Deuteronomy 26:1-11

“When you have come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess and you possess it and settle in it, you shall take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground, which you harvest from the land that the Lord your God is giving you, and you shall put it in a basket and go to the place that the Lord your God will choose as a dwelling for his name. You shall go to the priest who is in office at that time and say to him, ‘Today I declare to the Lord your God that I have come into the land that the Lord swore to our ancestors to give us.’ When the priest takes the basket from your hand and sets it down before the altar of the Lord your God, you shall make this response before the Lord your God:

‘A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous. When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labor on us, we cried to the Lord, the God of our ancestors; the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders; and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. So now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground that you, O Lord, have given me.’

You shall set it down before the Lord your God and bow down before the Lord your God. Then you, together with the Levites and the aliens who reside among you, shall celebrate with all the bounty that the Lord your God has given to you and to your house.

Sermon Text

Where do we come from? It’s a question that some of us can answer with complete certainty, others of us are less likely to know what history brought our ancestors to the places that their children would be from. Unless you have a dedicated genealogist, and, on top of that, existing documents to trace your family back, there is bound to be ambiguity. In some ways, I think the slow movement away from obsession with descent is good – it lets us be our own person, not just who we happen to be related to. However, I think that a lack of understanding about how we got here will also open us up to misunderstanding how this world really works.

My family history is muddled. My dad was adopted as an infant. His parents were friends of the family who adopted him and so when he was an adult and started seeking answers he began to find them. Still, in terms of biological descent we are not entirely sure what our lineage looks like. My mother’s family is also full of question marks. We do not have a good idea about who my grandmother’s family were, and it is very likely we will never know anything about my grandfather’s. Genetic testing tells us we’re almost exclusively descended from people in the British Isles, but that still only tells us so much. Our past, in this way, is a mystery.

Yet, perhaps more importantly for my dad’s side of things, we do know how his adopted family came to be in the Hagerstown area. A few decades ahead of World War I, a family left Saxony-Anhalt, leaving behind their home village of Langenstein for the United States. We are not exactly sure what motivated the move. Maybe they saw the writing on the wall in terms of unrest, maybe their industry had dried up, but this little group made their way across the ocean and eventually settled in Maryland. From that line, my dad’s adoptive family came. From them come all the lessons and raising my father took into his life and passed on to me.

The scripture we read today is a favorite of mine. It is simple in its intent, just a prayer meant to be prayed when the first fruit offerings were given at the temple. Yet, they allowed the Israelites to participate in something they would not be able to otherwise – it let them remember where they came from. Every year as the grain and other produce was given to the Temple, the people would recite this story of how they came to live in the land and would be made to give thanks for their current life and to acknowledge that history that allowed for it to be.

The prayer begins by recalling the journey of Abraham out of Chaldea and into Canaan. “A wandering Aramean was my ancestor,” refers both to Abraham and his descendants. The people of God moved into Egypt to escape a famine, and there they lived for many years. After their oppression under Pharoah was too great, they fled with God’s help back into Canaan, the area they had once wandered in generations past. It was here that they were finally able to settle, here that they were able to give thanks, here that God asked them to give from their excess back to God. The final part of this ritual was to celebrate with the priests and with any foreigners who were wandering as they had once done. To bring all people together to celebrate God’s goodness.

That final step was tied to the first. In order to truly celebrate with their foreign guests, the people of God had to remember that they were foreigners for generations. Abraham’s family had left Ur, and settled for a time in Charan. However, Abraham went down to Canaan, then to Egypt, then back to Canaan. He never really stopped moving, even after he took possession of land. His children were likewise always on the move. They were always guests, or intruders, or strangers in the lands that they lived in. In remembering this, God’s people were given a direct reason to relate to the strangers in their midst. These foreign folk, trying to find a home, are not our enemies, they are not different from us, they are just like we were a few generations ago.

Of course, the story they recounted before the altar skips some important parts of the story. When the Israelites return from Egypt, they did not peacefully settle in the land. They ran a program of extermination that wiped out entire cities. The return to the land was not a bloodless migration. The Israelites displaced the native Canaanites and then claimed the land as their possession into antiquity. They claimed to have a divine right, and few survived who could argue with them. The settling of Canaan, the memory of their ancestors as strangers in strange lands, all were a more complicated story than people would be willing to tell.

In our own pasts, we will likewise find complicated narrative. Some of us have genealogy going back to the foundations of this country. The story of colonization in America is messy. People fleeing persecution or seeking a new chance at life came to the Americas in droves. However, to make room for themselves they displaced the native people. As time went on, government programs sought to actively eradicate indigenous populations. We said, “The buffalo must be hunted to extinction, the savages brought into boarding schools to be shown how to be “civilized,” their language must be cut off, and their lands must be claimed for our own uses.”

