Proper 27C; Job 19:23-27a;
Luke 20:27-38; St. Paul's, Smithfield, NC 11/10/2019
Jim Melnyk: “Hard to
Answer a Wrong Question”
Have you ever caught yourself
asking the wrong question or having gone off on a tangent in the midst of a
serious discussion or debate? Or
possibly, listening to someone go on and on about a topic find yourself
thinking, “What in the world are they talking about? This has nothing to do
with what we were just saying.” Yet, there we often find ourselves, asking,
pondering, and sometimes pounding away at that which is either unanswerable,
unnecessary, or quite simply, the wrong question to begin with. Someone once
likened this to a statement by C.S. Lewis – about how human beings get obsessed
with the color of a trumpet or the sound of an orange – missing the whole point
of both – how fitting.
In our
Gospel lesson for today, Jesus finds himself confronted by a group of Sadducees
– the religious and social power brokers of Jerusalem – and he finds he is
being challenged to a somewhat frivolous debate regarding resurrection and the
rules of something called Levirate marriage. It should be noted that the
Sadducees were among the most conservative theologians of Jesus’ day. Unlike
the Pharisees, they didn’t accept any form of teaching that couldn’t be traced
to the written teachings of the Pentateuch – the first five books of the Bible.
They scoffed at the Pharisees who embraced an Oral Torah – that is, rabbinic
teachings explaining and elaborating on the written Torah. In addition the
Sadducees didn’t believe in angels, the immortality of the soul, or in
resurrection – which makes their particular questioning of Jesus in this
instance somewhat peculiar – if not ridiculous.
On the
surface, the question posed by the Sadducees offers the interesting possibility
of theological discourse and debate about the Torah – you know, the kind of
discussion that goes late into the night over a cup of coffee or a cold mug of
beer.
Levirate marriage, where the
surviving brother of a deceased husband takes his place in the marriage bed,
offered a way of caring for the widow as well as insuring the continuation of a
family's line. But their “for instance” is also a ludicrous question about who
gets ownership of the wife in heaven – and perhaps about who will be
responsible for her in heaven.
Think about
this story’s context in the gospel – more appropriate to Holy Week. Here is
Jesus having entered Jerusalem in triumph, with people spreading their cloaks
before him, waving palm branches and crying out “hosannas.” Jesus having cleared the Temple of
money-changers and merchants – having accused the leadership of Jerusalem of
being poor shepherds of God's people – acting as a person clearly claiming an
authority greater than that of the whole assembled leadership – and all they
can come up with by way of challenge is a debate on what heaven will look like
based on the terms of Levirate marriage. It makes me wonder how in the world
Jesus managed to keep a straight face. Perhaps he just wanted to weep.
In the end
Jesus tells the Sadducees, “You're really asking the wrong question, guys. We
can't know what heaven is like – trying to see or sense it from this side of
eternity. Your real question – the one you're afraid to ask, or unwilling or
unable to ask out loud – is about the reality of resurrection life itself,
because you're unwilling or unable to believe in the possibility that
resurrection life is real.” Essentially, Jesus goes on to say, “God is the God
of the living – for even in death, we are alive to God. As surely as you live,
so live Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and so live the many faithful who have gone
before us.”
“The question you should be
asking,” Jesus seems to be saying, “isn't
how a hypothetical woman and seven brothers once joined with her in marriage
will live out the realities of heaven, but rather, you should be asking, ‘How
can we, as followers of the God of heaven, create a world in which a widow such
as the woman you dreamed up doesn't have to be handed off
brother-to-brother-to-brother to ensure her ability to survive in the midst of
her great loss?’ Perhaps you should be asking, ‘How do we as followers of the
Living God – the God of Life – live as though we and God are truly alive – as
if being truly alive now – today – really matters?’”
Even Job, in the midst of all
his suffering – a whole book worth of suffering – even Job finally realizes
that he has come face-to-face with a living God – a God who brings healing and
consolation in the here and now, not just the great by-and-by. Job's act of faith – his words of trust, even
in the midst of great pain and loss, are so powerful we find them spoken at the
beginning of the Burial Office in our Book of Common Prayer; with Rite II
offering a particularly powerful poetic translation that occurs nowhere else:
“As for me, I know that my
Redeemer lives and that at the last he will stand upon the earth. After my
awaking, he will raise me up; and in my body I shall see, and my eyes behold
him who is my friend and not a stranger.”[1]
Job’s confidence that in the end
God will vindicate him gives Job the freedom to look for that vindication in
his own lifetime. And so, for Job, and for us, the struggle is to be faithful
now. The struggle is here – in the midst of this world's realities with all its
joys, with all its pains, with all its sorrows and confusion, with all its
promise and hope. The struggle is to live faithfully with the hope of God's
presence and power to make all things new – to make us new.
Episcopal priest and author,
Martin L. Smith, writes, “If we align ourselves with Jesus’ firm and calm insistence
that God is the God of the living, not the dead, then there is no danger of a
pie-in-the-sky religiosity. The dead, in fact, are alive to [God] and have a
role in a future fulfillment for humanity in which death has no power.”[2] Facing
the cross, the questions and the struggles for Jesus are the same. And, for us,
the questions are the same: In the midst of the struggles of our lives, how can
we live out the reality of resurrection life today? How can we face all the
challenges and hurtfulness the world has to offer and still remain faithful to
God's promise of new life, and to God's call to be agents of that new life in
the world around us?
Those aren't always easy
questions to answer, but they are questions whose answers can be
transformational. They are the questions of resurrection promise and
resurrection life – resurrection as it is meant to be lived – in the now of
life. They are the questions that help keep us alive in the present moment, and
give us direction in the days to come.
“Why” may be a necessary
question to ask at some point when dealing with our sorrow or our rage at the
unfairness of life, but we can get stuck on that question. It's the “how”
questions, the “where” and the “when” questions, which get us moving again, and
which empower us to live out our calling as followers of the Living God. How
will we become faithful shepherds and faithful stewards in the midst of so much
unfaithfulness in this world? Where and when will we proclaim faithfully a God
of justice and compassion – a God of life – in a world filled with people who
cannot see beyond their fiefdoms of power; filled with people who see the
compassion of Christ only as a threat to their authority and their place in
society, or even in the church itself? How will we bring healing and wholeness
– the promise of resurrection life – to a world that doesn't necessarily want
us to be whole people, let alone a holy people? Perhaps it begins with
remembering and reclaiming our Baptismal Covenant which we renewed just last
week.
The struggle to live into resurrection life is real; we all know that. Following
Jesus, being shaped by the teachings of Jesus, being infused with the Spirit of
Jesus, makes resurrection life – resurrection life as it is meant to be lived –
real. When we follow the way of Jesus: when we follow his way of compassion,
justice and grace – when we stand with those who are voiceless and powerless in
the world – when we follow Jesus' way of nonviolence and forgiveness – or when
we follow Jesus' way of reconciliation, healing and hope – when we follow this
way of holy living and holy love, we will find resurrection power in our
own lives. And when we find the power to live out the resurrection in
our own lives day-by-day, the world will find that same power as well.
