Proper 27C

When I used to teach, I came to sniff out the questions that really demanded an answer and those questions asked to waste time, to get the class off the subject or trip me up. There was something unmistakable about the genuine, sincere question and the sneaky, tricky question. Maybe you know what sort of question I am talking about.

The Sudducees, the elite thinkers of Jesus’ time, the power brokers, come to him with one of those sneaky, trap questions — asked not because of genuine curiosity or a desire to learn but asked out of spite. Their question is no burning question, it’s a hot potato.

They engage Jesus in dialogue because, by now, his reputation as teacher has long preceded him. Maybe, too, they are onto him because they have heard how he kicked all the money-changers out of the temple upon his arrival in Jerusalem… an arrival that comes after a very long circuitous journey through the surrounding lands.

By the time the Sadducees arrive, Jesus has already met many challenges to his authority. People have been asking him questions like, ‘By what authority are you doing these things?’ ‘Who gave you this authority—it is divine or human?’ ‘Who said you could make the lame walk, the blind see and the deaf hear?’ ‘Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor or to God?’

And so they pop their question about the woman having seven brothers as her husband. Ostensibly, they are asking about what is written in the law and, therefore, true. However, since there is nothing in the law and the prophets about the resurrection, they figure they have laid out a good trap into which this itinerant carpenter preacher can fall face down.

Mosaic law says that a man must provide an heir to his brother’s widow if she is childless. In the Sadducees’ logic, this is written in the law and true. If this happens six times — or even twice — in a family of seven brothers, then resurrection cannot be true. If they are all resurrected, the woman would have seven husbands. This kind of bigamy is a violation of God’s law; therefore, resurrection cannot be possible.

Now I have never been a great logician — my GRE scores proved that really well back in 1980 (I had a professor in college ask me if I had ever taken a course in logic and I said no and she said it's evident) — but even I can make out the logic of their thinking. But Jesus’ logic and God’s ways far exceed human reasoning and Jesus beats the Sadducees at their game.

First, since there is nothing in the law and the prophets about the resurrection, how can they know what it is? Jesus tells them their ideas about it are all wrong. Resurrected life is a new way of life: it’s life without death, life without marriage because you no longer need marriage. Children of God in the resurrected age all live with God and they are equal.

Jesus ups the ante. He reminds them of God’s words to Moses at the burning bush: I am the God of Abraham [and Sarah], Isaac [and Rebekkah], Jacob [and Leah]. Aha — these words are written in the Torah, they are true. Using the Sadducees’ own rules for reading Scripture, Jesus reminds them that God is the God of the living — I AM WHO I AM, the God of Being. Since God is the God of the living, and the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, then they must still be alive. Since the books of the Law tell us that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob died, and they also tell us they are now alive in God, then resurrection must be true. (1)

Jesus, who could answer so deeply the burning questions in people’s hearts, who could bring healing to their broken lives and bodies, becomes a logician to the point that all the Sadducees can do is pack up their bags and leave because they have been defeated at their own game.

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But what about us and our questions about the resurrection? What does it mean to be connected to the God of the living? What happens to those we love but see no more? And, underneath it all, what about our trust in all this talk?
It comes to me as no surprise that this lesson follows the Sunday after All Saints’ Day. We are still in that place of remembering our saints, those ordinary people who have graced our lives. Just look above you at all the memory banners that people made last week, names of people that are dear to us, who left us a legacy of their personality, their gifts, their struggles and their presence. They are those people who have seen Christ’s face in other people’s faces, who are Christ-bearers or, what Frederick Buechner calls, Life-givers… those people who help us feel alive, help incarnate us as the people we were created to be, and remind us that being fully human means that the Holy Spirit resides in each one of us, that God is in the midst of our imperfect lives.

Through the saints that have passed through our lives, we gain a glimpse of divine reality. Through the saints, ordinary and extraordinary, we connect to God. Simeon the New Theologian defines this body of saints, the communion of saints, as, ‘The saints in each generation are joined to those who have gone before, and are filled like them with light to become a golden chain in which each saint is a separate link, united to the next by faith, works and love. So in the one God, they form a single chain which cannot quickly be broken.’

We remember them, we feel connected to them and, I suspect, deep down inside wonder what has become of them. That question — a genuine, heartfelt one — is hard to answer but I believe firmly it is not for us to judge (like the Sadducees) what has become of them, but to trust that at the time of their death, whatever passes is solely between them and God and that somehow all is well for them. Yet you and I will not really know until our time has comes and we stand face-to-face with God. Until then, we see through a mirror darkly.

On my part, I can look into that dim mirror because of the belief I hold in the communion of saints and the resurrection. I put my trust in God and that trust helps me believe that all will be well, and that the golden chain will never be broken.

Perhaps knowing that maintaining such trust would be difficult for us, God has given you and me visible reminders of the golden chain: each other. To sustain us on our way, we share the body broken and the blood outpoured. So come and be fed, and then gaze upon one another, links in the chain, knowing that we are all in life together… as the communion of saints, here and now.

ENDO NOTE
(1) The logic lesson comes from a sermon preached by the Rev’d Michael A. Smith, in Preaching Through the Year of Luke (Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse Publishing, 2000), 81-83.