Sermon

The Twenty-Fourth Sunday after Pentecost (Year C, Proper 27)
November 11, 2007

Helen White

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(Note: The recorded sermon is from the 11:00 AM service, and it is an edited version of this text.)

It is December 2002 and we are trapped by an ice storm in our house, in Durham, North Carolina, with no electricity. The world outside, including the roads and sidewalks and car, is covered with ice. The house is very cold, especially at night, when the warmth of the sun is gone. Ethan and Jay are little, little children with many, many needs and Michael is out of town. Luckily my mother is there to help, but her patience and good cheer can only last so long. The days pass by, one, two, three, Mom leaves, Michael comes home, four, five, six. Still no electricity. It is just as cold inside as out. Other people get power and have the nerve to decorate with Christmas lights. Our house remains very dark and very cold. My anger finds an easy outlet: I hate those lights and I really dislike the people who put them up. As I drive around on the sixth day of living with no electricity, my head hurts and my body aches. I feel angry and exhausted. I have no warm place to call home. I am a victim of the ice storm and my patience is shot. I have no more energy for smiles at the grocery store. I have no more patience for sorry drivers. I am ready to share my anger with anyone who crosses me, no matter how innocent they might be. I think for a moment of the homeless families who stay at our church every few months. I think of the hurt many volunteers experience when they encounter the seemingly antisocial or selfish behavior of some participants of the shelter. I realize we are all victims and we are all perpetrators. And there is a very thin line, easily crossed, that determines which role we are playing at any given time. As I waste time in a heated drug store, buying medicine for my headache and cheap toys for the children, I vow to try and not judge too quickly the actions of others. I vow to try and remember how I feel, both emotionally and physically at this very moment. Then I glare at the woman holding up the line and make some rude comment under my breath.

This personal example might appear trivial in light of the suffering of many oppressed people in our world today. But I do believe the emotional dynamics of my experience are universal. One might call this cycle of pain and retribution the human condition. We are constantly moving from the role of the oppressor to the role of the oppressed and back again. Whether through our words or actions our silence or inaction, we participate, both individually and corporately, in the hurt of this world. The question we might ask today is—how does the Christian life offer freedom from the seemingly endless cycle of human violence?

In today’s Gospel reading we witness the Sadducees trying to “trap” Jesus. Their intent is hostile, though they use the disguise of religious dialogue. Why do we assume their words have violent intentions? Earlier in the narrative, Luke makes this quite clear: Jesus enters Jerusalem, riding on a donkey, surrounded by the people praising God because of all that has been done. Jesus goes into the temple and drives out those who are selling things, declaring that the house of prayer has become instead a den of robbers. Jesus teaches in the cleaned-out temple, and the religious leaders begin to look for a way to kill him. The spellbound crowds surround Jesus and make it difficult for him to be arrested. So, in the meantime, the leaders attack Jesus with their words.

Hearing the passage from Luke today, it is as if we have just turned on the television to watch “Hardball” or a Presidential Primary debate. But when we turn on T.V. we know the players; we know the issues. We can read between the lines of phrases like “War on Terror” or “Moral Values.” And we know that in today’s world the stakes are high—the actions of our leaders have enormous bearing on the state of our lives, our country, our world. Well, the stakes are just as high for the Sadducees and for Jesus.

The Sadducees are defined as “the elite class of landed Jerusalem gentry who operate the Temple and wield power from the religious base of operations” (The New Oxford Annotated Study Bible, NRSV). The Sadducees do not believe in the resurrection of the dead because they believe solely in the teachings of Moses as found in the Torah. In this way they are very different from other Jewish leaders, such as the Pharisees, who focus on the interpretation of the law. The important point for understanding the passage for today is that the Sadducees believe in the establishment of God’s Kingdom on Earth not in Heaven. The Sadducees, people who hold wealth and power in the temple society, believe that only the reestablishment of the Jewish monarchy will ultimately bring about God’s reign. So, while living under the oppressive rule of the Roman Empire, the Jewish temple is their place of earthly power. And Jesus is daring to invade it, daring to tear down their religious ideals with his words and his actions.

The Sadducees, not believing in resurrection, ask their question about resurrection attempting to point out how ridiculous the notion is—attempting to diminish Jesus’ power. They ask a seemingly logical question: who would someone be married to in heaven if they have had multiple husbands during their life on earth?

And Jesus responds with a logical answer, even using the Torah in a way that is congruent with the approach of the Sadducees. Jesus says, in the resurrection life everything is different. Earthly institutions, such as marriage, do not even apply or relate. God is the God of the living, as attested to in the story of Moses and the burning bush when God spoke to Moses saying “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,” even though patriarchs had died long before. Although Jesus’ answer is logically remarkable, especially in the world of rabbinical argument, its power to speak to us is not found in its logic. As we listen to the Gospel story as the early Christian did, living on this side of the Jesus’ resurrection, we realize Jesus is transcending the endless human cycle of violence represented so well by the argumentative Sadducees. In pointing to the resurrection, Jesus gives a glimpse beyond the continuous struggles of this life that ultimately end in death. Jesus declares that life as we know it, including all of our attempts to preserve human power on this earth will end in the divine life of God. And God is the God, not of the dead, but of the living.

This passage demonstrates that it is through the resurrection that we are freed from the seemingly endless cycle of human aggression and suffering. Now at St. Mark’s we ask, well, what exactly does this mean? How does the idea of resurrection from death really transform the harsh realities of this world? In the limited framework of this sermon, I offer you one of the most accessible images of the resurrection life we can encounter as followers of Jesus.

Every Sunday, we gather as a community in this beautiful, sacred space. We sit in a circle with a table at the center. We listen to the story of our faith, and we remember the words that Jesus spoke to his closest friends on the night he gave himself over to human violence. We prayerfully ask that the risen Christ be made known to us in the breaking of the bread. However we view the Eucharist—as sacrament, as ritual, as mystery—we know that it is beyond our human attempts to obtain power in the world. We make ourselves vulnerable by coming to the table bringing our full selves, our stories of hurting and being hurt. We come to the table, regardless of our earthly status, with our hands open, seeking communion. And as we look into the eyes of the people around us, as we are fed the elements of the earth that have been offered to God, we are participating in the resurrection life. We are participating in something beyond the normal ways and means of human existence. And I believe that in the Eucharist, we are brought into the presence of the risen Jesus. We encounter the risen Christ who looks upon those who have acted with violence and says, “Peace be with you.” The Gospel stories describe the experience of the first disciples when they encountered the resurrected Jesus—after the initial shock of the encounter, they felt fully known and fully forgiven, loved and set free from the cycle of human suffering. This becomes our experience of the Eucharist, as we participate in an act that is beyond us all. It may be the experience of community, it may be the experience of spiritual nourishment, it may be the experience of holy sacrament. But in out participation in the Eucharist, we catch a glimpse of the way Jesus opens the minds and the hearts of those seeking freedom from human suffering. And we enter into the power of the resurrection life.