For the Sermon audio click here
I have not often had the misfortune of walking into a room mid-confrontation. Once or twice, I have walked in to hear friends fighting over something that had just happened. Tension filled the air, yet most often they were arguing over a video game. This morning we get dropped into a heated debate about marriage, or is it about the Resurrection? We will come back to this in a moment. Right now, let’s try to understand how we got plopped into this debate. We hoped over an important detail when we took a detour last week celebrating All Saints’ Sunday. Just before this morning’s gospel story, Jesus came into the Temple, expelled those who were trying to make a profit from this holy place, and won a few arguments with the spiritual elite of the day. Jesus has been embroiled in a series of similar contests between Pharisees and scribes, but now we focus upon his conversation with the Sadducees.
Why are Sadducees so named? Well, the Sadducees are sad-you-see because they do not believe in the resurrection (BWAHAHA). That bad joke is brought to you by Evan’s 2nd grade Sunday school teacher, Miss Dot. We do not know too much about Sadducees because they became extinct by the end of the first century. What we do know is that they were connected to the wealthy people of the day, they wanted to know just what they could get away with and still be considered good people, and they did not believe in the resurrection. They actually sound like some Episcopalians I know.
The Sadducees, a group not mentioned previously in Luke, are on some level really wondering what Jesus’ response will be to their question, but there is also a desire to prove that Jesus does not know about the Scriptures. Pharisees, scribes, and Sadducees often come off looking like the bad guys, but initially they served as foils for Jesus, sparring partners that made it easier to make one’s point more clearly. The Sadducees address him, perhaps mockingly, as “rabbi” or “teacher,” then quote a strange law attributed to Moses, “If a man’s brother dies, leaving a wife but no children, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother.” Sadducees insist that there is no resurrection because they think that their legacy, their livelihood, and their life itself is passed on through their children. In Deuteronomy and Genesis Moses has made it clear that if one brother dies before bearing any children from a marriage, the hope of him “living on” is passed on to his brother.
Before going any further, let me say, this is a brutal system that completely neglects the position of women. In this chauvinistic, patriarchal society women are seen as nothing more than a way to pass on a man’s legacy. Continuing the name of the deceased came before the needs and desires of women in this society. The Sadducees do not seem to care about the woman from their example, as they continue full speed with their quest to prove the resurrection incompatible with Scripture.
Amplifying their example, they say, “Now there were seven brothers; the first married and died childless; then the second and the third married her, and so in the same way all seven died childless. Finally the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her.” It almost seems comical, SEVEN marriages! Really?! SEVEN! This is EXTREME! Isn’t it? Yet, it is a good question, who are we going to marry and be married to in the resurrection? Or maybe asked more generally, what is it going to be like in the resurrection? I wonder about this sometimes, “Am I going to get to see my family? Am I going to have a body? Am I going to get to watch a movie of my life?” Yet the Sadducees’ attempt to prove their beliefs right through Moses’ law and our attempts to understand “heaven” are out of focus with Jesus’ description of the resurrection.
Jesus did not let the Sadducees’ question reverberate too long in the temple. Perhaps worn a little thin from arguing with Pharisees and Scribes all day long, Jesus sets up a contrast between this age and the next, as those whom he has already contested eavesdrop wondering if Jesus will slip. There is a difference that exists between those who are focused on “this age” and “those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection.” Those of this age are concerned with marrying and being given in marriage, both men and women succumb to the temptations of this life. Those in the age to come do not worry about such things, not because they do not care about their earthly relationships, but because they have begun to act out of deeper Truth. Those in the age to come Jesus says, “are like angels and are children of God being children of the resurrection.” They have adopted the characteristics of resurrection life. They live in the Truth that the resurrection is already underway.
The Sadducees and the onlooking Pharisees and Scribes will not be sold without justification from Scripture, so Jesus recalls the story of Moses and the burning bush. God speaks to Moses saying, “I AM The God of Abraham, the God of Issac, and the God of Jacob.” To Jesus this shows that God does not relate to dead people, but to living ones. God would not say “I AM the God of someone who is dead,” rather God is beyond the realms of time and space. To God all are alive. God is the God of the living not the God of the dead.
When Jesus finishes his argument an eerie silence hangs over the temple, our gospel lesson does not give us the full ending. The Pharisees and Scribes break the quiet and celebrate the Sadducees defeat in this temple debate, saying, “Teacher, you have spoken well.” No one dared to ask him another question.
Yet, what I take away from this contest is not that Jesus is really good at debate, or that we do not need to ask questions about what the resurrection will be like. What I take away from this gospel is that our charge is to start acting like the resurrection is already happening. We might be anticipating the cross in Luke’s gospel, but the cross and the resurrection have already happened. Jesus has already been raised from the dead and this means that we too are raised from the dead for we are buried with Jesus in our Baptism. We therefore are charged to start acting like the resurrection is all around us. We are called to look around with resurrection vision, to taste with a resurrection tongue, to smell with a resurrection nose, to hear with resurrection ears, to feel with a resurrection sense. This is our call. Not to get bogged down in the laws that we make up about ourselves. Not to get stuck in the rules that we think apply to us getting into heaven, but to act as though we are already walking with Christ in the light of the resurrection.
We do this by opening our hearts, minds, and spirits to Christ, by caring most for the least among us, by seeking forgiveness when we wrong someone else, by remembering the resurrection, and by coming back together as the Body of Christ.
There is a resurrection, the fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed, Jesus himself shows, and we show every week as the Body of Christ. Our task is not to prove this to others through law and rules, but to live this out in our lives as the truest of all realities. We are children of the resurrection, let’s start living like it!
No comments:
Post a Comment