Luke 20:27-38
Proper 27 (32)- Year C
We get ourselves in all sorts of difficulties by positing one position on a continuum and investing it with so much truth that everything has to emanate from it. Political parties are like that. The wedge issues of war, marriage, the parentheses of life (birth & death), what is good for an idolatrous economy is good for a faithful individual, clear skies, and welfare as a common right all come to ignoble ends when asked to bear more than their frameworks can stand.
Here we find ourselves mixing cultural niceties of marriage with relationships beyond our knowing, off in the realm of speculation. We try to force the unknown into our known at our own peril and the peril of others.
While I am not satisfied with Jesus' formulation, he at least doesn't let the assumptions of the question tie him down and distinguishes what we know from what we don't know.
Tomorrow we will find out how many folks have bought lines from one party or another about the meaning of life in our time and projecting that into the future. A much more exciting time can be had if we begin to raise questions about the meaning of life beyond the limitations of our current so-called realities and begin reshaping our present in that light.
So what question do you think will trump all other questions?
What question has been giving you fits and causing cognitive dissonance in your life?
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2004/november2004.html
Who's wife will she be in the resurrection? Our society doesn't permit levirate marriages, but does encourage serial marriages. The same question can be raised about heavenly spouses? Will I be the spouse of my final marriage (sort of like a death-bed conversion) or will I, lottery-like, end up eternally espoused with one of those other losers?
Those who have been in abusive situations cry out for some assurance that heaven won't be hell. Those who have had a healthy relationship desire it to be extended.
In light of American election results, how does this interaction play for those who married (a man and a woman) out of denial of their sexual orientation toward their own gender and finally got that worked out and, by whatever mechanism, are effectively espoused in a man and a man or a woman and a woman relationship? What will the resurrection experience be for them?
To shift gears from the politics of marriage to the marriage of cultural and religious politics, whose party will hold sway in the resurrection? Will we live under a universally mandated, non-party leader like George Washington, a Democratic leader like Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a Republican leader like George W. Bush, a future woman, non-anglo or homosexual leader of some yet unknown party to come?
Jesus takes all these questions of ours about specific details of our years and changes the conversation. A challenge to us is to also see things in a larger light — beyond simply extending a past to intentionally inviting a future not based on a past. This can get to be scarier than fears of immorality or terrorists. And yet we know that this larger picture is so well-spoken by a prophetic Jesus (like the early, "let there be"s) that we can't avoid being a bit more humble about our current biases and a bit more courageously faithful to speak other larger images.
Republican voters, Democrat voters, Green voters, Libertarian voters, other voters, and non-voters — "Where lie life-giving decisions now that not only transcend death, but party?"
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2004/november2004.html
The following quote from a blog by Bill Carroll [MISSING URL] raises an important question in light of the recent American election - Does having a coherent world-view, regardless of its connection with external realities, trump every other concern? This question leads into the question of how close the Republican's have come to being today's Sadducee?
Does . . . "the reply of Jesus to the Sadducees pass theological muster for you? Jesus asserts the resurrection of the dead on the basis of a loose, and, to our way of thinking, rather incoherent, argument. The Sadducee argument, by contrast, is nearly airtight in its logical rigor. The Word says that she will be passed from one man to another. In the resurrection, whose woman will she be?
"In the history of the Church, there have been many things that have been taken to follow from loyalty to the 'plain sense' of the inspired text. Slavery, the subjugation of women, and violent religious persecution to name a few.
"Any Christian effort to read the Holy Scriptures seriously must reckon with the ways in which Jesus felt free to read the Bible. And his judgment on the Sadducees: 'You are wrong, because you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God.'"
How free are you to read the Bible? Is this kind of freedom allowed to Jesus' followers or has Jesus' reading become a constraint instead of a loosening for ourselves? As we go into the next four years when our recently elected president promises to expend the political capital he has (and probably excitedly willing to go into political capital deficit doing so) how does this Bible-reading freedom of Jesus make itself manifest?
To be able to talk about this freedom, live this freedom, trust this freedom is to build the base and connections for honesty of all kinds. In and of itself it is not a political guarantee of anything but it will help us all be more honest about the what choices are being made and what is masquerading as a choice. For me, more radical than any of the parties, not at home in any of them, this freedom for an open future will help clarify and correct each of the contending views.
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One of my favorite sources is the online Wikipedia. Their article on Sadducees contains this description. See where you think it fits in today's world.
"It is claimed that the Sadducees denied the immortality of the soul , and are discussed in this light in the New Testament debating the matter with Jesus , and that they denied the existence of spirits or angels .
"They rejected the rabbis' interpretation of the Torah , and are presented as denying that any of the Hebrew Bible, apart from the Torah, is authoritative. As to the Torah itself, the Sadducees are presented as interpreting it literally and rigorously on subjects it directly covers, while rejecting the Rabbinic traditions that mitigate the harsher penalties or aim at preventing unintentional rule-breaking."
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2004/november2004.html
If a pastor moves on from a congregation, another pastor is to come and make them fruitful. After seven pastorates, during a time of Jubilee from pastoring, a question arises as to which congregation do I have responsibility for forever?
Well, it turns out, none-of-the-above is the closest to reality. It was a false concept that an offspring is the end-all and be-all of life. Even having one imputed to one through no action of one's own, doesn't reverse death. To talk of pastoral responsibility for the life of a congregation is in the same arena of false concept.
Whew, finally the woman died. Whew, finally being responsible for another or a group of others died. In the midst of mutuality we can do just fine without an offspring. In the midst of mutuality we can do just fine without a pastor. This is not to say that a child wouldn't bring joy or a pastor wouldn't provide leadership. It is to look more deeply at the details and catch a glimpse of the fragility of the premise we have for so long taken for granted.
Where have you been caught thinking that you are caught in a web not of your own weaving or in a story made up by someone without regard for your character development? Time, then, to remember there is a G*D of the living that goes beyond our limiting rules based on bad science or bad systems. In this remembering it is now possible to move on.
- - -
children of resurrection
would be a lovely name
for a congregation
wrestling with a living G*D
as they find themselves
born and reborn and re-reborn
shedding skin after skin
growing from within
not compressed from without
child of resurrection
would be a beautiful secret name
for an individual
finding their identity
in being everyone's child
and bearing everyone's child
whether in body
or in metaphor
once or repeatedly
resurrection children
bypass usual fears
of death
as ending
or beginning
or changing
each is permissible
none holds sway
all is alive