“Answer In the Questions”
A Sermon Based Upon Luke 20: 27-38
By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership
25th Sunday After Pentecost, November 10th, 2013
“Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.” (Luke 20: 38, NRSV).
Life is full of questions isn’t it? We start asking questions quite young. Can’t you remember that younger brother or sister, nephew, niece or grandchild who kept on asking you “Why?” Why is the sky blue? Why is the grass green? Why do I have to go to the dentist? Why can’t I have my cake before supper? Why? Why? Why? Too many questions can drive you insane. You probably ask a lot of them too.
Our lives are filled with more ‘questions’ than ‘answers’. Humans are the only species on this planet which have this powerful, even maddening capacity to reason, to imagine, to doubt and to question. The animals that I have had, even the smartest ones, do not question things, but they react to things. People however, raise questions concerning things they know little or nothing about. We have strange and even complicated curiosity. We encourage our children to raise questions, because asking questions can make us make us smart, or maybe it will turn us into what my mother called me a couple of times, a ‘smart aleck’.
Certainly, in the Sadducees in today’s Scripture could have been called ‘smart alecks’. Several times in this chapter various religious leaders come to Jesus with questions. In fact, the whole chapter is built upon 4 questions, 3 which came from religious leaders themselves and one which came from Jesus. All the questioning in this chapter starts with one very big, leading question: “Tell us, (Jesus) by what authority are you doing these things?” The question that comes in our text near the end of the chapter builds upon this one. The Sadducees, as Luke explains-- ‘those who say there is no resurrection’---came to ask Jesus a question (vs. 27) about the resurrection they did not believe in. Of course, they were trying to trick Jesus into giving a wrong answer. The answer they got gave them a big surprise. The greatest rabbi in Judaism often answered questions by raising even bigger questions. It was a culture which said you ought to think through and answer the biggest questions yourself.
CAN JESUS TELL US WHAT HEAVEN IS LIKE?
Let’s begin with a look at the actual question the Sadducees asked. It was a question about the Resurrection of the Dead. As a part of the conservative and wealthy elite in that day, the Sadducees only considered the original Bible, the Torah, that is, the first five books of Law, as their Bible. Since the teaching about Resurrection did not develop until many years later, after the Exile, they did not believe it. They didn’t’ think any true Israelite ought to believe in anything more than this life.
While it might seem to us that this ‘question’ about the resurrection is silly, is really isn’t. We all have questions about what’s on the other side of this life---what’s heaven like, will we have a body, what is life like after death? John Killinger tells about a certain bright-eyed, comical little woman was the kind of person who enjoyed a joke till the day she died. During her last years she was a diabetic, and the doctors restricted her from adding sugar to her coffee and salt to her food. She managed very well without sugar for her coffee, for there were marvelous sweetening substitutes. But she never got used to doing without salt, for the salt substitutes were not so effective. We heard her say on more than one occasion, as she stared at the unsalted breakfast eggs on her plate, "If heaven is the way it is supposed to be, I am going to spend my first thousand years licking on a great salt block!" (From a sermon by John Killinger, “What Is Heaven Like” at www.good preacher.com).
None of us know anything about heaven or about the resurrection, except through faith, so we are free to imagine all sorts of things. C. S. Lewis, the famous Christian writer, said he hoped heaven will be filled with good cigars that never burn up. Karl Barth, perhaps one of the greatest theologians who has ever lived in the modern world, loved the music of Mozart. He said, in heaven, the angels play the religious music of Bach when God is around, but they play Mozart when God isn’t listening.
Most of us who believe, have some image of heaven and resurrection in our minds and in our hearts. But the Bible is wise to remind us that heaven can’t actually be described in earthly terms. The apostle Paul wrote, “Eye has not seen nor has it ever entered into the human heart, what God has in store for those that love him.” Heaven, Resurrection of dead bodies, or Eternal life, are images of hope and final salvation that defy human imagination, except in some kind of the zombie-like images people imagine in the movies.
Because we imagine heaven by “faith, not by sight” the door is open for all kinds of speculation or doubt. It is the kind of speculation which is suggested in the Sadducees question about the woman who was married seven times to different brothers. The Sadducees skeptically ask Jesus, “In the Resurrection, whose wife will she be?” It really is not a bad question, and the answer Jesus gives is an even better answer. Jesus says that in heaven, marriage does not mean what it means ‘in this age’. People in heaven are not like people, because resurrected people don’t die, but are more like “angels” and are “children of God” (vs. 36). The point Jesus is making is not that we will not recognize each other, but that we will different. We have to be different if we are going to be ‘of the living” and no longer ‘of the dead’.