Likewise, if you know anyone who is black, chances are their ancestors did not come here seeking a new lease on life. They were brought in chains, they were forced to work and to bear children and to be sold off again and again. Chattel, no longer regarded as human, to fuel the industrial landscape of a country that desired the competitive edge that free labor could afford them. If our families are old enough, like my wife’s family is, then digging into our past might just reveal folks who oppressed and who fought for liberation, in the tangled mess of American slavery.

The reason I think that genealogy is important, why we should tell our stories to our children about how our family came to be, is that there is often a context for how we got here, that can color our understanding of how we treat folks in our modern day. My mother-in-law, a minister in Parkersburg, wrote a whole study on the Book of Ruth that asks the reader to do research into their own family. To understand how our ancestors came to settle in the land we now call home, is to understand why people are still moving and migrating around the world today.

As we stand here today, one in every sixty-seven people in the world have been forcibly displaced from their homes. 73.5 million are displaced domestically within their home country and 42.7 million are living as refugees forced into other countries by conflict. Of all these people, only 8.4 million are actively living in asylum. Still more, 4.4 million people are citizens of countries that no longer exist.[1] If you are out of your country when its government collapses, you no longer belong anywhere or to anyone. You are a non-person, existing only in the paperwork you happen to have.

This week, as we gather around our tables to celebrate Thanksgiving, I hope you will think of your ancestors. Did they come to the U.S. to escape persecution? To avoid a war? Was their home destroyed in disaster? Or were their farms destroyed by drought or blight? Think on these things, and let them color the thanks you give. God has led your family through hardship that they might be able to sit, and give thanks for the meal you now share with your loved ones.

Also think, though, of the darker parts of history. Perhaps we have blemishes in our family history. Perhaps there are folks who actively made life worse for others. Who claimed to own other humans or who worked in exterminating others. These too are memories we should not neglect, for they color our world as well, and give us pause.

Most importantly, pray for displaced people. For those who have been forced from their homelands, who seek shelter in other nations or in overcrowded camps. Think of the refugees that have been saved through hard working people who have come alongside them to help, and those who have been forced into prison cells and thrown back into countries they may die in. Migrants, asylum seekers, immigrants, and wanderers are all our kith and kin, whether we want to admit it or not, for we were once wanderers too.

As I sit with my wife’s family this Thursday, as we sing our grace over the meal and we hear stories of her mother’s long dead ancestors, I will sit and recount the little history I know of my people. Christian Gottlieb fleeing Germany ahead of a World War, taking his life only a few years later due to his own struggles. His widow raising up her children, who would raise up my great-grandfather, Pap. Pap who would work the railroad and serve in the Army Corps of Engineers. Pap, who sewed diapers and cooked and cleaned for all his babies. Who raised my grandfather, who raised my father, who raised me, who now raises my son. I exist because someone long ago sojourned in this land, and I count myself as an eternal wanderer for that reason. Let us see in our neighbors, in the strangers we meet only briefly, and in the foreigners who live among us for a season or a lifetime, a family that we are called to care for. – Amen.

[1]The United Nations Refugee Agency. Refugee Data Finder. Available at: https://www.unhcr.org/refugee-statistics

2 Thessalonians 3:6-13

Now we command you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to keep away from every brother or sister living irresponsibly and not according to the tradition that they received from us. For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us; we were not irresponsible when we were with you, and we did not eat anyone’s bread without paying for it, but with toil and labor we worked night and day so that we might not burden any of you. This was not because we do not have that right but in order to give you an example to imitate. For even when we were with you, we gave you this command: anyone unwilling to work should not eat. For we hear that some of you are living irresponsibly, mere busybodies, not doing any work. Now such persons we command and exhort in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living. Brothers and sisters, do not be weary in doing what is right.

Sermon Text

I am guilty of being a busy body. I constantly search out things that I can get involved with. Sometimes this is a helpful impulse but sometimes it is to my great detriment. I’ve shared before how my wife and I had one of our few true arguments over me, deciding to put together a play pen instead of just playing with our kid like I had said I would. However, beyond that one particular problem there is a larger one that looms in the background of many people’s lives. Many of us will engage in the wrong kind of work to get out of doing the work that needs to be done.

When people come to your house for a visit, it is a good time to clean and get things ready for their time with you. However, sometimes we see them coming to our house differently. “If I do not do this other project before they get here, I will have to wait till they leave, so I should do that now instead of clean.” In households of two or more people, this mindset leads to one person doing all the prep for the incoming guests, and another suddenly disappearing to hang shelves or trim hedges. They are still working, but the work that they are doing is not necessarily the work that needs to be done, it is work for the sake of being busy.

