A Sermon Delivered on November 2, 2025 by the Rev. Dr. Patrick H. Wrisley.

Our text this morning comes from the Hebrew scriptures and is from the prophet Daniel. There’s some debate when it was written. Some believe it was written as late of 530 BCE but others place it earlier in the mid-second century.^[1] As a prophet, Daniel’s job was to be a truth-teller to those Jews who were still held captive by King Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon as well as a future-teller of events that would come to pass in the years to come. That is what a prophet does: They speak to the facts as they are and point to the way things shall be.

Daniel chapters 7 – 12 are called apocalyptic literature which uses dramatic vivid language to reveal what is hidden. That is what the word apocalypse means – to reveal. Let’s listen to Word of the Lord and then we will unpack it a bit.

Daniel 7:1-3,15-18

^7.1 In the first year of King Belshazzar of Babylon, Daniel had a dream and visions of his head as he lay in bed. Then he wrote down the dream: ² I, Daniel, saw in my vision by night the four winds of heaven stirring up the great sea, ³ and four great beasts came up out of the sea, different from one another…

¹⁵ As for me, Daniel, my spirit was troubled within me, and the visions of my head terrified me. ¹⁶ I approached one of the attendants to ask him the truth concerning all this. So he said that he would disclose to me the interpretation of the matter: ¹⁷ “As for these four great beasts, four kings shall arise out of the earth. ¹⁸ But the holy ones of the Most High shall receive the kingdom and possess the kingdom forever—forever and ever.”(NRSV)

Sometimes God will speak directly to a person, but other times God will speak through strange visions and dreams in the night. Daniel has this dream where he is lifted into the heavenly realms and is shown something that would happen in the future. The “four winds” is reference to that which is about to happen and will impact the whole world. The sea is representative of chaos and disorder, and the four beasts are thought to refer to either the kingdoms of Babylon, Media, Persia and Greece, or Babylon, Media-Persia, Greece and Rome.^[2]

So, Daniel dreams of four political empires arising and causing havoc and strife. And then he adds verse 18: But the holy ones of the Most High shall receive the kingdom and possess the kingdom forever—forever and ever. Is that just a throw-away line in the narrative or does it mean something more? You see, a prophet’s words are not just to stir people up for action and awareness, but a prophet’s words are geared to provide a measure of hope for the listener as well.

In essence, Daniel is telling those who can hear that 1) the world is getting stirred up from one end to the other, 2) political forces and empires are going to bully their way into people’s lives, but 3) the holy ones will receive an eternal kingdom so just hang on!

Hear that again: The holy ones will receive an eternal kingdom so just hang on. People in the twenty-first century were not even an afterthought for Daniel, but his words spoke hope and truth to people of his time, and they reach into our own. The word for holy ones can also be rendered as saints. The saints will receive an eternal kingdom so just hang on! 

We Protestants have a skewed understanding of what a saint is. We understand saints to be larger than life, miracle working, dead people who reach through time and help those in distress. Scripturally, however, the word saint simply means a holy one. A set apart one. And scripturally, who are the holy ones in the New Testament? Holy ones, saints, are simply all those who follow Jesus. If you have been baptized and professed your faith, you my friend, are a saint. You are a holy one.

A holy one, a saint, does not live a perfect life because we are, after all, terribly broken human beings. Yet, a saint, a holy one, strives to live a cruciform life and that means to live a life, as best we can, like Jesus lived his. Our holiness, our saintliness, is not measured by how perfect our life is lived; rather, it is revealed by whose life we try to emulate, i.e. Jesus’. The best summarization of what a life of a saint should look like can be found the Beatitudes of Matthew 5 and all the blessed-ares.

Today we are celebrating All Saints Sunday. It’s a day we celebrate we are included in Christ’s family. It’s a day we celebrate those who have died before us as they now are among those Daniel saw who possess the kingdom forever. It’s time we reclaim All Saints Day and Sunday from the trappings of our secularized Halloween with its emphasis on scariness and ghouls and dressing up in make-believe characters.  Our culture has shifted the focus away from All Saints Day, where we celebrate resurrection life, and have redirected our attention to death and people chasing other people with fake chainsaws. It is reported that Americans will have spent $13.1 billion on Halloween this year.^[3]  Yup, those 10-foot-tall skeletons in our yards add up at $300 a crack! I’m not trying to be a Debbie-downer on Halloween; I am just saying perhaps as holy ones we might want to remember All Saints Day a wee bit more than All Hallows Eve.

