November 10, 2013

Season of the Saints

Soli Deo Gloria!

Have you ever found yourself in this situation?  You have something difficult to discuss with someone, and you beat all around the bush before you get to your point.

Or how about this?  Someone has a beef with you, and instead of getting to the point, they first feel the need to wear you down, to bring up the past, to try to trip you up, everything but get to the point so perhaps the disagreement can be solved.

In our home, we call it ‘and another thing’.  Instead of saying, “I wish you’d do more around the house,” the conversation would start with,  “Why do you take so long in the bathroom?” , “And another thing – I hate your friends.” or “And another thing – (our all time favorite) – you smell!”  Everything but what was really bothering the person.

The ‘another things’ quickly became hilarious, and the opportunity for a lot of silly ‘ranking’ on each other, with each one trying to out do the other in ‘and another things’.  We knew we were being silly, and we saw it as an opportunity to disperse anger.

We weren’t at all like the Sadducees.  Most of the time, we weren’t out to get each other, to trap each other in saying something that we could then point to and say ‘aha!’ or, in the case of trying to trap Jesus, “Don’t listen to him!  He doesn’t know what he’s talking about!”

This 20th Chapter in Luke is all about the Sadducees trying to trap Jesus in saying something that would incontrovertibly prove to the dumb, gullible Pharisees, peasant, poor folk, unwashed, foreigners, that this Jesus they were all pinning their hopes on was nothing more than a two bit country preacher, making claims that he couldn’t prove and promises he couldn’t keep.

The Sadducees were the legalistic ones among the Jerusalem priests.  They followed only what was written in the Law, rejecting oral tradition.  They would have loved the bumper sticker that proclaims, God said it, I believe it, that settles it.  If it wasn’t written in the Torah, the sacred writings, there was no need to give any credence to some upstart’s interpretation of the Law, daring to breathe life into the Law, daring to turn Law into Gospel, into Good News, into grace.  Just who did this Jesus think he was?

So the Sadducees ask Jesus one more question that is the focus of our reading this morning, an ‘ and another thing’ after trying and failing to trap Jesus in an answer that might reveal that he was not the prophet and the hope the people thought him to be. Sadducees told stories like this one to ridicule the belief in resurrection and life after death. How can the dead be raised, if they can't tell who is married to whom? Jesus settles the argument answering that the book of Exodus teaches the resurrection, describing Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as "alive to God." And as if to confirm the point, our Lord goes to the cross and is raised from the dead, in a surprising reversal of all those arguments that would seek to challenge God's power to make all things new.

Jesus in a few words, preaches an Easter sermon.  He doesn’t dwell on the legal rubrics, but rather on a God who is alive and loving, who will come to us, when our resurrection happens, in ways that are surprising and unexpected.  This is the God who takes what is dead and makes alive.

We too have to be careful with Jesus’ words, because they are full and have been used to denounce priest’s marrying, or the belief that when we die we become angels.  The point isn’t to find ‘and another thing’, but to remember that we are children of the light, born again into a loving relationship with God and with each other, and that fact makes all the difference in how we relate to God and to each other.

That love dares us to be generous, dares us to take a chance, just as God takes a chance with each one of us.  We are reminded – while we were still in our sins, Jesus came to die for us.

God didn’t wait for us to be perfect.  He doesn’t wait for us to believe in Jesus.  God comes to us, in story, in water, in bread and wine, and challenges us to look at ourselves, look at each other, in a new light.

Jesus, like Job, surrounded by hostility, unbelief, despair, lost hope, still dares to proclaim life, still dares to speak of a God whose love will remain with each one of us, even as we are called through death into life everlasting.

I know that my redeemer lives, Job wants to write, with an iron pen (the most durable substance known at the time) engraving into a rock – I KNOW THAT MY REDEEMER LIVES.

And that’s what makes all the difference – in this life and the next.

Amen.