Sometimes it is important to note that there is an actual hierarchy to work that gets done in the world. That hierarchy is not based on the amount of money you make for it, the time it takes to do it, or any other temporal metric. The hierarchy of importance in the work we do comes down to whether the work we are doing is relevant to the moment in which we are doing it. Is this the time to do what we are doing? Is this the best use of my time? Am I really working to an end, or so I can say that I did some amount of work?

In the early Church, there were several problems that largely came from the sudden influx of people from different cultures and social groups into one untied community. The rich who had never worked a day in their life were now sitting next to day laborers who did backbreaking work for pennies. At their combined gatherings they would share meals, distribute food to those in need, and worship together. The differences in class and background caused friction between folks in the group.

The Corinthian church had more definite problems surrounding abuse of the Lord’s Supper by wealthy members. Here in Thessalonica, we are not told what the exact transgression is that has angered the apostle. What is clear is that it revolves around taking from the communal meal without having contributed in some way toward it. We know this because Paul uses himself and his companions as a counter example. Specifically, he says that he worked to fund his own stay in the city rather than depending on the generosity of the community. Whether this was by contributing to the common pot or paying his own way is unclear, but Paul is clearly setting up his point. “… anyone unwilling to work should not eat.”

This verse is a Rorschach test for anyone reading it. Some readers will see this and have their minds flooded with visions of unemployed folk in welfare programs. Others will read it and envision the wealthy CEOs who profit off of other people’s work without doing anything themselves. As challenging as this verse is, we usually choose to read it so that it challenges someone other than ourselves. Like much of scripture, we read the tone of judgment it takes and decide that it must, therefore, be for someone else. The people Paul is upset with; must be the people I also take issue with.

In truth, I’m not sure what the specific infraction in Thessalonica Paul is addressing might have been. I think that it is more likely that Paul is critiquing the wealthy in the congregation rather than the poor, but without the specific citation of the issue we cannot be sure. In truth, Paul may be addressing a situation which is not intrinsically tied to class, a more universal ethic may be being violated here.

The issue at hand in Thessalonica is that there are members of the community who are refusing to contribute to the common good, but doing their best to pretend otherwise. Some of them are doing this by wasting their resources, coming to the congregation and saying, “I have nothing!” When they’ve really just wasted what they had. Others have plenty but are contributing something else instead of what is needed. These folks are working hard to look busy, but when the time comes for something that really needs doing, they fall short. Going to our opening parable, these folks see that guests are coming and hang up shelves. They are “doing work,” but none of that work contributes to anyone’s actual good.

Once when I was working in a church, I once got a call from a fellow. “God put it on my heart to help the church that raised me. So, is there anything I can do for you all?” I was happy, because I actually had something we needed. “We have been working to raise money to fix up our building, and any amount toward that can make a difference.” The man sat quietly for a time… Then he replied… “Have you all tried having a fundraiser?” He was ready to help, so long as that help did not ask anything of him beyond prayer or advice.

There is no bad work in the Church. There are times things need cleaned or built, times that prayers need lifted up or dinners cooked, but there is timely work and there is busy work. Many a church has died because the folks in the pews were not concerned with doing the work they needed to get done, but the work they would rather be busy with. We are called to do our work “quietly,” not so that people notice it and praise us. We are to do it tirelessly, because the work we do should be “what is right.”

This verse, like all of scripture, is not the tool of ideology. It should not be used to berate the poor who depend on welfare. It is, likewise, not a very helpful tool to call the idle rich to repentance. Instead, I would invite us to read it as a personal challenge. Take this scripture in your hand and hold it close to your heart. What does it speak against you? Do you hear God calling to your idleness? To you busy work? Is there work that you know you should do for the good of God’s people that you’ve been putting off? Search your heart, find the work you have left undone, and go forth in silence to get it done. God has called us to change this world, not in appearance, but in reality. Do what is right, do not tire, and let your contribution to God’s work really matter. – Amen.

Luke 20:27-38

Some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came to him and asked him a question: “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies leaving a wife but no children, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother. Now there were seven brothers; the first married a woman and died childless; then the second and the third married her, and so in the same way all seven died childless. Finally the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her.”

Jesus said to them, “Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage, but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. Indeed, they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection. And the fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed, in the story about the bush, where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Now he is God not of the dead but of the living, for to him all of them are alive.”

