Sermon for the Twenty-Third Sunday after Pentecost – November 16, 2025

by Jeffrey Spencer | Nov 17, 2025 | Sermons

CLICK HERE for a worship video for November 16

Sermon for the Twenty-Third Sunday after Pentecost – November 16, 2025

Luke 21:5-19

Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.

One of the most vivid memories I have from my childhood is the time my dad took me to my first Mariners game. It was their first or maybe second season as a new franchise. They played in the Kingdom, which had just been completed a year or two before. I don’t remember who they played or whether they won or what we ate. What is vivid about this memory is walking up those big ramps around the perimeter of the Kingdom, looking up at the massive concrete pillars and beams, several feet thick. It was the hugest building I’d ever been in. It was like being inside a mountain. That enormous concrete structure made a big impression on me as a seven or eight-year-old kid. It seemed like it was built to last forever.

When they demolished the Kingdome only a mere twenty-three years later, I had to watch. I tuned in from our parsonage in Montana and watched the controlled demolition live. It only took a few seconds for a few well-placed explosives to do their work and poof, that entire massive concrete structure collapsed into a cloud of dust and a pile of rubble. What loomed so large both in the Seattle skyline and in my childhood memories was gone in an instant.

Things are never as permanent as we think they are.

We’re getting close to the end of Luke’s gospel now in our lectionary readings, and Jesus is in Jerusalem. We hear in our gospel reading for today that people were talking about the temple. They were admiring that spectacular structure which dominated the Jerusalem skyline. The temple was an architectural wonder of the ancient world. It was built on an enormous foundation with stones weighing as much as 40 tons each. There were massive walls covered in plated gold and towering columns of white marble. One set of doors was 75 feet high and 60 feet wide and made of solid Corinthian bronze. It seemed like it was built to last forever.

Jesus heard people talking about the temple, and he said to them, “As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.” It was no doubt an unwelcome comment. It was a bummer of a thing to have inserted into someone’s casual conversation. It probably seemed absurd.

But Jesus was right. Eventually, the entire temple structure would be leveled. In 70AD, the Romans completely destroyed it, burning it down in a fire so hot that it cracked those massive stones, causing the structure to collapse in a heap of dust and rubble. There was not one stone left upon another.

Things are never as permanent as we think they are.

When those who had been talking about the temple asked Jesus when this would happen, Jesus didn’t tell them. He warned them that people would come along claiming to know, but that they shouldn’t listen to them. (This is still good advice today, by the way.)

Jesus then went on to describe all sorts of other things that aren’t as permanent as we think they are. He said that nations and kingdoms will be shaken by wars. He said that the ground beneath our feet, those enormous tectonic plates upon which we literally build our lives, will be shaken by earthquakes. He said that there will be times when economic structures are shaken and people will struggle to put food on the table. He said there will be times when our physical health will be shaken by disease. He said that our religious communities and even our families will be shaken by change, by conflict, by fracturing. These structures upon which we build our lives, these foundations which usually seem so firm, so sure, so certain, so strong, so permanent, will be shaken. They aren’t as permanent as we think they are.

That’s the bad news. And we need to hear this bad news, actually. We need a Lord who tells us the truth. We need a Lord who is honest with us about how things will be before his kingdom comes. That way, when we look at the world unraveling around us in so many different ways, we can say, “Ah, Jesus said there would be days like these.” Whether we’re looking at world history or current events or our own shaky lives we can be confident that none of what we see, none of what we experience, is unknown or unexpected to our Lord Jesus. He literally said there would be days like these!

There’s plenty of bad news in what Jesus says, and we need to hear it. But sprinkled in among the bad news is good news. It is easy to miss it, but it is there.

First, Jesus tells us that when we hear of these things happening, when we observe the collapse of these things we think are so permanent, we shouldn’t be afraid. “Do not be terrified,” Jesus says.

By itself, this may not be so helpful. Usually when someone tells me not to be afraid, it has the opposite effect! It has the effect of making me aware that there is a situation at hand which has prompted someone to try and talk me out of my anxiety, which then turns my anxiety up even higher!

Fear cannot be driven out by command. It can only be nudged out with a promise. We need a reason not to be afraid. And Jesus gives us a reason. He tells us that those shaky situations are not the end. They won’t have the last word. He tells us that the collapse of those things we thought were so permanent, as devastating and as final as they seem, are not the end. When our world seems to be unraveling or cracks start to show up in the foundations of our lives, it isn’t the end. God isn’t done yet!

