22 Pentecost C 27 November 10, 2019
Job 19:23-27a Psalm 17:1-9
2 Thes.2:13-3:5 Luke 20:27-38
One of the mistakes that we often make in ministry is that we use the statistical and the hypothetical to diminish the personal and the individual. We use the anecdotal to discount the personal experience of another almost as if it were a competition for who has suffered the most.
I remember a woman who had had a miscarriage and another woman told her she would be just fine because she had had three miscarriages. The woman meant to project empathy but it seemed to discount the significance of how unique loss and pain can be.
Sometimes theology, the Bible, creeds and doctrines can be used to avoid the personal because the personal is what is new and what is happening to someone right now. And when we want to make people part of the statistics too quickly or a biblical example, we discount their immediate pain.
Today in the Gospel story we have a dialogue between Jesus and some Sadducees. It involved theological shop talk between a representative of a prominent religious party in Judaism and the new Rabbi on the block, Jesus. Religion in the time of Jesus was like the religion in our own time; often people want to make sure that they belong to the group which believes the best and the prescribed correct way. A hungry or sick person or distressed person, a person in deep loss is really not concerned about theological fine points; they just want relief, salvation, health or comfort. And religious people often are more interested in making sure that you know that they believe correctly with the right wording than providing relief and care.
The theological take on the Sadducees is that they did not believe in the resurrection from the dead. They were different than the Pharisees and other religious parties within Judaism. And since they didn't believe in the resurrection, that is why they were, "Sad, you see." (groan here)
Why didn't the Sadducees believe in the resurrection? It wasn't necessarily because they didn't want to. Their method of what established true belief was very limited.
The Sadducees were real traditionalists. They believed that belief could only be established if it could be found in the Torah. So they limited their Hebrew Scriptures to but five books. If a belief could not be found in Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, or Deuteronomy, it was an unsupported innovation and had to be rejected. The Hebrew Scriptures for other Jews included what is often called using the acronym TANAK, the Torah, the Nevi'im (the prophets) and the Ketuvim (the writings).
So the Sadducees presented a teaser, a riddle to Jesus cynically asking Jesus to rule on a hypothetical that they did not believe in. "Let's stump Jesus about his resurrection preaching." The hypothetical is full of irony for various reasons. If the Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection, what kind of immortality did the Sadducees believe in? They believed in an objective immortality; they believe a person attained immortality in their offspring, so it was very important to have children. What if a man married and didn't have children before he died? The Torah required that the brother of the decease to marry his widow and the children of the marriage would become the deceased brother's immortality. Such a forced marriage was called levirate marriage. So what if there are seven brothers and they all died and had to marry the one woman? The woman bore no children so none of the brothers would have objective immortality.
Can you see how divorced from actual life this joke of the hypothetical was? Why do we have resurrection thinking in the first place? Because we all feel personally unfinished in this life. We have lost people we have deeply loved and it seems totally unfair that they should be removed from our lives. We feel threatened by the seeming finality of death. The loss of death is not some theological hypothetical; it is deeply personal. Resurrection thinking is the personal belief that hope and justice and perfection will actual win out. And if they don't then why would a God of love plant such a hope within me? Just to taunt me for wanting something I could never become? Just to taunt us about justice which can never be realized? We come to a point of knowing that we need to become our better angels, and the words of Jesus assure us that our vision of perfection is not a cruel hoax, it is the ultimate invitation of our future.
What do we need before we can enter the realm of becoming angels? We need a Redeemer. We need an advocate, we need a really good lawyer.
The cry of Job that was immortalized in Handel's Oratorio, was "I know that my Redeemer lives." The nuance in the Hebrew word for Redeemer, is one who advocates or makes the case for. The story of Job was the case study for the good man who had bad things, the very worst things happen to him. All of his "good" friends believed that they were lawyers for God in telling Job that he must have done something wrong for such bad luck in his life. Job felt helpless to defend himself; sometimes we can think that bad luck is proof itself that we deserved all of the bad things that happened to us. Yet Job could not find a one to one correspondence with any particular thing he had done and the horrendous punishing outcomes. Job's friends were lawyers trying to defend a very wrong view of God. Job cried out for an ultimate lawyer and advocate who would defend the basic integrity of his life, not because he was perfect but because he was a person of faith who looked to a forgiving God.
So what can we learn today from our Bible lessons? Don't let our limited biblical and theological exposure keep us from experiencing the true implications of a loving God. And do not let our statistics and our hypothetical anecdotes steal or diminish the real pain of people who are in loss of all sorts. Let us know Jesus to be our Redeemer, our perfect lawyer who makes the case for the gift and the integrity of our existence and who says to us, "Do not let anyone ever say to you, "You are a mistake."" Jesus our Redeemer is the one who is leading us to become our better angels in this life in part, but more fully in the next and we won't have to worry about marriage in the next life because we will not be lonely or alone and we will know universal fellowship. Imagine one's life like a Word document which continually get edited and improved. And then when we die, Jesus the Redeemer can open our file with "edit enabled" function turned on. And Jesus our advocate can edit us towards our angelic selves through his graceful revisioning of our lives.
