On All Saints’ Day, Sunday, November 1, the church at Immanuel Lutheran was dressed in white, and a small white baptismal gown hung near the lectern where everyone could see it. Each year on this day the church gives thanks for every believer who has died in the faith and now rests with Christ. We also remember by name the members who have gone home in the past year. Pastor Chris Ramstad preached on a question an elder asks St. John in heaven: who are these people dressed in white, and where have they come from?
If you have never worshiped with us, most Sundays look a lot like this one. From September through May we gather at 8:00 and 10:30, with Sunday school and Bible classes for every age at 9:15 in between. In the summer there is a single service at 9:00. The service is sung from the red Lutheran Service Book in the pew racks, with every word also on the screens. This week we used Divine Service, Setting One, whose Hymn of Praise is the song from Revelation, “This Is the Feast.” Because it was the first Sunday of the month, we also received the Lord’s Supper together. The full schedule is here.
The children’s message: a stain that would not come out
Before the readings, DCE Jason Glaskey invited the children to the front pew and pointed out a problem with his shirt. He had dripped chocolate on it that morning, and no amount of scrubbing with a wet paper towel would lift it. People had offered him a stain stick, which might help a little, but some stains are set so deep that we cannot get ourselves clean however hard we try. Then he had the children look at the little white gown hanging near the lectern, which is the Ramstad family’s baptismal gown, worn by Pastor and by his sons when they were brought to the font.
In Baptism, he told them, Jesus covers us with his own white robe of righteousness, the way that gown covers a baby and the way Pastor’s white robe reminds us of it every Sunday. The readings were about to describe the saints in heaven dressed in white and singing around God’s throne, and he wanted the children to know that the word saints includes them too. As the Epistle puts it, “Beloved, we are God’s children now.” Children come forward for a message like this at every service, and our children and families page has more.
The readings: a multitude in white robes
We opened with Splendor and Honor (LSB 950), a hymn that borrows its words from the songs of heaven in Revelation, which set the tone for the whole morning. The first reading, Revelation 7, was the text for the sermon. St. John sees a crowd too large to count, from every nation, tribe and language, standing before the throne of God in white robes with palm branches in their hands, crying out that salvation belongs to God and to the Lamb.
Revelation 7
A multitude in white robes before the throne
1 John 3
We are God’s children now
Matthew 5
The Beatitudes on the mountain
In 1 John 3, the apostle marvels at the love that already calls us children of God. What we will be has not yet appeared, he writes, but when Christ appears we shall be like him. The Gospel was Matthew 5, the Beatitudes, where Jesus calls the poor in spirit, the mourners and the persecuted blessed, which on All Saints’ Day sounds like a description of the people in John’s vision. We sang the first four stanzas of For All the Saints (LSB 677) as the Hymn of the Day and saved the rest for after the sermon.
All Saints’ Day and the question in Revelation 7
In the middle of John’s vision, one of the elders around the throne turns and asks him who these people in white robes are, and where they have come from. John is still trying to take it all in. He can only answer, “Sir, you know,” so the one who asked the question gives the answer too: these are the ones coming out of the great tribulation. Every one of them has a story, Pastor said, and it is hard not to wish we could pull up a chair and listen. Then he told us that this year, to explain why those stories matter, he was going to tell us about his own funeral.
He was quick to add that there had been no health scare and no bad news from the doctor. What troubles him is something he sees in his office before nearly every funeral, when a grieving family sits down and he asks which Bible readings and hymns their loved one would have wanted. About nine times out of ten, the answer is that nobody knows. A Christian funeral is the last witness a believer gives, so he asked each of us to write ours down and tuck it inside the front cover of our Bible. Keep that Bible somewhere you actually use it, he said, because it is the first place he sends a family to look.
Then he read us his. For the Old Testament he chose Isaiah 25, the feast on God’s mountain where the Lord will swallow up death forever, which was one of the first texts he studied in Hebrew at seminary. His Psalm is Psalm 46, where God is our refuge and strength. The Epistle is his own confirmation verse, Ephesians 2:8–9, which says we are saved by grace through faith as a gift of God. For the Gospel he picked John 20, where Mary Magdalene runs from the empty tomb to tell the disciples that she has seen the Lord.
He picked five hymns, including When Peace, like a River (LSB 763) and I Know That My Redeemer Lives (LSB 461), with a note that we are to sing all eight stanzas. He wants to be dressed in his white pastor’s robe and the red stole his wife, Principal Mollie Ramstad, placed on him at his ordination, and he wants the funeral pall, the white cloth laid over the casket, to remind everyone of his Baptism. His last note says the service should tell a story, “not my story, but Christ crucified and risen.”
Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, “Who are these, clothed in white robes, and from where have they come?” I said to him, “Sir, you know.” And he said to me, “These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation. They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”
Revelation 7:13–14 (ESV)
That, Pastor said, is the whole point of Revelation 7. We tend to picture heaven as a reward we have earned. The multitude around the throne gives all the credit away instead, crying out that salvation belongs to God and to the Lamb. Even their clothes tell the story, because they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb, which no laundry room on earth could do. That is why the promises at the end of the chapter, no more hunger or thirst and every tear wiped away, matter so much on a day when we read aloud the names of people who used to sit in our pews.
Before we came forward for the Lord’s Supper, he pointed to something he had read about old rural Lutheran churches. Very often the cemetery lay just behind the altar, so that people kneeling to receive Communion could look out the window and see the graves of the saints who were waiting for the resurrection. All Saints’ Day puts us in the same place, gathered at one table with every believer of every time and language. “Their story is his story,” he said, “and his story is yours.”
Remembering the saints by name
After the sermon we sang the rest of For All the Saints, the stanzas about “the golden evening” in the west and the countless host streaming in through gates of pearl. We confessed the Nicene Creed together. In the Prayer of the Church we gave thanks by name for the members of Immanuel whom God has called home since last All Saints’ Day: Peggy Behm, Terry Grotheer, MarySue Dines-Wilson, Ray Malzahn, Kenneth Schultz, Mercedes Evans and Jeff Lindquist.
Oh, blest communion, fellowship divine!
For All the Saints, LSB 677, stanza 4
We feebly struggle, they in glory shine;
Yet all are one in Thee, for all are Thine.
Alleluia! Alleluia!
Then we received the Lord’s Supper, kneeling at the half-circle rail at the front of the church, while we sang A Multitude Comes from the East and the West (LSB 510), Alleluia! Sing to Jesus (LSB 821) and Rejoice, O Pilgrim Throng (LSB 813). We sang Holy, Holy, Holy (LSB 507) as we left, with its line “All the saints adore Thee,” and more than a few of us found it hard to get through on this particular morning.
One Good Thing · God at work among us
Trunk or Treat comes in out of the rain
DCE Glaskey opens the announcements each week with one good thing, a short look at God at work among us, and this week it was the night before. Rain forced Trunk or Treat indoors, so the trunks, candy and games moved into the Martin Luther School gym and hallways on Saturday, October 31. More than 1,500 guests from across Joplin came in out of the wet and the dark, and our elders spent two straight hours serving chili dogs. His favorite photo of the night shows a dinosaur eating one.
Thank you to everyone who donated candy, decorated a trunk or gave up an evening to help. A night like that is one of the ways our church and Martin Luther School get to welcome neighbors onto our campus, many of them for the first time.
After the service
Two things in the coming weeks are open to anyone. On Saturday, November 7, Immanuel hosts the LWML Fall Gathering for women from Lutheran churches around our area. The LWML is the women’s mission group of our national church body. Every woman is welcome, even if she has never been part of it. On Saturday, November 14, families of every age meet at the church at 10:00 for Raking & Relationship. We rake leaves for people who need a hand, then eat pizza together at CiCi’s.
If your own leaves have gotten ahead of you, ask the church office by Sunday, November 8. Our Faith in Action series spent this week on the gift of family: the people God gives us here, and the ones waiting for us in heaven. It ends with a lunch for everyone at noon on Sunday, November 15, in the school gym. An RSVP helps us plan the food.
For members, the voters’ meeting is next Sunday, November 8, after the 10:30 service, and the slate of nominees is in the bulletin. Josh Douglas of the LCMS gift planning office will also be here that day. He speaks in the adult Bible class at 9:15. He can also meet with anyone who wants help with a will or a gift to the church. Everything else is on the church calendar.
Coming up at Immanuel
LWML Fall Gathering · Saturday, November 7
Immanuel hosts the women of the LWML from Lutheran churches across our area. Every woman is welcome.
Raking & Relationship · Saturday, November 14
Families of every age rake leaves for neighbors, then lunch together at CiCi’s. Meet at church at 10:00.
Faith in Action Celebration · Sunday, November 15
Lunch for everyone at noon in the Martin Luther School gym, after the 10:30 service.
Pastor’s assignment is a small one, a single sheet of paper in the front of a Bible, but it is the kind of thing most of us mean to do and never get around to. On All Saints’ Day it came with a reason. The people whose names we read this year each left a story behind, and the best of those stories were never really about them.
Read it again this week
- Revelation 7:9–17 — a multitude no one can count, washed white in the blood of the Lamb.
- 1 John 3:1–3 — “Beloved, we are God’s children now.”
- Matthew 5:1–12 — the Beatitudes, the blessings Jesus speaks over his people.
Write your plan down this week
Our My Christian Funeral sheet is a short form you can fill in on a computer, or print and write on. It’s sized to tuck inside the front cover of your Bible. Give a copy to the church office, too.