Of course, we’d all like to know more, wouldn’t we? How different would our lives be if we knew exactly what life is like on the other side? We really can’t say, but we can say what life is like without any hope of life on the other side. The apostle Paul told the Corinthians that: “If the dead are not raised, then we are miserable people, and our faith is in vain.” Faith demands hope, even hope of some kind of bodily resurrection. But in a world like ours, what good is Resurrection without marriage, without everything being just like it is here, and even without ‘sex’? O.K. I said it, yes where marriage and human relationships are not the same as they are now. What good is Heaven or resurrection without human sexuality?
All of us have imagined Heaven, or we’ve heard or read reports of people who claim to have been there and back through some sort of “Near Death Experience”. The late Bishop James Pike, in his book, The Other Side, shares several alleged conversations he had with his dead son Jim. On one of these occasions, the bishop and Jim were discussing Jim’s being in heaven and what it was like. Pike asked if Jim recognized persons there as individuals. Jim replied that he did, and added that he wanted to know more people and know them better. "Do you think of people as male and female?" asked the father. "Is there something like—like intimate expression?"
The terms of the answer seemed amusing. It was very much like his son, Jim. Without a pause: "Sex? Yes, there is sex. But it is not like it is here. It is not physical, of course, but actually there is less limitation. It is more obviously like what sex really means. Here you actually can enter the whole person. It is like you are in fact merging—becoming one" when you communicate. Can you imagine able to get into the heart and merge with everybody—to feel what they are feeling, to communicate perfectly, to understand everything together where there is no limit to true love and understanding? If you’ve been married to someone for a long time, and you have become soul mates, you can imagine how close people can become, knowing what the other thinks, coming out with the same questions, answers and responses. If you can imagine two people taking trips together, talking long walks, holding hands, sharing hearts over tea or coffee, even reaching out to make sure someone is there in the night---then you might be able to understand that what Jesus means is that heaven and resurrection is not less, but more of the best we can have on earth. “They are like angels” (This story is also from John Killinger’s sermon as cited above).
CAN JESUS GIVE US ANY ULTIMATE ANSWER?
But of course, everyone has not had loving, trusting, caring experiences on earth and it very hard for them to imagine such a place like this? It’s too hard to trust anyone or anything, even Jesus. Many who have come from broken families or go through broken relationships have difficulty with any kind of positive hope or promise. They live mostly in the now, seeking the ecstasy that will heal their unspoken pain---whether it is forbidden sex, drugs, over-indulgence of food and alcohol. Part of the reason so many live addicted to the extreme, demand constant entertainment, or have little discipline in their life at all, is because there is no peace or promise in their hearts.
I imagine the Sadducees as people like this. They were wealthy aristocrats. They knew so much and in a material way had so much, but they always fell short on the emotional and spiritual values of faith, hope and love. This is why we need to see that the Sadducees’ question wasn’t really about the resurrection. They already had their mind made up about that. They did not believe in any kind of after-life or resurrection. They were the wealthy who had their life here and now, with no thought past the physical realities of this life. They were closed-minded, dead-end thinkers, and had no time for someone like Jesus who opened up life to all kinds of new possibilities. They wanted what they wanted and wanted to keep things as they were. They did not want to let go of one single thread of what they had believed, even if it wasn’t working for everyone else. That Jesus came with a different kind of ‘authority’ was nothing less than a threat.
You can live a very sad existence when your life is only about you; only your wants, only your views, only about continuing your existence, and only being the honored guest at the party you only throw for yourself or your own. (Maybe this is why might also call them: “Sad You Sees”). These ‘Sad You Sees’ kind of people could not allow this “God man” Jesus to bring any new authority for their lives. Their own view of God was narrow focused, closed-minded, and self-centered. This is why, in response Jesus refused to tell them the source of his authority. “Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.” (20:8). In divine wisdom, Jesus knew that you can’t argue anyone into heaven nor can you argue ‘heaven’ into anyone. You can only share the good news and let people make up their own minds. This is why Jesus left the Sadducees to their own conclusions.
So what kind of ‘authority’ does Jesus really have in this world? In a world of anti-establishment, where the church is part of that establishment that is being rejected, what kind of real authority can Jesus have? In a world where many, even in the church, have their mind made up as to what they will and won’t believe and how they will or won’t follow Jesus. In a world like this, what kind of authority can Jesus have? When Jesus leaves the freedom to decide in our own hearts, what kind of authority is it that lets us be, does not tell us everything, but only offers us an invitation, but never forces anything upon us? “Tell us,” (Jesus), “by what authority do you do these things?” Jesus refuses: “Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things” (v.8). Can Jesus’ teaching, especially his silence on so many things that trouble our lives, give us reason enough to him be the ‘authority’ for us in our own world?
