11/10/19 Resurrection Questions Luke 20: 27-38 Job 19: 23-27a; 2 Thes 2: 1-5,13-17
Once a famous Baptist preacher was speaking to some students at a Christian college. A student asked, “Dr. Marney, would you say a word or two about the resurrection of the dead?” He replied, “I don’t discuss such things with anyone under 30. Look at you all: in the prime of life. Never have you known honest-to-God failure, heartburn, impotency, solid defeat, brick walls or mortality. You’re extremely apt and handsome—white kids who have never in all of your lives been 30 miles from home, or 20 minutes into the New Testament, or more than a mile and a half from a Baptist or Methodist church, or within a thousand miles of any issue that mattered to a kingdom that matters. So, what can you know of a world that makes sense only if Christ is raised?”
When I was ordained, I was 28 years old. I look back on that now and wonder how the wise older saints in my first congregation put up with me. What did I know then? I was 28 and filled with confidence. Oh, I knew how to preach a sermon on resurrection for a funeral or for Easter. I had learned so much in seminary. But I’m afraid my questions about the resurrection were something like those of the Sadducees in our gospel, theoretical. But it’s life that really teaches us. It is as we live and love and lose that we learn. With open hearts and listening ears we can experience the holy and the mystical. Like Job it is through the suffering that the truth emerges. His words ring true because they are grounded in life not theory. “I know that my redeemer lives and stands with me, on my side.”
Christian faith is drawing near to God, holding fast to our Redeemer and living in that hope. It is not about getting our doctrine perfect. It’s not about having all the answers, saying the right prayers or having correct ideas. Doctrines tend to divide. Controversies repeatedly split the church. In 1054 the East and West split over ideas of the trinity and remain divided to this day. In the 1600’s the Reformed tradition almost split over something as arcane as supralapsarianism vs. infralapsarianism. Infant baptism vs. a believer’s baptism has divided us in more recent times.
During the time of Jesus, it was no different. There were groups of Jews with different beliefs. The Sadducees were rivals to the Pharisees. Both groups were opposed to Jesus and his followers. The Pharisees believed in a resurrection from the dead. The Sadducees did not. It was the Sadducees who challenged Jesus in our gospel today. They relied only on the first 5 books of the Torah, Genesis through Deuteronomy. They were sticklers who were certain their way was the only correct way. Those Sadducees who didn’t believe in the resurrection had a question for Jesus about resurrection. What a trap! And their question revealed just how limited they were to the views of their own time—whose property will the woman be if there is a resurrection, they asked.
Jesus deftly points to what is beyond their limits. Women won’t be property in the life to come. Your sights are too small. God is the God of the living! It’s the same message Paul preached in Romans: We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s!
The Christian community in Corinth asked similar questions—what kind of body will we have? Paul contrasts a physical body and a spiritual body. He uses and image that speaks of both continuity and discontinuity. This body the physical one, is like a seed and the spiritual body is like the full-grown plant. The seed becomes the plant. But how different the two are.
Martin Luther was asked about the afterlife—he answered in two ways saying that the afterlife is God’s business, so he didn’t have to worry about it. He also said that we can know as little about life after death as a baby traveling down the birth canal can know about the world the baby is about to enter.
This summer I had a powerful experience. We had been staying for a few days in St. Louis, Mo. with Jack and Peggy Sieber. As we were leaving, I felt lightheaded. When we got in the car, I measured my heart rate with an app on my phone—it was 189 bpm. Steve drove me to an urgent care facility just a mile or so away. But the facility had just opened for business. The level of training was inadequate. The nurses didn’t know how to operate the EKG machine, so they called an ambulance. Finally, after about a half an hour, when my heart rate had been high as 210 the ambulance personnel gave me a drug that stopped my heart momentarily in order to re-set the rhythm. It didn’t work the first time. They had the patches ready on the crash cart—it was all quite scary.
