A Sermon Based Upon Luke 20: 27-38
By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership
25th Sunday After Pentecost, November
10th, 2013
“Now
he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are
alive.” (Luke 20: 38, NRSV).
Life is full of questions isn’t it? We start asking questions quite young. Can’t you remember that younger brother or
sister, nephew, niece or grandchild who kept on asking you “Why?” Why is the sky blue? Why is the grass green? Why do I have to go to the dentist? Why can’t I have my cake before supper? Why?
Why? Why? Too many questions can drive you insane. You probably ask a lot of them too.
Our lives are filled with more ‘questions’
than ‘answers’. Humans are the only
species on this planet which have this powerful, even maddening capacity to
reason, to imagine, to doubt and to question.
The animals that I have had, even the smartest ones, do not question
things, but they react to things. People however, raise questions concerning
things they know little or nothing about.
We have strange and even complicated curiosity. We
encourage our children to raise questions, because asking questions can make us
make us smart, or maybe it will turn us into what my mother called me a couple
of times, a ‘smart aleck’.
Certainly, in the Sadducees in today’s
Scripture could have been called ‘smart alecks’. Several times in this chapter various
religious leaders come to Jesus with questions.
In fact, the whole chapter is built upon 4 questions, 3 which came from
religious leaders themselves and one which came from Jesus. All the questioning in this chapter starts
with one very big, leading question: “Tell
us, (Jesus) by what authority are you doing these things?” The question that comes in our text near the
end of the chapter builds upon this one.
The Sadducees, as Luke explains-- ‘those
who say there is no resurrection’---came to ask Jesus a question (vs. 27)
about the resurrection they did not believe in. Of course, they were trying to trick Jesus
into giving a wrong answer. The answer
they got gave them a big surprise. The
greatest rabbis in Judaism often answered questions by raising even bigger
questions. It was a culture which said
you ought to think through and answer the big questions yourself.
JESUS TELLS US WHAT HEAVEN IS LIKE
Let’s
begin with a look at the actual question the Sadducees asked. It was a question about the Resurrection of
the Dead. As a part of the conservative
and wealthy elite in that day, the Sadducees only considered the original Bible,
the Torah, that is, the first five books of Law, as their Bible. Since the teaching about Resurrection did
not develop until many years later, after the Exile, they did not believe
it. They didn’t’ think any true
Israelite ought to believe in anything more than this life.
While
it might seem to us that this ‘question’ about the resurrection is silly, is
really isn’t. We all have questions
about what’s on the other side of this life---what’s heaven like, will we have
a body, what is life like after death? John Killinger tells about a certain
bright-eyed, comical little woman was the kind of person who enjoyed a joke
till the day she died. During her last years she was a diabetic, and the
doctors restricted her from adding sugar to her coffee and salt to her food.
She managed very well without sugar for her coffee, for there were marvelous
sweetening substitutes. But she never got used to doing without salt, for the
salt substitutes were not so effective. We heard her say on more than one
occasion, as she stared at the unsalted breakfast eggs on her plate, "If
heaven is the way it is supposed to be, I am going to spend my first thousand
years licking on a great salt block!" (From a sermon by John Killinger, “What Is
Heaven Like” at www.good preacher.com).
None
of us know anything about heaven or about the resurrection, except through
faith. So we are free to imagine all sorts of things. C. S. Lewis, the famous Christian writer, said
he hoped heaven will be filled with good cigars that never burn up. Karl Barth, perhaps one of the greatest
theologians who has ever lived in the modern world, loved the music of Mozart. He said, in heaven, the angels play the religious
music of Bach when God is around, but they play Mozart when God isn’t
listening.
Most
of us who believe, have some image of heaven and resurrection in our minds and
in our hearts. But the Bible is wise to remind
us that heaven can’t actually be described in earthly terms. The apostle Paul wrote, “Eye has not seen nor has it ever entered into the human heart, what
God has in store for those that love him.”
Heaven, Resurrection of dead bodies, or Eternal life, are images of hope
and final salvation that defy human imagination, except in some kind of the zombie-like
images people imagine in the movies.
Because
we imagine heaven by “faith, not by sight” the door is open for all kinds of
speculation or doubt. It is the kind of
speculation which is suggested in the Sadducees question about the woman who
was married seven times to different brothers.
The Sadducees skeptically ask Jesus, “In the Resurrection, whose wife
will she be?” It's really is not a bad
question, and the answer Jesus gives is an even better answer. Jesus says that in heaven, marriage does not
mean what it means ‘in this age’. People
in heaven are not like people of earth, because resurrected people don’t die, but are
more like “angels” and are “children of God” (vs. 36). The
point Jesus is making is not that we will not recognize each other, but that we
will different. We have to be different
if we are going to be ‘of the living” and no longer ‘of the dead’.
