22nd Sunday after Pentecost (Year C) - November 10, 2019

22nd Sunday after Pentecost
Year C
November 10, 2019
Luke 20:27-38

Our gospel reading for today is another peculiar text from the Gospel of Luke. Jesus, again, is having an argument with the religious establishment of his day. People who don’t believe in resurrection ask Jesus a question about resurrection. Just to put some context around the text: the Sadducees were one of the main Jewish sects of Jesus’ day. They only considered Torah, the first five books of the Bible, to be scripture. Because neither the prophets, nor the psalms were considered scripture, the Sadducees rejected the idea of the resurrection of the dead. So they challenge Jesus on this. (Pharisees, however, accepted the authority of the Prophets and the Psalms and accepted the idea of the resurrection of the dead).

And their question, perhaps striking modern listeners as disturbing, revolves around the ownership of a nameless woman in the afterlife. After seven marriages, becoming a widow seven times, and remaining childless before dying herself, “Whose wife will the woman be?” For Jesus, the question misses the point of resurrection. The question assumes that resurrection is less resurrection (new life) but immortality. The question assumes that what comes after this life is the same as this current life. The question assumes that the woman will still be bound by the patriarchy that she was bound to in life. The question assumes that the woman’s value is bound up in the value of her husbands and in her fertility (or in this case her infertility). It assumes that what the woman was bound to in her life is the same thing that will bind her in the resurrection. In other words, resurrection life is assumed to look a whole lot like the life of “this age.”

The Sadducees try to trap Jesus with this question about resurrection that they don’t believe in. They don’t seem to actually care about what will happen to this hypothetical woman (who likely represents, at least in some way, some actual women, even if this is an extreme example – what happens to a woman who dies husbandless and childless?). They don’t care about her any more in death than they would have in her life; she’s merely property (unattached, unclaimed property). In this hypothetical scenario, proposed to Jesus, she finds no value in this world or the next.

While this particular example may not resonate with us, I do think that we often imagine resurrection and the “next age” to look a whole lot like this world as it is – without the bad, hard, or hurtful stuff, of course. But we tend to imagine it in ways that we see our world as it is. And that’s normal and natural; this world is our frame of reference. One of my favorite comedians is a comedian out of Australia, Adam Hills. Much of his content, well, let’s just say would not be appropriate for this context. But he has this sketch as part of his Characterful and Joymonger show in which he talks about heaven. He says, “I have a theory. I think if you spend your life doing what you love, and then you die doing what you love, you will spend the rest of eternity doing whatever it is that you love. If there’s any truth to that then, right now, Steve Irwin is up in heaven poking angels with sticks.” In all seriousness, there’s a comfort in thinking of heaven in this way; we want to see our loved ones how we remember them. We want to think of them finding joy on the golf courses of heaven or in the woodshops in heaven, or whatever it may be. We want to think of our pets chasing after rabbits.

While I can’t tell you what resurrection looks like; I can tell you that it brings me great comfort to imagine Pap hanging out with Aunt Eleanor, teasing one another, having a good time – without the aches and pains that plagued them in the last years of their lives. What I can tell you is that, in God, those who have died before us have found new life in Christ – whatever that might look like. There’s something different going on in the text than imagining Pap playing Pinochle at the card tables of heaven.

But there too is a danger in mirroring the Kingdom of God with the world as it is. Too often in American Christianity, we imagine a world with the same boundaries, the same designations of who is in and who is out, that exist in this world. In fact, so often we justify those boundaries in this world between those we consider “us” and those we consider to be “them” supposedly match what where we think God puts those boundaries. Too often American Christianity wants to claim that certain people are not loved by God (or are not worthy of God’s love) and thus don’t have a place in the resurrection. American Christianity treats resurrection as something we can do, that we can work toward, and conversely, the new life found in the resurrection is something that we can be excluded from because of “sin.” I hear too often that our LGBTQIA+ folks are “out”, that they’ve placed themselves out of the boundaries of God’s love because of their so-called life-style choices. We use the boundaries of this world to imagine the boundaries on God’s love and on what the resurrection looks like (the reality is that those boundaries are ours, not God’s).

