sermon: Resurrection

Pentecost 25 Year C 11/11/07
Luke 20:27-38
Resurrection
By Rich Gamble


The Sadducees were the elite of Jewish society. They were generally wealthy, well educated, socially prominent, and in charge of the Temple which was the heart of religious, economic and political life in Judea of the First Century.

The Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection. That makes sense. People who have everything going for them are not as inclined to need an alternative reality. They think things are perfect right here and now.

It is the people who are getting stepped on, who have seen their parents get stepped on and who know that their children and grandchildren will be stepped on- these are the people that need to look beyond the way things are and have always been, to a future where everything changes.

Resurrection speaks of a time when death will not be a factor. No death, no fear, no hunger, no intimidation. How are you going to keep people slaving away for you if they can’t be intimidated? For every abused worker who can’t afford to quit, resurrection speaks of the day when the boss has no power over you.

Now a pie in the sky bye and bye belief can be used to keep people slaving, life is hard and then you die and go someplace else. What do you care if nothing on earth ever changes, you are heaven bound.

But resurrection speaks of a new earth. A new reality on the earth. No death. No fear. Whose going to clean the Sadducees toilets? No, the Sadducees don’t like the idea of resurrection. And they don’t want their servants thinking about what things would be like if they were no longer cowed. Those same servants might start trying to hasten that new reality. A woman trapped in an abusive marriage may stay in the marriage and accept her lot if she feels that she deserves her treatment or if she can see no alternative. But if she meets someone who says that no one deserves to be abused or if she meets someone who shows her how she can live a good life apart from the abuser then she is much less likely to accept the abuse.

Speaking about an better reality undermines the present injustices.

Little wonder why the Sadducees would want to make uppity prophets like Jesus look foolish. Jesus is exactly one of those folks who tries to hasten that new day.

So believing that Jesus’ message centers on the promise of an afterlife they focus their intellectual powers to try to make Jesus look foolish and so lose favor among his followers. They use the form of argument called Reductio ad Absurdum.

They take an instance of a man who marries a woman and dies before she produces an offspring. Jewish law allows that the woman may then be married by the dead man’s brother. If that brother produces a child by the woman the child would be considered the child of the dead man and hence be his connection in name to future generations.

Ah says the Sadducees but the brother dies before producing an heir and so the woman goes to the next brother but he dies before and so she goes to the next and then the next and the next on and on through seven brothers. The last one dies and then the woman dies.

So the Sadducees ask, with a cheesy smile on their faces, in the resurrection to whom does the woman belong?

The Sadducees think that by painting this ridiculous picture of a bunch of resurrected brothers trying to figure out who has property rights over the life of the resurrected wife that they have shown what a ridiculous idea the resurrection is.

But there is a problem with the logic. They make the mistake of assuming that life beyond death is the same as life in the shadow of death. They make the assumption that in the resurrection wives will still be the property of their husbands.

Jesus points this flaw in logic out to the Sadducees. In the resurrection things will be different. Jesus, in talking about the dynamics of the resurrection, is talking about the direction of human existence. He is talking about human beings living in the light of God’s power for life.

In the ideal human community, women are not the property of men. The dynamics of the resurrection stands as a critique of life in the here and now. The Sadducees are shown to be so locked into the way things are (good for them bad for poor and working people) that they cannot imagine a world other than the current. Why should they? Everything is right for them in this world. But for the people who are hungry, homeless, without work and with very little hope of bettering themselves, the current world holds nothing but hardship and pain. The poor long for another reality and it is that longing which feeds their discontent with the way things are, and it is that discontent which can be the driving force for change.

If people believe that nothing can be done to change the conditions of the world around them they will simply accept things as they are and not try to make a change. Their belief becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

In Tuesday’s election, the majority of the people voted their frustration. They voted their anger. They voted their fear. They didn’t vote with a vision. They didn’t vote for the world they want to see, only the one they don’t like, the present one.

So they voted and because they did not vote with a vision of justice for their homeless and hungry neighbors, because they allowed themselves to be seduced by the arguments of the well off, their votes contributed to a state that is substantially worse today than it was on Monday. Not worse for the well off, just worse for those who are hurting already.

On Monday a handful of religious leaders met with the Governor. She predicted the outcome of the elections and told us that there would be a storm of cuts to programs for the poor. She believes that she has no choice but to cut essential programs for needy people. She asked the religious community to step up and take on even more of a role in aiding those who will be in need of essential resources. Because the voters chose not to take money from those who have way more than enough, our state and local governments will be taking aid from those who have little or nothing. No doubt church groups will strive to do more to help but we will not begin to make up for the cuts that are coming. We need a bigger vision of what people of faith need to be about than slightly stemming the tide of suffering caused by the cuts. We are called to boldly take up the struggle for justice in creative new ways.

Knowing that our God has moved us beyond the power of death, can give us the power to resist the forces which seek our passivity. This is the power of the promise of resurrection. It helps us imagine another reality and helps us see that alternative as a reality for our lives and living out of the power of that promise we can speak up without fear. For us, the ritual of Baptism is the symbolic step into a resurrected life, no longer governed by fear. Resurrected life for us is not some distant promise but a living reality. That new world, free of those who use fear and greed to pacify us, is a present reality. We need only embrace it and live in it.

The fact that the cause of justice was largely defeated on Tuesday does not mean that we were defeated. It just means that our work is that much more important.

The last election merely highlights how much more work needs to be done. We need to find ways to inoculate our neighbors against misleading media. We need to find ways to spread the vision that a world free of poverty and fear is as close as our ability to wake up and live it. Just as Moses led a confused and fearful people, so we who have a vision of a better world and path to get there, must lead where we can, speak where can, and take the lumps where we must.

On Monday I worked, on Tuesday I hoped, on Wednesday I mourned. Today we pray and tomorrow we pick up the work again. If Crucifixion couldn’t keep Jesus down then Tim Eyman sure isn’t going to slow me.

When I used the example of an abused spouse before, it was with full knowledge that programs for abused spouses are right now horribly under funded and will soon lose even more funding. Others may shrug and say ‘the will of the people’ and abandon them to their abuse, but we know that this is not the way things have to be. There is another way we can be a community, a nation and a planet.

Those people who will lose their medications when the program is cut, those homeless people waiting for a place to live out of the rain, the abused women and children and mentally ill people waiting for safety, they cannot afford the luxury of our weariness. They cannot afford to be written off as government belt tightening or budgetary discipline.

There is a new day coming. There is a light at the end of this tunnel and it’s our job to lead our neighbors towards it. Every once and while, while I am waiting for someone to take the lead, it hits me that I am the one I’m waiting for. We in tiny Keystone, not the conference, not the denomination, not some large and well off congregation, we are the ones who are called to be leaders in the struggle for a better world. Not because we are so talented or blessed with resources but because we are willing to take what gifts we have and use them for the work ahead.

The income tax initiative was always but a small step in the long walk to a just world. Our vision was always bigger. Our work was always greater. Now we take the lessons of that struggle and move on to the next. That’s who we are. That’s what we do. And everyone who was moved by our work to vote for that initiative is a potential ally in the work ahead and so a victory.

Our God doesn’t want us to spend our lives in passive anticipation of heaven or passive acceptance of a fallen world. We are called to see that God’s power for life is stronger that all the powers wielding fear and greed; and with the courage of that conviction, we can be the people God would have us be. We can be the voice of hope, the source of strength and ones who see the coming light even in the darkest night. We are called to be resurrected people, raised to walk a new life in Christ. We are called to be living embodiments of a hope that transcends time and death, a hope that comes from the God of love, whose promise is as powerful today as it was 2000 years ago. And that is good news.