Of
course, we’d all like to know more, wouldn’t we? How different would our lives be if we knew
exactly what life is like on the other side?
We really can’t say, but we can say what life is like without any hope
of life on the other side. The apostle
Paul told the Corinthians that: “If the
dead are not raised, then we are miserable people, and our faith is in vain.” Faith demands hope, even hope of some kind of
bodily resurrection. But in a world like
ours, what good is Resurrection without marriage, without everything being just
like it is here, and even without ‘sex’?
O.K. I said it, yes where
marriage and human relationships are not the same as they are now. What good is Heaven or resurrection without
human sexuality?
All
of us have imagined Heaven, or we’ve heard or read reports of people who claim
to have been there and back through some sort of “Near Death Experience”. The late Bishop James Pike, in his book,
The Other Side, shares several alleged conversations he had with his dead son
Jim. On one of these occasions, the
bishop and Jim were discussing Jim’s being in heaven and what it was like. Pike asked if Jim recognized persons there as
individuals. Jim replied that he did, and added that he wanted to know more
people and know them better. "Do
you think of people as male and female?" asked the father. "Is there
something like—like intimate expression?"
The
terms of the answer seemed amusing. It
was very much like his son, Jim. Without a pause: "Sex? Yes, there is sex.
But it is not like it is here. It is not
physical, of course, but actually there is less limitation. It is more obviously like what sex really
means. Here you actually can enter the whole
person. It is like you are in fact merging—becoming one" when you
communicate. Can you imagine able to get
into the heart and merge with everybody—to feel what they are feeling, to
communicate perfectly, to understand everything together where there is no
limit to true love and understanding? If
you’ve been married to someone for a long time, and you have become soul
mates, you can imagine how close people
can become, knowing what the other thinks, coming out with the same questions,
answers and responses. If you can
imagine two people taking trips together, talking long walks, holding hands,
sharing hearts over tea or coffee, even reaching out to make sure someone is
there in the night---then you might be able to understand that what Jesus means
is that heaven and resurrection is not less, but more of the best we can have
on earth. “They are like angels” (This
story is also from John Killinger’s sermon as cited above).
JESUS GIVES US AN ULTIMATE ANSWER
But of course, everyone has not had
loving, trusting, caring experiences on earth and it very hard for them to
imagine such a place like this? It’s too
hard to trust anyone or anything, even Jesus.
Many who have come from broken families or go through broken
relationships have difficulty with any kind of positive hope or promise. They live
mostly in the now, seeking the ecstasy that will heal their unspoken pain---whether
it is forbidden sex, drugs, over-indulgence of food and alcohol. Part of the reason so many live addicted to the
extreme, demand constant entertainment, or have little discipline in their life
at all, is because there is no peace or promise in their hearts.
I imagine the Sadducees as people like
this. They were wealthy aristocrats. They knew so much and in a material way had
so much, but they always fell short on the emotional and spiritual values of faith,
hope and love. This is why we need to see that the Sadducees’
question wasn’t really about the resurrection.
They already had their mind made up about that. They did not believe in any kind of
after-life or resurrection. They were
the wealthy who had their life here and now, with no thought past the physical
realities of this life. They were
closed-minded, dead-end thinkers, and had no time for someone like Jesus who
opened up life to all kinds of new possibilities. They wanted what they wanted and wanted to
keep things as they were. They did not
want to let go of one single thread of what they had believed, even if it wasn’t
working for everyone else. That Jesus came with a different kind of ‘authority’
was nothing less than a threat.
You can live a very sad existence when
your life is only about you; only your wants, only your views, only about
continuing your existence, and only being the honored guest at the party you
only throw for yourself or your own. (Maybe
this is why might also call them: “Sad You Sees”). These ‘Sad
You Sees’ kind of people could not allow this “God man” Jesus to bring any
new authority for their lives. Their own
view of God was narrow focused, closed-minded, and self-centered. This is why, in response Jesus refused to
tell them the source of his authority. “Neither will I tell you by what authority I
am doing these things.” (20:8). In divine
wisdom, Jesus knew that you can’t argue anyone into heaven nor can you argue ‘heaven’
into anyone. You can only share the good
news and let people make up their own minds.
This is why Jesus left the Sadducees to their own conclusions.
So what kind of ‘authority’ does Jesus really
have in this world? In a world of
anti-establishment, where the church is part of that establishment that is
being rejected, what kind of real authority can Jesus have? In a world where many, even in the church,
have their mind made up as to what they will and won’t believe and how they
will or won’t follow Jesus. In a world
like this, what kind of authority can Jesus have? When Jesus leaves the freedom to decide in
our own hearts, what kind of authority is it that lets us be, does not tell us
everything, but only offers us an invitation, but never forces anything upon us? “Tell
us,” (Jesus), “by what authority do
you do these things?” Jesus
refuses: “Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things”
(v.8). Can Jesus’ teaching, especially
his silence on so many things that trouble our lives, give us reason enough to him
be the ‘authority’ for us in our own world?
