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Life
After Death...and a Bride for Seven Brothers
September 4, 2005
Sermon Series on the Gospel of Luke
Associate Pastor Steve Lympus
Luke
20: 27-40
This week has been a
lot about death and destruction in the wake of Hurricane
Katrina – maybe you’ve seen it on TV, maybe you’ve
read about it, maybe you know someone affected. I’ve
felt overwhelmed by it, frustrated and helpless.
Many of us, when tragedy like this strikes,
ask a lot of questions…
- Why does this happen?
- Why do the poorest and weakest suffer the
most?
- Whose fault is it?
- Where is God?
Questions like these remind us of the fragility
of human life – how fragile were the lives of people
lost, how fragile are the lives of people suffering, how
fragile are even our own lives. Most of us try and avoid
the topic of death, most of the time. But we can’t
avoid death this week. At this point in Luke’s Gospel,
Jesus was very near to his own death.
Jesus is in Jerusalem now (we’ve been
with him as he’s traveled there, on his way to die),
he’s had his “triumphal entry,” driven
money-changers from the Temple, teaching to the crowds gathered
there for the Passover Feast festival. The Scribes and the
Chief Priests are sending spies now, to ask questions and
try to catch Jesus publicly in a mistake.
So far, Jesus has answered their baited questions
quite well, often leaving them silenced, amazed and his clever
and perplexing answers. Now, the Sadducees will have their
try. The Sadducees were one of a few Jewish religious parties – the
Sadducees, Pharisees, priests, Scribes – the Jews did
not have one single voice, just like Christians differ on
things.
The Sadducees were the
religious upper-class, aristocrats and intellectuals, and
they didn’t believe in the resurrection. And they’ve
devised a question to trap Jesus…
Gospel reading: Luke
20: 27-40
There was an Old Testament Law:
- If a man dies and leaves a widow with no
son (a helpless state for a woman in Jesus’ day),
his brother should “marry the widow and raise up
a child for his [dead] brother” (Deuteronomy 25:5-6).
- The woman becomes the wife of the surviving
brother, but her first-born son is named after her dead
husband, “that his name may not be blotted out from
Israel.”
- That way, his name would live on.
The Sadducees’ hypothetical scenario:
- 7 brothers, each one dies in turn.
- Each one marries the same widow of his dead
brother.
- Children are never born. If children were
born, then she would have been considered that man’s
wife.
- She eventually dies herself…and so,
they ask Jesus,
"In the “resurrection” life to come, whose
wife will she be?"
There’s that phrase: “There’s
no such thing as a dumb question.” Well, this actually
was a dumb question. Or maybe, better said…
This wasn’t a real question at all. There’s nothing wrong with
asking difficult questions…especially after a week like this, asking
each other and God difficult, honest questions is a very understandable thing
to do.
But the Sadducees were
not even asking an honest question. This was a theological
trap: remember, the Sadducees don’t even believe in
a resurrection – it wasn’t rational, Scriptural
(they thought), and immortality existed in one’s family
line. They’re trying to show how ridiculous resurrection
is, and trip Jesus up, and divide the crowd in two (Pharisees,
after all, believed strongly in the resurrection). So this
is manipulation, and mocking.
This was like asking those essentially meaningless
theological riddles:
How much free will do angels really have? Did Jesus really
drink wine, or was it grape juice when Jesus drank it? (I
don’t lose sleep on that one.)
The Pharisees (the party often picked on)
are sort of the know-it-alls, whereas the Sadducees are sort
of the skeptics. Both parties are wrong sometimes – the
know-it-all Pharisees who think they have God and every theological
question all figured out, and the skeptical Sadducees who
doubt just about everything. We do it too in today’s
Church – either we play know-it-all, or we play skeptical.
It leads to a lot of arguments.
Jesus knows exactly what this is about: the
resurrection. So he cuts to the point, and gives a 3-point
sermon: (This doesn’t mean that Jesus was a Presbyterian.)
Point #1:
Marriage is for this life, not the resurrection
life. There will be no marriage in the life to come. Relationships
and circumstances will change so much in the resurrection
life where there is no death, that there will be no need
for marriage.
This past week I asked my wife, Laura, how
she felt about this…I thought it would be weird, awkward
running into each other on those golden streets one day,
etc. She said, “I think the ecstasy of total communion
with God will make this one a non-issue for us.” I’m
still trying to get used to the idea.
There is news in this passage
for the married and the single people: marriage is not the
end-all be-all of the Christian life. Marriage is important,
and marriage is for many in this life – not all – but
marriage is only for this life. That’s point #1 in
Jesus’ sermon.
Point #2:
The resurrection is for real. Essentially
Jesus comes down on the “side” of the Pharisees
against the Sadducees. There is no death in the resurrection,
in the life everlasting – God’s children who
are resurrected “cannot die anymore” – they
are like angels (in that they don’t age or die).
