25 Pentecost C 27 November 6, 2016
Job 19:23-27a Psalm 17:1-9
2 Thes.2:13-3:5 Luke 20:27-38
Lectionary Link
In Abraham Lincoln's first inaugural address, he implored that the union of our country be touched again by the better angels of our nature. We certainly have seemed to lost the touch of the better angels of our nature in this long presidential campaign which has been so long, it seems to have started in 2012.
In Abraham Lincoln's first inaugural address, he implored that the union of our country be touched again by the better angels of our nature. We certainly have seemed to lost the touch of the better angels of our nature in this long presidential campaign which has been so long, it seems to have started in 2012.
The bad news of democracy, as Churchill said, it is the worst of all forms of government except for all other forms of government that has been tried from time to time. So, we long to be touched by the better angels of our nature; but according to the words of Jesus from the Gospel today, we will not achieve our angel nature until the resurrection. So we have lots to look forward to, even as we pray that we might as a country begin to access our angel nature in our efforts today to work for the common good of all of our citizenry and beyond our borders as a witness to what needs to be angelic in universal behaviors within our world.
The Bible lessons appointed for our reading today present us with some universal truths of human nature within the details of life situations where they first had a reading and listening audience. While details of life situations change, the universal truths of human nature remain the same and they are very relevant to our lives today.
Probably what every person who is born desires at various times is someone who can stand up for them. Each or us needs an advocate. Even the most talented among us who has great individual gifts, is still not an island. Each person needs someone else to make our case. The biblical Job was a very sad man; some terrible things had happened to him. He in fact lost everything in his life, except his life. And all of his friends believed that bad things would not happen to good people, and that meant that Job must have done something bad to deserve his misfortune, even if he did not know what it was.
Job was frustrated with all of the accusations of his friends. He wanted someone to stand up for him. He knew he was not perfect but he could not see a one to one correspondence between his harsh punishment and the deeds of his life. Job was wondering, "Where is my advocate? Where is my lawyer? Where is my redeemer? If I cannot find any person to defend me, I will have faith in God to defend me." And so we have the great cry of faith by Job, "I know my redeemer lives." The Hebrew word for redeemer could mean in our setting today an advocate or even lawyer. I know that I will have someone who will defend me before God's judgment seat and before my friends. I know that someone will stand up for me.
The story about Job is the story for all of us; we at times can feel like we do not have enough people who will stand up for us. Things can happen in our lives which seem unfair or painful. And we cry out in wonder for the purpose of everything. Why is all of this happening to me? The early Christians believed that Jesus Christ was the ultimate advocate, lawyer and Redeemer for humanity. Why? Because he identified the divine life completely with the human experience even to the experience of death and he became the perfect human lawyer, advocate and redeemer on behalf of humanity, on behalf of you and me.
In Jesus, you and I like the proverbial Job can have the faith to confess, "I know that Jesus my Redeemer, my lawyer, and my advocate lives and that he can and will make the case for the purpose of my life in all of its imperfection and in light of everything that has and will happen to me."
How many of you want to have someone really well connected to stand up for you and to declare and make the case for the purpose of your life? And do it for you now and after the end of your earthly life?
God grant us the faith hold on the ultimate advocate for the purpose of our lives; not the petty goals that we often are consumed with but the great big purpose of our lives, our lives toward God.
Many of the people of New Testament communities were in apocalyptic communities, like the group of people that Paul wrote to in Thessalonica. They and Paul believed that a second coming of Jesus would happen soon. From the internal information of Paul's letters, there were people who were concerned about the fate of some of their friends who had died before Jesus had come again. What does this tell us? It tells us that people thought that some significant event was going to happen soon which would end or change all life as it was known. For people who believe that the world was going to end soon, it does represent something of the selfishness of suffering. In our suffering we get selfish; why? because we want our suffering to end soon and if there seems to be no end to suffering, then we might believe that all of life should respond to unjust suffering by just coming to an end. We think that our suffering should force the hand of God to intervene on our behalf and save the world from all of the misery. When an entire group of people suffer, they want more than an lawyer or redeemer, they want an intervening military general to come and bring immediate justice.
