Rather belatedly, here’s my sermon/reflection from last Sunday. It’s based on Luke 20:27-38, in which Jesus and the Sadducees debate the resurrection. You can watch the whole service from which it’s taken here.
“I wish it could be different.”
How many times have you thought or said something like that?
Maybe as you look around your house and picture all the ways you could spruce it up and make it look amazing.
Maybe as you think about your life and the things you’d love to do. How many people went into lockdown with grand plans to change their life for the better, and came out feeling exactly the same?
Maybe as you watch or hear the news and hear stories about war, financial crisis, fears for the environment, refugee crises – stories we’ve heard time and again – and we wish we didn’t have to hear them any more, we wish the world could be a better place.
There’s a real tension between how we’d like things to be – how we imagine things could be – and how they really are. We long for the first and that just makes settling for the second that much harder.
What’s the answer? Is there anything that can bring the two together?
An Insecure Future?
Of course, for some people, it’s the other way round.
The future fills them with dread; the present gives comfort, confidence, maybe even power. And any change might upset all that, might take away what they hold dear.
If the future looks bleaker than the present – and for many, it does right now – then we kind of want to hold on to what we have now: sure, it may not be great, but it’s better than what’s ahead of us.
But if you’re powerful, if you’re in control, if you benefit from the status quo, then you’re not going to want that disrupting.
The Sadducees: “This is all you get!”
Take the Sadducees who question Jesus in our gospel passage.
We don’t know massive amounts about them, not as much as we do about, say, the Pharisees.
We do know they were a religious group in Jerusalem – and we do know they had power.
Not overall power, of course – the Romans were in charge, of course.
But they were in charge of the Temple. And that meant they were pretty much in charge of the whole religious life of Israel.
What they said, how they interpreted the Bible, the rules and commands they set were what counted. They could decide, so they thought, who did and who didn’t have access to God Himself.
And that situation kind of suited them. Sure, ideally the Romans wouldn’t be there controlling everything, but they were doing alright with how things were. Change wasn’t really necessary.
So talk of resurrection was not welcome.
Partly because they didn’t see it in the Bible – it just wasn’t there for them.
But partly because resurrection meant change, and change might mean they were no longer in power, and that meant… disaster, if only for them.
“One Bride for Seven Brothers” – not coming to a stage near you…
Hence their rather strange question to Jesus about the brothers and their wife. Not so much “Seven Brides For Seven Brothers” as “One Bride For Seven Brothers”.
It was designed to make people who believed in resurrection look stupid: how could God allow a situation where one woman ended up as the wife of seven brothers?
That’s daft – God would never do that!
So the status quo was the only option: this was how God had set things up to be and this is how they’d remain. So off you go and get those silly thoughts about resurrection out of your head.
Except, Jesus wasn’t about to do that.
Because they’d spectacularly missed the point.
Resurrection isn’t just picking up where you left off, carrying on after a brief interruption.
Everything changes.
Why?
Overcoming Death
Because death has been overcome.
So much of our lives, so much of our world, whether we dare to admit it or not, is governed by the fact that everything will one day die. Nothing ever lasts for ever.
Autumn is a beautiful season: but the gorgeous reds, oranges and yellows of the leaves are signs of retreat and death as winter takes hold.
So many of our fears and anxieties hold us either because we know our lives are limited, or because we fear something that might bring that end a lot closer than we’d like.
And part of Jesus’ point is that the reason we have marriage, give birth to babies and so on is to keep things going because we know time is, relatively, short for us.
But if death has somehow been overcome, then all of that changes. The walls have come down and the possibilities are, literally, endless.
So the situation with the seven brothers for one bride is daft: but it’s daft because that situation won’t ever arise – it won’t be needed any more.
Life will go on in a completely new, wonderful and indestructible way.
Our lives, the lives of those we have loved – because yes, we will see them again – the whole of our world will be utterly transformed.
Those fears we hold and the things we do to try and hold them at bay – they’ll disappear.
And those who use those fears to try and control things – they’ll lose their power.
The God of Life
How? Because God is the God of life, not death.
He has been right from the beginning, as Jesus points out when He quotes from the story of the burning bush.
Our world, our universe, was made out of God’s life and was made for life. Death doesn’t belong here, it’s an aberration.
And through Jesus’ own resurrection from the dead, God has made that a reality. As He raised His Son from the tomb, God began that work of undoing death and the hold it has on us all. His life entered the world through the open tomb and the One who came out of it, forcing death to let go of its grip on the world.
For those who like things the way they are, those who gain or hold power because of the way things are, for people like those Sadducees, that’s a scary prospect.
Dare to Dream… now!
But for those of us who are caught between the dreams of how things can be and the depressing reality of how things are, resurrection says to us that those dreams don’t need to stay dreams.
That that future, that hope, that imagination that thrills our hearts and just for a moment shines a shaft of light into our lives – that can become reality.
In the future? Yes, of course. We look forward to the day when this work will be completed, when the great promises of the Bible about a new heaven and a new earth will be fulfilled.
But what about now?
Dare we believe that this future that we sometimes dare to imagine could in some way become reality now?
Because Jesus has been raised from the dead: resurrection has begun. God’s transforming power is at work now. Things can change, lives can be transformed, hostile powers can be defeated, good news can be shared.
And maybe we can do something to show that; maybe God can help us to do and say the things that will bring that resurrection reality into our world now.
Sticking with something, even when it seems hopeless.
Daring to follow that idea that seems a bit mad and unrealistic, and to believe that God might be behind it.
Refusing to let our lives be crushed by the cynicism that death can bring.
Giving to others; helping those in need; planting seeds and saplings; telling someone else about the hope you gain from Jesus…
All these things can be signs that the realities of our world that crush us and rob us of life aren’t the end of the story.
All of them are signs that those who try to cling to power purely for their own good will not win out.
All of them are signs that the resurrection Jesus spoke of, looked towards and brought about through His resurrection is coming, and that through the God of the living life, not death, will win the day.
Wandering Thoughts II - the Sequel 