23rd Sunday after Pentecost [Pr. 27 November 11, 2007 “Series C”
Grace be unto you and peace, from God our Father and from our Lord, Jesus Christ. Amen.
Let us pray: Dear Heavenly Father, you sent your Son, Jesus the Christ to reveal your Word of grace and truth, and to redeem us through his death and resurrection. Through the power of your Holy Spirit, open our hearts and minds to hear his Word for our lives, and give us the strength to embrace it as we live our lives. And increase our faith, that trusting in our baptism into Christ’s death and resurrection, we might be empowered to walk in newness of life, and have hope in the life to come. This we ask in Christ’s holy name. Amen.
As a pastor, working with our confirmation students has been a real joy. I love to see our youth grow in their understanding of the Scriptures and to mature in their faith. And I will admit, that it has also proven to be challenging at times. After all, we have had some very bright students in our class, and they have asked some very difficult questions over the years, as they explore the relationship of Scripture and theology to their daily lives.
Asking questions is an essential part of learning. We learn and grow by asking questions about what we don’t understand. No question is a dumb question, if it is designed to help you acquire knowledge or information. However, there are some questions that are wrong to ask, because they are not intended to acquire knowledge. For example, there are questions that are specifically intended to shift the topic away from what I am trying to teach. Some of our students are very good at this, too.
And there are questions that are wrong to ask, because they are intended to trick or trap someone into a corner, to set a person up to look foolish in the eyes of others. We have an example of this kind of question in our Gospel lesson for this morning.
Luke tells us that there were some Sadducees who came to Jesus, and asked him a question. I believe this is the only time in Luke’s Gospel that we hear of the Sadducees, and so, I would like to share with you a little background information about this group. The Sadducees were an ultra- conservative religious party who accepted only the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, as the authoritative word of God. These are the books that contain the Law of Moses.
Since they rejected the writings of the prophets, where the Law of Moses was given further interpretation, the Sadducees were very strict and legalistic in their religious life. As a result, they rejected as heretical many of the things that Jesus was teaching, such as loving your enemies, or encouraging the payment of taxes to the hated Roman authorities.
They also found many of the actions of Jesus to be unorthodox and in violation of the law. To them, Jesus defiled himself with his frequent association with known sinners, social outcasts, and tax collectors. And Jesus openly broke the law by allowing his disciples to eat with unwashed hands, and when Jesus healed a man of his sickness on the Sabbath, he had blatantly snubbed for disregarding the sacred laws of their faith.
Because of their limited view of the Scriptures and their disregard for the ensuing theological development of Israel that developed over the years, the Sadducees view of life was very pessimistic and joyless. They did not believe in the hope of resurrection, a concept that developed in the theology of Israel two hundred years prior to the birth of Christ, or any kind of positive life beyond their earthly existence. To them, when a person died, their soul went to Sheol, a placed deeply imbedded in the earth, where at best, you lived a diminished sort of life.
Thus, when Jesus taught that the kingdom of God was eternal, and that the resurrection would bring new life to the faithful, who would sit at a great banquet, and have the wrongs they endured in this life ultimately made right, the Sadducees had to challenge Jesus. And so they came to Jesus, and asked him a question that was designed, not that they might learn or expand their understanding, but to make Jesus look foolish in the eyes of those who had come to believe in him.
The Sadducees begin by quoting their beloved Torah. “Moses wrote for us that 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.” Of course, we who live in today’s society may find this to be rather offensive to think about. But in that paternalistic culture, a woman was dependent upon her husband or her sons for her support. She was not allowed to own property or to inherit her husband’s estate. Thus, we might view this Law of Moses as providing a means by which the widow would be cared for.
Of course, the Sadducees wanted to drive home their point, and so they present Jesus with this hypothetical situation in which six brothers each take their turn marrying their oldest brother’s wife, before they die. But none of them were successful in giving her children. Finally, the woman, who had been married to all seven brothers, dies.
Then comes the question, designed to entrap Jesus, which we might read in this way: “If there is a resurrection, if God’s kingdom is joyous and everlasting, when she enters this kingdom, whose wife will she be? For she has been the wife of all seven brothers?
But Jesus, God’s Word who dwelt among us, was up to the task. And the message he gives us is filled with God’s grace, which not only gives us a hint of what life in God’s eternal kingdom might be like, but also assures us that even God’s faithful of years past, will be included in his heavenly kingdom.
First, Jesus says: “Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage, but those [who enter God’s eternal kingdom] neither marry nor are given in marriage. Indeed, they cannot die anymore…for they are children of God.
In his first reply to the Sadducees, Jesus tells us that we cannot project the values that we hold dear in our mortal life here on earth, even those that God established to be sacred expressions of his love for human life, into the future life that God has in store for us. Although God established marriage as a sacred bond between two people, that they might love and care for one another, support one another, provide a stable environment for raising children, through which his love might be revealed in an intimate way, it does not last forever.
Have you ever thought about that phrase in your marriage vows, in which you say that your are bound to each other, until death do us part? God instituted marriage as a means to help us experience and support one another as we seek to live our lives growing and understanding what his redeeming grace and love is all about.
Yes, it is a sacred relationship, which, if we are true to our vows, we can learn to love one another, as God loves us. In marriage, we learn to forgive and to accept forgiveness, to nurture and be nurtured, to grow in faith and trust. But when death parts us, or, in today’s society, where, unfortunately at least half of marriages end before death, we are free to marry again.
Marriage is finite. It is an institution that belongs to our life here on earth. However, when we enter God’s eternal kingdom, we have no need of marriage. We will be in the very presence of God, as those who have been redeemed by Christ’s death and resurrection. We will all be God’s children, who he loves. We will be his sons and daughters, brothers and sisters in Christ. Thus, there is no need for marriage, to provide for our security, or to nurture faith. For we will be in the very presence of God!
Finally, Jesus puts the Sadducees’ question back to them, by quoting a passage from the Torah itself, the only Scripture they trusted. Jesus recalls to their attention the fact that when God confronted Moses in the burning bush, centuries after Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob – the forefathers of the faith had died – calling him to go to Egypt to free Israel from the bondage of slavery, God still claimed to be their God, in the present tense. As a result, Jesus concludes, “God is the God of the living, not of the dead, for to him, all of them are alive.”
Thus Jesus teaches us that even from the beginning of Scripture, God has planted the message that he is the God of the living. And throughout the history of the Scriptures, both in the Old and the New Testaments, his word has consisted as both his law for our lives, which more often than not, convicts us of our sins rather than to directs us in how we live our lives. But the Scriptures also assure us of God’s redeeming grace, the forgiveness of our sins, and the hope of life eternal in God’s heavenly kingdom, through Christ’s atoning death for our sins, and his victorious resurrection. For that is the proof of God’s love.
So let us all rejoice and embrace the kingdom that Christ promises us to inherit. For if I understand our Lord’s teaching correctly, we will enter a life that is to be lived in the presence of total love and grace – the very presence of God. It is a life beyond our comprehension, yet it is a life that will be more joyous and more filled with excitement, than any time we have known to date.
Amen.
