November 19, 2023 ~ Proper 28 (33) ~ Twenty-Fifth Sunday after Pentecost ~ Thirty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time ~ Judges 4:1-7; Psalm 123; Zephaniah 1:7, 12-18; Psalm 90:1-8, (9-11), 12; 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11; Matthew 25:14-30 ~ VIDEO OF FULL SERVICE: https://vimeo.com/showcase/7960701/video/886966195

Claim the Heritage

“…we belong to the day. So, let us be sober. Let us put on the breastplate of faith and love, and the helmet of the hope of salvation.” — 1 Thessalonians 5:8.

For many the word ‘history’ means world changing events— the American Revolution, Presidential elections, World Wars, things that can change lives, especially when they do personally effect us. But for the most part we live daily, work-a-day lives, far from history book events, from the power structures which guide nations.

I think it’s good to consider history writ large for perspective. It can help us make sense of our own times, where we’ve been, where we’re going. This can empower us to move forward as a people, a nation.

But as individuals we also need to consider our personal, individual story in the context of our own family, our ancestors. Just as history in the large sense can be helpful for a nation, the history of one’s own family can be significant for individuals, help us place our own lives in an understandable context. This a piece of my family history, at least what I know it. (Slight pause.)

My Grandmother, my Mother’s Mother, Margaret, was born on a pig farm in Brooklyn, New York, in 1884, one year after the Brooklyn Bridge was completed. I know— a pig farm in Brooklyn— a surprise to some.

Despite still having farms, population in Brooklyn had grown by better than 90% from the previous decade and was now 550,000. Brooklyn was, in fact, still an independent city, not yet a part of New York City, and the third largest city in America, larger than Chicago.

When my Grandmother was a young child both her parents died. At the age of eight she was sent to live with relatives in San Francisco, placed on a ship, alone, without a chaperone. The Panama Canal was not finished until 1914, so she went to the west coast by going around the horn of South America.

When she was twenty, in 1904, she had saved enough money on her own to travel East and took the transcontinental railroad back to Brooklyn, thereby avoiding the great San Francisco earth quake of 1906. She then met and married her husband and went into business with him hauling merchandise all over New York City.

Cars and trucks were not yet commonplace, so at first a hauling business meant owning wagons and teams of horses, which they both worked. They had two children, both girls.

Her husband died when she was pregnant with her second child, my mother, and she became the sole support of this young family. Then the Great Depression hit. The hauling business died. So next she made a living by cleaning the houses of people who were still wealthy despite the Depression.

There is one more piece of family lore to convey. It’s said she was tough as nails and at the boarding house where she lived with her daughters, she had, bare handed, disarmed a thug wielding a gun. (Slight pause.)

The story as it got passed on to me clearly said Margaret was tough, independent and resourceful. What lessons was I supposed to learn, to discover in this history. What am I to use, make my own?’ (Pause.)

These words are from the work known as First Letter to the church in Thessalonika: “…we belong to the day. So, let us be sober. Let us put on the breastplate of faith and love, and the helmet of the hope of salvation.” (Pause.)

How often have any of us had one of these two thoughts: ‘Oh no, I’ve turned into my mother’ or ‘Oh no, I’ve turned into my father?’ (Slight pause.) This is a given: part of who we become, who we are, is an amalgam of those who have gone before us. Some of the traits we see we embrace; some we reject.

But we cannot embrace or reject, indeed, we cannot understand our family of origin unless we study both our ancestors and the times in which they lived— what happened to them. We need to place them in their own context to be able to understand these stories for us.

An example: both my parents smoked, a bad habit at best. But they came of age in the nineteen forties and fifties. Have you watched the moves of that era? Smoking was not only socially acceptable— nearly everyone smoked.

Unless I know about their era, it would be hard to put that habit in context. But we also need to know something about the broader picture. In the case of Margaret, knowing the history of Brooklyn, the Panama Canal, the Great Depression is helpful. It certainly helps me understand her legacy and know how I tie into it. (Slight pause.)

So, what is our own personal history of faith? How do we put it together, make sense of it? How do we claim our Christian heritage for us? (Slight pause.)

Paul urges the Thessalonians to be sober and put on the breastplate of faith and love, the helmet of the hope of salvation. This is, I think, a very personal statement, a statement of the personal history of the Apostle to the Gentiles shared with others. Ithink in these accounts, these words Paul takes into account the history of Israel with God, commonly called ‘salvation history.’

The people to whom Paul is writing get that. They know the faith history, the salvation history of Israel. I think knowing our faith history, the history of Christianity, is an important part of understanding ourselves and our faith.

Let me offer just one piece of that history and I have mentioned this here before. The true letters of Paul were written before the Gospels are recorded, written more than twenty years after the resurrection of Jesus. The Gospels were recorded between forty and seventy years after the events they relate.

Unless you know these are written by and to people a long time after Jesus was around, it becomes hard to understand what Paul or the writers of the Gospels are trying to say, hard to place these writings in any context— broad or personal. You might as well not bother reading them, if you don’t know from where and from when they come.

Certainly, if you don’t understand these simple facts about the history of Scripture and Christianity, then you am free to have all kinds of fantasies about it, such as someone was standing beside Jesus writing down everything as it happened. Unquestionably, some people today see do Scripture in that light. (Slight pause.)

I maintain understanding one’s own self and one’s own faith is hard work. Any mental health worker will tell you the real work in assisting people is done by the individual seeking guidance, not the therapist. The person seeking guidance is the one who works on their own history.

Working on our own faith is the same exercise. Each of us has to do the work. No one else can do it for us.

But, unless I do the work, unless I appropriate the reality of the Christian legacy for myself, I will not be able to understand faith or place it in any kind of appropriate context. I need to make it my own. Given what I know about Paul and the history of Christianity, this is part of the point in the words from Thessalonians we heard today.

These words are an invitation to us to do the hard, necessary work needed to actually take a personal faith journey within the Christian tradition. An unfortunate truth is too often want people easy answers, answers without doing the necessary work.

Paul lets us know we need to be (quote) “sober”— sober as in serious. If we are to be people of the day— and Paul does say (quote:) “you are all children of light and children of the day”— if we are to be people of the day we need to illuminate our lives by doing the necessary work.

When looked at in that way, seeing faith and love as a breastplate does not sound warlike. These words just say ‘this is the work— do it.’

It that hard? Yes. But I think I can guarantee this: if we do the work, it will be hardest work we have ever loved. Amen.

11/19/2023
Elijah Kellogg Church, Harpswell, Maine

ENDPIECE: It is the practice of the Pastor to speak after the Closing Hymn, but before the Benediction. This, then, is an précis of what the pastor said before the blessing: “My grandmother, Margaret, died when I was in my late teens. She had cancer and she knew it. She could feel the tumor. Never one to trust doctors, she died without seeing one. As I indicated, she was tough but also had a tender, gentle way when interacting with me and presented many facets to those around her. So, I learned a multitude of lessons and internalized some. Perhaps that is the reason we need to be on our own, individual Christian pilgrimage. We need to learn, to internalize and apply the lessons of God’s peace, love, hope and joy. Why? These are the core messages of Scripture.”

BENEDICTION: A kind and just God sends us out into the world as bearers of truth which surpasses our understanding. God watches over those who respond in love. So, let us love God so much, that we love nothing else too much. Let us be in awe of no one else and nothing else because we are so in awe of God. Amen.