As we deal with the fracturing of our world and our lives, Jesus also promises to help us. He tells us to not prepare ahead of time what we will say when we are attacked or maligned or ridiculed or threatened. “For I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict,” Jesus says. This doesn’t necessarily mean Jesus will whisper an awesome speech or sermon into our ears at just the right moment. It doesn’t mean he will slip us a note with the perfect comeback or argument to use against our adversaries. What Jesus is promising here is that he will be with us in every moment of trial or difficulty. He will be with us with his Word, assuring us that he is Lord and that we belong to him. It means that his Word will be the strong foundation upon which we will stand, leaving us unshaken even when everything else is collapsing. It means that our testimony before the world will be so simple and so ingrained in us that we don’t need to rehearse it. It will be part of us, part of our lives. The first Christian creed was simply, “Jesus is Lord.” These three words are so simple, and yet they say so much. They are so powerful. And we can only say them and mean it with Jesus’ help, which he promises to give us.

Jesus makes another promise, too. He promises that even though the world itself might collapse around us, not a hair on our heads will perish. This isn’t really about hair care, of course. Bald or balding Christians, take heart! This is a metaphor! This is about being known and loved so completely by God that there is no part of us that God will not redeem. This is about entrusting every last fiber of our being into God’s merciful care, even when parts of our lives seem to be falling away like hairs down the drain. It is about having every last dead cell being animated with new life through Jesus Christ.

“By your endurance you will gain your souls,” Jesus says. This is not an endurance that comes from our strength, but from his. It is the endurance of faith. It is the endurance of holding fast to what our Lord Jesus is promising to do for us here.

Jesus promises us that the future is in his hands, and so we don’t need to be afraid. It isn’t the end of things until he has the last word, so do not be terrified by what you see. Jesus promises to help us along the way, giving us words and a wisdom that the world cannot withstand or contradict. Jesus promises us that the entirety of our lives are in his powerful hands, down to the last strand of hair, and so even when everything else is collapsing, we will not perish. We will have life with him, now and forever.

Things are never as permanent as we think they are, but in our Lord Jesus and his Word we have a strong foundation which will never be shaken or destroyed. The Word of the Lord endures forever. His promises are permanent. When things get shaky, stand there.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer

Oak Harbor Lutheran Church

Sermon for the Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost – November 9, 2025

by Jeffrey Spencer | Nov 10, 2025 | Sermons

CLICK HERE for a worship video for November 9

Sermon for the Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost – November 9, 2025

Luke 20:27-38

Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.

Today we are introduced to a new sparring partner for our Lord Jesus. Jesus usually goes toe-to-toe with the scribes and the Pharisees or the chief priests. Today it is the Sadducees. The Sadducees were a small but powerful group in Jesus’ time. They were religious scholars of a sort. They were the elites who ran the Temple system. They were religious aristocrats who rubbed elbows with the wealthy and the powerful. They even hob-nobbed with Roman authorities as part of the upper class. Luther called them “the smug.”

One distinct feature about the Sadducees, which St. Luke is quick to point out to us, is that they didn’t believe in a resurrection. They didn’t believe in any kind of life after death. The Pharisees did. Most Jews did. The Sadducees did not. This might sound strange to have people so embedded in a religion’s leadership who don’t believe in something so central to it, something so widely held by its adherents, but that’s how it was. The Sadducees considered themselves too sophisticated to believe in something like life after death. Believing themselves to be smarter than God, they abandoned the best part of what their religion taught!

These types of religious leaders are still with us, by the way. The current president of Union Seminary in New York made waves a few years ago when she admitted in an interview that she didn’t believe in the resurrection. She said, “My faith is not tied to some divine promise about the afterlife.” There was a prominent Episcopal priest who sold a ton of books in the Nineties who openly denied that Jesus was really raised from the dead. I even heard a high-ranking clergyman from our own denomination once say that he wasn’t too sure about life after death.

You would think that if you can’t affirm the basic tenets of the Christian creeds that you would have the integrity to go find a new job, but instead these people somehow manage to work their way into the highest echelons of various religious institutions. They are the Sadducees of our own time. This is who the Sadducees were.

These Sadducees came to Jesus with what they thought was a sophisticated argument against the resurrection. They described a scenario in which a woman was married seven times, to seven brothers in a row, before she herself died. Then, no doubt with smug grins on their faces, they asked Jesus, “In the resurrection, whose wife will she be?”