I know that our Redeemer lives and he is making the case for the value of our lives now and he will usher us into an angelic future life forever. Amen.
I remember a woman who had had a miscarriage and another woman told her she would be just fine because she had had three miscarriages. The woman meant to project empathy but it seemed to discount the significance of how unique loss and pain can be.
Sometimes theology, the Bible, creeds and doctrines can be used to avoid the personal because the personal is what is new and what is happening to someone right now. And when we want to make people part of the statistics too quickly or a biblical example, we discount their immediate pain.
Today in the Gospel story we have a dialogue between Jesus and some Sadducees. It involved theological shop talk between a representative of a prominent religious party in Judaism and the new Rabbi on the block, Jesus. Religion in the time of Jesus was like the religion in our own time; often people want to make sure that they belong to the group which believes the best and the prescribed correct way. A hungry or sick person or distressed person, a person in deep loss is really not concerned about theological fine points; they just want relief, salvation, health or comfort. And religious people often are more interested in making sure that you know that they believe correctly with the right wording than providing relief and care.
The theological take on the Sadducees is that they did not believe in the resurrection from the dead. They were different than the Pharisees and other religious parties within Judaism. And since they didn't believe in the resurrection, that is why they were, "Sad, you see." (groan here)
Why didn't the Sadducees believe in the resurrection? It wasn't necessarily because they didn't want to. Their method of what established true belief was very limited.
The Sadducees were real traditionalists. They believed that belief could only be established if it could be found in the Torah. So they limited their Hebrew Scriptures to but five books. If a belief could not be found in Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, or Deuteronomy, it was an unsupported innovation and had to be rejected. The Hebrew Scriptures for other Jews included what is often called using the acronym TANAK, the Torah, the Nevi'im (the prophets) and the Ketuvim (the writings).
So the Sadducees presented a teaser, a riddle to Jesus cynically asking Jesus to rule on a hypothetical that they did not believe in. "Let's stump Jesus about his resurrection preaching." The hypothetical is full of irony for various reasons. If the Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection, what kind of immortality did the Sadducees believe in? They believed in an objective immortality; they believe a person attained immortality in their offspring, so it was very important to have children. What if a man married and didn't have children before he died? The Torah required that the brother of the decease to marry his widow and the children of the marriage would become the deceased brother's immortality. Such a forced marriage was called levirate marriage. So what if there are seven brothers and they all died and had to marry the one woman? The woman bore no children so none of the brothers would have objective immortality.
Can you see how divorced from actual life this joke of the hypothetical was? Why do we have resurrection thinking in the first place? Because we all feel personally unfinished in this life. We have lost people we have deeply loved and it seems totally unfair that they should be removed from our lives. We feel threatened by the seeming finality of death. The loss of death is not some theological hypothetical; it is deeply personal. Resurrection thinking is the personal belief that hope and justice and perfection will actual win out. And if they don't then why would a God of love plant such a hope within me? Just to taunt me for wanting something I could never become? Just to taunt us about justice which can never be realized? We come to a point of knowing that we need to become our better angels, and the words of Jesus assure us that our vision of perfection is not a cruel hoax, it is the ultimate invitation of our future.
What do we need before we can enter the realm of becoming angels? We need a Redeemer. We need an advocate, we need a really good lawyer.
The cry of Job that was immortalized in Handel's Oratorio, was "I know that my Redeemer lives." The nuance in the Hebrew word for Redeemer, is one who advocates or makes the case for. The story of Job was the case study for the good man who had bad things, the very worst things happen to him. All of his "good" friends believed that they were lawyers for God in telling Job that he must have done something wrong for such bad luck in his life. Job felt helpless to defend himself; sometimes we can think that bad luck is proof itself that we deserved all of the bad things that happened to us. Yet Job could not find a one to one correspondence with any particular thing he had done and the horrendous punishing outcomes. Job's friends were lawyers trying to defend a very wrong view of God. Job cried out for an ultimate lawyer and advocate who would defend the basic integrity of his life, not because he was perfect but because he was a person of faith who looked to a forgiving God.
So what can we learn today from our Bible lessons? Don't let our limited biblical and theological exposure keep us from experiencing the true implications of a loving God. And do not let our statistics and our hypothetical anecdotes steal or diminish the real pain of people who are in loss of all sorts. Let us know Jesus to be our Redeemer, our perfect lawyer who makes the case for the gift and the integrity of our existence and who says to us, "Do not let anyone ever say to you, "You are a mistake."" Jesus our Redeemer is the one who is leading us to become our better angels in this life in part, but more fully in the next and we won't have to worry about marriage in the next life because we will not be lonely or alone and we will know universal fellowship. Imagine one's life like a Word document which continually get edited and improved. And then when we die, Jesus the Redeemer can open our file with "edit enabled" function turned on. And Jesus our advocate can edit us towards our angelic selves through his graceful revisioning of our lives.
I know that our Redeemer lives and he is making the case for the value of our lives now and he will usher us into an angelic future life forever. Amen.
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