That’s point #2 in Jesus’ sermon. We’ll
come back to this in a moment.
Point #3:
Moses (who all parties respected) affirmed
the resurrection life: at the burning bush, God said to
Moses, “I am the God of Abraham, and the God
of Isaac, the God of Jacob.” God is “God
of the living.” If God is the God of Abraham/Isaac/Jacob,
then these people are not gone and lost forever! Dale Bruner: “The
name of God means resurrection.”
Jesus speaks truth from Scripture. It’s
a reminder how important it is for us to know Scripture!
It is from God, it is for us, and it is alive…we listen
and interpret, and Scripture affirms resurrection. That’s
point #3 in Jesus’ sermon.
Scribes: “Well spoken, teacher.” The
religious leaders were afraid to ask him more.
But let’s return
to Jesus’ main point here (#2): the resurrection
is for real. If there was ever a week we needed to hear
it, it’s this week: the resurrection is for real.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, there is death and
destruction unimaginable (as of yet, unaccounted); we’re
more used to these natural disasters being far away, this
is so darn close to home.
This part week, I met a guy downtown…he
was from the New Orleans area, had been traveling in the
Northwest for 2-3 weeks, looking for temp-work. When the
news of the hurricane hit, he knew his immediate family was
OK, but he had no idea how his extended relatives and his
friends were…what was left.
I asked him how we was doing with all this,
he said:
”If God takes care of the sparrows,
he will take care of me…I’ll be OK.”
I could hardly finish the conversation without
breaking down…will JT really be OK? Will his friends
and family be OK? Will he have a home to return to?
If there was ever a week we needed to talk
about the resurrection, it’s this week.
Jesus says: “[God] is God not of
the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are
alive.”
Does Jesus mean God doesn’t care about
the dead? No, Jesus means that the dead are not “dead” to
God. In God’s Kingdom, death is not the end of life.
There is a resurrection, and the resurrection is for real.
What is the resurrection?
What the resurrection is not:
- We don’t become angels (Jesus said “like
angels,” because as “God’s children” we
won’t die in the resurrection). People say this sometimes
when someone dies, that they are angels now – this
isn’t a Biblical idea.
- Not resuscitation, where we just come “back
to life” as life was before we died.
- Not a spirit-world, where our souls float
around in a sea of bliss.
- Not Hollywood: What Dreams May Come or Flatliners
(possibly the worst movies ever made about the afterlife),
where spirits either live in a dreamy water-color world
of their own making or where karma and good attitudes control
your fate. Resurrection is not reincarnation, and it is
not a paradise where we are in charge of our destinies.
We don’t earn the resurrection life, and we don’t
design it.
What the resurrection is:
- We die, and God raises us on the resurrection
day.
- We’ll have resurrected bodies, like
Jesus has a resurrected body, this is physical life renewed!
Resurrection bodies that will never suffer or die, on a
new earth that will never be exploited and that will never
destroy human life.
- But it will be different, we will be changed.
Many things will change, including marriage…I don’t
think that we’ll forget our relationships, but they
won’t be the same. Nothing will be totally the same.
- The resurrection is totally dependant on
God, who raised Jesus from the dead – the resurrection
life is God’s design for us, and all creation. All
real life is life dependant on God. There is no living
apart from God.
And the resurrection life affects
life now. Because there is more to life than death and destruction,
we can hope and work now as part of God’s healing of
broken people and God’s healing of a broken world.
We don’t just wait passively for the
end, for resurrection day…enjoying what material pleasure
we can and holding out for paradise.
We wait actively, we engage in God’s
good work in this world, and we prepare for Jesus to come
back. This is being alive to God now and forever.
So can we widen our imaginations today, to
begin living and preparing now for this resurrection life?
It’s hard sometimes. It’s hard to watch the news
this past week, and imagine the Gulf Coast region recovered,
lives and homes restored, schools and businesses and churches
and hospitals re-built, families reunited and living stable
lives again. Can we widen our hope that far?
We have a choice:
Will we live with limited faith?
Will we live a life limited by impossibility,
limited by fear, limited by lack of resources and lack
of hope, a life limited by dulled imaginations?
or
Will we live the resurrection life? …a
life of hoping in the future, and engaging in the present?
A life unlimited by death and fear, unlimited by impossibility
and skepticism, a life unlimited by death…
On Easter morning every
year, and for several weeks after Easter, we greet one another
with a liturgy long-used throughout the Church. We say and
affirm together that death was not the end for Jesus. Death
is not the end for us…we believe in a life unlimited
by death.
It’s over 6 months until Easter, but will you join
me today?
Christ is Risen!
He is Risen Indeed!
Christ is Risen!
He is Risen Indeed!
Christ is Risen!
Alleluia, He is Risen Indeed! …and
so too shall we rise.
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