PENTECOST 23

May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)

SEASON: PENTECOST 23
PROPER: 27 C
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: November 11, 2001

TEXT: Luke 20:27-38 – “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.”

ISSUE: The passage from Luke emphasizes the fact of resurrection as a part of Hebrew Scripture teaching. At the same time it stresses the broader concept of being a part of God’s family. The Christian community is raised up to a relationship with God as Father, and the followers of Jesus Christ as the sons, or children, of God. The Christian family is not lost from its faithful relationship with God.
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The passage of the Gospel from Luke today gives us another one of those moments that tells us how hard it was for Jesus living in a very difficult time. This affront to him by the Sadducees comes to him, according to Luke, immediately following the testing by the Pharisees as to whether or not it was legal for Jews to pay taxes to Caesar. Questions in public to Jesus were attacks, or traps, to dishonor him. To catch him in some false teaching, or to impose a question that he could not answer, and thus, diminish his importance and honor, which would also diminish his following.
We are familiar mostly with Pharisees. These were members of Judaism who were followers of both the written law and the rabbinical teachings of the oral law. They had some vague concept of resurrection, and they believed in angels and spirits. Some were friendly to Jesus, but from the Scriptures we mostly from the more hostile Pharisees who tested Jesus. Jesus himself was associated with the Pharisaic party. Interestingly enough, at the end of this scene from today’s reading, the Pharisees praise Jesus for his response to the Sadducees.
Now as for the Sadducees, they were also a religious party of Jews who were of the higher and wealthier class. Religiously they believed in, or taught only the first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures. They did not believe in angels or spirits, nor did they believe in any kind of a resurrection. They were the priestly class associated with the Temple and were they leadership class. They were often in collusion with the Romans for the sake of their own status, and perhaps for the safety of the country as well. Of course the teachings of Jesus and his popularity with the poorer classes may have been considered a real threat to the stability of the country. Thus, the Sadducees attack Jesus with the entrapment question about resurrection. Can he respond appropriately to maintain his honor and status with the peasants?
So the Sadducees raise for Jesus a problem issue about whether or not there can possibly be a resurrection. They set up what would be a difficult situation if there were such a thing as resurrection. If a man died and left his wife childless, and she were married by his second brother, who also died and left her childless, and so on through the next five brothers, all leaving her childless, whose wife would she be in the resurrection, because she had seven husbands?
There was in the Hebrew Scriptures a practice called Levirate Marriage, from Deuteronomy 25:5-10. If a man died, his brother was expected to take his wife and have a child with her for the purpose of carrying on his brother’s line in Israel. The practice would also give a widow a child, hopefully a son who could grow up to he her spokesman. In a sense it was the way a man lived on after this death, through his offspring, but offspring provided through his brother. The issue for Jesus to answer deals with, whose wife will such women be, if there is a resurrection when they all get to heaven, for they all had married her? Thus, they believe the resurrection concept is ridiculous.
Now, Jesus’ answer: In the time of the resurrection, in the time of the coming of the Kingdom of God, people don’t marry. They are like angels and are the children (sons and daughters) of God. Moses himself, the very one to whom the Sadducees pay so much attention, when he was in the wilderness tending his sheep and saw the burning bush heard God say: “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” (Exodus 3:6) Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had lived long before Moses. But God saw them as still living, and part of a living faith. “Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive,” says Jesus. Jesus answers the attack and maintains his position. The Pharisees (teachers of the Law) congratulate him on his good answer, and no one dares to ask him any more questions.
Why does Luke include this incident in his Gospel account? It does tell and highlights the stresses that Jesus encountered from both Pharisees and Sadducees. But Luke’s gospel is also directed and aimed at Gentiles, many of whom at the time came from pagan or mythological religions that had concepts of resurrection. Thus, Luke is saying to them, and so does Christianity. So join us. It is evangelical, missionary, in its approach. Luke is concerned with revealing that Christian Faith is about resurrection with the true God of Israel who is with his people always.
Underneath that concept, there is still lurking another teaching. Jesus was never very taken with the cultural understanding of family as an exclusive, turned in on itself unity. We remember things like, “Who ever comes to me cannot be my disciple unless he loves me more than he loves his father and his mother, his wife and his children, his brothers and his sisters, and himself as well.” (Luke 14:26) “No servant can be the slave of two masters; he will hate on and love the other; he will be loyal to one and despise the other.” (Luke 16:13) On another occasion Jesus is told, ‘Your mother and brothers have come for you.’ To which he replies, “My mother and brothers are those who hear the word of God and obey it.” (Luke 8:21) The Kingdom of God, Heaven, the Domain of God is far more inclusive. Those who are faithful, and are focused on God the Father are a part of a much larger family. The faithful are the sons and daughters, the children of God. Life in the Kingdom of God is not dependent upon the institutions of this world. Rather, those of faith are raised up, resurrected to the Kingdom of God.
The issue for us today is to consider what is the impact of this story on our lives. We are comfortable with a faith that teaches resurrection and hope for life eternal. The crowds at Easter bear witness to that. Although, I’m not really sure the greater crowds understand what that means. So many people have the folk-concept of resurrection that everything is going to be the same when we get to heaven. Today’s response by Jesus indicates that it is not. But the teaching in this days lesson tells us of our being with God. Giving up familiar concepts as to what is really important and turning to faith, loyalty, and trust in God is our ultimate salvation and hope. How we manage our family, and live according to cultural trends of this day is hardly important. We are worthy of the presence of God, and being children, son and daughters of God. What’s more is that we become as God’s faithful, like spirits and angels. We develop through Jesus Christ a new raised up spirituality. We are raised from being the children of Adam to the children of Christ. We live in the spirit of love, in the spirit of hope, in the spirit of openness. We live in the spirit of acceptance. We live in the spirit, which gives the message of an abiding love and hopefulness to the world around us.
We are presently living in a world where our foes surround us. Remember that old hymn by St. Thomas Acquinus: “O Saving Victim opening wide, the gate of heaven to man below. Our foes press on from every side. Thine aid supply, thy strength bestow.” (Hymnal 1982) The stresses and the strains of our lives surround us. The present fears of terrorist attacks can frighten us, and create all kinds of fears and anxieties. It is the unseen terror. We may find ourselves feeling like children in the dark; frightened by the shadows we cannot decipher and understand. Yet Jesus Christ enables us to be resurrected, raised up, lifted up out of the darkness and into the light, and assured that we are the children of God. We are the messengers of hope to a fear-filled and threatened world. We are raised up beyond mere knee jerking responses of vengeance and doing the same thing the same old ways. We are raised up to seek understanding and make the changes required that are resonant with God’s Kingdom.
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob: they were all men who were raised up from insignificant lives to be in the service of God. Moses was raised up, which his name actually means, from out of the Nile River, and raised up as a man with a speech impediment to become one of the greatest of all the sons of God and messenger of God, to deliver and to remove his people from evil and oppression. Job, surrounded by friends telling him how evil he must be to have to endure such punishment. Yet Job is raised up in faith to be able to say, “For I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth; and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see on my side, and my eyes shall behold, and not another.” Job 19:23-27a)