Jesus did not come in such an intervening way, so now all of the skeptics of our modern age can mock and make fun of such religious behaviors and religious imaginations about the end of the world.
Wrong! Modern and post-modern and irreligious people are more apocalyptic that any early Christians ever were. People today believe the crash a meteor, a nuclear weapon or environmental conditions could end life as we know it. We are inundated today with so many imaginary superheroes today who can intervene and force justice and correction in one fell swoop. The human rage for justice is so profound that we turn to literature, art and cinema to present us quick fixes for the evils of the world. We are addicted to the two hour solution found in the movies. The apocalyptic impulse in us today finds some comfort in action adventure stories which give us a quick fix vision.
What am I saying? The apocalyptic impulse is human because there is a great wound in freedom. What is the wound in freedom? The wound of freedom is that some bad things can happen, not just bad things but some really bad things. And the everlasting human impulse is to want to heal immediately this terrible wound of freedom when bad things can and do happen. The wounds of freedom only get healed in subsequent individual events of overcoming evil with good because freedom and time go together. Evil makes us long for a future of good.
The New Testament Christians were just like you and me; we always long for the wound in freedom to be healed when it occurs in the devastating events of suffering and injustice. The details of intervention came for the early Christians in inspired imaginations of a Second Coming of Christ. Don't make fun of this. We have many more imaginations of interventions in our culture today.
Finally, we come to the Gospel reading. The Gospel exposes another human universal. What happens to me after I die? What happens to my friends after they die? Do only famous people have immortality because they are well-known enough to survive in history books? What happens to all of the "small" people whose memory may only survive a generation or two to the few people who knew them? The impulse of immortality was prominent in the theological discussion during the time of Jesus; it is important to us now. Even though it may not seem important to us at all times, suddenly we lose someone who is very important to us and the loss forces us to desire further relationship and contact with the one we lost. We begin to lose our life strength; body and mind slow down and we lose the power of our preservation. And we ponder future preservation. Will all that we are as a psycho-social-spiritual-physical unity be dissipated as energy that no longer will remain bound together as a personally recognized identity? Who is our redeemer who will keep our identities alive after we have died?
The Gospel shows us that some wanted to reduce these deep questions of immortality to an argument between religious parties. Sadducees did not think that the Torah warranted a belief in the resurrection. Pharisees believed in a resurrection as proclaimed in the writings of the prophets; such a resurrection which would establish justice.
The early Christians believed that with the life of Jesus a significant innovation in understanding occurred regarding immortality, the afterlife and the resurrection of the dead. The foundation of Christianity occurred because significant people received post-resurrection appearances of Christ. People in the afterlife can only communicate with each other in the language of the afterlife. When the experience of afterlife is mixed with this life, we can only use images that we know from our own experience or from our own dream experience.
Jesus and his contemporaries knew about Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses and David. How did Abraham and Moses continue to live during the time of Jesus? They lived in the living words of the Scriptures. But what if the Scriptures were lost and what if there were no people around to read the Scriptures? Would that mean that Abraham and Moses would cease to exist? How can Abraham, Moses or anyone survive in memory if any continuing evidence of their existence is erased? Jesus proclaimed that the God of Moses was a living God and at the very least, a living God would have the best of all possible memory. And it is that great memory of God which is able to hold together the immortal identities of all people and reconstitute them beyond their physical lives in a glorious and unspeakable way.
It is okay if skeptics today do not want to believe in their own future identities. It is okay if they deny that the thought ever occurred to them. It does not change the fact that each person at times reflect upon a future continued recognized identity of self or significant others beyond this life.
So we believe that our redeemer God is a God with such a profound preserving memory that the divine memory bytes are able to reconstitute us to achieve what we don't achieve fully in this live, namely, our angelic natures.
The Gospel for you and me are the faith issues of knowing a redeemer, an advocate for us before God. Second, faith in living with the great wound of freedom in seeking the continual intervention of good in the face of evil, and finally knowing that God has the most profound memory of all to guarantee the future identity of everyone beyond this life.
You may disagree with the details of how these questions were answered in the past, but I do not believe that you and I can avoid these unavoidable features of human experience. And I am here to tell you that the Gospel of Jesus gives us some very hopeful insights. Amen.