Once I worked with a young man who had a
great heart for the problems of the world and he had potential to be a good
leader. Though he came to our youth
group, he told us that he thought Jesus and religion was something good in the
past, but had no real relevance for life today.
“We have moved on beyond Jesus”, he told me over and over. As he was about to graduate and leave the
community for the university, I knew that it was impossible for me to convince
him to follow Jesus. So, as he departed
and we said our farewells, I told him, “Christian,
I know that you have great promise for
leadership in this world. I am praying
for you. Even though you don’t believe
in prayer like I do, I am praying. And I’m
also praying for you that you will do better than Jesus.”
With a little shock, he
asked, “What do you mean ‘better’ than Jesus?
I answered, “Well
Christian, you said that Jesus is someone good in the past but not for life
today and that we’ve moved on past him.
Well, I’m just saying that there is some truth in what you say, for even
in the Bible Jesus told his disciples that they would do greater works than he
did. That’s what I hope from you…”greater works than Jesus”. I hope you will do something Jesus never could
have done….
But I will add only one
thing, I continued. If one day in the
future, when you are going through a troubled time or you’re facing something
you can’t see your way through, please also remember that Jesus did something
for you that you, nor I, could ever do, no matter how good we are or what great
thing we might accomplish. I challenge
to do ‘better than Jesus’, but also I hope you will someday discover what Jesus
did ‘better’ for you, and for the whole world.
We live in a time when people go toward
two extremes about Jesus: One, to think of Jesus as the person who died just
for me to give me comfortable life I can live on my own so I get to go to
heaven when I die. The other extreme belief
is that I have very little time to about Jesus at all in my everyday life,
except to consider him good or great teacher who once lived, taught and died,
but means little to my every day decisions.
Neither of these are correct views of this Jesus who not only came once,
but still comes to us. As the great
Albert Schweitzer, who met Jesus in the midst of his own busy, successful life discovered
and then became a missionary doctor in Africa.
In a book entitled, The Quest
for the Historical Jesus, written over 100 years ago, he wrote: “He
comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lakeside, He came to those men who knew Him not. He
speaks to us the same words: "Follow thou me!" and sets us to the
tasks which He has to fulfill for our time. He commands. And to those who obey
Him, whether they be wise or simple, He will reveal himself in the toils, the
conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in His fellowship, and,
as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience Who He is.”
http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/518564-he-comes-to-us-as-one-unknown-without-a-name).
Did you catch that last line: “They
shall learn in their own experience
Who He is.” What Schweitzer knew
about Jesus is why Jesus did not explain any more to these Sadducees. You can only know Jesus as you serve
Jesus. Jesus is not some religious belief
you can have in your heard or heart and then put back on a book shelf and
forget. You might have heard something
about Jesus, or came to believe something about him, but you did not meet
Jesus. Jesus is living ‘one’ that
captures you whole heart and life, or he has captured nothing at all. It is not at all important ‘who he was’, but
the major importance is who is this one who lives in us as we live in and for
him!
CAN
WE LIVE WITH THE QUESTIONS WE STILL HAVE?
We always live with unanswered questions
about ‘heaven’ and about ‘Jesus’. The
answers we have accepted into ourselves are in no way at the ‘final answers’. We have only been given ‘holy hints’, hints that
are definitive clues which are alive and well, never completely answered, but
always calling and compelling us to ‘come and see’, to ‘have faith in God,’ or to
live a life of possibility by ‘asking, seeking, and knocking’ on the door of
the most important questions humans ever ask.
But remember, we never have all the answers we want. The Sadducees didn’t get all the answers they
wanted from Jesus either. They didn’t
even like the one they got. But this is
not all bad, if you think about it. If heaven is real, and if the resurrection is
still to come, then we living toward the final answers, not away from them. This is a promise, not a problem.
So are you ready to love and live the
right questions? Once you answer a
question, it’s dead. Jesus is the
question who keeps on questioning us. “He comes to us as One Unknown….whom we know in our own experience of Who He
is.” Are you living the right
questions in your life? Jesus can reset
your life, by pushing your buttons, if you let him. He can make you ask the right question, just
like Bishop Pike’s son Jim did in a dream.
The dead son told his Father in
that dream, “Father, you on earth are the
dead ones, we are the ones who are really alive.” I think Jesus was saying the same thing, when
he said: “God is the God of the living,
not the dead, for to him, all who have died are alive in him.”
Any more good questions? I sure hope so. The living of our lives and dying in faith depends
on it. Amen.
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