Text: Luke 20:27-38 (RSV)
The Question about the Resurrection
27 There came to him some Sad′ducees, those who say that there is no resurrection, 28 and they asked him a question, saying, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies, having a wife but no children, the man[a] must take the wife and raise up children for his brother. 29 Now there were seven brothers; the first took a wife, and died without children; 30 and the second 31 and the third took her, and likewise all seven left no children and died. 32 Afterward the woman also died. 33 In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had her as wife.”
34 And Jesus said to them, “The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage; 35 but those who are accounted worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, 36 for they cannot die any more, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection. 37 But that the dead are raised, even Moses showed, in the passage about the bush, where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. 38 Now he is not God of the dead, but of the living; for all live to him.”
In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen
What’s this passage all about? I think, for starters, that it’s about words.
It has been a blessing and a delight to watch our granddaughter Chloe grow and develop. She’s recently started using words, and as with all babies, her words tend to be totally her own. She calls herself, alternately, “O-wee,” “Co-wee,” or sometimes just “Wee.” She calls her cat, Bosco, “Osso.” Her current word for music is “isick.” She calls me “Dad-dad” – her version of “Granddad.” She says “Daddy” and “Mommy.” She has a little friend named Kit, but she inverts his name so it comes out as “Tick.” She’s still working on “Grandma,” though….
It’s very exciting to see kids learn how to interact with their world and figure out how to use words to do that. I heard recently that a human toddler is at about the same mental level as a chimpanzee. But as soon as children learn words, learn what they mean and how to use them, their development increases exponentially. Words are truly the building block of our society.
Another article I came across recently talked about names. It was written by an Indian woman named Deepti Kapoor, and in it, she recounts an experience while growing up in Bahrain after her father was posted there from New Delhi. There was a contest put on by Bahrain’s only teen magazine for the “most unusual name.” Being surrounded by kids named Ali and Fatima, she figured her name – Deepti – gave her a pretty good chance of winning. As it turned out, the contest was won by another Indian girl whose father named her “Democracy.” Ms. Kapoor writes, “Her father named her Democracy because he said it was an important ideal and he wanted to make it central to his life. To say it every day. (I love you Democracy. Democracy, do your homework. Democracy, you’re grounded.)”[1]
When we were in Zimbabwe a couple years ago, we were impressed and surprised by the remarkable and unusual names of the people we met there – names like “Precious,” “Liberty,” and so on.
Names are very special words which we give to our children; it’s a custom that goes far, far back into prehistory. Names were once thought to be magical and to convey the attributes of someone or something bearing that name to children who were given that name. In some ways, that concept still exists to this day, when we give our children the names of our loved ones or family names.
And, it is no accident that Jesus is called the Logos, “The Word made flesh.” As William Barclay tells us, “To Jews, a word was far more than a mere sound; it was something which had an independent existence and which actually did things. As Professor John Paterson, in his book The Goodly Fellowship of the Prophets, has put it: ‘The spoken word to the Hebrew was fearfully alive … It was a unit of energy charged with power. It flies like a bullet to its billet.’”[2]
Words are important.
The words we use help us to describe our world. But the words we use also define our world and the way we perceive it. For example, I really dislike the word “Protestant.” It’s always struck me as being a negative word, just like the verb it’s derived from, “protest.” When we use the word “protest,” it’s almost always in the context of protesting against something. I suppose we could make a case that we sometimes protest against something for good and positive reasons; but the word “protest” still seems to me to be drenched with negative, even destructive, energy. Instead of saying “I’m protesting against” something, I prefer to say, “I’m advocating for” its opposite. To put it in the context of colors, “protest” makes me see red.
So, instead of “Protestant,” I like to use the word “Reformed” when describing our faith tradition. To me, that word is much more positive – it evokes the notion that something is being, say, recovered, or reconstituted. It makes me think of a potter shaping clay in a potter’s wheel – the potter works and shapes the clay, and it might take on many intermediate forms before it’s complete, but, in the end, it is a new thing. “Reformed” invokes a sense of a much a more creative energy. The color for “reformed” is, at least to me, the color green.
And that’s just one word – an important word for us, to be sure, but it is just one word of all the thousands of words we know and hear and use. All of these words shape our perception.
