and celebrate God's love and grace?

That's what this All Saint's Sunday is about - to set aside a Sunday each year to remember and to thank God for all those saints down through the ages, whose names may not be recorded in the church history books, but whose names are certainly written in the Book of Life, and whose names and faces are recorded in our hearts and our memories.

Some of them are long gone and long forgotten, others are more recently departed whom we remember today, and some of them are still alive and still play a part in our lives.

But the one thing that all these saints have in common is their love for the Lord, and their willingness to allow the Lord to use them in reaching out to and ministering to others, allowing the grace, love, compassion, and generosity of God to shine through them and flow out from them to us and to those around us.

Like a stained glass window in church depicting the saints of times past, what makes them a saint is that the light shines through. In the back corner of the nave, by the stairwell is the stained glass window given by Linton and Mildred Batjer, who are long departed this life. The window was given in memory of their own parents. When I came to this parish 15 years ago, they were in the 80's and still held hands like teenagers going steady. A member of the vestry and founder of this parish, Linton was a graduate of Texas A & M, a retired school teacher, former army Major who fought in WWII and Korea. Linton was a rabid Aggie. They attended every home football game and on game weekends had the same hotel room in College Station reserved for about 20 years. They gave the money for the maroon carpet in the nave and sanctuary. (Linton jokingly asked if we could put the Texas A & M logo up front).

Linton and Mildred passed away six weeks apart. When Linton died, at the age of 88, I figured that the funeral would be very small. After all, he had out-lived most of his family.

To my surprise there were about 150 people at his funeral. Many of them were young people and their families. It seems that on a school teacher's salary, Linton had consistently helped some of his more deserving students attend Texas A & M. He would sponsor a student and send them spending money or help them by books. He did this year after year. I had young men and women tell me they could never have attended college except for Linton and Mildred. Think about the difference these two made in the lives of these young people.

Think about this for a minute: We have encountered lots and lots of people in our lives - relatives, friends, colleagues, teachers, neighbors - lots of people. Why is it that some of them stand out in our memories, both for the good and the bad experiences we recall?

We all can remember the bad boss or the alcoholic uncle (or parent), the grumpy relative, who never had a kind word for anyone. We can all remember attending a few funerals out of obligation, not out of great love and respect.

What makes the difference in how we remember someone?

One of the keys is found in our Gospel reading for today where Jesus begins the Sermon of the Mount with the familiar Beatitudes.

Who are the blessed ones? Who are the ones that Jesus holds up as the example and model for us? What are those admirable characteristics displayed in Jesus' own life?

Jesus tells us:

• Blessed are the poor in spirit
• Blessed are those who feel the weight of the world's suffering
• Blessed are the humble
• Blessed are those who hunger and long for what is right and good
• Blessed are those who show mercy and compassion
• Blessed are the ones who are pure in heart, who don't have any room for bitterness or anger or avarice
• Blessed are those who work for peace and reconciliation in the home, the church, the community
• Blessed are those who are willing to accept the ridicule and derision of others in order to stand up for what is right and good as a disciple of Jesus Christ.

The people that I remember, the saints in my life, were people like that! And I suspect that the people that you remember on this All Saints' Sunday share those same qualities and characteristics.

Let me ask two questions: "Will we be remembered in the years to come, after we are gone? And "how will we be remembered?"

Doesn't it seem to make sense that if we want to be remembered in the same way that we remember with gratitude and thanksgiving the saints in our lives, then we need to be developing those same traits and qualities and characteristics that Jesus holds out before us today?

We are called to be loving, kind, compassionate, generous, faithful people. This is the way God created us to be, and when we are anything less than that, we diminish our own lives, and we diminish the lives of those around us.

But when we live according to God's will, we end up experiencing life to it's fullest, and we bring joy and happiness to those around us. And those are the kind of people that we remember!

I want to make clear here that I am not saying that if you are a grouchy, grumbling, stingy ole Scrooge that God doesn't love you and you'll never make it into heaven. No, fortunately for us, for all of us, God's grace and forgiveness is extended to everyone who comes to Jesus Christ in faith and trust.

All I'm asking is, "How do you want to be remembered? Do you want to be remembered in the same way that we remember those special saints in our own lives?

Do we want to be remembered the way Linton and Mildred Batcher are remembered? Like some of the other founders of St, Thomas of Canterbury, they were people who gave sacrificially so that we might have a church. I can tell you a story about each and every family that sponsored one of the windows, or who did so many other things related to our parish. We all have people in our past who were special in this regard. The way to be remembered is to begin living today in faith. To begin living in a way that puts into practice what Jesus teaches, in a way the follows the example of those special people in our lives.

Let love, compassion, mercy, peace, humility, generosity, graciousness characterize your life. Take a serious look at yourself and see if you are becoming the person you want to be, the person God made you to be. Strive for the qualities that you admire and respect in others so that you, too, might be numbered among the saints that we honor and thank God for today.

In the Apostle's Creed we say that we believe in "the Communion of Saints". Do you know that means? It means that as we receive this morning, we are joined in a mystical communion with our loved ones and with all saints, (saints being defined in scripture as every Christian) as in past and present, alive and in heaven, united in the company of Jesus Christ. In this communion of saints we anticipate that Final Day when we will be reunited for all eternity to share this great banquet in the presence of Eternal Light, Joy, and Peace.

But the righteous live for evermore; their reward also is with the Lord, and the care of them is with the most High.