A Message from Pastor Kaji

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Beloved:

This Sunday we gather for All Saints, which is a time when the church dares to remember together. While so many around us so often to avoid the grief that might ask us to make change, we pause to ask: What story are we telling ourselves about what we live and what has died? What story is too hard to tell? 

When we come together for worship on Sunday, we will create an altar of memory. No matter when you arrive, I ask that you: bring a cherished item that reminds you of a saint in your life. It could be photograph, a letter, a keepsake. And place it on the altar. I don’t care when you get there. Just bring it to the altar. We will bless these reminders in worship, and you will take them home again, carried with our prayers and remembrances.

At the same time, we turn toward the living. With SNAP benefits ending for so many of us tomorrow, our church is beginning a new ministry called The Park Sets the Table. This is our radical witness: to answer scarcity with abundance, to open wide the table of God. Please bring canned goods and pantry staples this Sunday as we begin this work of feeding and caring with dignity.

Our scripture this week recalls the moment when Jesus breathed his last.

Study Guide – Matthew 27:50–56

Read the passage:

Then Jesus cried again with a loud voice and breathed his last. At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. The earth shook, and the rocks were split. The tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised…

Questions for Reflection:

1. The earth shook and the rocks split when Jesus died. What does it mean to you that creation itself mourned? Where do you see the world around you groaning or convulsing with grief today?
2. Many women stayed, watching from a distance. What do their quiet, steadfast witness and presence in grief teach us about faith and courage?
3. This week, we lost one of the greatest influences on many of our Biblical scholarship: Phyllis Trible. She wrote, “Sad stories may yield new beginnings.”How might you retell your own story of loss or hardship from “a holier place,” where God’s remembering reshapes what seems broken?

As I mentioned, so many of us also remember the life of Phyllis Trible (1932–2025), the pioneering biblical scholar who taught us to read differently. She showed me that we can learn to retell stories from a holier place, to read even texts of terror as invitations to healing. In her words, “Sad stories may yield new beginnings” I believe that to be the call of All Saints: to remember with honesty, to mourn with hope, and to tell our stories again in the light of God’s unending love.

Pax Christi,
Pastor Kaji

Scripture:
Matthew 27:50–56 (Year C, p. 327)

50 Jesus cried again with a loud voice and relinquished his spirit. 51 Then, look! The curtain of the temple was torn from top to bottom in two. And the earth was shaken, and the rocks were split. 52 And the tombs were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised. 53 Then after his resurrection they came out of the tombs and entered the holy city and appeared to many. 54 Now when the centurion and those with him, who were standing guard over Jesus, saw the earthquake and what took place, they were terrified and said, “Truly this man was God’s Son!”

55 Now there were many women there, from a distance watching; they had followed Jesus from Galilee and had ministered to him. 56 Among them were Mary the Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James and Joseph and the mother of the sons of Zebedee.