Rev. Dr. Bary R. Fleet - Pastor
November 11, 2007 – 24th Sunday after Pentecost
Haggai 1:15b – 2:9
2nd Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17
Luke 20:27-38

It Isn’t About Us!

This week I heard about a colleague who was doing premarital counseling. He was going through the usual – talking about the pragmatics of the ceremony: who stands where, what order people processing. Then they got to the service itself. The pastor was reading over the vows: “I take you to be my wife, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, until death do us part.”

The groom stopped my colleague and asked, “Why do we say that?”

The minister was stunned. “What do you mean, ‘why do we say that?’”

“Those are your vows,” he said. “That is what you are promising to each other.

The groom said, “No, I know that. What I want to know is why do we say the ‘till death do us part?” We both believe in eternal life, so why should death be the end of our marriage?”

“Ahaaa …well, um: Good Question! I’ve never really thought about that before!”

What do you think? Does death end our marriages, or will we somehow continue that relationship in eternal life, or will it even matter? What will resurrection look like? What kind of changes will the new world of the resurrection make? Does the resurrection raise more questions than it answers?

We all have our own questions about resurrection – many more questions than answers. “If we don’t have bodies, how will we recognize each other?” “Will we be able to see what is happening with those we’ve left behind?” Lots of questions …

This is where we meet Jesus in today’s Gospel lesson. The Sadducees had their own question. The difference, however, is that our questions are sincere. We really do want to know. They were one more group trying to trick Jesus. They didn’t believe in eternal life in the first place. They were part of that group that thinks that we live, we die and that’s the end.

But the way they went about trying to get Jesus alienated from some of his constituents was to refer back to a law found in Deuteronomy, which legislated that – if a man died and does not have a son, the widow should not be married outside of the family, but the brother of the dead man should take the woman and make her his wife and if they have a son, he will be named for the woman’s first husband.

So, based on that, the question to Jesus was: What if there is a family with seven brothers and the first one marries, but he dies. So the next brother marries the woman, but he dies too … and so it goes until the last brother dies. Then the woman dies too. When they get to heaven, whose wife will she be?

Jesus’ answer was pretty straightforward – though not what they were looking for. “In this world, people get married, but in the resurrection of the dead, you won’t be concerned with marriage. You will have better things to think about, believe it or not. In the resurrection, you will be with God. That’s all you will worry about.”

Jesus really has very little to say about the resurrection. There are no real teachings about it. He doesn’t try to describe the details, which leaves us with a lot of unanswered questions:

If our bodies rise from the dead, what about cremation?

What about somebody who gets eaten by a shark …. Or who is physically mutilated?

What about our pets. Do they join the resurrection, or is it only for people?

How will we recognize each other?

Do we get resurrected right away, or do we lie in wait until Jesus comes again and we all get resurrected together?

What Jesus wants us to know about the resurrection is that it is a truth about God. The resurrection is God’s way of creating a new heaven and a new earth. It is God’s way of taking what we have messed up and fixing it. The resurrection is God’s way of never letting us go. It is God’s way of saying that “you were with me before you came here, and you will be with me after you leave here.”

While we aren’t like the Sadducees in wanting to trick Jesus, we are like them in having lots of questions. But our questions are really about us. What happens to us, to those we love? Will I still have to wear glasses? Will I still be bow-legged? Will I finally have “good hair”?

The resurrection isn’t about us. The resurrection is about God.

It is about a God who loves us so much that God will never let us go. It is about a God who will never abandon God’s creation or God’s children. Marriage is of this world … the resurrection is about a new world. The resurrection is a world in which we will all be with God.

It is a mystery. There are lots of unanswered questions. There is lots we can’t explain … but what we know is that we have a God who is going to make everything right in the end. It is a reminder that in the middle of pain and suffering and evil, we have reason to hope … because we have a God who is bigger and mightier than anything we might experience in this life!

NOTE: Much of today’s sermon is credited to Pulpit Resource, edited by William H. Willimon, Vol. 35, No. 4, Year C & A 2007.

SERMON IN A SACK: kernel of corn and a corn stalk. Talk about how the resurrection is like planting a kernel of corn … and getting a corn stalk … unimaginable … more than we can imagine.