Sermon

GOD OF THE LIVING

A Sermon by Rev. James D. Brown

Market Square Presbyterian Church

November 11, 2007

Scripture: Psalm 98 and Luke 20:27-38

Earlier this week, before I had written this morning’s sermon, I had an interesting moment in the steam bath at the Y. Hold on—let me explain! I had gone for a late evening swim, and was winding up a long day in the steam bath, half asleep.

I heard a voice emanating from the cloud of steam filling the room. “Reverend, what are you preaching about on Sunday?” Those of you here this morning know the text from Luke, so you can imagine that I was soon wide awake trying to put into a sentence or two what I hoped my sermon might become once I wrote it.

“It’s a strange text,” I stammered. “It’s about some religious leaders who laid a trap for Jesus by asking him a no-win question. It had to do with a woman who had seven husbands—seven brothers, all of whom died. Then the woman died too. The question put to Jesus was basically, “To whom will the woman be married in heaven? The last brother? All seven?”

“What did Jesus say?” asked my companion across from me in that steam-filled room. “He said that the questioners were off base in trying to impose a view of this life on the afterlife, that life in heaven will not exactly mirror our everyday existence in heaven” To which my steam-room companion replied, “Jesus knew what he was doing.”

With that, I called it a day and slipped out of the steam bath, took a shower and headed home for bed. It wasn’t the best sermon synopsis I’ve ever given, but after all, I hadn’t even written the sermon yet.

Let’s take a closer look at the text. As we do so, I think you’ll agree that Jesus did know what he was doing.

Some Sadducees confronted Jesus with the intention of making him look bad. Their question had nothing to do with an honest search for meaning. They wanted to ensnare Jesus in the long-standing debate within the Jewish community over whether there was life after death.

The Sadducees represented aristocratic, wealthy families from whom the chief priests were drawn. Sadducees held that the only authoritative books of scripture were the first five, the Torah consisting of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. Since they found no direct reference in the Torah to resurrection, they held that this was not a tenet of their faith.

To the contrary, the party of the Pharisees included the prophets and other writings from Hebrew Scripture in their list of authoritative writings. They found references like the following one in Job as an indication that we belong to God in life and in death.

For I know that my Redeemer

lives,

and 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 [for myself],

and my eyes shall behold, and

not another.

While Hebrew Scripture—what we call the Old Testament—doesn’t contain a great number of references to resurrection, there are hints like Job’s cry of hope that this life is not the end for us mortals.

So there you have it. The debate between the Sadducees and the Pharisees was a hot topic in Jesus’ day—as it is for us. After all, it has to do with life and death and the great beyond. The question that follows is a set-up for Jesus—a classic no-win situation.

The question is as I recounted it in the steam bath. Seven brothers married the same woman in succession. All seven died, leaving the woman childless. Then she died.

“In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be?” Remember, the Sadducees didn’t believe in resurrection, so the question is truly loaded.

The point of reference is a passage from the Torah—Deuteronomy 25:5-6. It bears quoting:

When brothers reside together, and one of them dies and

has no son, the wife of the deceased shall not be married

outside the family to a stranger. Her husband’s brother

shall go into her, taking her in marriage, and performing

the duty of a husband’s brother to her, and the firstborn

whom she bears shall succeed to the name of the deceased

brother, so that his name shall not be blotted out of Israel.

Jesus’ response to the Sadducees gives ample evidence that he did know what he was doing. Let’s look at his answer in two parts. First, he distinguishes between this age and the age to come. In this life, marriage is important. We marry and are given in marriage. Our customs today are not like those spelled out in Deuteronomy when polygamy was the norm, but the manner in which we make our commitments to one another and keep them is still of the utmost importance. Jesus makes this clear.

Having noted this, I have to say that all of us have had our Sadducee moments when we have looked up and down our family tree and wondered how it will hold up in the final judgment, broken limbs and all. We have had to figure out which cemetery plots members of our family will be buried in when there has been divorce or death and then remarriage. How will all this play out in the life to come? We have to wonder.

Jesus’ answer is helpful. In the age to come, he says, we will neither marry nor be given in marriage. That comment alone calls into question the very question put to Jesus. One commentator, somewhat tongue in cheek, says that the Sadducees’ question seems to view the afterlife as being inhabited by resuscitated corpses living out the same dilemmas of this life, only further complicated by wings and white robes!”[1]

Jesus helpfully turns our self-centered world upside down. He says that in the age to come we will neither marry or be given in marriage. At first glance the very words seem a bit silly. Of course we won’t! But let’s be honest. We do have our questions about relationships carrying over from this life to the next. Otherwise, why would we pray so earnestly at memorial services about our longing “for glad heavenly reunion.”