Too often in American Christianity, we imagine a world in which those with power sill have power, and the ones in poverty are still in poverty. The Prosperity Gospel espoused by so many of the most prominent American Pastors, from Paula White to Joel Osteen, says that your status in life reflects your standing with God. If only you had enough faith, if only you trusted enough in God, God would reward you with health, wealth, and happiness. For people on the outside, as a society, we tend to imagine that what binds one in this world will bind them in the resurrection. This is the danger that the Sadducees found themselves in. Their idea of resurrection, looks like the same old boundaries and oppressions found in this world repeated in the Kingdom of God.

In focusing on the hypotheticals of what resurrection looks like, who is in and who is out, they (and perhaps we too in our own way) neglect what resurrection means and how it impacts the present. Whatever life after this one “looks like,” I think Jesus points us to a deeper truth of what resurrection means. I’d translate Jesus’ response like this: “for they are not able to die again, for they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection… Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him, all are alive.” Resurrection brings us into relationship with the one who is the God of life. And through that God all are made alive.

Resurrection and resurrected life is so radically different from what we’ve come to expect from this world. It is, as so often heard in the Gospel of Luke, this world turned on its head. It is a gift, freely given, not because of who we are or what we do but because of who Christ is and because of what Christ does for us. Resurrection is about Christ’s conquering of death and evil on Easter Sunday. It is about Christ’s redemption not just for us but for all people. Resurrection is about how Christ is continuing to be active in this world, bringing about life where we might expect to find death. The ways of the world that are death dealing, the boundaries that divide us, our sin that pushes us to participate in the harmful ways of the world, the voices that try to claim that some are less worthy of God’s love than others – none of these any longer can claim the last word. In speaking about Christ’s resurrection, Pastor Cindy Gregorson writes, “Resurrection is unpredictable. We think we know how the story ends. When people are killed and buried, they are dead. That is the end. The political power and show of the day, the Roman Empire had triumphed. The Jewish leaders had protected their understanding of faith and God. But God, in the act of resurrecting Jesus was proclaiming, ‘I am not done!’ There is more, and this more will change everything you think and understand about life and how the world works.”

By Christ’s death and resurrection, it is God’s love and God’s life that have the final word. In Christ, something new is breaking into this world – a new creation, a resurrected creation that seeks to break down every wall and barrier bringing about new life not just for me, not just for my Pap, but for all people – especially the ones on the margins, the ones most harmed by the ways of this world. Everything is about to change. Resurrection isn’t a mirror of this world; it is a transformed world. A transformed world by the life found in Jesus.

In our baptisms, we’ve been united with Christ not just in his life, not just in his death, but also in his resurrection. We get to live lives marked by the promises of resurrection. We are already children of the resurrection. We trust that Christ works through us as we work for the Kingdom of God in this world. We get to be Christ for the sake of the world, breaking down boundaries between us and our neighbor, proclaiming and naming the love that God has for all of God’s beloved children – from our neighbors who are impoverished, to our LGBTQIA+ siblings, to our immigrant and refugee neighbor. We get to be part of the new life that God intends for the world. My friend and colleague, Josh Evans puts it this way,

“This is what it means to practice resurrection and be children of the resurrection: In our baptismal covenant, we promise to strive toward the peace, justice, and wholeness of all creation, to actively seek to heal the brokenness of the world, to be open to the new things God is doing in our midst… If God is a God of the living and we are made in God’s image, then we are a people of the living, called to serve and to love the living. We are God’s beloved children…children of the resurrection. So for God’s sake, and for the sake of this weary world, let’s live like it.”

So for God’s sake, and for the sake of this weary world, let’s live like it.

Amen.