11/7/04

God of the Living

Job 19:23-27a
2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17
Luke 20:27-38

Jesus had a knack for getting himself into sticky situations, didn't he? - and for getting out of them! As in his situation with the Sadducees today. These learned religious leaders were looking for a fight - crusin' for a bruisin' - and they intentionally laid a trap to ensnare this Galilean trouble-maker. If they made him look ridiculous in front of his followers, they thought, then these folks might lose faith in him, and he'd be less of a threat to the establishment.

The Sadducees were the religious conservatives of their day. They believed that only the first five books of the Bible were divinely inspired, and they interpreted them literally. They rejected all notions of an after-life, and also discounted any hope in the coming of a Messiah. They advocated complete cooperation with the Roman government, even to the point of adopting Roman culture - quite contrary to the rest of Judaism that preferred separation from society.

Their question to Jesus is based on a law found in Deuteronomy that decreed that a man should marry his brother's widow to assure that the family line continued. They painted a ridiculous picture of a woman with seven husbands in the resurrection, intending to show the absurdity of life after death. Jesus cleverly responds to them in two ways. First, he tries to correct their twisted view of life after death. The quality of resurrected life is quite different, he says, from that of this life. In the other realm folks are freed from all the mundane necessities that are part of our life now. Jesus isn't knocking the institution of marriage, nor is he saying that life now is necessarily inferior to the life to come - it will just be different, because after we die, we will be different. Second, he continues his response, quoting from Exodus - one of those first five books that the Sadducees liked - when God speaks to Moses in the burning bush, and makes a self-referral as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Jesus logically concludes that there must be a resurrection, since God is not God of the dead, but God of the living, and since God was speaking in the present tense - thus, these men must still be alive, living in the resurrection. Choosing Moses as the exemplar of belief in the resurrection is a positively brilliant argument on Jesus' part, and the Sadducees are impressed. Jesus has met them on their own turf, and has proven himself a worthy adversary. (i) We can almost hear them say, "Good answer, Jesus. Good answer."

What can we learn from this rather confusing episode? First, I would suggest a persuasive case has been made that there is something beyond, something after this life. A resurrection is promised by our Lord, and we are heirs to that divine inheritance. Our God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, loves each of us individually. Each person, whether living or dead, is precious in God's sight. ach of us shares in God's eternity. This is what is behind All Saints' Day. We remember those who have gone before us, and we rejoice that they are now part of what we sometimes call the Church Triumphant. Yet, many of us are unsure about an after-life; we'd like to believe, but we're skeptical. Many of us fear death - the process of dying, not being able to live out a full life, the dread of nothingness, the dread of extinction - death is one of humanity's oldest fears. There is a certain benefit in fearing death, because if we didn't fear it and fight it, our world would have been depopulated ages ago. There is a strong motivation in preserving life. But for the person of faith, the fear of death is unfounded. We may feel sad at the thought of leaving this life, but our faith urges us to be joyful at the thought of where we are going after this life.

We really don't know much about heaven or about life after death, but the Bible does give us quite a bit to hang our hopes on. In the life eternal we will be with our Lord, and we've learned that where Jesus is there is light, love, peace, and joy. There is no darkness in the life beyond, because Christ is the light shining eternally. There is no hunger, because Christ is the bread of life; no sorrow, for it is God who wipes away all our tears. Jesus says to the Sadducees and to us: "Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all ... are alive." God of the living ... all are alive - we can't fully understand this; it's more than our minds can comprehend, and in the end, it's a mystery. But the Christian faith affirms loudly and clearly that there is life after death, there is a resurrection, and God's love makes it possible.

The second thing we can learn from our lesson today is also good news for all of us - not only is there life after death, but there's also life after birth, because Jesus Christ liberates us to live life now! For sure, we're concerned about life after death. Some Christians spend a lot of energy wondering about the Second Coming and the end of this age. Others of us wonder what heaven will be like, whether we or our loved ones will end up there, etc. Nothing wrong with such speculation, but our primary concern as Christians needs to be with the here and now, what we do with our lives here and now, between the now and the then. This is where God charges us to live fully, and to work with one another to bring about mercy and justice, to be concerned about the poor, to be concerned about war and peace, to serve others, to care for the environment, to love one another, to reflect the light of Christ in our daily lives, to spread the good news, to resist the powers of evil as best we can.

