11-10-19 Readings & Sermon

Oh reading from Hagai.

In the second year of King Darius, in the seventh month, on the twenty-first day of the month, the word of the Lord came by the prophet Hagai, saying, Speak now to Zerubbabel, son of Shilteil, governor of Judah, and to Joshua, son of Jehosedak, the high priest, and to the remnant of the people, and say, Who is left among you that saw this house in its former glory?

How does it look to you now?

It is not in your sight, is n is it not in your sight as nothing?

Yet now take courage, O Zerubbabel, says the Lord.

Take courage, O Jo Joshua, son of Jehosadak, the high priest.

Take courage, all you people of the land, says the Lord.

Work, for I am with you, says the Lord of hosts, according to the promise that I made you when you came out of Egypt.

My spirit abides among you.

Do not fear.

For thus says the Lord of hosts, once again in a little while, I will shake the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and the dry land, and I will shake all of the nations, so that the treasure of all nations shall come.

And I will fill this house with splendor, says the Lord of hosts.

The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, says the Lord of hosts.

The latter splendor of this house shall be greater than the former, says the Lord of hosts.

And in this place I will give prosperity, says the Lord of hosts.

The word of the Lord.

This is from the second letter to the Thessalonians.

As to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to him, we beg you, brothers and sisters, not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed, either by spirit or by word, or by letter as though from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord is already here.

Let no one deceive you in any way, for that day will not come unless the rebellion comes first.

And the lawless one is revealed, the one destined for destruction.

He opposes and exalts himself above every so-called God or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, declaring himself to be God.

Do you not remember that I told you these things when I was still with you?

But we must always give thanks to God for you, brothers and sisters beloved by the Lord, because God chose you as the first fruits for salvation, through sanctification by the Spirit, and through belief in the truth.

For this purpose he called you through our proclamation of the good news, so that you may obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.

So then, brothers and sisters, stand firm and hold fast to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by our letter.

Now may our Lord Jesus Christ Himself and God our Father, who loved us and through grace gave us eternal comfort and good hope, comfort your hearts and strengthen them in every good work and word.

The word of the Lord.

Some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came to Jesus and asked him a question.

Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies, leaving a wife and no children, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother.

Now there were seven brothers, the first married and died childless.

Then the second and the third married her, and so in the same way, all seven died childless.

Finally, the woman also died.

In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be?

For the seven had married her.

And Jesus said to them, Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage, but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage.

Indeed, they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection.

And the fact that the dead are raised, Moses himself showed in the story about the bush, where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.

Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living, for to him all of them are alive.

The Gospel of the Lord.

Well, I am happy to report the Red Cups are back at Starbucks.

Sadly, I'm not so happy to report that they're not doing gingerbread lattes this year.

Along with that, there are holiday decorations already up at the mall, and Netflix and other streaming apps are pushing their Hallmark-style Christmas romance movies.

Lonely Woman meets lost man, they fall in love, overcome some kind of conflict, and eventually say their I do's underneath the mistletoe.

There's the story of the business-focused woman, then also the princess in disguise, and the widow who lost the love of her life, all who were not looking for love, but all of them finding it.

I have to admit, there's nothing like sitting in front of the fireplace streaming one of these sappy flicks while sipping a glass of something red.

Now I want you to take that idea of romance and marriage and love, hold it in your hand for a second, and toss it out.

That idea of romance that the Hallmark Channel tries to portray is certainly not what the Sadducees were asking about in their inquisition of Jesus when they were asking about the fate of this hypothetical bride.

It was not because they wondered who could she possibly have loved the most.

They were asking, who did she belong to?

Which brother would have her as his bride, as his property in the afterlife?

The passing of the bride from one brother to the next was part of the Deuteronomic law.

It can be argued that the law was in place to protect the woman, for in the case back then, it was certainly better to be remarried than to be a widow.

But it was more about making sure the family line continued from one generation to the next.

If the woman was remarried to someone outside of the family, then the family tree would stop growing and if not growing, dead.

It was all about family preservation.

The Sadducees were followers of the Torah, those first five books of the Old Testament, including Deuteronomy, where this law came from.

