“Traditions of Love” 2 Thess. 2.1-17 Pent. 22C Nov. ‘25

 

“Traditions of Love” 2 Thess. 2.1-17 Pent. 22C Nov. ‘25

1.                Please pray with me. May the words of my mouth and the mediation of our hearts, be pleasing in Your sight, O Lord, our Rock, and our Redeemer. Amen. The message from God’s Word today on this 22^nd Sunday after Pentecost is taken from 2 Thess. 1.1-8, 13-17, and is entitled, “Traditions of Love,” dear brothers and sisters in Christ.

2.                 If you’ve ever seen Fiddler on the Roof, you’ll remember the opening scene—Tevye, standing proudly yet precariously on that thatched rooftop, balancing himself while a fiddler plays a haunting tune. I don’t know about you, but just standing on a chair to change a lightbulb feels risky enough—imagine doing it on a roof while holding a violin! Tevye explains that life in his little village of Anatevka is as uncertain and risky as a fiddler on the roof. What keeps them steady, he says, is one word—Tradition! Tradition gives rhythm to life—birth, marriage, death—and holds a community together. But as Tevye admits, it’s precarious. One wrong step, one broken string, and the balance is lost.

3.                And that’s true for us too, isn’t it? Our families, our churches, our faith all rely on what’s handed down—on what we might call “holy habits.” And yet, like the fiddler’s tune, those traditions are fragile. They can be lost in a single generation if they are not cherished and shared. It’s like trying to keep a stack of pancakes from toppling, or balancing a laundry basket on your head while carrying a toddler—one wrong move and it’s chaos!

4.                In our Epistle reading today, St. Paul sounds a little like Tevye. He says to the Christians in Thessalonica: “So then, brothers and sisters, stand firm and hold to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by our spoken word or by our letter.” (2 Thess. 2:15) Paul knows that the Christian life is precarious. The Thessalonian believers were being shaken by false teachers who claimed that the “Day of the Lord” had already come. They were anxious, uncertain, maybe even fearful. Paul steadies them with what he had passed down—the Word of Christ crucified and risen, the truth of God’s saving love.

5.                God encourages us not to leave our traditions. Paul reminds the Thessalonians—and us—that the apostolic tradition is not something we can outgrow or move past. “Stand firm,” he says, “and hold fast.” There’s a temptation in every generation to think we’ve advanced beyond the old ways—to believe we can modernize the message, loosen the doctrines, streamline the liturgy, and still keep the faith intact. But when we set aside the traditions of Christ’s Word, we lose our footing. Next thing you know, someone suggests worship via TikTok dances… I’m not sure Moses had that in mind!

6.                Our Lutheran forefathers understood that. The Augsburg Confession begins with the words, “Our churches teach…”—not “Our churches invent,” or “Our churches innovate,” but teach what we have received. Traditions that come from the apostles are not chains that bind us—they are roots that hold us firm when the winds of culture blow. They are how the Church remembers who she is and whose she is.

7.                God encourages us not to love our traditions more than Him. But there’s another danger: loving the tradition itself more than the Lord who gave it. Isaiah warned God’s people that they were still keeping the feasts, burning incense, and offering sacrifices—but their hearts were far from Him. Jesus said the same to the Pharisees: “You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.” (Mark 7:8)

8.                There’s the tightrope again—the fiddler’s peril. It’s one thing to treasure tradition as a means of grace and order; it’s another to worship the tradition itself. Maybe you’ve seen it happen in a church—where the question “Why do we do it this way?” is met not with “Because it points us to Christ,” but “Because we’ve always done it this way.” Tradition without love becomes performance. It’s possible to sing the hymns, recite the liturgy, even sit through a sermon, and forget the One who’s speaking through it all.

9.                God encourages us to practice traditions of His love. So, what does Paul commend to us? Not the abandonment of tradition, not the idolizing of it—but the practice of traditions rooted in God’s love. Listen to how Paul frames it: “God chose you from the beginning to be saved, through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth… so that you may obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (vv. 13–14)

10.             That’s the heartbeat of all true Christian tradition—God’s saving action in Christ. His love handed down, generation after generation, through the Word and Sacraments, through parents teaching children, through the Church gathered around font, pulpit, and altar. That’s why we light candles, sing hymns, confess creeds, kneel in prayer, and hear the Scriptures read aloud. Each of these is a small echo of the great symphony of grace that began when Christ rose from the grave.

11.             Traditions like these are not empty rituals; they’re reminders of God’s living presence. They weave His love into the rhythm of our days. Bud lost his wife two years ago —maybe you know someone like him. After his wife passed away, he felt like half of him was gone. But every afternoon, he started sitting in her favorite chair with one of her devotional books and a cup of coffee. It became his quiet time with the Lord. He never set out to start a “tradition,” but that small act became one—a daily practice of love, remembrance, and faith.

12.             That’s what Paul means. Christian traditions are not about clinging to the past for comfort—they are about letting the love of Christ fill our present and shape our future. So today, dear friends in Christ, God encourages us: Not to leave our traditions, for they ground us in the truth. Not to love our traditions more than God, for they are only means to His grace. But to practice traditions of His love—traditions that reflect His mercy, His forgiveness, His life-giving Word.

13.             Like the fiddler on the roof, we balance precariously in this world. But, the song that keeps us steady is the melody of Christ’s love—a song passed down through Word and Sacrament, through the communion of saints, through every generation until the day we join the heavenly chorus. And on that day, the fiddler’s tune will no longer be precarious. It will be perfect harmony—when all God’s people, of every time and tradition, sing together: “From God can nothing move me!” “My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.” Until then, stand firm. Hold fast. Practice traditions of His love. Now the peace of God that passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, until life everlasting. Amen.

