11/9/2025 - God of the Living

November 9, 2025
2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17
Luke 20:27-38

I have this core memory from when I was five years old.

We had just gotten home from church.
I passed out on the couch.

When I woke up, the house felt wrong.
It was too quiet.

I called for my mom. Nothing.
Dad. Nothing. 

Baby bro. Gone. Dog. Gone.
I checked every room, every closet, looked out every window — No one.

And I ran back to the couch and buried my face into the cushion and sobbed — because the story we had just heard in Sunday School was about the end times.
That the believers would be lifted up into the heavens.
And those who hadn’t asked Jesus in their heart - the sinners would be left behind.

I had been left behind.

I begged Jesus to take me too.
I confessed my five year old sins. Asked Jesus into my heart. Please God, it can’t be too late.

Few minutes later, my parents walked in.
All was well.
Life did not end.

But that moment lodged itself deep in me — and over the years, the little Baptist in me has found myself back on that couch, in that fear, again and again.

Am I really saved?
Am I really okay?
What if I missed the moment?

I am learning, fear like that shapes our understanding of our worth.
Fear like that tells stories about worth — stories that say the good things God brings, the healing God offers, the peace God gives… is conditional on us doing it perfectly right.

I share this because this isn’t new.

This is a recurring thing in Scripture — and in every age of the church — the people of God become anxious about the future.
About the end.
About timing.
About how all this will unfold.

Some of that is fear.
Some of that is grief.
Some of that is the deep ache for the world to be healed now.

Paul writes to the Thessalonians — do not be shaken.
Do not be unsettled.
Do not get hijacked by panic.
Stop creating stories that erode your worth.
The Day of the Lord is not a threat against you.
You are held.
You are chosen.
You belong.

And Paul uses passive Greek verbs intentionally here — God loved you… God chose you… God calls you. God is the active subject. We are the ones acted upon. Paul is not inviting prediction charts — Paul is shutting down speculation and re-rooting their imagination in the character of God.

Paul’s “stand firm in the tradition” here is not rigid moralism — it’s paradosis — the living an embodied communal memory of Gospel + Eucharistic life that holds us secure when fear tries to fracture us.

Jesus is doing the same thing in Luke.
A group of Sadducees — who don’t even believe in resurrection — try to trap him in technical hypo-theticals.
Jesus refuses the premise entirely.

And Jesus cites Exodus 3:6 — a text the Sadducees actually accept — to argue resurrection not through metaphysics but through covenantal present tense:
I AM the God of Abraham.
Not “I was.”
Jesus is grounding resurrection in who God is — not in what we can predict or control.

Both texts today say:
stop obsessing over the mechanics of the end —
return to the God who holds you now.

Because when we fixate on timelines and theories and who is in or out — we shrink God down to our fear.

Jesus and Paul refuse that.

The future of God is not fear based.
It is faith based.
It is covenant based.
It is relationship based.

We do not belong to death.
We belong to the God who is Life.

And because we belong to this God — who strengthens and sanctifies and loves and chooses — we are free to stand firm.
To witness.
To live faithfully right now — not to secure our future — but because our future is already secure in God.

This is what I cling to when fear and shame and doubt rise again in me — when my confidence, voice, worth feel fragile.

Because Scripture today is telling us: the future of God is not fragile. The future of God is not dependent on our capacity to perform perfectly. The future of God is held in God.

I believe it — because I have seen how security in God has actually led toward healing — in communities — in the world.
I have seen how it has empowered people — as they are.

We do not have to wait for the future to live resurrection life.

We live it now.
We resist violence now.
We bless now.
We show up for the vulnerable now.
We act and pray now.
We embody mercy now.

Because the same God who will raise the dead — is the God who strengthens you today.

Beloveds — may we remember our future is not fragile.
our belonging is not fragile.
our hope is not fragile.

May we rest in the God who is faithful.
and stand firm in what has been entrusted to us.

May our life reveal what is already true:

God is God of the living.
And we belong to this God — now and forever. Amen.