Sermon for 11/10/2013 from Pr. Mark T. Peterson at Christ the king Lutheran Church, Holliston, MA. I'm thankful for the teachings of Dr. Mary Havens at LTSS, who taught and challenged us to CONFESS not a theory or idea, but the God who has been made known to us.
Gospel:
Luke 20:27–38
27Some Sadducees,
those who say there is no resurrection, came to him 28and asked him a question,
"Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies, leaving a wife
but no children, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his
brother. 29Now there were
seven brothers; the first married, and died childless; 30then the second 31and the third married her, and so
in the same way all seven died childless.
32Finally the
woman also died. 33In the
resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had
married her."
34Jesus said to them, "Those
who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage; 35but 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. 36Indeed they
cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being
children of the resurrection. 37And 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. 38Now he is God
not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive."
Greetings to you in the name of Jesus Christ
I would like to ask you to try and do something right
now, something I did with some Confirmation students recently.
Try to imagine, or think about, nothing. As you do this,
I don’t mean try to clear your mind. I mean try to think of what “nothing” is.
Can you imagine what “nothing” is?
I can imagine emptiness, I can imagine a void, but I
can’t imagine, I can’t think about, I can’t possibly wrap my head around what
nothing is; because in my life, I’ve always been surrounded by something. Many
things for that matter.
Now, let me tell you about the God I know. This God, is
eternal, meaning before there was nothing, which I can’t imagine, there was
God. And, furthermore, this God created something, from nothing, namely, you
and I. So, this God I know, is well beyond anything we can imagine. Not as a
matter of hyperbole, but as a matter of fact.
You see, we, as human beings live in a world of starts
and stops, and beginnings and endings, and though we can fantasize,
editorialize, and theorize about what eternity is, we really can’t understand
it; except maybe while listening to a sermon that seems like it will never end.
Knowing then, that I have plenty of time, we hear this
morning about this group of people called the Sadducees, who were a sect within
the Jewish people at the time, we hear them asking Jesus to theorize on what
happens in the resurrection, the time when the dead are raised to new life.
And, it’s a pretty good question, a question that could undermine Jesus’
authority and teaching.
And, it’s a question that I hear still today. Maybe not
which brother is going to get this poor widow, but more along the lines of people
wondering, or proclaiming “What is heaven like?” What I mean, is that when we
humans think about life after death, we think of the people we’ll see and
envision ourselves going to this great, eternal fantasy land in the sky, and we
begin asking questions. Questions like, How old will I be? How old will others
be, will my parents be older or younger than me? And, as we think about it, maybe
we get a little worried about running into our ex, or someone else from our
past. And then there’s the ultimate question, while I’m golfing at this
awesome, heavenly golf course, will I ever hit a bad shot, and if I don’t will
it still be fun?
Now, as a Pastor, maybe I’m supposed to have some answers
for this stuff, but I don’t; at least none that don’t lead to us taking God’s
word and parlaying it into museums that have statues showing the times when people
were riding on dinosaurs. The truth is, I don’t have a clue about what happens
when we’re dead, just as I have no idea what I was doing before I was born.
Since I’m not much help in these manners, maybe we can
see what Jesus says to the Sadducees, how he sorts this whole mess of what
happens in the resurrection out. He starts out by describing something really
different, but, apart from these generalization, Jesus doesn’t really get into
it life in the time of resurrection.
Rather than get into useless speculation, Jesus says to
the Sadducees, “let me tell you about the God I know.” He points out that this
is the God, who everyone knows can speak from a bush, is the God of Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob, and he says that this God he knows is a God of the living.
And though they disagreed about the resurrection, the Sadducees knew this God
who Jesus was talking about, for it was their God as well.
So, let me tell you some more about the God I know. This
God who created us out of nothing, sent Jesus into this world not to give us
all the answers, but to show us how to trust in that which we cannot
understand. This God I know, sent Jesus into this world not to make us safe and
secure, but to empower us to be bold and courageous in our compassion, our
generosity, and our love. This God I know sent Jesus into this world so that in
the midst of a world bound to such things as time and space, we may taste, see,
and share the life of our Risen Lord and Savior who not even death could
contain. This God I know, this Jesus that I know, has given this life to us so
that we may bear the promise of God’s love, of God’s eternity, for all people
and all of creation, in all times and places even as we face the certainty of
our own death. And in the aftermath of this horrible tragedy in the
Philippines, this God I know takes away the sting of death, with the promise
that we will never be abandoned, and in this promise gives us space to grieve
and mourn over those who have died and the loss of so many lives, without
speculation about what has happened to them in death.
This God I know, doesn’t give us the answers, only the
promise of new life. And just as we can’t wrap our heads around how big our God
is, and around things like eternity, or creation out of nothing, we also have
great difficulty understanding God’s abundance. As we talk about Stewardship
and money, our minds immediately jump to budgets and planning, and what we can
do if we can just all give enough money…and God can do some great things out of
us with what we give. But just as God gives us the eternal food of Christ’s
body and blood, despite our incomprehension, so that we can share that life
with all the world. God gives us the practice of Stewardship, not so we can
have an end result, but so that we can know, learn, and share in the never
ending abundance of God. God gives us this practice of stewardship, so that
with our lives of generosity, we can witness to all of creation, telling tales
of this God we know, who is generous beyond our imagination.
May this God continue to be revealed to us through
Christ, so that we may share in the unending mercy, the graceful abundance, the
eternal love, life, and hope, of the God we know, with all of creation.
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
Amen
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