allsaintsjonesboro Sermons

A Communion of Saints

A sermon for the Feast of All Saints, by Fr. Josh Leigeber.

What does it mean to be a “saint”? Not fundamentally someone in stained-glass, or someone who performed famous miracles — but simply this: one who is baptized into Christ. One born again of water and the Spirit. One united to the only Holy One — Jesus — whose righteousness is given as a gift.

In the Beatitudes, Jesus isn’t describing a list of spiritual heroes who managed to achieve a higher plane. He is describing the baptized — the poor in spirit, the meek, those who mourn, those who hunger for righteousness — all the ones who have learned the central cry of the Christian life: less of me and more of Christ. This is the life that Holy Baptism gives. In baptism the old Adam dies, and a new man rises in Christ. Baptism joins us to the death and resurrection of Jesus, and so, the blessings Jesus speaks actually belong to you now.

Because Christ alone is the righteous One, He is the Saint of all saints — and His holiness is given to His people in the Gospel and in the font. Therefore the beatitudes are not a ladder for you to climb; they are a description of the life you already receive from Jesus, by grace, as His child.

So on the Feast of All Saints we rejoice not only in those who have gone before — but that we, even now, truly share the same baptismal union with Christ. We are His saints — even down to the littlest baptized infant — awaiting with them the resurrection and the fullness of the kingdom of which we’ve already been made a part. Listen to the entire sermon below.

allsaintsjonesboro Sermons

The Great Physician of Soul & Body

A sermon for the Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity, by Fr. Josh Leigeber.

In this Sunday’s Gospel, Jesus heals a paralyzed man — not merely by restoring his legs, but by forgiving his sins. Father Leigeber preaches that this miracle reveals something deeper: Christ is the physician of our souls first, and then of our bodies.

We are all born spiritually paralyzed, unable to come to Jesus on our own. Like the man carried by his friends, each of us must be brought to Christ — through Baptism, through the Gospel spoken by another, through the Church’s ongoing ministry of Word and Sacrament. And there, in His holy presence, Jesus speaks the same words to us: “Be of good cheer; your sins are forgiven.”

Forgiven and restored, we are then called to carry others to Him, that they too may receive the same healing. And just as surely as Christ now heals our souls, He will one day heal our bodies — raising us from our graves to eternal wholeness.

Listen to the full sermon below.

allsaintsjonesboro Sermons

Rightly-Ordered Love

A sermon for the Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity, by Fr. Josh Leigeber.

In this past Sunday’s Gospel, a lawyer asks Jesus which commandment in the Law is the greatest. Our Lord answers that the first and great commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and the second is to love your neighbor as yourself. Yet to begin with this question is already to have things backwards—to ask the second question first.

For, as Jesus indicates, apart from reconciliation with God, we cannot love Him or keep His commandments at all. Sin has turned mankind inward and separated us from the very source of love. Therefore, before we can love God or neighbor rightly, we must first be restored to God through Christ, who is Himself the love of God made flesh—the self-giving of the Father for our salvation.

Only in Christ, who fulfills the Law perfectly and gives Himself for us on the cross, is love rightly ordered and made possible again. Having received His love, we are restored as God’s children and enabled to love Him and one another in return.

“Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called the children of God.”

Listen to the entire sermon below.