All we need

ember 10, 2019

Luke 20:27-38

Everyone knows what memes are, right?  Memes are the best thing about the internet.  They’re pictures with hilarious captions on them.  I’m on a cleansing social media hiatus and I really miss memes…so if you see any good ones be sure and forward them to me.  For example:  My friend HG, the Bishop for TN’s Assistant, sent out a reminder email about this week’s task force meeting in Memphis.  In the email there were specific instructions about how to RSVP to this meeting; click the link below and complete the SurveyMonkey form and submit it.  Simple enough.  Instead, people starting to “reply all” with their response and meal requests.  So, seeing this, I sent HG a text of a meme of the character from Game of Thrones kneeling with his sword, and the caption said “Brace Yourselves…Reply All is Coming”.  My favorite meme of all time is this crazy picture of a chihuahua, with a tiny bib on, standing next to a plate of carrots, and the responses are hilarious:  are those Cheetos?  Why is that dog wearing a bib?  And finally, someone comments “this post is a mess”.  That’s a long story to say that this morning’s text reminded me of that meme…this text is a mess.   

Within the Bible there are several different types of experts, priests, and religious leaders that we encounter regularly…namely, the Pharisees and Scribes.  We are familiar with them, what they do, how they work; but today we will be talking about a group that most of us aren’t as familiar with…the Sadducees.  The Sadducees were more of a philosophical sect than anything, and they were strict with their beliefs.  They only accepted what was written in the Torah (the first five books of the Bible [as we know it today]) from Moses, and they completely disregarded any oral traditions, context, or cultural significance that it took to fully understand the text (today, we would call them Biblical Literalists (and there are many still who believe that the author of the text plainly meant what is written, without any “exegesis”, or study, as we call it).  They followed the law to the letter, and since there is no account of spirits or resurrection in these five books, the Sadducees absolutely rejected the resurrection of the dead (and that’s why they were so Sad U Cee).

This got me thinking about tradition and perception.   I attended a meeting on Thursday night in Columbia about building community.  We discussed what is community, how can we build community, and we spent a fair amount of time on the barriers to community, and two things came up:  tradition, and perception.  Tradition can get a bad rap.  Tradition is important…it reminds of where we’ve been and from what we’ve come.  It’s our roots, if you will.  The danger, however, is when we cling to tradition for the simple sake of clinging to tradition because that’s what we’ve always done.  If we don’t understand our traditions and why we observe these traditions and why and how these traditions form and continue to form us, we often find ourselves lost in a quagmire of confusion when these traditions are challenged.  It was once said that tradition is the living faith of the dead, and traditionalism is the dead faith of the living; traditionalism is what gives tradition this bad rap.  Perception was the other thing that was heavily discussed.  Perception is what you and I uniquely see and experience in our lives.  I have no perception of what it’s like to be married, or divorced, or have kids, but some of you here do.  Perception turns bad when we can’t see past it.  When we can’t set aside our own privilege and enter the world of someone else…to embrace their perception…therein lies the danger.  When we refuse to enter the world of the homeless, the sick, the aging, the oppressed and persecuted, we can quickly become systemically calloused without even being aware that this is going on.  The Sadducees we are discussing today suffered from traditionalism and perception apathy, which is a dangerous combination.

So, back to our story.  The Sadducees have approached Jesus with a question.  But not really just any question, this was more of a challenge.  They were hoping to stump the teacher, and humiliate him, or even worse trick him into committing heresy publicly.  So they reach back and pull out a bit of law known as the Levirate Marriage.  This was an old, but traditional, law that stated if a man marries a woman, and he dies before she bore a male heir, then his brother would marry her and this would continue until she either bore a male heir or until this simply wasn’t a possibility any longer.  This was law, and it was followed without negotiation or debate or anything.  The involved parties really had no say in the matter.  This law, or tradition, came about for good reason.  Women were no more than possessions back then, so if her husband was dead and she had no son or sons, then she would be a widow and would be marginalized to the outskirts of society, destitute and forgotten.  So, this tradition, this law, was meant to protect the women of that day and time. 

So, these Sadducees came to Jesus with a hypothetical scenario:  a woman marries a man, and has no male heirs, and he dies.  His brother then marries her, and has no male heirs with her.  The next brother marries her, and has no male heirs.  This continues seven times.  Seven times this poor woman is widowed, until finally she herself dies.  The question, though, is in the resurrection, whose wife is she, for she married seven times. 

Now everyone here knows I’m a huge West Wing fan, and immediately my first thought was Annabeth Schott saying “reject the premise of the question”, and that’s pretty much what Jesus did.  The problem here becomes that perspective we spoke of earlier.  We are human beings, living human lives, having human experiences, one of which is marriage.  There’s a small detail, often overlooked for what it means (we instead like to weaponize this line for our own purposes), but it says (in our UMH on p 867) until we are parted by death.  Until we are parted by death.  The premise of the question is rejected because human marriage does not follow us into death, because at death, we cease to be the human beings we are now and are transformed into something…else. 

And this is where it begins to get crazy.  I’ve had more than one conversation this week about what Heaven will be like.  We are a people who aren’t good with accepting the unknown.  We have traveled to the moon, we have explored the deepest depths of the ocean, and we have studied human anatomy with such fervor, because we constantly strive to be all-knowing.  It’s a need that’s very deeply rooted within us.  But the things of this world will cease to be and we will move on to something beyond compare, beyond comprehension, and beyond our wildest dreams.  We will no longer have 10 fingers and 10 toes, no more high cholesterol, no more diabetes….  All of our flaws and warts and bumps will be gone.  We will no longer need marriage, or children, or any of these human constructs we cling to, because we will have God, and I fully believe that God is all we will ever need or want.  I have faith.

And that’s what it comes down to; faith.  Faith is that blind following, acknowledging that you don’t have it all figured out, and that’s ok, because you don’t need to have it all figured out.  Your plans, your agendas, your intentions, they all cease to be relevant because I know, you know, that God wants nothing but good things for us and God will take care of us. 

Coming out of All Saints Sunday last week, someone asked me if I thought they would recognize their mom and dad in Heaven.  I believe so, and I believe so based on the Transfiguration when those with Jesus recognized Moses and Elijah, two people separated from them by centuries and still they knew them.  The follow up, of course, was if they would know them as mom and dad.  I don’t have the answer to that.  I don’t know if we will or not.  As a kid I heard that same response and it used to shake me and upset me to my core, but as I have grown, I’ve come to realize that this isn’t something I’m even entitled to worry about.  This isn’t my concern.  My concern should be focused on the objective fact that our Creator, our All-Knowing God, has created a place for you and me for us to dwell with God forever, and ever, and ever. 

And there, God is all any of us will want or need.  That, I believe.  Thanks be to God.