God of the Living

This past Sunday I explored the lectionary text dealing with a question on resurrection (Luke 20: 27-38).  It was a challenging sermon for me; I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments. The text follows the audio player.

NOTE: Apologies for the lower than normal audio quality, I couldn't place my phone in its normal location to record the audio, so it was recording from the balcony, thus the increased background noise and such.  Hopefully our church's new audio recording system will be up and running soon!

I have a bit of a confession to make; I don’t always know what to say about resurrection.  To be clear, I believe in the resurrection.  I believe that Jesus rose from the dead and I believe that in the fullness of time God will raise us all, as in the words of the Apostles’ Creed, “to life everlasting.”  I find great hope in the Gospel promise that death is not the end, and on Easter morning I can’t help but tear up just a little bit as we sing “Christ the Lord is Risen Today,” especially Wesley’s masterful third verse: 

Lives again our glorious King     
Where, O death, is now your sting?     
Jesus died, our souls to save,     
Where your victory, O grave?

So, yes, I believe in resurrection, but I’ll be honest, I don’t always know what to say ABOUT resurrection.  This was a challenge for me growing up in the American Heartland.  My hometown is, depending on who you ask, located on, or just slightly north, of the buckle of the Bible Belt - a loosely defined region of the States running from the Midwest, through Texas, and across the South - a place where patriotism and conservative Christianity are seen as one and the same thing.  In the Bible Belt, the American flag flies in every sanctuary, pastors are taught in seminary how to say Jae-zus, and discussions of resurrection and the afterlife are very serious.  I can remember in high school two of the guys in our choir got into an argument about when the rapture would happen; each quoting their pastor to prove their point.  One ended the conversation by saying something along the lines of, “I don’t know how you don’t see it, the Bible is so clear on what happens when we die.”

I wanted to step in and ask him where in the Bible this wisdom was found, but I was socially awkward as a teenager.  It was just such a different way of talking about faith than what happened at my church.  Sure, my pastor talked about resurrection, about hope, but never in the kind of detail that some of my friends seemed to at their churches.  We didn’t really talk about exactly when people are resurrected, or what our bodies will be like, or what the afterlife would be like.  Instead, Alex would say things like, “We know not the hour nor the day” and “We will be as God intends us to be” and “It will be beautiful and true.”

While I appreciated the mystery and beauty of how my congregation discussed the topic, I, like my southern baptist classmates, wanted to understand.  I wanted to have the right answer.  Honestly, I wanted to look as well prepared and studied as the other “serious Christians” in my school; I wanted to have something to say beyond “it’s true.”

This desire, the desire to understand the things of faith, is not unknown to our tradition.  As people of the Reformation we believe in the study of scripture and the hearing of the Word proclaimed as our path to understanding who and whose we are.  We trust that, as my mother used to tell me, “God gave us brains for a reason!”  It is why the reading of scripture, and the preaching on it, is central to our weekly worship.  It is why we have Sunday School for our young people and weekly Bible study for our adults.  It is why Presbyterians, historically, have been founders of schools and universities - because we believe that someone well educated, who can read and write and think clearly, will be better equipped to engage with not only this world, but the truths of God’s kingdom in scripture.

Unfortunately, this same desire to understand can lead down less helpful roads.  We can become obsessed with our own quest for understanding, we can dive so deeply into a question that we loose sight of the big picture.

I truly enjoyed seminary.  One of my favourite parts was, unsurprisingly, lunch.  Not because of the food, I promise you.  No, I loved gathering around table with my friends and just talking. Talking about what we had discussed in class, talking about what was happening at our churches, talking about the big issues facing our world.  My circle of friends had a great time at lunch.  However, there were other groups, sometimes sitting at the very next table, who spent their lunch times differently.  They would argue over the finest points of theological thought, often descending into discussions over theological proofs that would make your head spin.
To them, this was a game, a mental chess match to test who was the better intellectual.  Questions like “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?” or “If God is truly omnipotent, could God make a rock so heavy that God couldn’t lift it?”  Questions that have no good answer, but are merely designed to provide a venue for proving a point, for argumentation.  The ultimate coup for these folks was to have one of our professors join them for lunch, so they could try to stump the expert, try to confuse the teacher.

