Sermon for November 10, 2013
PREACHER: Pastor Carrie Smith
Luke 20:27-38
Grace and peace to you from God our
Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Last week, our community gathered to celebrate
All Saints Day, lighting candles in remembrance of our loved ones who have
died, and rejoicing in the promise of the resurrection. Here at Bethany, this
day is always a beautiful celebration: we haul out the bell choir, our best
singers, special brass musicians, and our lovely liturgical dancers, all to
help us give thanks to God who is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the
end; and to Jesus, the risen Lord, who promises to be with us always, even to
the end of the age. It was a glorious worship service, thanks to all those who
offered their artistic talents to the glory of God!
On All
Saints Sunday, the promise of the resurrection is what makes the day more than
just a memorial for the dead. The promise that one day we will all be raised
and reunited with our loved ones is why Christians do not mourn as those with
no hope, but instead gather and celebrate as we did in spectacular fashion last
week.
But let’s be
honest: on All Saints Day, we don’t dwell on the specifics. The preacher
doesn’t spend a lot of time talking about the nature of the resurrected life, providing
proof of the bodily resurrection of the dead, or painting Thomas Kinkade-style pictures
of heaven. Why? Because everyone has a different understanding of what the
resurrection of the dead means or looks like. And Scripture, while it gives us
hope, doesn’t give us many details to go on!
Take the
text for this week, for example.
Here we
encounter a fringe group, the Sadducees, publicly testing Jesus on the issue of
the resurrection. First of all, we don’t know much about the Sadducees and who
they were. These guys seem to be ones whose entire identity is made up of what
they are against. Can you picture
people like this from your own life? Folks who seem to draw energy from being
negative? You might remember the Sadducees from Sunday School, where I, at
least, was taught to remember that the Sadducees were against the resurrection,
so they were sad, you see...
So the Sadducees
had issues with the resurrection, and they especially had issues with Jesus
teaching in the synagogue about the
resurrection. So they concocted a scenario, a perfect storm, a trap of a riddle,
meant to twist Jesus up in his argument and prove the resurrection to be
impossible.
“So…there is
this woman whose husband dies, leaving her childless. So she marries his
brother, and he dies. She eventually marries all 7 brothers, and they all die, and
she never has any children—so after she dies, whose wife will she be?”
The point of
throwing this riddle at Jesus is to try and make Jesus say something, in the synagogue, that goes against the
teachings of Moses. The Sadducees want to discredit him, and therefore his
ideas. But Jesus comes back with an answer that stops them in their tracks: he
says: “Listen, these marriage laws are about the here and now. The resurrected
life is completely different! Your complicated rules will not be an issue! And
furthermore, even Moses talks about the resurrection. So the most important
thing to know is this: “Now he is God not of the
dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.”
God is not
the God of the dead, but of the living. This may not seem like a definitive
answer, but for the Sadducees, it was enough to shut them up. The very next
verses, which didn’t make it into our lectionary reading for today, say this:
9Then some of the scribes
answered, “Teacher, you have spoken well.”40For
they no longer dared to ask him another question.”
I wish I
could say something so definitive about the resurrection—something that would
stop doubters in their tracks. Or, even better—I wish I had the right words to
clear up my own doubting and confused thoughts on this issue! But to be honest,
I had preached about the resurrection at a number of funerals before I had thought
too much about what I really believed about it.
And then, I
had no choice but to think about it. This happened at my first call, down the
road at a country parish, and I had a dear parishioner there who was sick from
the very first time I met her. At first, Paula was just short of breath. She wheezed
a little as she walked up and down the steps into the church. She always
attended the Wednesday evening service with her husband, because for many years
she had worked the night shift as a nurse and found Sunday mornings too
difficult. Wednesday nights typically had about 15 people in attendance, an
intimate group, so we got to know each other quickly, and the Wednesday group
often prayed for Paula and her breathing issues.
