Pentecost Twenty-Two | 09.11.2025 | Job 19.23-27a; Ps 17.1-9; 2 Thess 2.1-5, 13-17; Luke 20.27-40 | Carl A. Voges |

The Passages

[Rather than preaching from one of the four passages (Revised Standard Version) assigned for today, this Sunday’s homily attempts to enter all of them and note how they anchor us more deeply in the Lord’s Life.  Due to volume, the passages are not printed out, but are described in the homily.]

“The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our stronghold.  Come now and look upon the works of the LORD, what awesome things he has done on earth…Be still, then, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations; I will be exalted in the earth.” [Psalm 46.8, 9, 11]

In the Name of Christ + Jesus Our Lord

Every Sunday that we step into the Church’s Liturgy, there is a hidden, yet huge, reality which anchors our lives in those moments – we are coming in as the Lord’s daughters and sons!  We may be casual about such reality, but it exists.  We are the Lord’s people – rescued from the world’s life by the Son through his crucifixion, resurrection and ascension; created by the Father to be immersed in his Life; and made holy by the Spirit through the Life he breathes into our lives!

This reality, though, gets casual and is often hidden because the world’s life keeps swirling around us.  We are birthed so fully into it that its confusion and chaos keeps asserting itself from infancy to death.  It is that life which causes the Trinity’s Life to become assumed, ignored and obscured. The four passages today push back against the world’s life, resetting our lives firmly in the Life streaming from the Father, Son and Spirit, the only Life which pushes through death into eternity!

We first look at the psalm appointed for this day, Psalm 17.1-9, because its realities provide us a context to better understand the passages from Job, the apostle Paul and the Lord Jesus Christ.  The nine verses of Psalm 17 reflect well the extreme strains experienced by the Lord’s people today as well as the extreme difficulties of Job’s life.

The verses plead with the Lord to recognize their innocence and lack of lying.  The only individual capable of being that way is the Son of God and the Son of man.  In a shadowy way the verses point to him because he is “Vindication” for Job and us.  He keeps us focused on the Father’s ways.  He steers us through the impurities and offenses of the world’s life.  He enables us to pay close attention to the speaking of the Father and the Spirit.

The agony of this vindication playing out in our lives comes out vividly in the passage from Job 19.  The chapter responds to Bildad’s second conversation in chapter 18.  Job is recognizing that he is completely isolated, that his friends do not understand his circumstances.  Job knows he may have spoken incorrectly, but he has not intended to offend God or other human beings.  Just before the verses of today’s passage, Job stresses how solitary his life is.  He wishes that his words were written so he can be vindicated.  Through his “Vindicator” (“Redeemer”), Job hopes to obtain an audience with God himself.  In his desperate loneliness, rejected by his friends, stripped of heirs, attacked by God and uncertain of his future, Job’s trust expresses the certainty that, after his death, his understandings will be fulfilled!

Job’s difficulties and the strains of living in the world’s life as the Lord’s baptized people is worked out in the day’s second reading from 2 Thessalonians 2.  This parish had been started by the apostle Paul.  He wrote them two letters.  They were experiencing sharp opposition from the synagogue because they were regarded as a heretical sect.  They were also stirred within the parish by the expectations of Jesus’ second coming as well as a vivid sense of the Spirit’s presence and power.  This tension created the erroneous opinion that the Lord’s Day (his Second Coming) had already occurred.

Paul wrote his two letters to encourage the parish in these difficult circumstances as well as to address the theological and practical consequences of the faulty teachings.  He reminds his readers of the apostolic tradition concerning the Lord’s Day.  He also startles them and us with the reminder that the rebellion against the LORD God must take place first and then the “man of lawlessness” will be revealed before the Lord’s Second (and Final) Coming.  Paul also rebukes those individuals who are teaching that our rescue as the Lord’s people means we no longer have to work!  He exemplifies his work among them, commenting that “If anyone does not work, that person will not eat.”

In dealing with the strains of being the Lord’s people in today’s world, note the paragraph where Paul describes the “man of lawlessness.”  The description fits those people who are fully wrapped in this world’s life.  Life is all about them and they are thoroughly caught up with the thousands of the world’s gods.  Unfortunately, this wrapping makes them think they are God himself and they come to tragic ends!

