Sermon, 11/6/22: So when do I get what’s coming to me?

22 Pentecost

Psalm 145:1–5, 18– 22; Haggai 1:1–15b; II Thessalonians 2:1–5, 13–17; Luke 20:27 – 38

God called you… so that you may obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.
II Thessalonians 2:14

On Tuesday of the week past, the Church observed the Feast of All Saints.  Once a year, we give thanks to God for all those women and men, some known, but an even greater number unknown, who went about living a life, without fanfare, but dedicated to sharing the Good News of Christ.  These are they whom we recognize and about whom we sing as hailing “from earth’s wide bounds, from ocean’s farthest coast.”  (Hymn 287: For all the saints)  Their names are not found among those of the major and lesser saints whose witness to the Good News of Christ is on record and whose deeds are accorded individual recognition.   

Because we do not have names, which we can attach to these individuals, we tend to think about them in the abstract.  However, they are worthy of the recognition and adoration shown an enunciated saint.  These were and are individuals, not unlike you and me, who lived in their own present, but who, in so living, contributed to the future that you and I have inherited and whose witness encourages us to live in our own present, to preserve the created order for those yet to come.  They were, as are we, essentially “bridge people.”  Those, whose contribution to the faith we celebrated on Tuesday, provided and maintained the connection between Christians of yore and those yet unborn. 

Liturgically, we proclaim this to be the Octave of All Saints.  Thus, today is called appropriately All Saints Sunday.  Today’s lectionary, this year the 22^nd Sunday after Pentecost and the Sunday after All Saints Day, provides us with a visual regarding just how interrelated the past, present and future are.  Today’s lectionary reminds us that we cannot have one without the other.  And so it is that I offer to you today, a reflection which bears three parts.  They are:

I. The Bible as a historical document of politics, social and religious thought
II. Imagining or shaping the future in real historic biblical time
III. What the future holds for us moderns, according to the Bible

I. The Bible as a historical document of politics, social and religious thought
In our liturgical setting, we hear weekly excerpts from the Bible: from the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible, with its Five Books of Moses, or the Pentateuch, the major and minor prophets, and the Psalms; and from the New Testament with letters of Paul to the people where he had founded churches, and the four Gospels.  We have established and accepted this order as the standard or canon for the expression of God’s interaction with us human in the past, in the present, and in anticipation of the future.  We label this collection the Bible.

In addition, but rarely mentioned, there is also that portion of the Bible, like an appendix, called the Apocrypha.  It is that section, often not found in some editions of the Bible, but which a significant number of biblical scholars and ecclesiastical authorities have argued belong to the canon of the Bible, as they are inspiring sources of the divine presence in human affairs.  The deciding councils chose not to include them in the canon, that which we know as the Bible, because no direct authorship could be established.   

Today we hear, however, not from the Apocrypha, but from Haggai, one of the minor or lesser prophet.  This is interesting in and of itself, as we are given very specific dates of this man of God: “In the second year of King Darius, in the seventh month, on the twenty-fifth day of the month.”  Lacking, because they are insignificant, are the hour, the minute, and the second that the word of God was given him.  Also, unlike as with John the Baptist, no description is given us, regarding what Haggai wore or what he had for breakfast, lunch, or dinner.

What is important, indeed of greater importance, is what Haggai says regarding God’s further involvement in the life of the people of God.  And that message is not one of doom and gloom.  Rather, Haggai proclaims the very opposite: “[Thus says the Lord:] Take courage…for I am with you…according to the promise that I made you when you came out of Egypt.”  (Haggai 1:1f)  The Hebrew disregarded over years the Covenant which they had made with God after being set free from Egyptian slavery, and their disobedience had dire consequences.  Still, proclaims Haggai, God looks towards the future.  God has not given up on what God created.

George Friedrich Handel in a bass aria of his “Messiah” memorializes this prophecy of hope and restitution proclaimed by Haggai:
For thus says the Lord of hosts: Once again, in a little while, I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land; and I will shake all the nations…and I will give prosperity says the Lord of hosts. ( Haggai 2:6f)

II. Imagining or shaping the future in real historic biblical time.
Remaining in the historical nature of the Bible, we come to the New Testament, and more explicitly to that portion of Luke’s gospel just read.    In Luke’s gospel, you and I are accustomed to encountering the Pharisees as that group most likely to call into question actions the intentions and actions of Jesus.  However, in today’s gospel, they are the good guys.  Well, at least they are not mentioned in this encounter.  Nevertheless, Jesus finds himself in the middle of a theological dispute!  In his final teaching session in the Temple in Jerusalem, preceding his crucifixion, he has been challenged by the Sadducees, the party of the high priests of the Temple.

In order to maintain their hold over the rank and file, the Sadducees accepted nothing that was not explicitly stated in the Scripture, which for them was the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament, the Books of Moses.  The Pharisees, on the other hand, believed that Scripture, under certain circumstance, could be interpreted in the view of the present situation and experience.  The Sadducees were the “fundamentalists” or the “strict constructionists” and the Pharisees the “moderates” of their day.