But they did not follow those latter Hebrew scriptures, the prophets, and those historical writings.

And this is why many of them did not believe in the resurrection, because it was not explicitly stated in the Torah.

So their argument basically is this if it cannot be determined how the laws of marriage are upheld in the resurrection, then there must not be any resurrection at all.

Easy as that.

How awful that what it must have been like to be a Sadducee.

Their current reality was as good as it was going to get.

And as they looked around and saw the Roman occupation, well, things were looking pretty grim.

There was no basis for hope.

How were they to understand God's justice and mercy when all they had was what was right in front of them?

And they were trying to shape their understanding of the future, or lack thereof a future, based on their current situations and current institutions.

Now, while Jesus normally answered questions like these with parables or stories or more questions, he met the Sadducees' question head on, perhaps because of how important it is to understand resurrection, and how important it is to have the knowledge of God as being the God of the living, not the God of the dead.

There was no room here for misunderstanding.

This was central and important.

Jesus meets them where they are at.

Jesus uses the Torah to lay a foundation for resurrection.

Jesus takes the Sadducees back to that burning bush, a story that they were all very well familiar with.

And it is at the burning bush that God identifies God's self as I am, or Yahweh, saying, I am the God of Abraham, I am the God of Isaac, I am the God of Jacob.

God is saying, I am not I was.

This implies that even though these patriarchs have long since died, somehow they are still living in their relationship with God.

But this story is about so much more than Jesus simply winning a good argument, no matter how much we like to win an argument.

It is about Jesus flipping worldviews upside down.

He tells that the institution of marriage as they know it will have no place in the resurrection.

In the life of resurrection, there is no death, and therefore no need for procreation.

Procreation at the time was one of the main reasons for marriage.

Procreation and marriage kept the human race and the family line going on into the future.

The institution of marriage was an example of just one thing that changes with resurrection.

In the resurrected life, there is no room for owning another person.

Women are not given in marriage because women are not a thing to be owned or traded or passed off.

Now, marriage today looks very different, and while there are still some hangovers of the old institution in marriages today, for many cultures marriage is at least somewhat more fully based in equality.

But that is not to say that there are not other current institutions that we will discover have no place in the resurrected life.

The God of the living, the I M of the burning bush, spoke to Moses so that the Hebrews could find freedom from the Egyptians.

Thousands of years later, a woman who many knew her as Moses was also in communication with God, and she was called to lead enslaved southern blacks across the Mason Dixon to gain freedom.

Harriet Tubman was living into the resurrected life, a life that has no room for slavery.

Slavery strips a person of her identity.

Living the resurrected life gives an identity as a child of God.

Slavery inhibits resurrection, frees.

Slavery is death.

Resurrection is life.

Harriet Tubman was not resigned to believe that the institution of slavery was her lot in life.

She knew that it was not the life that God intended for her.

So she escaped to Philadelphia for freedom.

Shortly after she arrived in Philadelphia, she became determined to go back and lead her family across that same line so they could experience freedom.

Eventually, she would make 13 trips across the border, leading over 70 people to freedom.

The movie that is currently out in theaters depicting Tubman's life shows the scene of Tubman when she first crosses into Pennsylvania.

She's standing on the top of a hill as the sun is low in the sky.

Casting its rays upon her, she lifts up her hands to examine them.

The scene in the movie reflects what the real Tubman had told her biographer long ago, saying, I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person.

There was such a glory over everything.

The sun came like gold through the trees and over the fields, and I felt like I was in heaven.

Tubman expected that with freedom must come some ontological change, when in fact she wasn't changed, but free now to be the person she always was.

Tubman believed in the resurrection, in the resurrected life, and that was a life that impacted how she lived in the present.

The Sadducees were busy trying to impress their own beliefs onto the resurrected life, instead of letting the resurrected life shape them.

While marriage is certainly different today than it was 2,000 years ago, and while the institution of slavery technically ended in 1865, we are all aware of institutions in society today that are counter to the resurrected life.

The question this passage from today's gospel continues to ask me is do I allow these institutions to shape my view of the resurrection?

Or do I allow the resurrection to shape me and in turn to shape institutions?