In the weeks
and months after I arrived, as I got to know her, Paula’s health got worse and
worse. Doctors were baffled. They could find no reason for her to have
difficulty breathing. It wasn’t cancer. It wasn’t asthma. It wasn’t allergies
or a mold problem in her house. Finally, they diagnosed her with “idiopathic
pulmonary fibrosis.” In other words, scarring of the lung tissue with no
discernible cause. And no treatment.
She was 59
years old.
Unfortunately,
the disease progressed rapidly, and less than a year after I met her, Paula was
in the hospital unable to take any meaningful breaths. One incredibly hot
August day, I stopped in to see her there after spending far too much time at
the county fair (another important part of a rural pastor’s job!) I rushed in,
hot and sweaty, for a quick hello, and saw that Paula was really struggling. So
I sat at the edge of her bed and asked what I could do. Paula shared that she was
frustrated and angry, and incredibly sad to be leaving her husband, kids, and
grandchildren. She knew she was dying, and it sucked. But at that moment, in
her hospital bed, she wanted to talk about the resurrection.
What was it
like? Did I believe in it? How could we know it to be true? Dying was the easy
part, she said. Trusting that this wasn’t really the end was the hard part. Please
help, she said.
I have to
say, as a brand-new pastor, I felt completely unprepared for that conversation.
I knew how to write a good funeral sermon. I knew how to baptize babies and
chant the liturgy and prepare children for confirmation. I knew how to attend
the county fair and bless the cows and pigs and sheep my parishioners were
showing. But looking a dying woman in the face and answering her questions
about the resurrection seemed something best left to a pastor who knew more
than I did, had seen more than I did, or understood Scripture more than I did.
But here was
no one else in the room that day but me. So here’s what we did: Paula and I
held hands. We decided there was so much we didn’t know (what the resurrection
would look like, who would be there, what our bodies would be like, what our
relationships to our loved ones will be like, for example) so instead we talked
about what we did know: What God is like. How we’ve felt God’s love for us and
presence with us. And, especially, where we have experienced resurrection
already, in this life.
Paula talked
about the joy of holding her grandchildren as babies and seeing the future in
their eyes.
I talked
about watching my brother journey from the depths of a powerful addiction to a
new, clean life, full of promise and hope.
Paula shared
about her love of angels (she had a truly massive angel figurine collection at
home!) and some of the times when she felt the presence of angels (or God, or
the Holy Spirit, or whatever you wanted to call it) giving her comfort and
hope.
I shared
about the darkness of my own grief after losing several pregnancies, and the
new, resurrected life I found when I was able to share my story with others
going through the same thing.
Paula talked
about feeling Jesus’ presence with her at church, and while reading Scripture,
and especially while singing her favorite hymns. She also gave thanks for the
life-giving 40 year marriage she had enjoyed with her husband.
After a
while, we were silent. There were still many questions left unanswered. The
future was still unclear. But together, we had found firm ground in speaking
about the God we knew intimately—the God who had been present with us at our
baptisms, in our sharing of communion, in the beauty of nature, at the birth of
our children, in the love of our church community, and in times of difficulty
and grief. The God we both knew is the God of the living, not the dead. Our God
is a God of life, life, and more life—which we saw most perfectly when Jesus
was raised from the dead and walked again among the faithful. As scary as it
was to be facing death, Paula came to a resting place, trusting that the God of
this life she loved so much would continue to be the God of the next life; that
the God she loved and served would not abandon her when she needed God most.
Soon, I went
back to the county fair, because Paula needed her rest. She died just a few
days later.
At this point in my ministry, I’m not sure I have any better
answers about the resurrection. I wish I could direct you all to heaven’s
website, where you could see previews of the rooms available and even check out
the menu for that heavenly banquet! I wish I had the perfect snappy comeback
for those who doubt, just like Jesus did with the Sadducees. But instead, in
times of doubt—mine or others’—I find myself going back to that hospital room
with Paula, where together we found hope in the promise of the resurrection,
and where we knew the awesome presence of the living God in the sharing of our
stories.
Let us pray, sisters and brothers, with St. Augustine, who
wrote:
“You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is
restless until it finds its rest in you.” Amen.
