Choosing the Story that Chose Us

Image Credit: https://www.sukkahsoftheworld.org/
This year the Jewish festival of Sukkot falls on the days from the 6th to the 13th of October. My friend Aaron Ginsburg writes, “On Sukkot we build Sukkahs. They remind us of our wandering in the desert for forty years after the liberation from Egypt, and also of the huts that were made in the fields to make it easier to keep an eye on the harvest.

Thanksgiving Sunday, Year C
12 October 2025

Deuteronomy 26:1-11
Psalm 100
Philippians 4:4-9
John 6:25-35

I remember being at the mall shortly after we had moved to Abbotsford. It must have been near Christmas and there were lots of merchants who had set up temporary businesses. One of the services offered was genealogy. The teaser to make you stop was that they offered to tell you where your name came from. When they propositioned me, I said, “No thank you,” and smiled; for I knew where my name had come from, at least sort of. I had brought it with me.

While I know where my name comes from, I do not know a lot about my ancestry. I know that on my maternal grandfather’s side the family were blacksmiths for three hundred years in a town called Hannoversch Münden.
The rule then was that the eldest son inherited the shop and because my great-grandfather was the second born, he had to find something else and so he moved away to the city where I was born. The next thing I know is that his son, my grandfather, worked himself through school as an engineer on the old steam ships of the merchant marine. This was prior to WW I. Beyond that I know little. I was never told.

Maybe it was intentional. We remember the things we are proud of, we forget or at least neglect the things we consider less representative of who we are, for the interest in genealogy is about identity, it’s about understanding who we are. And our search for identity always includes choice in what trails to follow and in what to remember.

I know even less about my father’s side. Apparently, his ancestors were cigar makers in my home town, a port near the German North Sea coast. My father said that being a cigar maker was one of the lowliest of professions. The next thing I know is my father’s father and his brothers worked in their parents’ humble coal business after their father had died young, and I know that their business grew. They were self-made men of the forties and fifties of the last century, benefiting from the rebuilding that was needed after the war (for they had branched out into construction materials). However, in the 50ies they had a disagreement and parted ways; and that is the main thing I remember about them, and a bit more about my grandfather, for we would see him from time to time. But I know nothing about my grandmothers, about the siblings of my grandparents, or siblings of great-grandparents on either side.
Before I came to study at the Vancouver School of Theology I travelled the United States by Greyhound. My accent was stronger then and people often asked where I was from. When people heard I was German, many would say that they too were German, though they did not have an accent, did not speak the language, and had no memory of the culture. But remembering where their ancestors had once come from was important.

Maybe the things I know about my family, many of them less flattering, are the reason I have never had great interest in genealogy as a way to find out what makes me me. That, however, is the reason people pursue genealogy: It is to understand who they are by learning where they come from.¹

Our reading from the Book of Deuteronomy gives us a different way to grasp who we are. On the surface it is a reading about what Israel shall do when they enter the land. Their sojourn through the wilderness is nearing its end and at last they can set their eyes on settling down after forty long years.
And so we have this beautiful text: Israel shall give of the first fruits because giving of the first fruits is better than the giving of leftovers, not necessarily because the first fruits are better but because the giving of the first fruits shows trust in God’s ongoing providing. After they have given they shall celebrate because the act of giving opens our eyes to God’s abundance and generosity (v.11). Trust as expressed in the giving of the first fruit also means that Israel will not live in fear, will not hoard or stockpile, but will live by God’s gracious hand that satisfies not only their desires but the desire of every living thing (Psalm 145).

And yet the instruction about what to do when Israel is in the land is more than a stewardship text. It teaches a liturgical act in which Israel declares its identity through the retelling of its story.
For Israel is not only to give the first fruit, but to remember that their ancestor was a wandering Aramean, they are to remember Egypt, and in this remembering declare that God heard their cry, and that thus this land is theirs not by their doing but by God’s. They are not self-made men and women but live by God’s gracious providing. Their life is to declare that God responds to human need because God hears our cry, and is merciful and abounding in steadfast love.
And so they remember how God acted in their history. It is this liturgical act of remembering that affirms their identity. They remember Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob not because it represents pedigree but because of what God has done for them. They are God’s people.