God wills for all of us a full life before death, but some of us meander through our lives without much of a sense of purpose or meaning, getting through each day - and that's about it - oblivious that life is intended to be so much more. Others of us have heard God calling us to a higher purpose for our lives, but we hesitate when we discover that any worthy purpose has a cost attached. (ii) Others of us follow the false gods of success, stifling spontaneity, creativity, and imagination for the sake of forcing ourselves into narrow patterns of success. We may look back upon our earlier days before our straitjackets had begun to pin us down as times of foolish dreams, but actually, they may have been times when we were more fully alive. Some of us have "arrived," but in the process we may have somehow lost ourselves. (iii)

There are other things that often prevent us from living as fully and as freely as God intends. Some of us are held back by economic constraints. It's hard enough if we lose a job or have unexpected expenses to just make ends meet, to provide for the basic necessities. But when we lose sight of the abiding presence of God who can redeem these and other kinds of rough times, who can give us strength to get through them, who can sustain us in the turbulence of stormy seas, who can bring us assurance of hope for the future, then we are doubly constrained.

Others of us are entrapped by physical, mental, or emotional disabilities that hold us down and prevent us from living life fully. I read about a painting that hangs in a museum in the Midwest that is entitled, "Waiting for the Chinook." In the painting a cow is trapped in a deep snow drift during a blizzard, and she is obviously unable to move. The cow's only hope is a "Chinook," a warm wind that blows across the plains, sweeping away drifts and freeing trapped animals as if by magic. But, huddled in the back of the scene also trapped is a pack of starving wolves. The message is clear. The warm wind hoped for to free the cow will also free her enemy, thus substituting one kind of death for another. (iv)

Life is sometimes like this for us, isn't it? We can be trapped by an illness, disability, or handicap of one kind or another, and yet even trapped, we may feel kind of safe and secure, and may worry that being freed from it would only bring on further dangers of a different kind. So we often prefer to remain paralyzed, trapped in ways that we may choose or may not choose, seemingly unable to extricate ourselves.

Job, the Old Testament character who epitomizes faith in the midst of suffering, is the patron saint of all of us who've ever felt that life has dealt us a bad hand, ever felt entrapped in our own shortsightedness, entrapped in our success or in our poverty, in our physical condition or in our mental state. In spite of Job's terrible suffering that includes loss of family, friends, and possessions, and incredibly painful afflictions, he still "hangs in there" with God. For sure, at times he becomes angry with God, at times he plummets to the depths of despair, but he never completely loses his faith. Even when faced with death, Job holds out for vindication, if not in this life, then in the next. And in our passage today, in the midst of suffering, he utters a victory cry that mocks the power of death: "I know that my Redeemer lives!"

Indeed, the power of death can be just as strong during those years after our first breath as at the time of our last breaths. A living death can be terribly destructive and must be fought just as tenaciously as we fight physical death. What is necessary to fight and ultimately conquer the suffocating power of living death is a strong faith in the God of the living, in the Living Christ; an openness to God's redeeming, transforming power, and a willingness to use our God-given gifts to make this world a better place. We have heard two affirmations of the Good News this morning. One is that there is something after this life, that there is life after death, and God's love makes it possible. We are able to boldly declare with the Apostle Paul: "For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." (v) That, my friends, is a powerful affirmation. The second affirmation is that there is something in this life, that there is life after birth, and that God's love makes this possible also. We are able to declare confidently with Job: "I know that my Redeemer lives!" - and because Jesus Christ is Lord and God of the Living, we can begin life anew, right now, and live it fully for the rest of our days. Praise be to God! Amen.

The Pilgrim Church of Duxbury
Rev. Kenneth C. Landall

i John Killinger, A Devotional Guide to Luke, p. 112.
ii Hoover Rupert, Dorans Ministers Manual, 1984, p. 191.
iii David E. Roberts, ibid., p. 258.
iv Pulpit Resource, 11/6/83.
v Romans 8:38.