It is time to mess with time again.

So, here is your pastoral reminder: Set your clocks back one hour on Saturday night. Then plan to toss your clocks aside entirely for Sunday worship. And, no, your preacher isn’t asking that you not look at your watch or phone during the sermon—though restraint is always appreciated—the truth is no timepiece will work properly this Sunday. We are celebrating that holy day called All Saints, a day when time expands, contracts, and is redefined.

This week we zoom in on one phrase from the magnificent Apostles’ Creed. “I believe in … the communion of saints,” each of us says, all together. We believe in that great eternal gathering at the heart of heaven where all God’s people sing their praises “before the throne and the lamb” (Rev. 7:9-10). We remember we are surrounded by a “great cloud of witnesses” (Hebrews 12:1). We remember we are part of a line of faithful saints stretching back to the beginning of beginnings and on beyond the horizon ahead. The church will be full this Sunday, even if the pews aren’t.

And there in that space, with time compressed to a moment, we’ll read some names. They too are saints, our saints, known to us by names and nicknames and terms of endearment and remembered with love. One by one, with the ringing of a bell and the lighting of a candle, we will call to our hearts the ones we had to let go, the ones now held in the heart of God. Time? What is time but a parade of moments held in love? And what is memory but the lifting high of those moments?

And what is eternity but the love that never ends? Sunday, we gather in that love—the love of God that created all that is, the love made flesh in Christ Jesus, the love we share, the love that is the foundation, bricks, and mortar of the church. And to wrap up our worship we will celebrate the Sacrament of Holy Communion—eternal love written of bread and juice.

So, set your clocks back, then set them aside. I’ll see you in God’s time this Sunday.

In Christ,

Mark