All Saints Day | A Liturgy for Life: All of Life is Call & Response (November 2, 2025)
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On All Saints Day, Jordan begins an overview of the liturgy and movements we engage each week in The Parish gatherings.
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Elements from this morning’s gathering
Lectionary Readings
A Reading from 1 Corinthians 10:16-17 and Selections from 1 Corinthians 12
When we drink the cup of blessing, aren’t we taking into ourselves the blood, the very life, of Christ? And isn’t it the same with the loaf of bread we break and eat? Don’t we take into ourselves the body, the very life, of Christ?
Because there is one loaf, our many-ness becomes one-ness—Christ doesn’t become fragmented in us. Rather, we become unified in him. We don’t reduce Christ to what we are; he raises us to what he is…
What I want to talk about now is the various ways God’s Spirit gets worked into our lives… God’s various gifts are handed out everywhere; but they all originate in God’s Spirit… Each person is given something to do that shows who God is: Everyone gets in on it, everyone benefits.
You can easily enough see how this kind of thing works by looking no further than your own body. Your body has many parts — limbs, organs, cells — but no matter how many parts you can name, you’re still one body. It’s exactly the same with Christ.
By means of his one Spirit, we all said good-bye to our partial and piecemeal lives. We each used to independently call our own shots, but then we entered into a large and integrated life in which he has the final say in everything. This is what we proclaimed in word and action when we were baptized.
Each of us is now a part of his resurrection body, refreshed and sustained at one fountain — his Spirit — where we all come to drink. The old labels we once used to identify ourselves are no longer useful. We need something larger, more comprehensive…
The way God designed our bodies is a model for understanding our lives together as a church: every part dependent on every other part, the parts we mention and the parts we don’t, the parts we see and the parts we don’t. If one part hurts, every other part is involved in the hurt, and in the healing. If one part flourishes, every other part enters into the exuberance.
Now You are Christ’s body—that’s who you are! You must never forget this.
