What We Inherit

Rebecca Sheridan
Sunday, November 2, 2025
Ephesians 1:11-23

    Many of you know that a big portion of my sabbatical this summer was visiting the lands of Rich’s and my ancestors in Norway, Scotland, Ireland, and England.  I wish I could have brought you all along with me to meet my Norwegian cousins.  You would KNOW they were related to me – we have family resemblances.  It was interesting that in talking to my cousin Ragnhild, who truly looks like my twin, we learned that my dad and her mom both had the same genetic illness a few years ago, at the same time! In Ireland, we unfortunately did not find any living relatives, but we learned about the cultural heritage we have adapted here in the United States of the Celtic harvest festival of Samhain, which we have Christianized as All Hallow’s Eve (the day before All Saints Day), a time to get ready for winter and remember the dead.  Most of us know it as Halloween.  Our summer travels were a time of learning about the cultural and ancestral heritage of where we come from, and what is different from our own American culture and upbringing.  If you have ever been able to go back to or visit the land of your ancestors, or even just visit the town or neighborhood where you grew up, maybe you have also had this feeling of connection across the ages – like these places are really home.  These experiences along with our reading from Ephesians this morning have had me reflecting for awhile now about all that I have inherited – culturally, genetically, spiritually.  What is our inheritance?
    Ephesians chapter 1 lifts up our Lutheran Christian understanding of saints, which differs from some Christian traditions.  All baptized Christians are saints in the household of God and members of the body of Christ, God’s family.  A saint is not a perfect person. And, you don’t have to wait to become a saint after you die.  Your baptism into Christ makes you a living saint, and because Christ lives in you, you can live out those blessings and beatitudes that Jesus talks about in Luke’s gospel today.  We are able to do unto others what we would have done unto us because of the inheritance we have received through our faith in Christ – it is our faith in Christ that makes us saints.
     Our prayer in the letter to the Ephesians is that we might understand more fully, “what are the riches of Christ’s glorious inheritance among the saints.” You may be interested in genealogy, like I am, to know what you have inherited biologically from your ancestors.  As we remember those who have gone before us today, we certainly lift up the gifts, the stories, the memories, the traditions that we have inherited from our loved ones.  Most important, though, is that we celebrate the riches of our inheritance because of who Christ is and what Christ has done for us.  We all have an equal share – none of us are cut out of God’s estate.  We are all saints of God.  This is the hope to which God has called us in Jesus Christ.  And this is a present inheritance that we experience both while we are still living and that we enjoy into eternity: the riches of Christ’s love, peace, hope and life.
    This All Saints Sunday has hit me hard.  I think every year it does.  I come around to this day, and I remember, with joy and gratitude and sadness all mixed up together, when I recall the many saints that have gone before us.  We have been reminded recently of the fragility of life, and that everything can change in a moment with the death of a loved one.  Chase Filandro stood here two years ago in June for our blessing of high school graduates.  Bette Gilmartin was greeting people at the door and  Meredith Coleman was singing in our choir not that long ago. Bill Wolter was counting offering on Monday morning with his wife Hilde.  I met Bob Janetschek at Olivia Ricketts’ baptism.  And Debbie Ostermeier was baptized on Christ the King Sunday, last year.  That doesn’t even include everyone on the list that we have just for this past year, and we can see and remember the saints that have gone before us just in this place, and then we remember those other saints in our lives that we have deeply loved.  We cherish their memories.  We feel their absence and the hole these losses leave in our lives.  Maybe those of us who are in deeper grief have a hard time believing that there will come a time when we will laugh again, when we hear Jesus say “blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.”  Today is a day where it’s OK to weep – Jesus calls those who do blessed.  It’s a day we recognize that death is close to life, sometimes closer and more sudden than we’d like.  Yet somehow, we rejoice also, because our inheritance is with these saints in the kingdom of God.
    All Saints Sunday is about recognizing that I have inherited my mom’s administrative skills, my dad’s blue eyes and also my parents’ high cholesterol and conflict avoidance.  As Lutheran Christians, we live in the tension of being simultaneously saints and sinners, all at the same time.  We do not pretend to be perfect, but we should neither deny our saintliness because that is the power of Christ working in us.  God holds us all, all of who we are, the good and the bad, our character flaws and faithlessness, and through our baptisms plunges us into the only death that really matters, the death of our old selves, so that we might live a new life in Christ, as living saints serving a living God.  When we recognize the fragility of life and the closeness of death, it helps us live a little more lightly to focus on the things that really matter  - our family, our friends, leaving some kind of legacy for future generations.  Just as these saints who have gone before us passed on things we want to hold onto, remember well, and pass on to our children, what are those things that we want to pass down or have people say about us when we die?  What is the inheritance we have received, and what is the inheritance we want to leave behind?  Our faith helps us answer these questions.  And then, we put our ultimate trust in our eternal inheritance with God – we are in God’s hands, all of us.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.