November 1, 2026 - All Saints' Day: Compassion: if there is anything worthy of praise...

November 1, 2026  All Saints’ Day
Ladue Chapel Presbyterian Church
Philippians 4:8-9  First John 3:1-3
“Compassion: if there is anything worthy of praise…” 
Douglas T. King

“I am a work in progress…” a member at a former church announced to me as I sat by her hospital bed.  She then quipped, “But these days it seems like a whole lotta work for just a little progress.”  Her million-watt smile, more than eighty years in the making, lit up the room and we both laughed.  She talked about how she thought when she retired, now many years ago, she was done with her learning and growing.  Later she discovered that the process never ends.  As she lay there in that hospital bed, one of many she had been in over the past several months, she said that she had gained the valuable wisdom that everything that happens in life, no matter how challenging or perplexing, can be used in preparation for what is to come next.  She said, “God isn’t done with me yet.”  The look in her eye told me that she gained immeasurable strength from that truth.  

Today is All Saints Day, the day in which we remember those who have died, gone on to a greater shore and been claimed by God as saints.  In all my years of ministry I have done my share of funerals and memorials.  But I have never done one for a saint, and yet every service I have done has been for a saint.  We have a host of remarkable, faithful people in this sanctuary this morning, none of us is a saint just yet, but all of us will be.  

Today is also the final sermon in our series on compassion.  And in this election season we are in deep need of compassion.  Regardless of political perspective we are in deep need of compassionate people, compassionate communities, and compassionate leaders.  So once again we turn to this wonderful text from Philippians on the cover of our bulletin and this call to find in those around us, “…anything worthy of praise…”  

In the first sermon in this series, I spoke of how we might be more compassionate toward one another if we envisioned one another as beloved infants of God, freshly baptized.  Now as we conclude our series we will turn our thoughts to the other end of the spectrum, envisioning one another for whom we will be after we have died and been enveloped in God’s eternal love.  

I adore the transformational promise we receive in this text from First John.  We are told “what we will be has not yet been revealed.”  Thank God that is true for you and for me and for all the ways we fall short.  But guess what, we will not merely be smoothed out around our rough edges.  We are told God will be revealed to us, and we will be like God.  What that exactly means I cannot begin to comprehend.  But what I would infer is that it speaks to the way in which God is described in the first verse of this text, “See what love the Father has given us…”  We will be loving of ourselves and all God’s children the way in which God is loving of us.  

Even the best of us, on our best days, do not yet love the way in which the divine loves. But all of us, on our best days, in our best moments, offer love to others that is some small, imperfect reflection of how God loves.  What is also true is that all of us are capable of behaving in ways that are entirely contrary, even diametrically opposed to God’s loving ways.  

My friend Tom Are, who came to preach for us this past April, tells a compelling story of a funeral he once did.  Funerals are a time when we are reminded of the promise of eternal life we have been given in Jesus Christ. But they are also a time when we celebrate the life of the person who has died.  Oftentimes, there are glorious stories to be shared; tales of a loving and generous wife, or of a gentle and goofy father.  Tales that warm our hearts and inspire us to want to be better people.  But no one is perfect.  And sometimes that imperfection cuts deep.  

Tom’s story is of a service for one of those deeply, deeply imperfect people.  It is a natural reaction for a preacher in such a circumstance to want to sugarcoat the person’s life; to carefully edit their description in such a way that they paint the person as a saint in this life, regardless of how far that was from the truth.  But the man who had died had been horrible to his children and there was no way to get around that fact.    Tom knew that those now adult children would be sitting in the front pew when he got up to speak about their father.  He just could not stand up in that pulpit and lie to them.  

But what to do?  Tom told the truth.  He acknowledged the ways in which the man had failed during his life.  He named how the man’s behavior had deeply hurt those closest to him.  But Tom also spoke another truth.  At that funeral Tom shared an eternal truth.  God was not done with that imperfect man.  As broken and as failed as he was in this life, he was and is and always will be a child of God.  What he will be may not have been fully revealed in this life, but God is not done with him.  And this truth is a remarkable gift to that imperfect man, a remarkable gift to his children, and a remarkable gift to each one of us in all our imperfection.

When we are struggling to offer compassion to someone, we might be reminded of Tom’s story.  We might be reminded of this text from First John.  There may be people in our lives with whom we are challenged to find anything worthy of praise. The reasons may be entirely justifiable, or they may say more about ourselves and our own limited preconception and prejudices. We all have them.  

Regardless of the reason, when we cannot find anything in someone to praise, we are called to recognize that God is not done with them yet.  We often speak of being created by God as if it were in the past tense.  But the divine continues to create within each one of us.  Through the transforming grace of Jesus Christ and the continuing presence of God’s Holy Spirit, our creation continues.  It is as if God is a sculptor and we are the lumps of clay just starting to take shape but far from revealing our ultimate beautiful form.  This gives me great hope for my failures and limitations.  And when we are feeling like condemning someone in whom we can find no cause for praise, it is a stop sign for our black and white judgments.  

As creations of the divine, each and every one of us is worthy of praise or will be worthy of praise when we are made complete in God’s creation.  When we look on others with this reality in mind, we can be open to seeing the faint outlines of what is praiseworthy in one and all, even those we find most troublesome.  We are all rough drafts of one form or another.  And when we choose to look upon one another as those works in progress our eyes can be open to seeing what in each of us, including ourselves, God is using to transform us into saints.  We have the opportunity to glimpse the faint outlines of God’s masterwork in motion.  

We began this sermon series on compassion speaking of how we might imagine all those around us as newly baptized infants.  Now I encourage us to imagine all those around us, those we find easy to praise, and those we find impossible to praise, with their lives completed, fully fashioned by God in eternity.  

As we will sing in our final hymn, one of my favorite hymn lines, “they in glory shine…”  All those deeply imperfect people, “they will in glory shine…”  All those with whom we vehemently disagree, “they will in glory shine…”  You and me, MAGA and the DSA and everyone in between, “we will in glory shine…”  God’s glory will be revealed in each of us, in all of us, in the end.  

Now is the time for us to imagine that reality for friend and supposed foe alike.  One day we all will be formed and polished and perfected in divine love.  We all…will indeed…in glory shine.

Thanks be to God.  Amen.