November 10, 2019: May God’s words alone be spoken, may God’s words alone be heard. Amen.
Having celebrated All Saints, and survived the time change back to EST (barely), we are now in Advent. For those who are new here, there is more information on the seven week Advent season in your bulletins (and for podcast listeners, the same information is available on our website), but it was the original length of Advent, and many denominations are working to bring the church back to this tradition. There is, in fact, a group of liturgical scholars who formed The Advent Project to promote this return church-wide.
As I have noted before, we don’t have to change much, other than the colors of the day, because our lectionary, the selection of readings prescribed for each week, was always in Advent in this time period, we just refused to acknowledge it. If you pay attention the next few Sundays, the themes of death, destruction, resurrection, and Christ’s return all feature in our scripture readings, for Advent always begins with Christ’s second coming, before we turn to await his first.
Some might think Advent should not begin before Thanksgiving, but the church is not to be bound by secular things, and despite the fact that on Thanksgiving we offer God our gratitude, it is a national holiday, not a church observance. In addition to not being bound by the secular calendar, the earlier start to Advent allows us to enter into this reflective season of expectancy before we are sucked into the Christmas season shopping vortex.
So, welcome to Advent!
Now, when I first saw the reading from Job we heard this morning, I thought – yup, that’s a scripture for me. Job says “”O that my words were written down! O that they were inscribed in a book!” Yeah, I agree, because if they aren’t, I can guarantee I won’t remember them. But while I love this passage, we need to address this really weird gospel reading, because there really is an important message there, even if it is packed in a rather bizarre encounter Jesus has with the Sadducees – and, wait for it…it is an Advent gospel to be sure.
So, here’s the run down. Jesus and his gang are in Jerusalem – yup, this is after the whole palm waving grand entry thing – and he is shaking things up a bit. He has already overturned some tables, and is teaching his radical gospel message in the temple. Now, the temple leaders are the Sadducees, and they ask a really strange question of Jesus. They say “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. Now there were seven brothers; the first married, and died childless; then the second and the third married her, and so in the same way all seven died childless. Finally the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her.” Sounds like something the Riddler would ask Batman, right?
Okay, this is a time when, like a few weeks ago, it is important to remind all those bible thumpers out there who talk about biblical marriage that they have not actually read the bible they wave around. A few weeks ago we were reminded that many of the patriarchs – Abraham, Jacob, etc. – had more than one wife. And this question by the Sadducees is describing another biblically based thing called Levirate Marriage – in which a childless widow would be married off to her dead husband’s brother. I wonder just how many of those hypocrites would think THAT type of biblical marriage would be okay-dokey with them – not to mention the fact that the practice is not only patriarchal – well, isn’t just about everything in our texts? – but it is sexist. While the law was meant to protect widows from being cast aside into an impoverished existence on the margins, it leaves the women no agency in the choice. So, to those who do this, just stop with using our sacred texts to subjugate others to your own prejudices – just stop.
But let’s get back to this smackdown between the Sadducees and Jesus. I mean, I can just see Jesus standing there thinking “Dudes, what exactly are you burning in those incense pots in the temple, ‘cause whatever it is, you could sell it on the street,” because Jesus knew it was a nonsensical question. Why? Well, you have to know a bit about those Sadducees, beyond the bible camp song – “I don’t want to be a Sadducee. I don’t want to be a Sadducee. ‘Cause they’re so Sadd-u-cee. I don’t want to be a Sadducee.”
First, they did not hold as scripture anything beyond the Pentateuch – the first five books of the bible, or Torah. The rest of what we call the Hebrew scriptures, or more properly, the Tanakh, were not part of their tradition.
And that takes us to the second thing to know, they did not believe in an afterlife, so they are posing a hypothetical about something they profess to not be possible – a hypothetical about a hypothetical.
Jesus, being a good Jew himself, knew all of this of course, which is why he answered this ridiculous riddle the way he did. He did not, for example, draw from the passage from Job we heard this morning in which Job is proclaiming that he will be face to face with God in the afterlife. The Sadducees would not have thought that text valid. Instead, Jesus, as he is wont to do, meets them where they are – in their context – drawing from the Torah and the story of Moses and the burning bush.
Now this is where it gets exciting for all of you members of the grammar police, because he answers their hypothetical by emphasizing the tense of God’s declaration to Moses. You’all remember the story, right? Moses is walking along, minding his own business, when this bush bursts into flames, but isn’t consumed. Then, Smokey the Bear comes out and chastises Moses for not properly extinguishing his campfire. Okay, that didn’t happen, but really folks – only you can prevent forest fires. Anyway, Moses approaches, and God tells him “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.”