It is important to say more about this before we go on to Jesus’ response. The Sadducees were referring to what Moses had written in Deuteronomy about an ancient practice called levirate marriage. If a woman was widowed without a child, according to this practice it was the responsibility of the brother of the man who died to take in his sister-in-law, marry her, and have a child with her. This sounds completely bonkers in our time, but the function of this was to provide care and support for widows. It was less about marriage as a relationship and more about basic life insurance. A childless widow in that time had no means of supporting herself other than begging or prostitution. And so in a time where there was no life insurance, no social security, no safety net of any sort, this levirate marriage system was essentially life insurance. It was a way to provide ongoing support and protection to widows. The Sadducees thought they were so smart in citing this practice from the law of Moses as a way of ridiculing the idea of the resurrection. What if she ends up going through seven brothers? In the resurrection, whose wife will she be? This background is important to note, because it shapes Jesus’ response to them. Jesus tells them that in the resurrection from the dead, people neither marry nor are given in marriage. Which, by itself, might not be a very satisfying response.

I’ve heard people who are in happy, loving marriages say that this response from Jesus makes them sad. “Is Jesus saying I won’t be with my husband or wife in heaven?” This is especially confusing and painful and difficult for the many widows and widowers in our congregation. When this reading has come around in the past, I’ve had widows come to me in a fury, with tears in their eyes, saying, “What do you mean there’s no marriage in heaven? If I won’t be married to my husband in heaven, then I don’t want to be there!” And I get it. I do. I adore my wife, and while we technically only signed up “until death parts us,” I would love to go extra innings with her. She is the best part of my life, and I want to spend eternity married to her. I can’t imagine heaven being heaven without her there as my wife. So I understand completely.

But we need to be careful about isolating these words and jumping to conclusions.

Jesus is talking about something really specific here in this reading, so we need to pay close attention to him. Jesus is not giving a full-fledged description of heaven. Jesus is countering the Sadducees and their argument. Jesus is saying that the life insurance program which is levirate marriage won’t be a thing in the afterlife.        It won’t be needed because in the resurrection there will be no death! Jesus isn’t saying we won’t know each other. He isn’t saying we won’t recognize each other. He isn’t saying we won’t be together. Jesus is telling the Sadducees that their scenario is irrelevant, because in heaven none of those earth-bound concerns for support or protection will matter anymore.

What Jesus goes on to say should provide encouragement and hope for all of us. Jesus cites the story of Moses and the burning bush to point out that God identified himself as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob. Jesus points out that although all three of them are long dead, God speaks of them in that story in the present tense. God calls them by their name. And so they are still themselves. They are still recognized as Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. Jesus then says, “Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.”

I don’t know what marriage, or any of our relationships for that matter, will look like in heaven. But we have a divine promise from our Lord Jesus that our God is the God of the living. We have a divine promise that to him, all of our loved ones whom he has called to himself are alive. We have a divine promise that we will be alive with them – still recognizable, still known by name. We cannot possibly understand what this new state of being with God will be like, but Jesus assures us that it is real, and that it will be good.

You might have heard the modern parable of the two unborn twins in their mother’s womb. The first unborn baby says to the other, “Do you believe in life after delivery?”

The second one replies, “Yes, of course! Don’t you?” And the first twin scoffs and says, “No! That’s a silly idea. What we are experiencing here and now in this womb, this is all there is. What would life after delivery even be like, anyway?” And the second replies, “Well, maybe there are senses that we don’t even know about yet, senses that we don’t use here. What if our eyes open and we begin to see things we can’t even imagine yet?” The first baby says, “You’re being ridiculous. Don’t you see this umbilical cord? Don’t you know this is what is keeping us alive? It’s a scientific fact.” And the second says, “Well, maybe it will be different out there. Whatever it is, I’m sure our mother will take care of us.” The first twin starts to laugh, “Ha! You believe there’s a mother? What gives you that idea? Where is this mother now?” And the second says, “She’s all around us. In her we live and move and have our being. I believe that in life after delivery, she will be there to hold us and care for us. But even now, if you listen, you can hear her heartbeat. Even now, you can hear her voice.”

My friends, in Jesus Christ we can hear the heartbeat of the One in whom we live and move and have our being. Through the Word of God we can hear the voice of God telling us that there is indeed a life beyond this one. I can’t tell you exactly what it will be like. Our eyes haven’t yet been opened to that. There are senses that won’t be awakened until then. I can’t tell you what our relationships will be like either, but based on the divine promise we have from our Lord Jesus, I can assure you that we will recognize each other. I can assure you that we will be alive and together in ways that we can’t begin to imagine now. I can assure you that the resurrection is real, and that it will be good.

