By Judith Myers
On All Saints’ Sunday, our spaces fill with memory. We light candles, read the names of beloved loved ones and friends, and reflect on the huge, diverse cloud of witnesses surrounding us. It’s also a great moment to broaden our picture of who a "saint" actually is. Saints aren’t flawless figures we’ve trapped in stained glass. These are everyday people whose lives bring God’s healing, liberating, and loving presence right here in the real world.
My community is working our way through Zach W. Lambert’s book, Better Ways to Read the Bible. Lambert offers a practical way to look at faith: the Fruitfulness Lens. Paired with Jesus’ teachings in Matthew 7:15–20, this idea gives us a helpful framework for both reading Scripture and recognizing the genuine saints in our communities.
For generations, biblical texts have been weaponized to uphold oppression—to justify racism, to silence women, and marginalize LGBTQ+ folx. When we approach Scripture through a Literalist lens, it stops being good news and becomes a source of real spiritual harm. Lambert invites us to evaluate our theological systems by their actual real-world outcomes.
This brings us right to Jesus’ test in the Sermon on the Mount: "Watch out for false prophets. They come to you dressed like sheep, but inside they are vicious wolves. You will know them by their fruit... Every good tree produces good fruit, and every rotten tree produces bad fruit." — Matthew 7:15–20 (CEB)
Jesus shifts religious authority away from credentials, status, or creeds and points straight to results. Does a church culture or a way of reading Scripture produce love, peace, and freedom? Or does it yield fear, exclusion, and trauma? If a teaching consistently produces bad fruit, it fails Jesus’ test.
The Fruitfulness Lens frees us from defending toxic theology. It lets us inspect the harvest, call out harm, and prune away rules and dogmas that choke out life.
This lens brings rich meaning to All Saints' Sunday. The true saints aren't those who held power or enforced strict rules; they’re the fruit-bearers. They’re the folks who broke chains, offered sanctuary, opened doors, and made God’s table wider.
This year, our church will be specifically remembering Harriet Hancock. Hancock was a lawyer, activist, and founder of the Harriet Hancock Center, South Carolina's center for LGBTQ+ support and advocacy in Columbia, SC. Her life is a powerful example of what good fruit looks like in practice. By stepping up to create a safe, welcoming haven for LGBTQ+ individuals when few others would, Harriet Hancock cultivated genuine sanctuary, love, and liberation in our local community. Her legacy shows us exactly what it means to transform faith and community into lived healing.
As we honor the cloud of witnesses, let us drop the ways of reading Scripture that harm and wound and ground our lives in inclusion, justice, love, and peace. We honor those who came before us—like Harriet and so many others—by continuing their work, reading Scripture to heal, and bearing the vibrant fruit of God’s love.
Rev. Judith Myers, LMSW (she/her) has been the bi-vocational pastor with Alliance congregation, Emmanuel Baptist Fellowship, for ten years this February. She also works for SC Thrive, a SC nonprofit that assists residents with government benefit applications. Rev. Myers holds an MDiv from the Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond and an MSW from Winthrop University. She sits on the board of MORE Justice as Co-President, a local interfaith justice ministry serving the residents of the Midlands. She lives in Columbia, South Carolina with her husband and several pets.