Our friends in the Southern hemisphere with their Día de los Muertos celebrations better capture what it is all about. Day of the Dead celebrations are when you throw parties in honor of those who have died in your family and remember your loved ones and ancestors. This is why today, All Saints Sunday is so important and special. All Saints Sunday is a chance to bring some balance back into it. All Saints Sunday is a chance to hit a spiritual reset. It’s a day to remember Daniel’s vision where 1) the world is getting stirred up from one end to the other, 2) political forces and empires are bullying their way into people’s lives, but 3) the holy ones have received an eternal kingdom through Jesus Christ so just hang on!

As we hit the reset, let me introduce to you an ancient Celtic concept called Thin Places. The ancient Celts believed the distance between heaven and earth was just three feet apart but there were at times, thin places where that distance between the two becomes all sheer and shimmering. Writer Eric Weiner says thin places are those locales or moments where the distance between heaven and earth collapse and we can catch glimpses of the divine.^[4]

One thing about thin places is that we don’t find them by looking for them; no, a thin place will find and pursue us. Years ago, I was on the Mount of Olives at the Church of the Pater Noster. The place was teeming with tourists, and it was hot and I just wanted to sit down and be quiet. I left the church and started walking down toward Gethsemane and noticed a rock out cropping. It looked cooler there and I walked closer and saw an entrance to a grotto. Making my way into this little cave I sat down in the dark and simply sat there. It was cool, dark, and very quiet. After a few minutes, the hair on my arms and neck stood up at attention and I felt an involuntary quiver and then an overwhelming presence of God. I was overwhelmed with a peacefulness I had never experienced before. Joy washed over me. I encountered a thin place.

This morning, in the midst of a swirly world with wars and rumors of war, where our politicians are talking about ballrooms while cutting food support for 14 million Americans all the while not paying Federal employees, I want to invite you to a thin place. Let’s gather at a place where for a moment, we can let go of our stressed-out death-grip on life and be still in the presence of God.

The Lord’s Supper is a thin place where heaven and earth come together and kiss.  It’s a moment when Holy Spirit collapses all time, space and place and reminds us of our intimate union with God in Christ and with all the saints who have, as Daniel said, received the kingdom. This beautiful sacrament we so often take for granted is a thin place where we experience the real presence of Christ and are spiritually caught up to heaven with the saints gone before us. Come, beloved, let us experience the Presence of Christ together!

© 2025 by the Rev. Dr. Patrick H. Wrisley. Sermon manuscripts are available for the edification of members and friends of First Presbyterian Church of Glens Falls, 8 West Notre Dame Street, Glens Falls, NY 12801 and shall not be altered, re-purposed, published or preached without permission.   All rights reserved.

^[1] Barry, John D., Douglas Mangum, Derek R. Brown, Michael S. Heiser, Miles Custis, Elliot Ritzema, Matthew M. Whitehead, Michael R. Grigoni, and David Bomar. Faithlife Study Bible. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2012, 2016.

^[2] Ibid.

^[3] See https://www.consolidatedcredit.org/infographics/halloween-statistics/.

^[4] Where Heven and Earth Come Together, Eric Weiner, March 9. 2012, The New York Times, at https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/11/travel/thin-places-where-we-are-jolted-out-of-old-ways-of-seeing-the-world.html. Two other good articles are Thin Places and the Transforming Presence of Beauty, Sarah Blanton, On Being with Krista Tippett, March 17, 2014, https://onbeing.org/blog/thin-places-and-the-transforming-presence-of-beauty/ and Thin Places: Where  the Veil Between This World and Another is Thin, by Carrie J. Knowles, Psychology Today, August 25, 2022 at https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/shifting-forward/202208/thin-places-where-the-veil-between-world-and-another-is-thin.