God of the Living - 11/6/22

Sermon 2022.11.06. "God of the Living" (Luke 20:27-38) M. Newheart, FBC, East Greenwich, RI

Today we are observing All Saints Day. We have read the names of our members who have died in the last year. And you have named others. In my ministry career, people often ask me if they will be able to recognize their loved ones in heaven. Jesus faces a similar question from the Sadducees.

When Jesus was in Galilee, his primary opponents were the Pharisees. When Jesus went to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover, his opponents were the Sadducees. The Sadducees were made up primarily of wealthy priests, who did not believe in angels, demons, or the resurrection, as Luke says here. The Sadducees did not only bother Jesus, but they also bothered Paul, when he was on trial (Acts 23:7-8). Luke does not present the Sadducees in a very good light. He says that they didn't believe in the resurrection, yet they asked Jesus about the resurrection. These were not people of integrity.

But here in chapter 20, we have three stories in a row of people testing Jesus, attempting to trip him up. First, while Jesus was teaching in the temple, the chief priests, scribes, and elders came up and asked him where his authority came from. He refused to tell them and instead told them the parable of the vineyard. Then the chief priests sent spies to trap Jesus; they asked him about paying taxes to the emperor, and Jesus wiggled out of their grasp and said, "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's" (Luke 20:25). Once again, Jesus escaped from their trap. Yay! Way to go, Jesus! You showed them! Then the Sadducees came. We know what's going to happen: These folks were going to try to trip Jesus up, and Jesus was going to best them.

So, the Sadducees—They were so sad, you see--The Sadducees called Jesus Teacher, just like the spies had done when they asked Jesus that taxing question. But they didn't want to be taught by Jesus, they wanted to trap Jesus so that they could hand him over to Pilate, with whom they were in cahoots. The Romans were able to maintain control over their empire because they put in place local yokels to govern. The Sadducees held the majority on the council that controlled Judaism and the temple. But in the temple in Jesus’ day, sacrifice was made not only to God but to the emperor, who at that time was Tiberius. The temple authorities compromised so that they could stay in power.

So the Sadducees asked Jesus a question about the resurrection, which they didn't believe in. They asked Jesus a question about marital relationships in the afterlife. This question is not as farfetched as it might seem. Over their lifetime, people often have more than one spouse. Not more than one at a time, but consecutively, over their lifetime. People die, people are divorced. People acquire new mates. As I have traveled across the country serving interim pastorates, I sometimes think that I need a scorecard to sort out the various familial relationships in the churches. Joe is Bob's son, and Anna is Bob’s wife, but Joe is Anna's stepson, and Patty is Dick's ex-daughter-in-law, and they are still close. You get the idea.

Sometimes we think that these multiple partners over a lifetime is a modern phenomenon, but it's not. As the Sadducees said--and it's interesting to me that Jesus' enemies always speak with one voice. Did they practice? OK, altogether now, "Teacher, Moses wrote for us--" No, Thaddeus, you're falling behind. Keep up!

Nevertheless, the Sadducees rightly noted that Moses, writing over a thousand years before Jesus, said that if a married man dies childless, then his brother should marry the widow. This is all written down--supposedly by Moses--in the 25th chapter of Deuteronomy, the fifth book in the Old Testament. Now Moses doesn't say anything about the widow not wanting to marry the brother. "Not that good-for-nothing brother! Oooh! I'd rather die!" Moses doesn't say anything about that. He does say that if the brother doesn't want to marry the widow, she is supposed to remove his sandal and spit in his face, in front of everybody! This is serious stuff! Serious!

But the Sadducees, who were just sad sacks, didn't take any of this seriously. They were playing with it to trap Jesus. And so they talked about an absurd situation, in which seven brothers married a woman consecutively, and each one of them died childless, and then the woman died. [S #9] She probably died of exhaustion after caring for these seven dying brothers. The question of the Sadducees is, In the resurrection, whose wife shall she be?

