Sermon from First UMC East
Greenbush, Luke 20:27-38
It’s an absurd situation … intentionally. Even for back
then when life expectancy was shorter and there were no resources for family
planning, even then, it’s an absurd situation. Seven brothers, each one dying
one at a time, without children and then marrying the same woman until finally
all seven have died and the widow remains. It is intentionally absurd because
there is no genuine curiosity behind it. We are told in the first line of this
passage from Luke that those asking it, the Sadducees, “say there is no
resurrection.” So we already know they do not believe what Jesus is teaching.
So they come up to Jesus with this scenario to see what he will say. They aren’t
looking for enlightenment, they are looking to prove him wrong, to make him
look foolish, they are looking for a “gotcha” moment.
A gotcha moment is when someone seems to be asking a
question but is really just hoping to trick you, puzzle you, or make you look
stupid. People love these moments. They love to see people stammer, stutter or
admit that they don’t know something. I can imagine that if this scene was
taking place today, there would be a big group of people standing around with
their cell phones up, hitting record and hoping to get a big moment to post on
Instagram. It’s like all those cameras positioned around the plane, watching as
a president descends down the staircase, hoping to catch a trip, a stumble,
anything that people will click on or laugh at or use to prove a point about
weakness. That’s where Jesus is standing in this scene from Luke, he is at the
top of the stairs, about to walk down and the Sadducees are sure hoping he will
miss a step.
But he doesn’t. Like so many other times in the Gospels, Jesus
avoids the trap and not because he sidesteps it, but rather because he faces it
with the truth, a deeper truth. Jesus answers this question by taking it to
another level. He will not engage with their premise because he knows they lack
understanding. It’s like the Sadducees are looking at a map of their
neighborhood and thinking it’s a map of the earth. They aren’t seeing beyond
what is in front of them. They are caught in the details, the legalities, the
day to day existence they see and trying to apply that to eternity, to the ways
of God, to the great Divine mystery.
I believe that questions of faith are important. I know
that in my own faith journey, questions of faith have deepened my relationship
with God and strengthened my faith. There are many examples in the Bible of
people wrestling with God, crying out their doubts, digging deeper, and coming
out changed … renewed, lit from within by a burning desire to stay close to God.
But there is a difference between asking questions to dive deeper into a
relationship with God and asking questions to put up walls and barriers on that
relationship.
Before I moved to New York about a year and a half ago, I was
a youth pastor at a large church. I got to walk alongside young people as they
challenged, questioned, wondered at and celebrated their faith. I loved sitting
with teens and young adults as they started asking questions about what they
believe. The questions showed that they were taking their faith seriously, they
were figuring out how to apply it their lives, their goals and their decisions.
They were making sense of the world and inviting the Holy Spirit into that.
And, at a certain point, they had to decide whether to dive in to the mystery
and accept that we can’t understand everything, we can’t always make sense of
God’s ways- and embrace faith or decide to pull away. And honestly, that’s a
decision we probably make over and over in our lives as we grow, mature and
encounter new struggles and new questions. When we have asked all our questions, will we
embrace faith and accept Divine mystery, or will we keep trying to figure it
all out for ourselves?
When Jesus answers the Sadducees, he tries to explain to
them how God’s ways are different than what we see in the here and now. He
talks about things that defy laws and defy maps and defy what we can experience
in the here and now. He talks about being “like angels” and the dead being
raised and being “children of the resurrection.” For those of us living here
and now, it’s difficult to understand these things. Difficult to wrap our minds
around God’s love that never ends, even when we die. Difficult to imagine a
time when all of this will be no more and we will be made new in a resurrection
with Christ. Death is such a harsh reality and we spend a lot of time trying to
wrap our minds around it, run from it, avoid it, worry about it and plan around
it. It’s hard to imagine a time when death will be no more.
Since we moved here, my favorite place to walk my dog is a cemetery.
I live near Albany Rural Cemetery and my dog and I have had the opportunity to
explore its many paths, look at its many colorful trees and listen to the many
sounds of the creeks and waterfalls. It’s a place where I go when I want to
clear my head and just be present in the moment. I don’t listen to music or talk
on the phone, I just hear the sounds of the birds, the rustling leaves and my
footsteps. I look at the distant hills, the flowers and blue sky. And I also
look at the graves. I think about the stories behind them. I look at the grave
with the life-sized statue of a curious three-year old boy looking at a book
and think about the mother who had that made, the mother who still wanted to
see her son standing there, innocent and present. I look at the big fancy
towers and marble buildings and think about the family patriarchs and
matriarchs who decided on materials that would last, stones big enough to be
around for a long time, structures sturdy enough for whatever weather may come.
I look at the freshly placed flags by the graves of veterans and think of the
people who placed them there, people who are devoted to doing the research,
finding the graves and carefully placing the flags so that the legacy of
courage, sacrifice and dedication isn’t forgotten. I look at the graves with
matching benches next to them, benches made by loved ones who couldn’t bear the
thought of leaving them there and wanted to make a spot where they could still
be together.
All of it out of love. In the hospital I sit with families
as they try to soak up every last second, every last breath before the machine
stops beeping. Death is a harsh reality. And it is hard to let go.
So I get it. If a man marries a woman and she doesn’t have
children and he dies and then she marries the brother and he dies and the next
brother and the next and the next … who will she be married to in “the
resurrection?” It’s almost a way of asking, how do we keep this life going? How
do we hold on to the attachments we have here? How to we make sense of things
and feel safe? How can we make what is unknown feel predictable?
Like the beautiful stones placed with love, we want a way
to still experience the ones we love here on earth.
But Jesus says, it’s not like that. And maybe that sounds
scary, maybe that sounds like something we don’t understand or can’t predict or
control or buy or purchase insurance for, but Jesus says …. It’s so much better
than that. Jesus says that the dead are “children of God” and that even though
they are dead . . . to God “all of them are alive.”
We are God’s children. God’s love continues across all space
and time, it is more than the here and now. God isn’t letting us go. God has
got us, even if that isn’t the “gotcha” moment the Sadducees are expecting.
So breathe easy, it’s ok if we don’t understand it all. We
are God’s children and that will never end. God’s love is so much more than our
attempts to make sense of things.
When I am working as a hospital chaplain, I often do rounds
in the post-partum unit. I give new parents some time and space to process
whatever thoughts, feelings and emotions they are having and then I ask if they
would like me to pray. And each family has different things they would like me
to pray for, like health or happiness- and I do, but every single time I look
down at those tiny little brand new lives, those little toes and soft
shoulders, my heart feels overwhelmed by how beloved they are. So innocent and
so new, so clearly God’s children. And I pray that every day of their lives
they will know how much they are loved. As their skin wrinkles, their bones
stretch, their minds deepen and their joints crack, even then, that they will
know every moment of every day that they are God’s beloved children. And that
is my prayer for you. The Sadducees brought Jesus a complicated question, and
he gave them a much deeper, much bigger answer, but also a much simpler answer …
it’s love … God’s love in this life and the next.
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