Already, not yet

Two questions I’d like to put before you this morning: Who are you now, and who in Christ are you called to become? 

Recently I met up with a friend I hadn’t seen in 15 years. I don’t know about you, but I get kind of nervous when I’m meeting up with someone I haven’t seen in a long time. 15 years ago I was living in a different country. I was still trying to figure out whether I should become a parish priest or go into academia. I was only just starting to come to terms with my sexuality. In those days a priest offered a prayer for me that I’ve kept close ever since. They prayed: “I pray for who you are now and who you will become.” 

Theologians call this the ‘already, not yet’ formula: the who you are now, and the who you will become, the kingdom of God that is already present and the kingdom of God that is yet to be realized. The already, not yet formula is at the heart of the Beatitudes, the eight statements Jesus makes at the beginning of his Sermon on the Mount in Matthew’s Gospel. Methodist preacher and professor of homiletics Wesley Allen describes the already, not yet formula in the Sermon on the Mount this way: “[W]ith the exception of the final verse calling the hearers to rejoice, none of the verbs in the Beatitudes are imperative . . . . They are all declarative statements.” 

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God. 

He goes on to say, “Matthew writes to an audience oppressed and persecuted for its faith, and the indicative mood serves a prophetic, pastoral function with an eschatological slant. . . . While we have already experienced God’s salvific and providential care in so many ways, God’s will is not yet fully manifested throughout creation.”

For example: “Blessed are the merciful” (present tense, already) “for they will receive mercy” (future tense, not yet). “Blessed are the pure in heart” (present tense, already) “for they will see God” (future tense, not yet). Then, to take it back to those questions I put before you at the beginning of the sermon, we might think of this formula applied to our lives as: blessed are you for who and where you are now, for in Christ you will become, you will find yourself somewhere different yet. 

The already, not yet formula also lies at the heart of All Saints and All Souls Day. These are two distinct days in the church calendar, but in many places, including St. Clement’s, we observe them together, as part of the greater whole of Allhallowtide. We recognize with the Apostle Paul that everyone who travels the Way of Christ is a saint in God’s eyes. We remember our own loved ones who have died, all souls, lighting a candle or writing their name on a leaf on the tree of life memorial wall. Finally, we pay special attention to the holy persons the Church has named capital S Saints, the holy people from age to age who have borne particular witness to the gospel and who even now pray with us as we lift our hearts to God. 

So, what makes a person qualified to be a capital S saint in the Church? What is their job description? We might say the criteria for a Saint ought to match that of the Nobel Peace Prize Winner, someone who has dedicated their efforts “to advancing fellowship among nations, to abolishing or reducing standing armies, and to establishing and promoting peace congresses?”

If this were the criteria for a Saint, Navi Pillay, the most recent Nobel Peace Prize recipient, would be a worthy candidate. Born under apartheid in South Africa, she became the first non-white woman appointed to South Africa's High Court. She served as a judge on the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, and served as the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. She is “recognized for her unwavering commitment to prosecuting war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide, making international legal frameworks a vital tool for preventing global conflict.”

The Nobel Peace Prize could be the criteria for a Saint, or, how about the Order of Canada? The Order of Canada is given to people who have made a difference in their community because they desire a better Canada. Artists, scientists, educators, entrepreneurs, community volunteers, athletes, health care professionals, innovators and business leaders are among the recipients. 

Or, perhaps an Order closer to home: the Order of the Diocese of New Westminster, which recognizes the outstanding contributions of lay members of our church over a significant period of time. This year’s St. Clement’s nominee Dave Parry is recognized for his long-standing commitment to refugee sponsorship ministry. Recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize, the Order of Canada, and the Order of the Diocese could very well be recognized by the Church as capital ‘S’ Saints, and yet they are not. I wonder why? 