To you widows or widowers, or anyone who is in a happy, loving marriage and feels saddened by Jesus’ words, know this: the scriptures promise us that love never ends. And so all the things you currently enjoy about your spouse, or all the things you miss about them – the companionship, the closeness, the love – it will all be there in the afterlife. We will be recognizably reunited with them in heaven. The scriptures teach us that a loving marriage is a sign, a faint reflection, of Christ’s love for the church, and that reflection can only come into sharper focus in the life to come.

To those whose relationship status or relationship history is more complicated, know this: in the life to come all those complicated scenarios will be resolved by God in ways you can’t begin to imagine, so don’t worry about it. All will be sorted out. All will be perfected.

To those who feel alone, know this: in the life to come, all will be loved and held and cherished and cared for forever.

For those who are missing any loved ones, whether they are friends, parents, children, other family members, know this: because of Jesus, we have the hope of living with them forever as children of the resurrection.

Don’t let anything rob you of that hope. Don’t let anyone try to tell you otherwise or try to distract you from it, even if they’re wearing a clerical collar. Our God is the God of the living. To him, all of them are alive, and one day we will be delivered into a new life too.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer

Oak Harbor Lutheran Church

Sermon for All Saints Sunday – November 2, 2025

by Jeffrey Spencer | Nov 4, 2025 | Sermons

CLICK HERE for a worship video for November 2

Sermon for All Saints Sunday – November 2, 2025

Ephesians 1:11-23, Luke 6:20-31

Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.

On All Saints Sunday we need to get one thing straight right from the start: Sainthood is not earned or achieved; it is bestowed and received. Sainthood is a gift! It is the baptismal birthright of every Christian!  A saint is not someone who has earned the title by being exceptionally well-behaved. A saint is not someone who has achieved this status by performing a miracle and making it through a process of canonization. What the Bible teaches us is that a saint is someone upon whom Christ has bestowed his saving grace, someone who has received this saving grace through faith. Whenever saints are mentioned in the New Testament it simply refers to those who have been baptized into Christ.

There are certain people from Christian history who have made extraordinary contributions to the church. We commonly refer to them as saints. These are those spiritual superheroes who have their own days on the church calendar. This is a good thing. We should remember and celebrate them. We can learn from them. We can be inspired by them. But they are not in a separate category. Their title of saint is not exclusive to them. In the Bible the word “saint” is simply a synonym for the word “Christian.”

We see this most clearly in how St. Paul addressed several of his letters. When Paul wrote Romans, 1 & 2 Corinthians, Ephesians, Philippians, and Colossians, he addressed all these letters to the saints. He was not writing to spiritual superheroes in these letters. If they were already spiritual superheroes, they wouldn’t need his letters! The people he was writing to were not people who had earned any status in the church. They were not people who had achieved moral or spiritual perfection. In fact, in some cases, Paul was writing to people who were deeply messed up! Have you read 1 Corinthians? Parts of it read like it could be a script for a new series called “Desperate Housewives of Corinth.” And yet, the Apostle Paul addressed them all as saints. Why? Because they were Christians. He called them saints because Christ Jesus had bestowed his gift of salvation upon them, and they had received it in faith.

In our reading from Ephesians for this All Saints Sunday we hear Paul repeatedly refer to the saints as those who have received an inheritance. An inheritance isn’t earned or achieved. It is bestowed and received. To be precise, an inheritance is bestowed and received after someone has died. To be a saint, then, is to receive the gift of what Christ has done for us through his death on the cross. It is to receive the inheritance of salvation he has won for us through his death and resurrection. Jesus bestows this gift, Paul says, through his Word, and we receive it in our ears by faith.

Christ is bestowing this gift upon us today as he speaks to us. In the gospel of Luke today we hear Jesus proclaiming blessing after blessing. This blessing isn’t just for those who heard him back then, they are for you who are gathered here today. This is a living Word being bestowed upon you to receive and believe.

“Blessed are you who are poor,” Jesus says. “Blessed are you who are hungry.”  Jesus proclaims his blessing upon those in need, whether materially, spiritually, or relationally. Jesus looks upon those who don’t have enough, whether it is money or food or hope or love, and he says to them, to you, “Blessed are you, for yours is the Kingdom of God. Blessed are you, for you will be filled.” Blessed are you because God sees you. God cares about you, and in the coming of his Son, God is bestowing upon you a love that fills every emptiness.