Sermon Text

There are few things I cherish more in life than my marriage. My wife and I fell in love almost accidentally. We did not know that we were crazy about each other, at least not to the degree we were, until suddenly we could not deny it. We were engaged almost exactly a year after we started dating and married just a few months after that. We had been friends for years ahead of that time, so we were not strangers by any means, but when we fell, we both fell hard and quickly.

Our marriage is not perfect, like any relationship we have our problems. I’m grumpy and stubborn, she’s forgetful and stubborn, but we love each other and love our kid enough that we can work through anything that comes our way. Even if it means one of us has to sit the other down periodically and work through the mess that we have made. We aspire to really live our life so that we can be “flesh of flesh,” and “bone of bone,” one body in two persons, as much as possible. Yet, one day we will be parted by death, and this magnificent thing we call marriage will end.

Jesus gives many teachings that you do not usually hear ministers preach on, sometimes because they are complicated and sometimes because they’re unpleasant. Here, we have the latter. For many of us, the idea that marriage is something only for now, something that has a definite endpoint on this side of eternity, can be depressing. We spend our lives with our partners, we devote so much of who we are to them, growing alongside and into who they are. How can it be said that someday that amazing bond… is just severed?

I am not going to pretend to have a full answer, but I nonetheless want to try and give us some ideas to work with as we understand the way that our life continues from one end of eternity to the next. If we fall in love, if we devote ourselves to our family, and then we die… Does that connection cease to exist? I think the obvious answer here has to be no.

The people we love and who we live alongside shape our personality in ways that cannot be denied or diminished. This goes beyond who we choose to spend our life with, it bleeds into every relationship we have. I look like and share a (terrible,) sense of humor with my father. I talk and gesticulate like my mother. My personality grew up alongside my best friends Rose and Tara. My theology was shaped by dozens of teachers and colleagues, and the great enigmatic friend/foil in my life whom I call, “Tater.” We are the culmination of not only the entirety of our own life, but the life we live alongside other people.

When we die, if those relationships were suddenly voided, then we would cease to be who we are. “John,” cannot exist outside of the aspects of who I am that have been formed specifically because of the people in my life I have loved and who have loved me. I am not “me,” in isolation, I am only “me,” because of what has brought me here to the present moment. If in death, in the presence of God, I was suddenly turned into some kind of blank slate, then God has not saved “John,” God has only saved something vaguely “John,”-shaped.

When we enter into eternity, having died physically, we are not reset. There is no system of cosmic return that requires us to be broken into our constituent parts, we keep all the bits of us that we lived with. The difference which death makes, through God’s salvation, is that the bits of us that are rooted in sin are removed. The loves we feel, therefore, are transformed not such that they cease to exist, but so that they are now in their “perfect,” state. In the world to come, we are told that there is no marriage, and that those who are married in life will not be married in the resurrection – but that does not make their marriage unimportant, or erase its significance.

I am who I am in large part because of who my wife is. Likewise, knowing me has changed a great deal about her… Some things for the better even! When the day comes that we enter into eternity, we will not shed that reality of ourselves. Yes, we are told that we will no longer be “married,” and that our relationship will not continue on in the way it presently does. However, that does not mean that we will mean nothing to each other. When the present age ends, we will be perfected fully, and our love will likewise become perfect. We will have the capability to universally and fully love all people, with the same love that Christ felt. It will be different, it will be lived out differently, but it will be a definite improvement nonetheless.

When people ask me, “Pastor, do we get to see our family in Heaven?” I always tell them yes. Yes, you will see them, and yes, they will still be special to you. Yet, somehow, your definition of “family,” will be much larger. As you meet Christians from every era of history and every race and nation and creed, you will run into folks you never knew, and that you still love entirely. Whether our loved ones form a welcome party into glory, or we stumble upon them as we wander through perfection, as we meet again and as we reminisce once again, the path ahead of us is guaranteed to be better than the one behind us.

I love my wife, more than just about anything. Yet, I do not fear this teaching of Jesus. I do not fear it because I know that in the resurrection I will love as Jesus has loved, and Jesus has loved all people perfectly for all time. Just because I am told I will not be married to my wife forever, does not mean that she will not always be eternally important to me. God has better things in store for us than we can possibly imagine. Still, how blessed are we that we are given the gift of sharing our life with others. Whether that is through marriage, or friendships, or any number of other relationships we might have. God has given us each other, for this moment, and for eternity. Praise God, who gives us an eternal love. – Amen.

Ephesians 1:11-23

In Christ we have also obtained an inheritance, having been destined according to the purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to his counsel and will, so that we, who were the first to set our hope on Christ, might live for the praise of his glory. In him you also, when you had heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and had believed in him, were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit; this is the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption as God’s own people, to the praise of his glory.

