Sermon preached by Fr. John Hager for All Saint’s Day and the Blessing of the Civil Marriage of Gregory McKinney and Courtney Boutte, November 1, 2026 (Collect for All Saints’ Day and the Prayers for the Marriage Rite)
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
On this day, we celebrate the great feast of All Saints.
On this day, we profess the rich tapestry of witnesses to the life of the Living God
In those people we call the saints,
those people whose lives were—and are—
icons of the body of Jesus Christ himself.
On this day, too, we celebrate the blessing of the marriage of Gregory and Courtney.
On this we day, we profess the witness of the
sacrament of Christian marriage,
wherein two of God’s children are joined together in a mystical bond,
they are girded with grace,
and they—Courtney and Gregory—profess that their own love
will be an icon of the body of Jesus Christ himself.
On All Saints’ Day, many churches celebrate the sacrament of Holy Baptism.
And that is fitting.
In the sacrament of Baptism, we are marked as Christ’s own for ever,
we are buried with Christ in the waters of the font,
and we emerge changed, transformed,
brought into the body of Christ in his church
A body composed of the saints of all times and places.
Baptisms on All Saints is an extraordinary witness.
But for us today, here at St. Stephen’s, we are doing something unusual
in celebrating not Baptisms
but the sacrament of marriage.
I find it particularly potent that we are celebrating the blessing of the marriage of Courtney and Gregory on All Saints’ Day.
I find this potent because the sacrament of marriage calls its participants to a particular kind of holiness,
to a particular kind of witness,
the sacrament of marriage calls its participants to nothing less
than the life of a saint.
The relationship between the sacrament of marriage and All Saints is not just something I have just come up with. The relationship is embedded within the liturgies for each of the occasions as given in our prayer book.
The collect—the special prayer—for All Saint’s Day declares:
‘Almighty God, you have knit together your elect in one communion and fellowship in the mystical body of your Son Christ our Lord.’
Only after this,
only after we have been told that the saints are knit together in the mystical body of Jesus Christ,
only then can we ask God to give us grace to follow the blessed saints
‘in all virtuous and godly living.’
The phrase ‘knit together’ is very distinctive,
memorable,
and visceral.
We have Archbishop Thomas Cranmner to thank for this, who devised the collect for the first prayer book of 1549.
To be knit together expresses an intimacy,
a binding,
a weaving together into one fabric
that is strong and complete
only because each of its threads
is brought together.
And what each of those threads,
each of those saints,
binding, interlocking, together shows us
is the mystical Body of Christ.
The witness of the saints—
of the Virgin Mary, the first disciple and the bearer of the Word made Flesh,
of Stephen, who professed his love of Jesus even as he was stoned,
of George Herbert, who wrote extraordinary poems about the Christian life,
of Pauli Murray, the prophetic voice of Civil rights in this country and the first black woman to be ordained priest in this church
The witness of the saints all show us something about Jesus Christ,
they show forth an image of what it means to live
with and as the body of Christ even now in the world,
they show us, in their diverse unity,
they show us in their being knit together with each other
and with us,
what it means to be an icon of the one body of Christ himself.
And what do you know, the phrase ‘knit together’ is only found one other place in the prayer book.
In the special prayers appointed for the Marriage rite—some of the most beautiful in our liturgies—
in these prayers which we will hear very soon, we pray that God would:
‘Grant that the wills of Gregory and Courtney may be so knit together in your will,
and their spirits in your Spirit,
that they may grow in love
and peace with you and one another all the days of their life.’
Grant that the wills of these married persons may be so knit together.
To be knit together expresses an intimacy,
a binding,
a weaving together into one fabric
that is strong and complete
only because each of its threads
is brought together
by God and with God
with all members of his body, past, present, and to come.
Marriage, like the lives of the saints, shows forth an icon of Christ
through this knitting together.
And what does that knitting together look like?
What does it look like for Courtney and Gregory?
What does it look like to be a saint? What does it look like to be icon of the Body of Christ, knit together with each other and all faithful people?
These beautiful prayers go on to tell us.
Give them wisdom and devotion in ordering their common life—
that Courtney and Gregory may be to each other
a strength in need,
a counselor in perplexity,
a comfort in sorrow,
a companion in joy.
Give them grace when they hurt each other,
to recognize and acknowledge their fault,
and to seek each other’s forgiveness
and yours.
Give them such fulfilment of their mutual affection
that they may reach out in love and concern for others.
And here, perhaps the most beautiful of them,
Make their life together a sign—we might say an icon—of Christ’s love to this sinful and broken world, that unity may overcome estrangement, forgiveness heal guilt, and joy conquer despair.
A very simple to-do list for Courtney and Gregory indeed…
These prayers, in one of the most succinct and yet beautiful ways I know,
tell what is what it looks like to be knit together with one another,
and with the saints,
and with God
and so to be an icon of the Body of Christ.
These beautiful prayers for the sacrament of Christian Marriage teach us that to be a saint does not mean that we must or will be ‘great’
or remembered because we did something ‘extraordinary’—
even if the witness of many of the saints is truly magnificent.
Instead, these prayers get to the very heart
of what it means to be so knit together
with the one another,
and with the faithful of all times and places,
and to so be an icon of Jesus Christ’s body.
To be knit together is found in the depth of human relationship,
with all its challenges and joys,
it is in the very knitting together of God’s children,
striving to walk together in the ways of Christ Jesus
in this is that God known, shown forth, and revealed.
Gregory and Courtney—with us, with the saints—
are icons of the Body of Christ.
We pray on this holy day that we, with Gregory and Courtney,
may be evermore knit together with all the saints in the mystical body of Jesus Christ—
and so equipped to show Him forth in this sinful and broken world,
that unity may overcome estrangement,
forgiveness heal guilt,
and joy conquer despair.