So, why was this a good answer to these Sadducees? God did not say “I was the God of your father, Abe, Isaac, and Jake,” but “I AM” their God. See, grammar matters – and so does the Oxford Comma, just sayin’. Then, to ensure these Sad guys got the message, Jesus tells them “Now [God] is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to [God] all of them are alive.”
And there is the crux of it. God is the God of the living – and everything is alive. Or put another way, Jesus is telling them, and us, to stop focusing so much on the literal, and embrace the God that is beyond our understanding, to see the life beyond what we know.
Perhaps it helps us to hear this scripture now, when the cold of winter is descending on us, the trees are losing leaves, and the flowers are dying. All seems dead and desolate in these winter months. Yet deep in the ground, deep within those empty tree branches, life is not ended, just changed. And when spring returns, we will see what we cannot now see.
At yesterday’s funeral for Bonnie Sherrill, we offered this prayer “We seem to give Bonnie back to you, dear God, who gave her to us. Yet as you did not lose her in giving, so we have not lost her by her return. For what is yours is ours always. And life is eternal; and love is immortal; and death is only a horizon; and a horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight.”
Our ability to comprehend what is possible with God is limited, but God is not limited. We try to make sense of what happens when we die, but Jesus is telling the Sadducees, that God is a God of the living, and to focus on that rather than getting tripped up within our human made boxes. As Martin Luther put it “Our Lord has written the promise of resurrection, not in books, but in every leaf in springtime.” In other words, remember that there is much life we cannot see, for a seed appears to be a dead thing, but is as much a living part of God’s creation as the plant it will become.
And it is a good message for us too, because we can often feel so very weary from the trials of life – personal ones known only to us, and those that affect the larger world – it can seem as though we are walking through a perpetual winter – that we are the walking dead. Yet the season of Advent teaches us that new life is always just around the corner, out of our sight, yet preparing to be born anew, even when it is hardest to imagine it.
The early Advent reminders of death, destruction, and desolation, while not always the cheeriest of readings, set the table for what is to come, because we know that no matter how dark the world may be, no matter how difficult things are, no matter how dead we may feel, the promise and hope found in Christ will always be reborn in us if we let him into our hearts.
Yet there is something else besides belief in the afterlife going on in Jesus’ answer to the Sadducees – one so important to hear in our day. When they pose their question, they are trying to trick him on what they know to be a literal part of the Pharisaic tradition, of which Jesus would be a part. But if you notice, Jesus sidesteps the focus of their question, to reframe it. He is telling them, in a sense, stop focusing on the law, doctrine, and dogma – and instead, turn your heart to the God that is alive all around you.
As I said before, there are those who use scripture and doctrine to marginalize others. Perhaps today the Sadducees would quote one of the clobber texts – those 8 snippets of scripture some take out of context to cast aside those who love differently than they. Jesus would counter in much the same way today– to get your head out of the literal and focus on the God alive here – all around you. Stop being the oppressor and start to live the godly life to which you are called. Levirate marriage existed because people cast aside the widows without children. They were left to a horrible existence without means for food and shelter. Jesus tells them, and us, to care for the widows – and today that would be LGBTQ people, the immigrant and stranger, the sick and imprisoned, the poor and homeless, the ones who are pushed to the side because they are a different race, speak a different language, or are differently abled. Because until we do that – we are the walking dead – and our God is of the living – always hoping that we might awaken and live as She hopes and dreams for us.
In this time of Stewardship, as we reflect on what Christ Church gives to us and how we might give back to enable what we do here to continue for years to come, it may be helpful to consider our response to this message in this season of Advent. And to help you, today you will be given something blessed at the altar that seems to be without life – it is a bulb like this one. These particular bulbs are, I believe, a powerful symbol of the life that is all around us in God’s creation, even when it is hardest to imagine it – because these are the first flowers to pop through the cold of this time year to offer a bit of color amidst the late winter snows. It is a crocus bulb.
Take this as a reminder of the faith that is birthed into new life here in your parish home whenever you are present, and in the way in which your gift of your pledge is a bulb planted in the soil of this faith community – bringing forth life for yourself and all those we serve.
Take it home and plant it as a symbol of the hope found in Jesus.
Await its breaking forth from the ground (or the pot of soil) with the expectancy of Advent.
And rejoice in the life that is in all things, even if it is hard to see or imagine, when flowers break forth.
God is a God, not of the dead, but of the living – for everything is alive in God.
Let us awake to our life in God, that we and others may truly live.
Amen.
For the audio from the 10:30am service, click below, or subscribe to our iTunes Sermon Podcast by clicking here:
The Rev. Diana L. Wilcox
Christ Church in Bloomfield & Glen Ridge
November 10, 2019
Advent 1 – Year C – Track 2
1st Reading – Job 19:23-27a
Psalm 17:1-9
2nd Reading – 2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17
Gospel – Luke 20:27-38