But the problem is that we don’t all wind up with the same understanding of a word or the same perception. This reminds me of the movie “The Princess Bride” – ever seen it? In it, there’s a character who constantly says “Inconceivable!” Finally, another character says, “I don’t think that word means what you think it means.” It’s the same thing here. We don’t always understand what another person means when he or she uses even common words; sometimes they don’t understand us. Sometimes we ourselves don’t fully understand ther words we use. This is where it becomes important to ask clarifying questions and engage in dialogue. But we need to be sincere and serious about it when we do.
The Gospel passage for this morning shows us the opposite of sincerity. As the Very Reverend Charles T. McCoart, of Emmanuel Episcopal Church in Virginia, writes, “Jesus’ enemies knew the power of words. They didn’t want to help Jesus. They wanted to embarrass Him. They wanted to humiliate Him publicly. They wanted to destroy Him. In fact, they were plotting to kill Him.
“But they didn’t want to create a martyr. Before they killed Jesus, they needed first to discredit Him. If they could discredit Jesus, then people wouldn’t remember Him fondly. They wouldn’t write books about Jesus and erect shrines to His memory. They wouldn’t say, ‘Remember when Jesus did this!’ or ‘Remember when He said that!’
“Jesus’ enemies wanted to be sure that, when they killed Him, He was really, really dead – dead and gone!
“So they attacked Jesus with words.”[3]
We find Jesus engaged in a war of words with some people who have no interest at all in actually hearing, much less understanding, Jesus’ answer to their question. These people were called the “Sadducees.” The Gospel record often mentions them with the Pharisees – they certainly had the same goal as far as it came to Jesus – they wanted him gone, and they weren’t at all squeamish about how to achieve that, but as far as their theologies were concerned, they couldn’t have been more different. As the text makes clear, the Sadducees, among other things, did not believe in the resurrection from the dead – so, in order to trap Jesus, they ask him that obviously absurd question. You can almost see the smirks on their faces as they do so.
But, as usual, Jesus’ answer confounds them and sends them packing: “But that the dead are raised, even Moses showed, in the passage about the bush, where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. 38 Now he is not God of the dead, but of the living; for all live to him.”
In other words, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob all died – but God declared that he IS STILL their God. From that, the chain of logic follows that they, therefore, must still be alive; and, if they are alive, they must have been resurrected from the dead; and, therefore, there must be a resurrection.
Well and good. But what does that mean for us here today? I mean, most of us don’t go through our daily lives spending a lot of time on the question of the resurrection, much less on who’s going to be married to whom in heaven!
But that is one of our most deeply-held and core beliefs. That word – “resurrection” – is one of the most important words we will ever hear or ever use.
A very close relative of mine asked me a while back, “Do you really believe all those things you preach?” I was a bit surprised by the question, but also inwardly happy for the opportunity to have a “teaching moment,” you might say. I answered, “Of course I do. Otherwise I wouldn’t do it.” I went on to say that I truly did believe that I would see my Dad again one day, and all my other loved ones who had gone before. He just nodded and didn’t say anything more about it.
Whether we think about it a lot or not, that word “resurrection” is what propels us here every week. The hope and the promise of it is what fuels our faith, and allows us to face the challenges of the world with a smile on our faces and courage in our hearts.
In his poem, “Friends,” Arthur Mampel writes:
“Days with friends were
as my young papa
on a country road –
distance and snow
everywhere, a farmhouse
light was friendly.[4]
So, friends, let’s remember that wonderful word “resurrection”! Let us remember that, no matter how long the journey, no matter how cold the winter or how deep the snow, there is yet before us the warm, inviting light of Home! And Papa is waiting for us there!
In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen.
[1] https://catapult.co/stories/all-the-things-i-thought-about-when-we-were-naming-my-nephew?mc_cid=14c47043f3&mc_eid=7899d45461
[2] Barclay, William, The Gospel of John, The New Daily Study Bible, Louisville, Ky,, Westminster John Knox Press, 1975, 2001, p. 32
[3] http://www.emmanuelonhigh.org/Customer-Content/emmanuelgreenwood/CMS/files/Twenty-Fifth_Sunday_after_Pentecost.pdf
[4] Mampel, Arthur, “Friends,” in Poems: Silk Over Wood, 1981, London, Toronto, Chicago, International Theological & Philosophical Library Press, p.27