 

“Saints Now & Then” 1 John 3.1-3 All Saints Nov. ‘25

 

“Saints Now & Then” 1 John 3.1-3 All Saints Nov. ‘25

1.                Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Heavenly Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. The message from God’s Word as we observe All Saints’ Day is taken from 1 John 3:1-3, it’s entitled, “Saints Now & Then,” dear brothers and sisters in Christ.

2.                Did you notice the title for today’s sermon? “Saints Now and Then.” The expression “now and then” usually means that something only happens occasionally, not regularly. This may be the way we think about being saints. Every now and then, we get it right and act like saints. You know, like the time you actually let someone else go first at the four-way stop, or resisted that second piece of pie at the potluck. Now and then! But, that’s not the way we’re going to look at saints on All Saints’ Day. You are saints now because God calls you saints. You will be saints then when Christ returns because God’s call does not change. You might wonder how we can say all of this about saints, because this text never uses the word saint. It does have the word children, though, and in a very special sense: children of God, real children of God. God pours His love on us so that we are real children of God now and forever.

3.                John begins our text, “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him” (1 John 3:1). On All Saints’ Day we remember the children of God, the saints of God, who have died this past year. At their funerals, we match Scripture to life, beginning with Ecclesiastes 3:2: There is “a time to be born.” Jane Doe was born October 7, 1952, to John and Mary Doe. Then, John 3:3: “Unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” God caused Jane to be born again as his dear child, fathering her in Baptism. Then Romans 10:9: “Confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord.” Jane was instructed in the Lutheran faith and confessed that faith in the rite of confirmation at Grace Lutheran Church. God said in Genesis 2:18, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” Jane was the helper that God gave to Sam Smith in holy marriage on June 14, 1975. Psalm 68:6: “God setteth the solitary in families” (KJV). Four children were born to Jane and Sam. Ecclesiastes 9:10 says, “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might.” Jane especially had the Philippians 2:3 ability to “count others more significant.” Then, back to Ecclesiastes, “there is a time to die.” Jane died on July 25, 2024, at the age of 71 years. She is survived by her husband and children, grandchildren, relatives, and friends. She was preceded in death by her parents and especially by her Lord Jesus Christ, who died and rose again so that whoever lives and believes in him isn’t really dead!

4.                When all of that is read at a funeral, who in their right mind would say that Jane’s birth as a child of John and Mary was only an empty ceremony? That it didn’t really happen? That’s outrageous. People saw her. We saw her. She was a real, live person! But many people would say that the birth from heaven, being fathered by God, never happened, that it was just an empty ceremony. Ridiculous! We saw the new Jane! We saw her new nature in her confession of faith, her marriage, and her life of faith. Her life was better, she was better, because she was a child of God. The love of God can be seen! “See what manner of love God lavished on Jane, on you, on me, that we are called children of God—and we really are.” We are just as much a real child of God as we are a real child of John and Mary! But the world doesn’t recognize that child because it doesn’t recognize our Heavenly Father. Even Jesus was seen by some as only the child of Joseph and Mary, because they didn’t recognize his Father.

5.                “Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). There are many “alternative” burial practices that are readily available these days—totally legal and increasingly popular. Cremation is chosen more often than embalming a body and burying it. Cremated remains can be kept in a closet, on the fireplace mantle, or scattered in the deceased’s favorite spot. There is, however, much to be said about the traditional practice of burying remains with a stone marking the site and listing the person’s name. One former pastor, Pastor William Knaack, who for many years served deaf parishioners in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and North Dakota, says it this way: “It’s a reminder that God isn’t done with this body yet.” What God will do with that body is too glorious for us to comprehend, but those whose souls are with Jesus will have bodies raised to be like his.

6.                Jesus will come back, appear again, and we will then appear “like him” in glorious ways we can’t understand now. But we will still be children of God, really. We will continue to exist in a way that we don’t know, but we will be. I stopped with the word be deliberately. We don’t know what we will be, but we will still exist, still be children of God. Job said that even after his body was destroyed his eyes would see God. John tells us that we shall see our Redeemer too. There is a resurrection, and we’ll be there.

7.                “And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.” 1 John 3:3 calls all this a hope, and a wonderful hope it is! Then, though, there’s something that sounds like a catch to all these great promises. There’s always a catch, right? Like the commercials that say, ‘Free trial—just give us your credit card, your email, and your firstborn child! A child of God that has this hope now and then “purifies himself.” How can we purify ourselves? Am I disqualified because I can’t make myself saintly enough? That’s what the word purify means. It’s directly related to the word for “saint.”

8.                No! It’s not a catch. No one is disqualified whose sins are covered by Christ. Jesus’ death on the cross paid for all sins. And just as we are justified by grace, by God’s work and not ours, we are also sanctified, purified, by grace, through faith—God’s work, not ours. God does this through the means of grace: Word and Sacraments. God calls us to faith by the Word, keeps us in faith by the Word, makes us a child in Baptism, and feeds us with the body and blood of Christ for the forgiveness of sins and strengthening in faith. God made you his child, and, now and then, God keeps his children clean! Really! Parents, you know what it’s like—keeping your kids clean is a full-time job! Mud, peanut butter, and mystery stains appear out of nowhere. But God never tires of washing His children in grace. Amen. Now the peace of God that passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, until life everlasting. Amen.