Jesus did not come in such an intervening way, so now all of the skeptics of our modern age can mock and make fun of such religious behaviors and religious imaginations about the end of the world.
Wrong! Modern and post-modern and irreligious people are more apocalyptic that any early Christians ever were. People today believe the crash a meteor, a nuclear weapon or environmental conditions could end life as we know it. We are inundated today with so many imaginary superheroes today who can intervene and force justice and correction in one fell swoop. The human rage for justice is so profound that we turn to literature, art and cinema to present us quick fixes for the evils of the world. We are addicted to the two hour solution found in the movies. The apocalyptic impulse in us today finds some comfort in action adventure stories which give us a quick fix vision.
What am I saying? The apocalyptic impulse is human because there is a great wound in freedom. What is the wound in freedom? The wound of freedom is that some bad things can happen, not just bad things but some really bad things. And the everlasting human impulse is to want to heal immediately this terrible wound of freedom when bad things can and do happen. The wounds of freedom only get healed in subsequent individual events of overcoming evil with good because freedom and time go together. Evil makes us long for a future of good.
The New Testament Christians were just like you and me; we always long for the wound in freedom to be healed when it occurs in the devastating events of suffering and injustice. The details of intervention came for the early Christians in inspired imaginations of a Second Coming of Christ. Don't make fun of this. We have many more imaginations of interventions in our culture today.
Finally, we come to the Gospel reading. The Gospel exposes another human universal. What happens to me after I die? What happens to my friends after they die? Do only famous people have immortality because they are well-known enough to survive in history books? What happens to all of the "small" people whose memory may only survive a generation or two to the few people who knew them? The impulse of immortality was prominent in the theological discussion during the time of Jesus; it is important to us now. Even though it may not seem important to us at all times, suddenly we lose someone who is very important to us and the loss forces us to desire further relationship and contact with the one we lost. We begin to lose our life strength; body and mind slow down and we lose the power of our preservation. And we ponder future preservation. Will all that we are as a psycho-social-spiritual-physical unity be dissipated as energy that no longer will remain bound together as a personally recognized identity? Who is our redeemer who will keep our identities alive after we have died?
The Gospel shows us that some wanted to reduce these deep questions of immortality to an argument between religious parties. Sadducees did not think that the Torah warranted a belief in the resurrection. Pharisees believed in a resurrection as proclaimed in the writings of the prophets; such a resurrection which would establish justice.
The early Christians believed that with the life of Jesus a significant innovation in understanding occurred regarding immortality, the afterlife and the resurrection of the dead. The foundation of Christianity occurred because significant people received post-resurrection appearances of Christ. People in the afterlife can only communicate with each other in the language of the afterlife. When the experience of afterlife is mixed with this life, we can only use images that we know from our own experience or from our own dream experience.
Jesus and his contemporaries knew about Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses and David. How did Abraham and Moses continue to live during the time of Jesus? They lived in the living words of the Scriptures. But what if the Scriptures were lost and what if there were no people around to read the Scriptures? Would that mean that Abraham and Moses would cease to exist? How can Abraham, Moses or anyone survive in memory if any continuing evidence of their existence is erased? Jesus proclaimed that the God of Moses was a living God and at the very least, a living God would have the best of all possible memory. And it is that great memory of God which is able to hold together the immortal identities of all people and reconstitute them beyond their physical lives in a glorious and unspeakable way.
It is okay if skeptics today do not want to believe in their own future identities. It is okay if they deny that the thought ever occurred to them. It does not change the fact that each person at times reflect upon a future continued recognized identity of self or significant others beyond this life.
So we believe that our redeemer God is a God with such a profound preserving memory that the divine memory bytes are able to reconstitute us to achieve what we don't achieve fully in this live, namely, our angelic natures.
The Gospel for you and me are the faith issues of knowing a redeemer, an advocate for us before God. Second, faith in living with the great wound of freedom in seeking the continual intervention of good in the face of evil, and finally knowing that God has the most profound memory of all to guarantee the future identity of everyone beyond this life.
You may disagree with the details of how these questions were answered in the past, but I do not believe that you and I can avoid these unavoidable features of human experience. And I am here to tell you that the Gospel of Jesus gives us some very hopeful insights. Amen.
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