The Sadducees, under the guise of a hypothetical question about the resurrection, sought to set Jesus up, as it were, in order to discredit his teachings, so they cited the text from Deuteronomy 25: 5 – 10, which speaks of the duty of a brother to care for his widowed and childless sister-in-law.  Unintentionally, unwittingly, however, the Sadducees expose their own hypocrisy and efforts to hold onto power.  The Creation Story in the Book of Genesis is explicit: God created man and woman to work together in partnership.   The Sadducees’ “got ya” question exposes their corrupt application of that ancient, religious text and, simultaneously, lays bare a real and acute issue of their day because of it.  

In their question, we see historical evidence of a socio-economic reality of an evolving nationhood.  There is no social safety net, no social security, no Medicare.  A widow needed a child, preferably a son, who could provide her in her senior years with a livelihood.  The woman, although also made in the image of God, had no rights.  She was property.  Those in power, the Sadducees and the Pharisees set standards for one-half of humankind, which is contrary to the will of the Creator.  In their very question, to whom this generic, hypothetical woman would belong at the resurrection, the Sadducees, the strict constructionist, have failed to see, or have ignored the Biblical reckoning required prior to the resurrection. They exposed their base interest, namely to keep the woman in her place, subservient to a man, denying her her status as partner.

You have been, I am 99% certain, at some time or other, the recipients of questions raised by persons who had no intention of being influenced your response, but rather often desired only to demonstrate their superiority of thought or social standing.  No matter the logic or validity of your explanation, you lose.  In this, then, you can sympathize with Jesus.  It is a frustrating no-win situation in which he found himself thrust.  However, Jesus does not shrink away.  Rather, he rebuts adroitly the Sadducees on two fronts.  The first was their misunderstanding of the resurrection, and the second their misunderstanding of Scripture.

The Sadducees assumed that in the resurrected life, life/marriage as we know it would continue.  Jesus acknowledges that human mortality makes marriage necessary, primarily in order to provide for the orderly distribution of property in a nation-state.  In the resurrection, who owns what, is of no significance, because the resurrection-world is about transformation, and the categories of human life fall away.

Jesus recites back to the Sadducees their own Scripture, Exodus 3:6, in order to demolish a false premise or an inaccurate reading of Scripture on the part of the Sadducees who believed that the dead are separated from God.  Jesus proposes: If God is only God of the living and if Moses identified God as the God of Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, and Jacob, then they cannot be dead, or God could not be identified as their God.  Still, they had died, so for God to be identified as their God, these Patriarchs and Matriarchs must be either living or going to live again.  So it is that the Sadducees’ own Scripture demands the idea of the resurrection.

Emphatically, Jesus rejects the idea that God is only the God for the living, and states emphatically: “all live to God.”  As God’s creative power first brought life to be, so also will that same power create life beyond human death.  No longer are the dead beyond the power of God, if ever they were.  If that be the case, then no living human being is beyond such love, power, and mercy.  Jesus rejects any attempt to place limits on God’s grace.  All humanity belongs to God, those who are alive and those who have passed back into eternity.

III. What the future holds for us, according to the Bible
Today’s gospel causes us to think, to reflect long and hard, about how we look at scripture and incorporate the teachings of scripture into our lives. There is no overt call to action, for example to feed the hungry or give water to the thirty or to visit the sick.  Nevertheless, today’s gospel does require action on our part, because today’s gospel provides the underpinning of how we approach God.  The Sadducees failed the test, for although they gave lip service to God’s creative power, they failed to realize that there is not a “radical disconnect” between what was and what will be, that evolution is not stagnant.  God is the connecting force.

We, in the 21^st Century, need to be mindful of the Sadducees self-inflicted trap which may blind us to what God may be doing in the future.  Biblical evidence illustrates that God is faithful and will support those who honor the covenant of a new life in Christ.  However, that does not give us license to say that God is bound to bring harmony to creation in the same way as was seen and recorded in the past.  Jesus laid the groundwork for radical change.  Jesus calls us to be prayerful, but Jesus calls us, as well, to rise each day from our beds with open minds, so as not to miss the often new things that God is doing in our midst, lest we are left, like the Sadducees, holding on still to the restriction of former times.

Finally, the lessons found in Haggai and in Luke’s gospel, absolutely appropriate to All Saints, are truly beautiful, truly reassuring, truly comforting, as they remind us that there is no limit to God’s grace, that no one, neither the living nor the dead, is unknown to God.  If, as according to Paul’s admonition to the Romans (8:39), nothing can separate us from God’s love, then life, your life and my life, the here and now, not some distant future, can be filled with a joy that is contagious, a joy that radiates from the core of our being, whether proclaimed from Clarendon Hill, or from the housetops, or from a smile to one in need of a smile.   Amen.