Sermon: Commemoration Sunday
By Amy Sexauer MDiv III
Seminarian in the Memorial Church of Harvard University
(The following is a transcript of the service audio, Nov. 9, 2025)
Good morning. As Marty mentioned, this church was originally built as a war memorial to the Harvard alumni killed in World War I. I imagine they did not expect how many more names and wars would be added in the following decades. But in addition to the Memorial Room, they included a small gold plaque in the back left corner of the chapel, my right, your left. It was written in Latin, which I think might've been some kind of a test, or maybe perhaps a desire for the plaque to remain discreet. It includes the names of Harvard alumni from Germany and her allies that were also killed in World War I. The plaque reads, "Harvard has not forgotten her sons who under opposite standards gave their lives for their country". Before they were the other. Before we were forced through politics to view them as our inhuman enemy, both sides were just kids here at Harvard.
This plaque does not forgive or minimize, but it holds space for people being more than what history has named them. That sentiment changed by the time the World War II wall was added. Maybe because of the bitterness of two back-to-back World Wars. Maybe because of the atrocities of genocide that took place in World War II.
Many of you are probably already familiar with Adolf Sannwald. He's listed on the World War II Memorial as an affiliate of the Divinity School. He's also listed as an enemy casualty. Many people were furious to see his name included on the wall when it was first revealed to the public, despite the fact that we have a fair amount of evidence to show that he was outspoken against the Nazi Party. And according to his family, drafted at an older age as punishment for speaking out against them.
The legitimate and warranted hate against the Nazi Party was so strong and fresh after the war that people could not conceive that any citizens or soldiers of Germany could also be victims. Sannwald's name, however, lives on and is remembered often because of the placement on the wall, and even especially with the added qualifier. I believe that we can credit his old roommate from his time at Harvard for submitting Sannwald's name for inclusion on the wall. Someone who remembered Sannwald, who he was before the war.
By comparison, there are two names not included on the wall, even under an enemy status. Special student Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, one of the central planners behind the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, and Doctor Shokichi Otajima, a 1934 graduate of the School of Public Health, both fought and died with the Japanese Army, and no one suggested that their names be included because war makes our humanity illegible to each other.
In the years since I left active duty, I have become very suspicious of morals, politics, and stories that depend on the perfect villain. I am distrustful of any narrative that depends on the evil of someone else as a simple and uncomplicated fact. To be clear, I do not believe that harm does not exist, and that we should not take action to prevent harm, and that sometimes that action is violent, but I am suspicious that of any category of human that is unequivocally associated with harm.
In the Gospel reading today, we have an interaction between Jesus and the Sadducees. As is often the case, the Sadducees or the Pharisees are presented to us as the foil to Jesus' message of the Gospel. We are told in Luke that the Sadducees do not believe in the Resurrection, which frames their question about the Resurrection as potentially a mocking one.
I do not know that much about the Sadducees, so I tried to do some research, and I got frustrated pretty quickly. The main description that I found over and over again is that the Sadducees were the wealthy elite. I probably got tripped up on this phrase, because it's something I see commonly in our politics of today. They were the wealthy elites, responsible for managing the temple. They were potentially unpopular because of their relationship to the Roman Empire.
But many scholars believe that the book of Luke was written after the temple was destroyed in 70CE. The Sadducees and their beliefs were essentially lost to history after that. We do not have records of their own writings and teachings in their own voice. All we have are accounts of the Sadducees recorded by other people that did not agree with them. We don't know if they were proud of the responsibility of taking care of the temple, the sacred site of their people. We do not know if they were conflicted about having to work with the Roman Empire. Maybe they felt it was a necessary evil because it kept the peace and protected their heritage. We don't know.
All we know is the Sadducee is a title given to a group of people who were probably not monolithic, whose nuance and humanity feel illegible to us 2,000 years later, but who are probably a lot more than just anti-Jesus. But this illegibility is not only an effect of history. Maybe you've been in a situation where someone asks you, "Are you Christian?", and you hesitate. Maybe the answer for you is an easy yes. Maybe it's always been a yes. But have you ever felt the need to add some clarification? Because you know that what the person's really asking is, "Are you a jerk?" They say, "Are you a Christian?", but what they really want to know is how do you vote? How do you feel about a very specific social or political issue that is personal to them? They're wondering if you are safe. "Am I safe with you?"
