Sunday Readings : Luke 20. 27-38; Job 19. 23-27a; 2 Thessalonians 2. 1-5, 13-17
Sermon preached on: – The Third Sunday before Advent 10.11.19
Prayer :-
Today is the third Sunday of Advent and this day is also observed as the Remembrance Sunday to commemorate the contribution of military and civil servicemen and women in the two world wars and later conflicts. There may be people known to us who may have left our physical company, those whom we grieve and miss. We respect their contribution – we know that they live on through their influences on us, in the ways that they have contributed in our lives, they have shaped our lives. They live on through their loving memories. We hear the assurance of Jesus’s last line in our Gospel passage – God is the God of the living – and to God all are living.
Last Sunday our Gospel passage was Zacchaeus’s conversion when he met Jesus in Jericho, while Jesus was making his way to Jerusalem.
In the episode we examine today, Jesus is now in Jerusalem. This is late in his ministry. He is at the Temple teaching daily. In Luke chapter 20 we see Religious authorities ask Jesus three questions:
• First, the chief priests, scribes and elders ask, “Tell us: by what authority do you do these things? Or who is giving you this authority?” (20:2).
• Second, the chief priests and scribes (or their spies— 20:20) ask, “Is it lawful for us to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?” (20:22).
• Finally, in our Gospel lesson for today, the Sadducees ask, “Therefore in the resurrection whose wife of them will she be? For the seven had her as a wife” (20:33).
None of these questions are honest inquiries for information. All three are attempts to ensnare Jesus—to compromise his authority.(v. 27)“Some of the Sadducees came to him, those who deny that there is a resurrection”. We tend to lump Sadducees and Pharisees together as opponents of Jesus, but the two groups are quite different:
Sadducees get their name from the priest, Zadok ( 2 Samuel 15 ff.). They are members and supporters of the high-priestly family and tend to be wealthy and politically well connected. They accept only the Torah as authoritative scripture, giving the writings of the prophets a lower place in their system and rejecting oral tradition altogether. They refuse to believe in the resurrection because the Torah does not explicitly teach it.
• Pharisees are more religious and less political. They accept both Torah and Prophets as authoritative scripture, and rely heavily on oral tradition to understand scripture. They believe in resurrection, a concept not fully developed in the Old Testament and not clearly mentioned in the Torah.
The word resurrection does not appear in the Old Testament, but the beginnings of the concept are found in Job 19, the passage which has been read to us this morning and particulary the verse 26 “For I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth; and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see on my side, and my eyes shall behold, and not another.”
The book of Job is one of the oldest books we posses, I don’t just mean in the Bible, I mean anywhere. This is probably one of the very oldest writings in the human history. As far as we can tell though it is not easy to date. It comes from the era of the patriarchs around the time of Abraham and we say that because culturally the things are mentioned in the book paint a social picture of the time of Abraham. More than that Job does know the name of God of Abraham. He does know the name Jahweh. So Job is one of the oldest books if not the oldest book that we have in the world. The idea of resurrection is mentioned in one of the oldest writings in the human history.
Psalm 16:10; 49:15; Isaiah 25:8; 26:16-19; Daniel 12:2; and Hosea 13:14. Ezekiel 37.
I find two questions in Particular in the light of our Gospel passage this morning:-
First, what is resurrection like? Further, and perhaps more to the point, how much will our resurrection life be like our life in this world? And what will our relationships be? This passage gives few specific answers to such questions, though it does stress that we should not limit our imagination — let alone God’s design — for life after death by our own experiences.
Second, how does resurrection compare with immortality? Though a Greek notion, many Christians today and, indeed, throughout the centuries, have confused immortality with resurrection.
We sometimes fail to distinguish between resurrection (God raises a person from the dead after a period of time) and immortality (life continues after death with no lapse of time), so it is worth considering the two beliefs:
(1)
Resurrection &
(2) The Biblical understanding of immortality
(1) RESURRECTION: The Christian belief in resurrection is rooted in the resurrection of Jesus, and is an essential belief of the Christian faith. The New Testament teaches that Jesus was raised from the dead (Matthew 28:6; Mark 16:6: Luke 24:5; John 20:1-18) and that those who believe in Christ will be raised like him in a general resurrection at the end of time (Romans 8:11; 1 Corinthians 6:14; 15:12-57; 2 Corinthians 4:14; etc.). Belief in the resurrection is an essential tenet of the Christian faith. Paul says, “If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain, and your faith also is in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:14).
• Jesus incorporates both the “now” and the “future” dimensions in a single sentence when he says,“He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life (“now”), and I will raise him up at the last day” (“future”) (John 6:54). Isn’t it wonderful to realize that we believers are already a part of the kingdom of God. But we need to be careful we can loose our partnership, our citizenship if we don’t remain faithful till the end.
Matthew 24: 13 says “But the one who endures to the end will be saved” Hebrews 3: 14 says “For if we are faithful to the end, trusting God just as firmly as when we first believed, we will share in all that belongs to Christ.”
If
we live a life worthy of the calling, for which we have been called
by God. (Eph. 4.1)
In our Gospel lesson for this week, Jesus
gives us a “now” perspective when he says, “Now
he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them
are alive.”.
Jesus says that it’s really a whole different thing. The resurrection life is not just getting some version of your old life back. Nor is resurrection the same thing as immortality. This is not just a question of what happens to your physical body after you die.Resurrection works on entirely different terms.
But what does it mean for us in this moment to live as children of the resurrection? How does the experience of Jesus, this example of Jesus- live on through us? And how do we bear witness to the resurrection in our experience of others?
For us in this moment, in this time and this place, to live as a children of the resurrection is not a matter of physical life and physical death. It is to be transformed by the Gospel of Christ and become witness of Jesus and to live anew in that spirit. It is to be transformed by the Incarnational Jesus’ words and deeds.
It is a rejection of the death-dealing of this world. It is moving from death into new life. It is the realization that nothing, not even death, can separate us from the love of God – and because of that, because of the constant presence of God and constant love of God for us as living children of the resurrection, the constant challenge to us is to allow that love to flow through us and out into the world.
In the name of God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen