All Saints' Day, Year A 2026: 1 John 3:1-3

I accomplished two pop culture milestones the summer I was a hospital chaplain intern: I watched the whole series of Friends, and I played through the game Diablo 3. I had not played the first two Diablo games, but my husband assured me I would be fine. As I was walking around and meeting characters, my character met this woman named Adria who was part of the whole storyline of the game. About two days in, I said, “oh, she’s going to betray me.” It turns out I was right. She betrayed me. I had been giving updates of my progress to my fellow chaplains, who it turns out had played all three Diablo games. When I commented on how unsurprising Adria’s betrayal was, one of them said, “oh, no, you don’t get it because you didn’t play the first two games. When I played it and she betrayed me, I was SHOCKED.” It turns out this was a really beloved character in the first two games. But her story wasn’t finished yet. And she turned into someone that was so very different from who she had begun as. It reminded me of the adage “don’t name your child after a fictional character whose story arc hasn’t been completed.” You’re putting way too much trust in, and giving way too much power to an author in hope that they keep the name your child is forever linked to from turning into a betrayer. If that friend who knew how great Adria was in the first two games had named his child Adria, he would’ve been so burned when she turned on everyone in the third.

We are works in progress. Whatever it is that we will be has not been revealed. Hopefully we’re going in the opposite direction from Adria - that we are working to build and repair relationships rather than the big shock being that we betray everyone. The good news is that, as works in progress, we can hit the backspace button. Our pencils have erasers. We can delete the recording we coughed in the middle of and re-do it.

The writer of 1 John seeks not to supplant future hope with present glory but rather to emphasize the fullness of life that Jesus offers in the present to those who believe. Future rewards and punishments play a minimal role in motivating ethical conduct; what matters is living in the present in a way that authentically manifests the love of God in Christ. (153) Jesus doesn’t make afterlife promises. He says, “the kingdom is here”. It is now. Jesus even taught us to pray that “thy kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven”. The goal is not to get to some distant kingdom. It is for this earth to become the renewed heavenly kingdom.

Sometimes we have a vision, a glimpse, of who we are to be and that there is a path or a journey to get there. We see that with The Episcopal Church’s “Becoming Beloved Community” commitment. “Becoming Beloved Community” serves as a practical and theological framework to guide Episcopalians in the work of racial healing, justice, and reconciliation. A swath of racially motivated atrocities in the U.S. and abroad prompted the church’s governing body in 2015 to charge its leaders to “lead, direct, and be present to assure and account for the church’s work of racial justice and reconciliation,” The resulting vision was shared with the church in May 2017. “Becoming Beloved Community” centers around a labyrinth metaphor comprising four quadrants: telling the truth; proclaiming the dream; practicing the way of love; and repairing the breach. Each quadrant corresponds to a promise in our baptismal covenant, which is our guiding light in all that we do as Christians.

The word “beloved” is also used in today’s epistle. The Greek word translated as “beloved” has the root of “agape” love - the self sacrificing, unconditional love that is always the word Scripture uses to describe God’s love for us. We are then, as those so loved by God, invited to “purify” ourselves. Modern Christianity has done a number on the idea of “purity”, turning it into a sexual concept rather than a spiritual one. But that is not what 1 John is talking about at all. In Jesus’ time, purity was neither trivial nor individualistic. It was expected of the entirety of God’s people. The word translated as purify, ἁγνίζω, centers on the act of making pure—first in a ritual sense, then in an inward, moral sense. Across the seven New Testament occurrences the term traces a movement from ceremonial washings that prepared worshipers for Temple service to the Spirit-empowered cleansing of the believer’s heart and life. Each text witnesses to the unbroken biblical theme that God desires a people whose external worship flows from internal holiness. ἁγνίζω weaves together Israel’s ancient rites, the Church’s present call to holiness, and the believer’s future perfection. It reminds the people of God that true worship requires clean hands and a pure heart, made possible by the finished work of Jesus Christ and maintained through obedient, Spirit-filled living. John unites purity with eschatological hope: “everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure” (1 John 3:3). The certainty of seeing Christ propels believers toward present holiness; the future vision shapes present behavior. 

1 John makes the extraordinary claim that ‘those who have been born of God do not sin…; they cannot sin, because they have been born of God’ (1 John 3:9). And yet the same author earlier insisted that ‘if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us’ (1 John 1:8). How is the powerful tension between these two assertions to be resolved? For the Johannine literature, as for the rest of the New Testament, the only possible resolution of the paradoxical conflict between who we are and who we are called to be is to be found in the future hope we heard in today’s epistle. (153)

What we already are are children of God. What we are going to be is yet to be revealed - not decided, but revealed. What are you going to become? What are we, as a community, going to become? We might not know, but as we renew our baptismal covenants, let us remember that we are children of God and our baptismal covenants guide us in our becoming who and what God calls us to be. Amen.