God Chose You as First Fruits – 6 November 2022

Luke 20:27–38

With their question, the Sadducees were trying to ridicule the notion of resurrection. Jesus, however, took their question seriously and tried to help them see that God was not bound by time and space. He also tried to help them see, both in his story and in his own risk-taking with the cross, that the relationship of God to God’s people was also not bound by time and space. Jesus said that even Moses recognized that God’s relationship with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was not one defined in the past tense.

Jesus . . . went on to demonstrate just how seriously he took death and how seriously he took resurrection. It is not that we escape death, but that our deaths have been included in his death and the resurrection that he experienced is the resurrection that is given to us. From the past, to the present, to the future, from hope to joy, from ashes to fire, from death to life, God is with us. –– Rex Kaney

2 Thessalonians 2:1–5, 13–17

Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians is a superb testimony of how generations of community are so connected, and how the witness of those who have gone before us can give us such strength for our own journeys. The community at Thessalonica was so important to Paul that he called them “the first fruits of salvation” because of their faith. Like these folks who Paul knew were to serve as great witnesses to those around them, we too have people in our lives who, because of their faith and witness, have been for us “first fruits of salvation.” They too stood firm and held to faith, and because of their witness we continue on our journeys today.

I remember as a young adult, when I was about to go off to college, visiting in the home of one of my friends in our youth group. I noticed that next to the large living room in their home was a small parlor that had been turned into a prayer room. As I glanced into the room, I noticed a table with a cross and several photographs. One of those photographs was of me, and as I was about to walk back out of the room, my friend’s mother came up to me and pointing at the photographs said, “We pray for you every day.” She gave me what Paul gave the folks at Thessalonica and what we are to give to those who come after us, the blessing of Almighty God. “Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and through grace gave us eternal comfort and good hope, comfort your hearts and strengthen them in every good work and word” (vss. 16–17). –– Rex Kaney

Job 19:23–27a

Job wanted his words to be recorded in a permanent manner. Job got his wish. His expression of belief in a future vindication by God has been preserved in scripture and even in Handel’s “Messiah” (“I Know That My Redeemer Liveth”). –– Joseph F. McHugh

Rex Kaney was senior minister at Druid Hills United Methodist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, until it closed. With graduate degrees from Candler School of Theology, he has served as adjunct faculty at Candler in United Methodist studies.

Joseph McHugh is a freelance writer from New Jersey, and a former weekly newspaper columnist writing on lectionary readings and whose recent writing includes Explain That to Me!: Searching the Gospels for the Honest Truth about Jesus (ACTA Publications).

Homily Service 43, no. 4 (2010): 122-132.