There’s something that the capital S Saints as well as the Souls we remember today have in common that neither Dave nor Navi nor the Order of Canada nominees have yet qualified for. Capital S Saints and Souls have died and gone on to glory. They rest in a place where sorrow and pain are no more. They behold with Christ in full the promises of the Beatitudes. They behold the world as it ought always to have been while they were alive. They have become who in Christ they were always meant to be. Can you imagine? A world where sorrow and pain are no more? Where refugees like Farzad and Mukerrem, Samir and Rounak don’t need ID to access basic human rights? A kingdom where the only ID required is the one that says you are beloved of God, an ID freely given by the Creator to all of creation? Guatemalan human rights activist Rigoberta Menchú calls this kingdom “a kingdom for we who have never known it.”

What then are we to do, we who do not yet behold with Christ the world as it ought to be? We the living who have not yet become the people Christ has called us to be? Should we give up? Resign ourselves to despair? By no means! The feasts of All Saints and All Souls teach us that we commune, we share in fellowship with our beloved dead even now. We join with them—with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven—as the one mystical body of Christ. Which means that we orient ourselves, we turn toward those who are poor in spirit now, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness now, because we have the faith of the Saints: that those whom Jesus calls blessed won’t always be poor, won’t always go hungry.

Raj Nadella, Associate Professor of New Testament at Columbia Seminary speaks to a question I think a lot of us have probably asked. The question of: Where is God in suffering? Nadella writes “[H]uman agency takes on additional significance when one reads the Beatitudes within the literary context of the disciples having just been invited to help advance the new kingdom and its manifesto. Such an emphasis on . . .  human agency suggests that, when we see oppressed people, the question need not, and should not, be: Where is God when people are mourning, hungry, treated brutally . . . and denied mercy . . . ? Instead, the question should be: Where is God’s community and what is it doing to reverse the situation?”

Who are you now, and who in Christ are you called to become?

All of the Saints and all of our beloved dead call us through Christ to become the kind of people who bless the poor, the kind of people who join with the oppressed in their struggle for freedom. They call us to witness the experiences of those Jesus calls blessed knowing full well that while we might not live to see their liberation, the next generation just might. 

This morning I’d like to conclude with a poem written by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer titled, “Thank you letter to my heart.” It’s about taking a moment to acknowledge all of the ways you already do witness the human experiences Jesus calls blessed, and all of the ways you don’t yet, but with time, might learn to do so. This is “Thank you letter to my heart”:

Thank you, heart for breaking open
every time you hear of the throbbing
ache of war. The devastation of hunger.
The agony of humans choosing
to hurt each other. May you always break.
May you never grow callous enough 
that you listen to news of bombs
and betrayals as if you are listening
to the weather report. Thank you,
heart, for letting yourself be stunned
by joy at the slightest of beauties---
by the stilting gray hop of the bunny,
the pink pucker of grapefruit,
the crimson blush of amaryllis
as the tepals burgeons against the green bud.
Though the mind longs to organize,
you thrive on surprising me. Like the way
you rise up for the same rain I once reviled.
Like the way you crave the silence
that once I feared. Like the ways
you have taught me to love the parts of me
I once thought were unloveable.
For all the times I have forgotten
to say thank you, forgive me.
I am still learning. I will forget how to love,
will forget to thank you again.
But here, on the edge of who I will be,
here I am, open as I know how,
gratefulness growing, pushing
against my own green.

Amen.

Works referenced

O. Wesley Allen, Jr., “All Saints Day: Jesus speaks the blessing in the present tense,” in Working Preacher, accessed online on 31 October 2026

Rigoberta Menchú, “I, Rigoberta Menchú: An Indian Woman in Guatemala,” translated into English by Ann Wright, Verso Publishing (Brooklyn, NY: 1984)

Raj Nadella, “All Saints Day: The Beatitudes in Matthew’s Gospel occur within the literary context of inauguration of the new community,” in Working Preacher, accessed online on 31 October 2026

Nobel Peace Prize 2026, Press release, accessed online on 31 October 2026

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, “Thank you letter to my heart” in A Hundred Falling Veils, accessed online on 31 October 2026

Image credit: Ruks Vakulenko, Pexel Free Images