Jerusalem, We Have a Problem – sermon on November 6, 2016
Luke 20: 27-38 Some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came to him and asked him a question, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies, leaving a wife but no children, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother. Now there were seven brothers; the first married, and died childless; then the second and the third married her, and so in the same way all seven died childless. Finally the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her.” Jesus said to them, “Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. Indeed they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection. And the fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed, in the story about the bush, where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.”
Sermon: Jerusalem, We Have a Problem by Rev. Doreen Oughton
Do people know what a meme is? Not quite a cartoon, but some picture and words that are supposed to be witty. Like posters you might have hung in your room, they are now posted on-line. I’ve been noticing some anti-religion memes lately. There’s the one that says, “If there’s no God, then who wrote the bible, huh? Checkmate, Atheists!” Or the one that says, “Sure.. a guy builds a boat and fits two of every kind of animal on it, but you think evolution is ridiculous.” Or the picture of the sweet-faced smiling young woman with the caption “God loves you so much that he created hell just in case you don’t love him back.” And there’s the one with Gene Wilder in his Willie Wonka outfit and the caption, “So, you’re religious. Tell me about your imaginary friend.”
This is the tone that the Sadducees are taking with Jesus – a little smug, mocking, wanting to point out the inconsistencies in his teaching, but not in any sincere, dialectical way. They want to embarrass him. Now the Sadducees know they have a problem. They think that Jesus is their problem. Jesus has been teaching in the Temple the past few days. He has arrived with the multitudes of religious pilgrims there for the Holy Days. He arrived on a donkey through the back gate of the city to waving palms and shouts of Hosanna. He created a ruckus at the tables selling animal sacrifices, accusing people of turning this house of prayer into a den of thieves. And the religious leaders are not pleased. Luke tells us that the leading priests, which would be the Sadducees, along with teachers of the law and other leaders, are plotting to kill him. Why? What is it about him that has them feeling so threatened? Well, not only is he challenging their authority and integrity, he’s got others people listening to him.
Jesus sees that the Sadducees have a problem, only he sees a different problem. In the account of this story in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus says right to them, “Your mistake is that you don’t know the Scriptures, and you don’t know the power of God.” That’s what their problem is. They don’t even understand the scriptures on which they base their beliefs, and even worse, they don’t understand about the power of God. They don’t believe in the resurrection, because in their understanding, no mention is made of it in the Pentateuch – the first 5 books of the bible, the books of Moses. Those are the only books that matter to the Sadducees. It’s where all those ritual practices are detailed – the set up of the holy of holies, the type of fabric to be used, the requirements of a perfect animal for sacrifice, the cleanliness, as well as those 613 commandments that they may well know by heart.
And so to them, once you are dead, you’re dead. You only go around once, so you might as well live your life to the fullest. Even churchgoers who, on Sundays, will sing praises to the resurrected one or partake of the bread and cup in anticipation of the heavenly banquet that awaits us, will still harbor some doubts about that. Our daily lives, our actions and attitudes, suggest we believe otherwise. I have to confess I stand convicted in one of my favorite quotes from a Mary Oliver poem – “What will you do with your one wild and precious life?”
And when we harbor this belief, that this life is all we’ve got, we turn our attention toward leaving a legacy. We want our lives to make a difference, to mean something. We want at least to be remembered. “We will never forget you,” we solemnly promise too-soon deceased friends in eulogies and still-active Facebook pages, never pausing to ponder how long, realistically, our own memories will last. We erect monuments, name buildings, and endow chairs. Those of us who have children take some comfort that at least our family story will be continued. In fact, this Levirite marriage law that the Sadducees base their question on is about keeping one’s name alive beyond one’s death. And it also gave some protection to women, giving them a household to belong to when their husband died. But there can be a selfishness to this preoccupation with leaving a legacy, ensuring we will be remembered. Spouses and children become just a means for our own ends, exploitative. It might come in the form of pressuring our children to give us grandchildren. Or manipulating them to take over the business you started, or at least carry on the same traditions that you kept up for your parents, whether you wanted to or not. In short, we cling. Like the Sadducees, we don’t understand the power of God. We don’t trust that life goes on for us as well as others after we pass from this world.
Jesus can easily put up with the mockery, because he knows the power of God. He knows that God is the God of life ever-lasting. He directs his challengers back to their holy scriptures, to Moses who encounters the burning bush that declared I AM the god of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob; not I WAS their God. A dead person has no God. God is not God to the dead, and so, Jesus assures them, indeed Abraham and Isaac and Jacob live. And where they live, women aren’t passed off for “protection,” don’t need to be anyone’s wife in order to belong, but are equally part of the family of God. You don’t need to procreate to keep the family line going – for you live, like angels, children of the resurrection.
In the kindom of the age to come, our worth comes not from what we have done, or because of our legacies, or by how many people remember us, but because of what Christ has done, what God has done. When we trust Christ’s saving actions, we can stop looking to our relationships as extensions of ourselves, stop using them to further our own agendas. We have been baptized children of God, and we can lean on that relationship to find our true identity – one of eternal worth. Instead of looking to leave a legacy, we can focus on becoming a living legacy to Christ – his living body in and for this world as long as we are in it.
The Sadducees had a problem, but they didn’t even know what it was. The teachings of Jesus did not need to be a threat to them. They were meant to save them, to bring them closer to God, to help them begin to live into the eternal life that was at hand. In what ways are we like the Sadducees? Do we perceive threat where Christ promises life – in welcoming the stranger, in sharing what we have, in self-sacrificial love, in letting go of our legacy aspirations? Jerusalem, Leicester, we have a problem, and Jesus is the solution. May it be so.