Once I worked with a young man who had a great heart for the problems of the world and he had potential to be a good leader. Though he came to our youth group, he told us that he thought Jesus and religion was something good in the past, but had no real relevance for life today. “We have moved on beyond Jesus”, he told me over and over. As he was about to graduate and leave the community for the university, I knew that it was impossible for me to convince him to follow Jesus. So, as he departed and we said our farewells, I told him, “Christian, I know that you have great promise for leadership in this world. I am praying for you. Even though you don’t believe in prayer like I do, I am praying. And I’m also praying for you that you will do better than Jesus.”
With a little shock, he asked, “What do you mean ‘better’ than Jesus.
I answered, “Well Christian, you said that Jesus is someone good in the past but not for life today and that we’ve moved on past him. Well, I’m just saying that there is some truth in what you say, for even in the Bible Jesus told his disciples that they would do greater works than he did. That’s what I hope from you…”greater works than Jesus”. I hope you will do something Jesus never could have done….
But I will add only one thing, I continued. If one day in the future, when you are going through a troubled time or you’re facing something you can’t see your way through, please also remember that Jesus did something for you that you, nor I, could ever do, no matter how good we are or what great thing we might accomplish. I challenge to do ‘better than Jesus’, but also I hope you will someday discover what Jesus did ‘better’ for you, and for the whole world.
We live in a time when people go toward two extremes about Jesus: One, to think of Jesus as the person who died just for me to give me comfortable life I can live on my own so I get to go to heaven when I die. The other extreme belief is that I have very little time to about Jesus at all in my everyday life, except to consider him good or great teacher who once lived, taught and died, but means little to my every day decisions. Neither of these are correct views of this Jesus who not only came once, but still comes to us. As the great Albert Schweitzer, who met Jesus in the midst of his own busy, successful life discovered and then became a missionary doctor in Africa. In a book entitled, The Quest for the Historical Jesus, written over 100 years ago, he wrote: “He comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lakeside, He came to those men who knew Him not. He speaks to us the same words: "Follow thou me!" and sets us to the tasks which He has to fulfill for our time. He commands. And to those who obey Him, whether they be wise or simple, He will reveal himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in His fellowship, and, as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience Who He is.” http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/518564-he-comes-to-us-as-one-unknown-without-a-name).
Did you catch that last line: “They shall learn in their own experience Who He is.” What Schweitzer knew about Jesus is why Jesus did not explain any more to these Sadducees. You can only know Jesus as you serve Jesus. Jesus is not some religious belief you can have in your heard or heart and then put back on a book shelf and forget. You might have heard something about Jesus, or came to believe something about him, but you did not meet Jesus. Jesus is living ‘one’ that captures you whole heart and life, or he has captured nothing at all. It is not at all important ‘who he was’, but the major importance is who is this one who lives in us as we live in and for him!
CAN WE LIVE AND LOVE THE QUESTIONS WE STILL HAVE?
We always live with unanswered questions about ‘heaven’ and about ‘Jesus’. The answers we have accepted into ourselves are in no way at the ‘final answers’. We have only been given ‘holy hints’, hints that are definitive clues which are alive and well, never completely answered, but always calling and compelling us to ‘come and see’, to ‘have faith in God,’ or to live a life of possibility by ‘asking, seeking, and knocking’ on the door of the most important questions humans ever ask. But remember, we never have all the answers we want. The Sadducees didn’t get all the answers they wanted from Jesus either. They didn’t even like the one they got. But this is not all bad, if you think about it. If heaven is real, and if the resurrection is still to come, then we living toward the final answers, not away from them. This is a promise, not a problem.
So are you ready to love and live the right questions? Once you answer a question, it’s dead. Jesus is the question who keeps on questioning us. “He comes to us as One Unknown….whom we know in our own experience of Who He is.” Are you living the right questions in your life? Jesus can reset your life, by pushing your buttons, if you let him. He can make you ask the right question, just like Bishop Pike’s son Jim did in a dream. The dead son told his Father in that dream, “Father, you on earth are the dead ones, we are the ones who are really alive.” I think Jesus was saying the same thing, when he said: “God is the God of the living, not the dead, for to him, all who have died are alive in him.”
Any more good questions? I sure hope so. The living of our lives and dying in faith depends on it. Amen.