Maybe that identity —Christian —means everything to you. Maybe it's your family, your community, your sense of purpose. But you also know that being a Christian means different things to different people. That for some people, the term carries association of hurt. We are certainly aware of the harm that has been done in the name of Jesus. So the word Christian on its own, especially in our political climate right now, doesn't tell me very much about you. Will it immediately connect you to someone, or immediately isolate you from them?
Maybe you don't want to erase or minimize this aspect of your identity altogether, but you wish there were some other way to convey all of the love that exists for you in that one little word. That's how it feels for me, being a veteran right now. It's my family, my community, for a long time, my sense of purpose. But I also know that being a veteran means different things to different people. That for many people, especially outside of our country, that term carries associations of hurt.
When someone asks me about my service, I know that they want more information. They're looking for context clues to try to plot me on a graph of options. Does my service make me honorable? Does it make me insufferable? How do I vote? Am I safe? I'm frustrated by its limits too. Even if I could answer all your questions, if we went out for coffee after service today, and I told you absolutely everything, I would never be able to capture for you all of the love that exists for me in this one word, this one facet of my identity. These identities we pour ourselves into are ill-fitting containers, both for ourselves and the others we force into them.
I wish I had more time to tell you about all the people I love that share the title of veteran. I wish I could make their humanity more legible to you, but I think that's the kind of thing probably best done in person, in conversation, and in relationship. But I will say this. People certainly join the military aware of the benefits they may receive, and aware of the violence they may participate in. But it has been my experience that when most young people join it is because of love. Love of their country, love of their communities, love of a dream that even if it isn't real, we want it to be. Love for themselves and a desire for their life to mean something. They are not violent. They are not aggressive. They are not war hungry. They start out as kids. Their only fault is believing that the American people, the voting citizens of this country, will treat their lives as a precious resource. The upcoming generations of Americans are our most precious resource, and they deserve to not be treated like political tools and economic investments.
So why this tangent in the middle of our Gospel discourse? Not just because it's Veterans Day, or Veterans Day's coming up, I'm sharing this with you because I want you to understand how much we as veterans love. Because I think there's this idea that if you are capable of violence, you must be lacking in love somehow. It has been my experience that this is not the case. Which unfortunately means, that love as we know it is not enough to save us from violence. Love does not necessarily prevent harm. Love in fact is often the excuse or the tool we use for prioritizing certain people over others.
Maybe we should turn back to Jesus for some guidance. So how does Jesus respond to the Sadducees in our Gospel story? They ask Jesus if a widow, who's lost multiple husbands and remarried multiple times, they ask, "Who is her husband in the resurrection?" As I said before, I do think this question is presented to us as facetious. But behind it, I think, is a legitimate concern. If there is an afterlife, who will I be in heaven? What roles, what identities, what pressures, what expectations, what relationships from this life will remain in the next? The Sadducees cannot imagine an existence where this poor widow isn't defined by marriage. They probably cannot imagine themselves separate from the role they play in their society.
Who do we have a hard time imagining in heaven? Not because of their worthiness, which Jesus mentions, but that's not the question the Sadducees asked. Who can we not imagine in heaven because we cannot imagine them beyond the role they play on earth?
I'll read Jesus' response for you. "Again, those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. Indeed, they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection." And He ends with, "He is not god of the dead, but of the living, for to Him, all of them are alive."
Jesus could have lashed out at this question. Jesus could have admonished the Sadducees for trying to trick Him, or for using a widow as a pawn. But instead, He says the ways in which you categorize people down here do not exist in the resurrection. In the kingdom of God, you are not defined by your job, your role in your family, or the country you were born into.
I wonder if Jesus answered in this way because He was speaking not just to His followers, but to the Sadducees themselves? Whose teachings and legacies would be lost to us, but whose worth as a child of God would not. The things that pit us against each other, the things that make us good or evil, enemy or hero, are the structures and systems of this world, not the next.
In the kingdom of heaven we are love and we are loved by God absent these containers, these identities that separate us from each other. I'm not saying that our diversity isn't beautiful. And I'm not saying that we should not be accountable to each other. But when we hyper-focus on the immorality of individuals, when we associate evil and bad deeds with a certain kind of person, we are complacent in supporting the systems that turns them into the object of hate. The love of God is not a toll for prioritizing some people over others. Love should change us. Love should break us down. If we are all children of God, then love is a tool for breaking down the identities that divide us.
Harvard has not forgotten her sons who under opposite standards gave their lives for their country. God has not forgotten His children, no matter where and how they fight, or where and how they fall. Our work is to use the love that God has given us to see beyond the words, the identities, and the flags that divide us. May we remember who we are to God before the world tore us apart. Amen.