I looked over the heads of all these medical personnel and met eyes with Steve. It was the day before Mother’s Day. Our kids were expecting us. I was worried about my family. I thought, well, if I die here on the table, Jack and Peggy will help Steve cope with things—and my kids and my parents and my sister will be there for each other. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t want that to be the end—but at some point, my thoughts shifted to the realization that I’d finally have all my resurrection questions answered. I’d soon be in the presence of God. I felt no fear, just excitement.
The next time they gave me a double dose of the drug, I felt weightless, suspended like at the top of a rollercoaster, then felt the blood swooshing through my body. Finally, my heart rate dropped to 145 and I got my first ambulance ride where Jack’s golfing buddy, who is the head of cardiac medicine at St. Luke’s Hospital, met me, conducted a bunch of tests to determine I had not had a heart attack. He put me on medication to get me safely home. Two weeks later I had a cardiac ablation procedure and voila—I’m fine. I know it was much easier for me to be the one on the table than the one standing by watching and worrying. It was only later that I considered what would have happened if we had been on the highway in the mountainous desert between Durango and the US border. Life is such a precious gift. God’s marvelous grace holds us through this life and beyond to something we can’t yet know or see.
Ten years ago, our daughter had her fourth open heart surgery. The other 3 operations were when she was an infant, before I was her stepmother. I went into a real tail-spin in the months of anticipation before her valve replacement. I was afraid all the time. Not about her—my belief in the resurrection was strong. I knew all the way to my core, that God would hold her through death and beyond if she were to die. No, I was afraid for myself and for Steve. How would we possibly cope?
Even when we believe in resurrection we can be overcome by our questions, or by the power of loss, or even by anticipated loss. It was the communion of saints that comforted me in the end. I had seen the church surround those who grieve so many times, I knew that whatever happened, we would be held together by people of faith, uplifted and carried when we couldn’t step forward by ourselves. Theoretical questions about God don’t really matter. Our second lesson points us in the right direction. The church in Thessalonica was apparently worried about ideas about the second coming of Christ. Paul’s letter admonished them to draw eternal comfort and good hope instead of getting distracted with wild ideas. Comfort for our hearts and strength comes through living in faith, through as Paul says– every good work and word.
The Sadducees came with a manipulative challenge, seeking to debate an intellectual issue with Jesus. He gave them a long answer that set them back on their heels. Compare that to Martha who came to Jesus full of grief over her brother Lazarus’ death. To her he said, “I am the resurrection
and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live…Do you believe this?
Martha was ready to receive the blessing that Jesus was proclaiming. For her it wasn’t just a hypothetical question. Resurrection is a whole new world. Injustice—where women have no hope, no standing, no safety net unless they are married will pass away. The age to come will be so much more than that—more than we can even ask for or comprehend.
A major league baseball pitcher was once asked what he thought about his future prospects. He answered, “The future is like the present, only longer.” That may be true for baseball, but God’s way in Christ is not just a continuation of the present. It is a whole new way, beyond our present experience, only known through hope and faith in the living God. We can fiddle around with ideas and theories, we can ask theological questions and read all kinds of books. But in the end resurrection is not an abstract issue. It is part of a life of discipleship, suffering and hope.
Job spoke from his heart about his lived experience. The “friends” who appear to counsel him give him answers—they simplify and explain away his circumstances, unconvincingly. They couldn’t tolerate the complexity and mystery of his life. But Job rejected their cut and dried answers. His confession of faith has to do with connection with God, his trust in the Redeemer who stands with him through it all.
We all have friends like Job’s who seem to have all the answers, and if we’re honest sometimes we fall into that same trap ourselves, the trap of believing we know it all, that there is one absolute answer to life’s dilemmas. When we are in the valley of the shadow of death, when grief overwhelms us, when we are lying on the table with the crash cart at our side what we need is not an answer, we need God’s own self—the resurrection and the life. Like Job we can say, “I know that my Redeemer lives and that I shall see God who is for me.”