The bottom line in Jesus’ teaching about the architecture of the after life is that resurrection life will not exactly mirror our life here. That seems obvious, but our human limitations tend to lock us into just such a mindset. But what really matters is whether there is or is not life with God beyond this life.

This takes us to the second part of Jesus’ answer. Jesus surprises his questioners by going to a text they held up as authoritative—and using it to make his case that there is the resurrection of the dead. Remember, only the Torah was held by the Sadducees to be authoritative. It is there that Jesus stands his ground, on a text from the 2^nd book of the Torah—Exodus 3:6.

Moses was tending his flock on the Sinai Peninsula while the Israelites were still in bondage to the Egyptian pharaoh. God called to him out of a burning bush in one of the most stirring encounters between God and a human being in all of Scripture. Moses knows himself to be on holy ground. He hears God speak: “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob.”

It is this passage that Jesus quotes to the Sadducees. In a manner that would have left them breathless, he uses this pivotal story out of Israel’s past to make the startling claim that if God is indeed the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, long since dead, then this must mean that they are in some fashion still alive to God.

This particular verse means everything to Jesus and to us. “For he is God not of the dead but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.” This takes us back to the issue of vantage point. From which angle do we view the whole matter of life and death and life after death? Today’s lesson is more about the nature of God than about how we humans perceive our own destinies. Abraham and Isaac and Jacob are alive to God.

I find this affirmation to be incredibly important. In this life we will never fully know the architecture of heaven or the anatomy of angels. What we can cling to is Jesus’ proclamation that the living and the dead are alive to God.

This has all sorts of implications for how we live our day to day lives. Let me use an illustration out of another of my experiences this week. It is directly connected. I had signed up, along with Carlin Wenger and Tom Johnston, to be among 100+ men who volunteered to read stories to grade school students in the Harrisburg public schools on Wednesday of this week

We met at Harrisburg High School at 7:15 in the morning, and after an orientation session we went off to respective assignments. I was sent to Foose Elementary School, where two of our members are on the faculty: Marianne Peters Flickinger and Karen Yoder Williams. I was asked to read a story to three third grade classes, one after the other.

Marianne steered me to a book about a girl named Grace, which I read to three wonderful classes of children who listened ever so intently. In the story Grace’s parents are divorced. Grace is saddened by the fact that hers is not a storybook family with a mom and dad and brother and sister—and a dog. Instead she has her mom and Nana and a cat named Paw Paw.

Her dad and stepmother live in Africa, and out of the blue her dad sent tickets for Grace and her Nana to come visit. The book is about the visit and Grace’s growing understanding, as her Nana puts it, that a family is what you make it. By book’s end Grace is turning the corner toward a deeper understanding of how she is to make the very best of the life that is before her.

I couldn’t help but be aware that among the children to whom I was reading there had to be a large number who shared Grace’s lament about other children’s storybook families and brokenness in their own. In what classroom setting would it not be the case that questions abound about death and divorce and a feeling of abandonment?

I loved the way the children talked with me about Grace and her determination to make the best of her life. And I admired the dedication of all three teachers with whom I was blessed to work for a short while on Wednesday morning. They are unsung heroes who deserve our thanks and praise for the ways they stand with our children day in and day out.

It’s what happened after class that most closely connects with today’s lesson about the God of the living found in Luke’s Gospel. After I read the story for the third time I headed upstairs to say hello to Karen Williams. As I walked down a corridor one of the classes in which I had read was making its way toward me. I stepped to the side, and a young girl left the line she was in and came and stood in front of me. I should say at this point that I had been introduced to her class as a minister. She knew my vocation, and that is why she sought me out.

Her head barely above my waist, she looked way up into my eyes, hesitated for just second, and then said, as clear as a bell, “My baby sister died. Can you pray for her?”

I reached out instinctively and put my hand on her shoulder. Her teacher glanced our way, and I could tell by the look on her face that she knew exactly what was transpiring between me and this young girl with an angelic face.

“What’s your sister’s name?” I asked her. She told me. I replied that I would pray for her. She nodded and said thank you, and off she went with her classmates and teacher.

Dearly beloved, the only way I can pray for her sister and mean it is to claim as my own Jesus’ pronouncement that our God is the God of the living, and that for our God, all are alive—especially this little girl’s baby sister.

In his response to the Sadducees Jesus knew what he was doing. My friend in the steam bath got that right. So must we.