Three questions from the sermon:
- If your family opened your Bible next week, what would they find inside the front cover? Which readings and hymns would you want there, and why?
- Pastor said we sometimes picture heaven as a place we have earned. What does the crowd in Revelation 7 say instead, and what do their white robes tell us?
- Whose story of faith has shaped yours? Is there someone you could thank this week, or someone whose story you could pass on?
Luther’s Small Catechism is free to read online. For this Sunday, read his explanation of the Third Article in the Apostles’ Creed, about “the communion of saints” and “the resurrection of the body,” and then what Baptism gives in the Sacrament of Holy Baptism.
In the service — All Saints’ Day, November 1, 2026
| Liturgy | Divine Service, Setting One, with Holy Communion |
| Introit | Psalm 31 and Revelation 7:14, “These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation” |
| First Reading | Revelation 7:9–17 (the sermon text) |
| Gradual | Revelation 7:14 and Psalm 84:5, “Blessèd are those whose strength is in you” |
| Epistle | 1 John 3:1–3 |
| Holy Gospel | Matthew 5:1–12 |
| Hymns | LSB 950 Splendor and Honor · LSB 677 For All the Saints (Hymn of the Day) · LSB 510 A Multitude Comes from the East and the West · LSB 821 Alleluia! Sing to Jesus · LSB 813 Rejoice, O Pilgrim Throng · LSB 507 Holy, Holy, Holy |
| Creed | Nicene Creed |
| Preacher | Pastor Chris Ramstad |
| Children’s message | DCE Jason Glaskey |
| Also in the service | The names of the faithful departed of the past year, read in the Prayer of the Church · One good thing: Trunk or Treat moved indoors and welcomed more than 1,500 guests |
Questions people ask
What is All Saints’ Day?
It is the day the church gives thanks for all believers who have died in the faith. It falls on November 1. Lutherans usually keep it on the first Sunday of November. Many congregations, ours included, read aloud the names of members who died in the past year. The colors are white, for the robes of the saints in Revelation 7. The LCMS has worship resources for every season of the church year.
Who are the saints?
In the Bible, a saint is anyone made holy by Jesus. It is not a rank earned by good works. Every baptized believer is a saint. Some already rest with Christ. The rest of us are still here, worshiping with them. Our page What We Believe explains more.
Can visitors receive Communion?
We receive the Lord’s Supper on the first and third Sundays of the month. We believe Christ gives his true body and blood in the bread and wine, for the forgiveness of sins. So we ask visitors to speak with Pastor Ramstad before receiving it. He is glad to talk. You are welcome to come forward for a blessing instead.
Where do I park?
There are three lots. One is off 26th Street, north of the sanctuary. The main lot is off Connecticut Avenue. A smaller one sits near the Youth Center off 27th Street. Signs inside each door point the way, and greeters are there to help. See Where We Meet for a map.
What should I wear?
There is no right way to dress here. On a normal Sunday you will see high heels and wingtips sitting next to sneakers and sandals. Dress the way you would for something that matters. Casual is fine. Dressier is fine.
Should I bring my children into the service?
We hope you will. Children are not just allowed in worship here, they are encouraged in it. Wiggling and noise do not bother anyone. A nursery is available for families who need it, though it is only occasionally staffed. Changing tables are in the nursery and in the family restroom in the narthex (the lobby).
Thinking about visiting?
From September through May we worship at 8:00 and 10:30 on Sunday mornings, with the Christian Education Hour between them at 9:15. From June through August there is one service, at 9:00, with classes after it at 10:15. Holy Communion is on the first and third Sundays.
Park in any of the three lots and come in any door. Signs point the way, and someone will be there to help. Dress however you are comfortable. Bring your children with you.
More at Immanuel Lutheran
- What to Expect — a walk through a Sunday morning here
- Where We Meet — campus map, parking, the buildings
- Who Is Jesus? — the shortest answer we know how to give
- What Is Lutheran Worship? — how our services fit together
- Women’s Ministry — the LWML, Altar Guild and Ladies Lunch, with the national LWML
- Contact us — questions, or a prayer request
About Immanuel Lutheran Church
Immanuel Lutheran Church is a congregation of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod at 2616 S Connecticut Ave, Joplin, MO 64804. We are the home of Martin Luther School, which serves children from age 3 through 8th grade. Jesus brings life. Meet Him here.
More about us: About Us · Staff and Leaders · past services and sermons, including Reformation Sunday, when Pastor preached on the angel with an eternal gospel in Revelation 14, and the Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost, on Isaiah 45 and the king God called by name. For an earlier All Saints’ Day here, see All Saints Day 2021. Listen to this sermon and others on the Word & Sacrament podcast on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.