In spite of these strains, Paul is thankful for the people in this parish, commenting on how the Lord has brought them into his Life and through the workings of the Spirit has deepened their understandings of that Life.  This Life will guide them through the strains they are experiencing and ultimately bring their lives to completion in it.  He encourages them to remain fully rooted in that Life and to hold to the traditions taught them by Paul and others.  He commends them to the sustaining work of the Son and the Father who comfort and establish them in all they are and do.

In the Gospel for today, the strains of being the Lord’s people are erased as his Life rushes to completion in eternity!  This passage from Luke shows Jesus distinguishing  two ages or kinds of existence.  People are part of the world’s life because of their physical births but the Lord’s people are part of the age which surfaces fully in eternity because of their Baptisms into Jesus’ crucifixion, resurrection and ascension.  Such people are carried through the deaths triggered by the world’s life, falling asleep in the Life which streams from the Son’s ascension.

This Lukan passage comes from the early days of Holy Week.  Jesus has entered Jerusalem on the Day we currently observe as the “Sunday of the Passion.”  He has cleansed the temple, pointing to the new Life which will erupt the following Friday and Sunday.  The religious authorities, who are increasingly hounding him, are challenging the authority by which he says and does things.  He relates the parable of the vineyard, detailing how, as religious authorities, they have mishandled their responsibilities with the Jewish traditions.  He also details what is involved when paying taxes to the governing authorities.  Then, in today’s Gospel reading, they raise significant questions about the resurrection in eternity.

The passage is the highly familiar one involving seven brothers who end up being married to an individual woman but all of them die before having any children with her.  The authorities, familiar with their traditions from Moses, try to confound Jesus by wondering which brother will be the woman’s husband in the resurrection.

Apparently Jesus surprises them with the observation that those who are carried from this age (this life) to the next one (eternal Life) are no longer involved in marriage!  That reality no longer exists because such persons are equal to the angels, and are the sons and daughters of God, being heirs of the resurrection!  Jesus goes on to reinforce the resurrection reality by referencing Moses and the burning bush, showing that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is THE God of the living and not the God of the dead!  He comments further that this is the reality in which his people live!

Jesus’ teachings and comments impact the scribes so much they acknowledge he has spoken well and they no longer ask him any more questions.  And we well know how the end of that Holy Week works out for him and for them!

All four passages run back into the closing passage from Psalm 17.  While we, as the Lord’s people, have to make our way through the world’s life, we also live within the holy places of the Lord’s Life.  These places, ranging from the Scriptures and including the Sacraments of Baptism, Forgiveness and Supper, expose us to the Lord’s Life, surrounding and sustaining us with its realities.  Such activity enables us to pay close attention to the Lord’s ways and walk in them.  There is less stumbling around in our daily livess along with the growing confidence that the Lord hears us when we call on him.

Exposed to the Lord’s Life on a continual basis, we recognize that our Lord is always showing his marvelous loving-kindness to those who take refuge in him.  He steadily protects them from those who harass and torment his people.  Having drawn us into his Life he is highly jealous for and proud of us.  He is committed to keeping us safe from everything in the world’s life which threatens us with its natural destruction.

Earlier we had noted the strains of living in the world’s life as the Lord’s rescued people.

These strains are huge and often unrelenting; they can run on for days and weeks, even months and years!  Because it is impossible to free ourselves from the world’s way of living, we often find ourselves taking the Lord’s Life for granted, walking away from it or, more dangerously, re-working his Life so that it better fits with our natural ways of thinking and doing!

As he works his Life into ours from the holy places, he breaks the hard-wire the world installed at our births and keeps replacing the software which the world is always dangling for us to try so we can get out of these strains on our own!  Remember, the world, as smart and attractive as it appears to be, is not capable of dealing with its strains.  All it does is point to the things which are wrong, work us into endless frenzies over them and leave us with “temporary solutions.”  Such accomplishments only emerge from what we think and do, while continuing to prolong the dead ends in our lives!

The world’s life is always seeking to take control of our lives and to have the last word in everything we think, say and do.  Gratefully, the world does not have such control or the last word!  It is the LORD God who does!  These four holy readings remind us again that the Son, the Father and the Spirit are always stepping fully into the strains of living in the world’s life, rescuing the people trapped by them, and immersing those individuals in the only Life which streams from eternity into eternity!

Now may the peace of the LORD God, which is beyond all understanding, keep our hearts and minds through Christ + Jesus Our Lord

Pr. Carl A. Voges, STS, Columbia, SC
carl.voges4@icloud.com