I wonder if this is the same basic intent that drove the Sadducees in today’s reading?  I wonder if their desire to have a proper understanding of God led them to this same tactic of intellectual showmanship, and what better way than to confuse the teacher.  We should note that their likely intent here, in the days following Palm Sunday and leading up to Jesus death on the cross, their intent is likely more sinister than simple questioning, but for today let’s take the question at face value.  Let us assume they are asking in goodwill.

Why ask?  Is there actually a woman they know who has recently gone through this terrible ordeal?  There is certainly no indication of this in the text.  Rather, this is a question like my seminary colleagues might have asked, a question used to test theological ideas.  It is a question designed to explore proper understanding.  Proper understanding of scripture, of the law, of God.  The belief of the Sadducees was that proper understanding leads to proper faith; if you believe the right things, then your faith will follow.

This is certainly not just a 1st Century Jewish thing!  This approach to faith is mirrored across history.  Within our own Reformed tradition the reliance upon, and proliferation of, confessional documents alone shows this to be true.  We very much want to know what is “right belief.”  From the Apostles’ Creed of the early church through the Westminster Confession to the statements of the 20th century in the Theological Declaration of Barmen and the Belhar Confession, just to name a few, guides for how we should view scripture, the world, and God, are part and parcel of our Christian life, they are part of our Presbyterian DNA.  For many, these creeds and confessions become a litmus test for proper faith - if you say and believe the right things, then you must be right with God.

At the core, this is not a bad thing.  There is no need for each generation to reinvent the theological wheel, and these statements help keep our faith honest and in tradition with the church throughout the ages.  There are errors of thought, some quite dangerous, that can easily slip into belief and practice; and these statements help keep us right.  Generation upon generation have thought, pondered, and polished.

However, if we are not careful, this can become not much more than an intellectual game, where faith is no more than proper thinking.  We are warned of this by St. Anselm of Canterbury, the 11th century theologian and bishop, who describes the sort of faith that “merely believes what it ought to believe” as “dead.”  His motto, “Faith Seeking Understanding” reminds us that faith comes first, and out of a love for God we seek to understand.
So if faith is more than right thinking, then how do we view the question of the Sadducees?  As with almost any encounter with Jesus, especially in Luke’s gospel, we should be prepared for the unexpected, and this case is no different.  Jesus response sets the question on its head.  He refuses to play the mind game of the Sadducees, instead he reminds them, and us, that the kingdom is so much more.

We are reminded that when we talk about people, we aren’t talking about abstractions, or logic puzzles, or problems to be solved in clever ways.  We are talking about living people, people with names and stories and hopes and dreams, people who are all children of God.  Jesus reminds us that the things of that age - the age to come - will not be as they are now.  The priorities of this life, the things that drive us to distraction, the things that consume our thoughts and lives, those things will be re-formed, as will we.

And this, for me, is both deeply reassuring and also amazingly frustrating.  I want Jesus to keep going, to keep explaining.  What do you mean we will be like angels, like children of God?  What will it all be like?  Yes, I understand you say it will be beautiful and true in a way I cannot understand right now, but I’d at least like to try to understand!  Can’t you tell us just a little bit more?

Part of the process for searching for a church in the PC(USA) is completing an almost 10 page long form which congregations review to decide if they want to interview you.  It asks questions ranging from leadership style to past experience.  The last question, however, is different: it simply asks for your statement of faith.  In my statement, I talk about a lot of things, but I end with this statement: 

"I believe that the day is coming when Christ will return in glory. On that day all things that divide us, both from each other and from God, will be wiped away and we shall truly know peace and joy."

I don’t know what it will look like.  I don’t know how it will work.  But, for me, this is resurrection.  For me, this is our hope.