“Blessed are you who weep,” Jesus says. This tends to be a weepy Sunday as we remember those saints who have died since last All Saints Sunday. We ache at the sound of the names of those saints who are no longer with us. They were dear friends and beloved members of our church family. They were beloved husbands and wives, mothers and fathers. In many cases, that grief is still fresh, still raw. “Blessed are you who weep,” Jesus says to us, “for you will laugh.” That laughing doesn’t have to be today. It is okay to weep. But Jesus promises us that a day is coming when death and mourning and crying will be no more, a day of restoration and reunion and, yes, laughter.

“Blessed are you are who are hated, excluded, reviled, and defamed on account of the Son of Man,” Jesus says. Jesus proclaims his blessing on all who suffer because of their faith in him. Jesus proclaims his blessing on our brothers and sisters in Nigeria who are currently being violently oppressed under an extreme form of Sharia law, with tens of thousands of them being massacred and martyred for their Christian faith. Jesus says that they, and all who suffer for their faith, can rejoice, because their suffering won’t have the last word. Jesus promises that their reward will be great in heaven.

Jesus bestows blessing after blessing after blessing. And these blessings are given to those who haven’t earned or achieved anything! These blessings are instead freely bestowed upon those who need them. They are bestowed in grace and received in faith.

There are woes too, of course. Jesus gives warnings to those who are already comfortable in this life: the rich, the happy, the well-fed and the well-liked. These aren’t inherently bad things to be. In fact, in the right context, they can be received as blessings of their own. But Jesus warns that those who are already comfortable with life as it is are less likely to see their need for a blessing from Jesus. They are less likely to receive the salvation he has come to bestow. Being comfortable now makes it very easy to be in denial about our need for the life he brings.

There was a news story that ran a week or so ago about a new study on the health benefits of walking. My wife and I are avid walkers, so it got my attention. The way ABC News described the study was to say that “walking 4,000 steps per day reduced the risk of death by 40%.” Now, whoever wrote that byline is in some serious denial, because I’m pretty sure that no matter how much you walk, the risk of death is always 100%! (If you’re curious, the story went on to clarify that it led to a 40% reduction in premature death from cardiovascular disease, which is a pretty important detail, I think.)

We may well be secure and happy and healthy now, and that isn’t bad or wrong. But it can lead to this kind of denial, this false sense of security. The reality is, we will all face times when we are poor in some way or another. We will all face times when we feel empty, when we hunger for things to be different. We will all have times when we weep at the loss of someone dear to us. And no matter how much we walk, the death rate is still 100%. And so the day will come for all of us when our name is on the list of those who have died since the last All Saints Sunday.

In the meantime, we have a word of blessing from our Lord Jesus. In the meantime, we have the promise of the inheritance our Lord Jesus has bestowed upon us through his saving death. In the meantime, we have a title which has been freely bestowed upon us, the title given to us in our baptism – the title of saint. There is nothing we do to earn or achieve this title. We can only receive it through faith, by trusting that it is ours, by trusting in Christ’s Word to us.

And when we receive this title by faith, we start to act like who we are. When we receive this gift of salvation and sainthood which has been bestowed upon us, we start to act at least a little bit like those people who have their own days on the calendar, each in our own way. Our hearts begin to soften towards our enemies. We are a little more inclined to bless those who curse us and a little less inclined to seek revenge. We begin to look forward to sharing with those in need. We start to do to others as we would have them do to us.

We don’t do this perfectly, or even particularly well. We are sinner-saints who will always struggle with this. But in fits and starts we begin to live into the identity bestowed upon us by our Lord – not because we have to, but as a grateful response to the One already did it perfectly for us. Our Lord Jesus loved his enemies, even as he was being crucified. Jesus blessed those who cursed him, saying, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they are doing.” Jesus turned the other cheek to those who struck him, and by his wounds we are healed. Jesus gave up not only his cloak but also his tunic as he was stripped bare, giving up everything, even his life, in order to save us, in order to save you, in order to make you one of his saints.

Sainthood isn’t earned or achieved; it is bestowed and received. As we receive the gifts Christ won for us on the cross, given to us in Word and Sacrament, we are strengthened for a life that, however imperfectly, begins to reflect the perfect life and the perfect love of our savior. As we receive the promise of the glorious inheritance our Lord Jesus has in store for all who believe, we also live in hope. We look with hope to the day when we can once again share some barbeque with Roger, a piece of pie with Jack, some chocolate milk with Allan, some tea and cookies with Mary, some Dove chocolates with Gisela, a cup of coffee with Bob, and some ham salad with Leona. Until that day comes, we gather with them, and with the whole company of heaven, at the table our Lord has set for all the saints as a foretaste of the feast to come.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer

Oak Harbor Lutheran Church