I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, and for this reason I do not cease to give thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may perceive what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power. God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come. And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.

Sermon Text

All Saints’ Day marks a time when the Church acknowledges that its membership is larger than just who sits in the pews. The Church is not just those baptized members that work and walk on the face of the earth, but all those who are present with God beyond the veil of death. As the Church on Earth awaits the resurrection, so those present with God await the same, looking for the day where heaven and earth, physical and spiritual, new and old are all mixed together into a new, perfected creation.

There is, surprisingly, very little within the scope of scripture that describes what sort of life the dead participate in. We know that faithful people, upon their death, are present with God in some meaningful way.[1] We know that they are conscious and that they are actively worshipping God and awaiting Christ’s final victory at the end of the age.[2] Beyond this, however, we do not know exactly what it is like to be physically dead, yet spiritually alive and present with Christ. The time between our physical death and the future resurrection is not something the early church seemed very concerned with. Later writers would develop all sorts of concepts of the “intermediate state,” and of “the beatific vision,” granted to the dead. However, from a standpoint of scripture, very little is revealed to us about the nature of our afterlife.

I think it is intentional that scripture does not fixate on the nature of our existence between death and resurrection. Our duty is to do what is right now, to worship God as we live, and to go into the world to proclaim the good news of Christ in all that we do. To focus on something that we cannot participate in until we actually get there would be to miss the point of the here and the now. We do not get an exact guide to what death brings.

Yet, we are given an abundance of assurance. Christ’s immediate presence with us in death means that, not only is death nothing to fear, it is a gift. Paul says in Philippians that, if he had a say in the matter, he wished he could die sooner rather than later. Yet, he did not see his life as a burden either. He says, “To live is Christ,” meaning it gives us the opportunity to imitate and better know the savior, “to die is gain,” meaning that we get to be present with Christ in a fuller, more direct way.[3] The Christian is not meant to crave death, but we are not to see it as something great and terrible either. For us, death is just a transition from one state to another, a changing of the self from the physical to the spiritual, until the day we rejoin our physical self once again in perfection.

It seems to me that the Church has lost some of its ability to be fearless in the face of death. The process of dying is hard, it does not always go smoothly, but it is not the end of us. There are many things death robs us of – opportunities we could have taken but did not, time with family on this side of eternity we cannot get back – but death is still only a temporary separation. If we believe that, then it should hold no sting for us. While we can, and should, mourn that the people we love die and that they are no longer beside us, we should not “mourn as those without hope.”[4] We believe Christ has marked us, that our faith has confirmed us, that we have a future even beyond death.

Still, I believe people hope that they might be immortal. On one hand this manifests in recklessness, but on the other, and just as dangerously, it manifests as a obsessive pursuit of wellness. New vitamins, new supplements, new exercise regiments, new procedures, new this that and the other, just to deny that one day this life must end. Why are we fearful of growing old? Of wrinkles and stretch marks and grey hair? Why do we chase after youth that has already passed by? It is ok to be as old as we are, to enjoy the benefits and to face the hardships every era of life brings. There is no shame in aging, in frailty or in strength we are all of us significant, all of us still beloved by God. Death comes to everyone, and there is no shame in it.

It can seem a grim topic, to address death so straight on. Yet, it is an important part of life. Christ came and lived and died, in large part so that we would have a companion in every step of life. When we come to the end of this life, we die. Born into eternity in that moment, we see things in a new way. We are present with God, with all the saints who went before us, and we join them in something new. We wait for God’s redemption of the world as people who have seen it closer than anyone else. We behold Christ face to face, we see the power of the resurrection right in front of us. We pray for the day all people can know its power.

On All Saints’ Day, we acknowledge that the Church consists of both the living and the dead. We also acknowledge that we too shall someday die. We will be a name in an obituary, a carving on a grave stone, a face on a poster. Yet, that is not the end of us. In dying we join the feast which Christ set long ago, and we eat and drink and celebrate God’s glory with people from all of space and time. Even today, as we take bread and cup and declare Christ’s salvation through these elements, we do so in the presence of the many witnesses who have gone before us.

Let us find God’s glory at work in every part of our lives. Those of us who are young, rejoice in your youth and vitality! Those who are old, let every achy joint and grey hair testify to the good things that have brought you thus far. Those of us in between, do not mourn the transition from one era to another. For in all times, and all places, in life and in death, God is with us. Praise God, all you people, for God is with us forever more. – Amen.

[1] Luke 23:43

[2]  Revelation 6:9

[3] Philippians 1:21

[4] 1 Thessalonians 4:13-14