Pentecost 22, 2025
Job 19:23-27a
Psalm 17:1-9
2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17
Luke 20:27-38
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
My oh my. That was quite a gospel text there, wasn’t it? As with so many of the readings we get on any given Sunday, the first step is to break it down and get the context, so we know who is who, and what they’re saying.
So, the Sadducees. We don’t often hear about these guys, and we don’t know much about them. We usually hear the Sadducees grouped together with the Pharisees, because they were both leaders in the Jewish community of Jesus’ day. Painting with a broad brush, we could say the Pharisees typically had the regular folks on their side, while the Sadducees had the wealthy elites backing them. The Sadducees controlled the Temple during this time, while the Pharisees sort of handled education and daily laws.
As a result, the Pharisees embraced many writings and books of the prophets, whereas the Sadducees only accepted the Torah, or the Law of Moses . . . which we call the first five books of the Old Testament. Now the reason that is important to know is because nowhere in the first five books of the Bible is there any reference to life after death. If we only had Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy as our scriptures, then you and I would say that when you die, you die. You go to Sheol which is the land of eternal sleep. "There’s nothing past this," in the words of the band Deathcab for Cutie.
So, there’s your background. Now a group of these Sadducees comes to question Jesus. And they proceed to lay out what sounds like an algebra problem about two trains leaving Chicago, but is really about what happens after death. It’s important to remember that they personally don’t believe anything happens after death, so it’s not like they’re trying to clear something up. This is more like trying to poke a hole in someone else’s beliefs by applying logic to it. You know like asking, “If angels play harps of gold, then how can they possibly float in the clouds, since there’s nothing to support such heavy instruments, huh Jesus?” At which point, I want to read you something written by C.S. Lewis . . .
"There is no need to be worried by facetious people who try to make the Christian hope of 'Heaven' ridiculous by saying they do not want 'to spend eternity playing harps'. The answer to such people is that if they cannot understand books written for grown-ups, they should not talk about them. All the scriptural imagery (harps, crowns, gold, etc.) is, of course a merely symbolical attempt to express the inexpressible.”
Lewis continues, “Musical instruments are mentioned because for many people (not all) music is the thing known in the present life which most strongly suggests ecstasy and infinity. Crowns are mentioned to suggest the fact that those who are united with God in eternity share His splendour and power and joy. Gold is mentioned to suggest the timelessness of Heaven (gold does not rust) and the preciousness of it. People who take these symbols literally might as well think that when Christ told us to be like doves, He meant that we were to lay eggs."
I just love C.S. Lewis. But, let’s go back to the reading we heard. So the Sadducees sure sound like they’re mocking Jesus, and probably trying to let him know that they don’t believe in this life after death stuff, like he and the Pharisees do. But then Jesus answers them, using their own scriptures—those first five books of the Bible—by referring to the story of Moses and the Burning Bush. Remember that story? Of course you do; it’s kind of an important one.
To refresh our memories, in the book of Exodus, Moses is up on the mountain, tending the flocks for Jethro. He sees a burning bush, and God calls to him from out of it. When Moses asks who God is, the reply is “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” Keep that story in mind as we go back to Jesus’ reply to the Sadducees . . .
Jesus says to them, “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.” You'll recall that, by the time Moses shows up in the stories, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are long gone from this earthly plane.
We get a little tripped up here because of how we typically use phrases about the past. Like we might say, “St. Timothy’s is the church of my great grandfather,” meaning it’s the church that he went to when he was alive. But it doesn’t work that way for God. As Jesus says, “Now God is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to God all of them are alive.” St. Timothy’s Church doesn’t work that way, right? This building doesn’t think of your great grandfather as being alive. But to God, he is. Which means to us, he is. And for that reason, when we celebrate Holy Communion at this Altar together, your great grandfather is celebrating with us. As is my great grandfather, who never set foot in Massillon. The saints of every time and every place, every time we gather around this Altar.
And even though Jesus doesn’t start talking about the time-space continuum and the mutability of time, it does kind of enter into this. And here’s what I mean by that.
For you and me, time passes in a straight line. We are born, we live our lives, we die. And we can only experience things that happen within our lifetimes. As far as any of us knows, once we’re dead, we are dead. And yet, we talk about the dead as though they are currently alive, somewhere else, don’t we? Right in our Book of Common Prayer there are all sorts of places where we pray for the dead, that they would go from glory to glory, that they would increase in perfection, that they are with us on another shore, that they might pray for us. It’s as though they are dead, but they are not dead. A Schrodinger’s cat of eternal life, if you will.
But now listen again to the words of Jesus: “God is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to God all of them are alive.”
You and I do not know what happens after we die. I mean, we don’t really know, you know? We have faith. We have belief. We have trust. But we don’t have knowledge. Not true, factual knowledge.
But what we do have is faith, and hope, and trust in God. We trust in the promises of Jesus that, just as Jesus was raised from the dead, so we too will rise from the dead. We don’t know when, and we can’t say how, but we live our lives trusting in that promise. That’s all we have to go on, but we trust that it is enough.
And in the meantime, we remember the words of Jesus: God is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to God all of them are alive. Today, we know we are alive, and we trust that we are in God’s hands. And one day, we know we will die, and we will still be in God’s hands. Because God is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to God all of them are alive, just as you will also be alive. We live our lives trusting in that promise. Our God is a God of the living, and as long as we belong to God, we are alive. You belong to God right now, and you will always belong to God. The God of the living.
Amen.
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