And while the Jewish festival of Sukkot or the Festival of Booths is a harvest festival and thus somewhat like our Thanksgiving, essential to it is the remembering of the nomadic life one’s ancestors lived and the remembering of their slavery in Egypt. In other words, this liturgical act of remembering defines the people’s identity not by remembering exceptional accomplishments, or famous ancestors, or past great wealth, or nobility (I have an old friend who claims that his ancestors were robber barons), but remembering the things our family histories usually omit.

They remember their past slavery because it was in their distress that God heard their cry. And so they don’t suffer from amnesia. They are not afraid to remember past suffering because they are defined neither by their suffering nor by their accomplishments, power, or wealth. What makes them them is that they are God’s people.

Therefore, they do not have to construct elaborate genealogies to overcome the shame of their humble origin. Their identity lies in being God’s people, in God hearing their cry, in God’s faithfulness, and in God’s transformative action. They are God’s. This is who they are.
The liturgical retelling of past events makes them participants in these events. In the retelling past events become their present.

So, when we gather in worship to tell of God’s faithfulness and of God’s great acts in the history of Israel, in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, in the lives of the saints, and in the ongoing history of the Church – however flawed it may be –, we tell a story that is our story, we speak of events that are not only in the past but that define our present because they speak of God’s relationship with God’s people. In the telling of these events, and this is what we do in worship – on Thanksgiving and every time we worship –,we remember who we are.
Therefore, in the way that my speaking about my ancestors, or of what you may tell me about your ancestors, tells not only their story but also mine and yours, so much more does the telling of the stories of liberation, election, of incarnation, and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit tell not only history but lends identity, an identity gifted to us by God.

And because Israel remembers God’s great acts and because its identity is not built on its own accomplishments, it can therefore celebrate the bounty the Lord has given them with foreigners and other marginalized in their land. And so our thanksgiving shapes our living.

The theologian Walter Brueggemann points out that when Gerhard von Rad began to understand the confessional nature of the instruction in Deuteronomy 26 that von Rad published his findings only a month after the German Confessing Church had issued the Barmen Declaration against the ideology of the Nazi Regime. Brueggemann comments that as Israel in its confession was seeking standing ground against the formidable theological alternative of Canaanite religion, so the Barmen Declaration articulated theological standing ground against the blood and soil ideology of National Socialism.²

The kind of remembering and the kind of inclusion that our reading asks for are counter-cultural acts in a society that believes in the strength of the individual, and celebrates fame, power, and wealth. Such counter-cultural living is required in a world in which common denominators have been reduced to the economy and the market and therefore lacks in social cohesion.

When we gather for worship we tell the story of how we were once slaves to sin (Romans 6) and in the confession of our our sin, we remember God’s mercy. We remember how we were once far off but have been brought near by the blood of Christ (Eph 2:13). When we celebrate Holy Communion we remember (1 Cor 11:24). When we pray the Creed, we remember God as the beginning and the end who created us for Godself. When we gather we tell the story and when we tell the story, we remember who we are.
We are not self-made people but people who live by God’s mercy. In the Sermon on the Plain Jesus exhorts us to be merciful as our heavenly Father is merciful. (Luke 6:36)

For Israel the act of Thanksgiving became an act of storytelling, of telling and remembering how their story was wrapped up in God’s story. I wonder how you tell your story and how we tell our story as God’s people, using the template Israel provided for us, but adding to it, filling in the bits that are pertinent to us.

I do not know much about my ancestors, a few things about a great grandfather, a grandfather, a bunch of cigar makers, and of quarrelling brothers. I understand that they say something about me. But I also know that our genealogies are as much chosen as they are given, by focusing on some and neglecting others. More importantly, I know that having being incorporated into God’s story through my baptism into Christ’s death and resurrection I am not beholden to my family’s past, nor my standing in the world, nor the world’s belief in the power of the individual. And thank God for that.

As we treat our families’ histories and choose some stories to define us but not others, so we choose God’s story that defines us and that reconciles our lives, our families, and our histories. But the story of God is not only a story that we choose, it is also the story that chooses us, for God has heard our cry.

Amen.