When Jesus heard this question, he put on Facebook an eye-rolling emoji, and he typed SMH, shaking my head. Then he said, "You knuckleheads! The present age on the one hand and the coming resurrection age are two vastly different things. For example, in this age you marry, and you are given in marriage. But in the resurrection, it is a whole new ballgame. Marriage and death are no more. In the resurrection, believers are like angels.” Jesus didn't say that the righteous dead become angels, flying around strumming their harps, making beautiful music. No, believers are like angels in that they are children of God. After death, believers have an intimate relationship with God and with one another. Jesus didn't describe that idea in much detail. Say more, Jesus. Tell us what the afterlife is like. What are these heavenly bodies and spiritual bodies that Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians 15? What is he talking about, Jesus? Teacher, teach us!

But Jesus doesn't teach us anymore than he taught the Sadducees. Instead, he said to those bad-you-see Sadducees, "You want to talk about Moses, let's talk about Moses. Let's talk about the burning bush. What did Moses call God? He called God the God of Abraham--and Sarah, the God of Isaac--and Rebekah, the God of Jacob--and Rachel. The Lord is not God of the dead but of the living. To God, all of these people--Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Rachel--all of them are alive. There is a permeable boundary between the living and the dead, between heaven and earth.

And yes, yes, it is All Saints' Day. We are celebrating it today. All saints--that is, all who are in Christ--are still alive to God. The names of the people that we read a few minutes ago are still alive to God--and to us. We can talk with them, and they can talk with us. Back in the 90s, when Bill Clinton was president, First Lady Hillary said that she would talk with Eleanor Roosevelt, who had left the White House and this life many years before. A lot of people criticized her for that. I'm sure they talked with their dead parents and grandparents and said, "Can you believe that she said that? I thought that you and I had a special thing going. It turns out we don't."

I want to be careful here. I do not want to deny the reality of death. The people whom we honor today no longer exist on this earthly plane. They are dead, deceased, gone from this life. But in the spirit, they are alive. We can be inspired by their example. We can learn from their mistakes. And they did make mistakes. Part of honoring the dead is to admit that they weren't perfect. They were human. We acknowledge their humanity, just as we acknowledge ours. Sometimes we are angry with our deceased loved ones. We can tell them that. We can write them a letter, or we can imagine them sitting in a chair beside us, and we can tell them how we feel. If you do such an exercise, please get in the other chair, and speak as your deceased loved one. What do they have to say? How do they respond to your anger, your tears, your grief? The dead still speak—through you.

We will soon celebrate communion. We also celebrate the communion of the saints. All the saints are here with us, and they share communion with us, symbolically taking the bread and the cup. In other words, our communion crosses boundaries between the living and the dead. Perhaps the best illustration of this idea is the ending to the 1984 movie "Places in the Heart," which is set in depression-era Texas. The movie ends in a country church. The pastor reads from 1 Corinthians 13, then the choir sings, "In the Garden." The plates are passed for communion. First comes the plate with little cubes of white bread, and immediately after comes a plate of cups with grape juice. The camera follows the communion plates. We see a couple seated on the front row. Ed Harris portrays the man, and we have just seen him kicked out of the house by the woman who now sits beside him and grasps his hand. We also see Danny Glover, who has just left the community. As a black man, he would not have been welcome in a church at that time and place. And we see the other stars: John Malkovich, who plays a blind man, Sally Field, who won best actress for this role. Then there are two characters who have both died previously in the movie. One is white, and one is black. The black man has accidentally killed the white man, and the KKK has killed the black man, but here they are in the church sitting side by side serving communion to one another. The black man says to the white man, "The peace of God." And that is the end of the movie.

Yes, the peace of God is with us, the peace of Christ, as we celebrate communion. As you pass the plates to one another here, perhaps you will imagine that you are passing it to folks who have gone before. The peace of Christ, the peace of God, the God who is God of the living.

And all God's people said, Amen.