Year C
Luke 20:27-38
The Very Rev. Denise Vaughn
The Promises of God
“I am with you,” is the most announced promise of God in the scriptures. From the time of Adam and Eve to the Hebrew people’s journey in the wilderness, to the exile, to the birth of Jesus Christ, Emmanuel—God is with us. God’s sustaining presence is not a trite saying but a real promise. Through it all God does not leave us alone. I have heard the words “I am with you” in my heart and mind during some tough times and several of you have shared that you have also. Knowing that God is with me has allowed me to live life with hopefulness, thankfulness, and joy. All three of the lessons today speak to the hopefulness and joy of knowing that God is with us.
The prophet Haggai, one of three prophets who arose in Judah after Persia became the dominant power in the ancient Near East, sees the deep needs of the people, their hunger and thirst, and their poverty, spiritual and otherwise. It was to those dispirited people that he communicates the concern of God. “Be strong,” the people are told—even as they stand among the rubble of their temple, the ruins of their memories and identities. “Work, for I am with you” says the Lord of hosts according to the promise I made you when you came out of Egypt. My spirit abides among you; do not fear.” God, through Haggai, recalls the covenant that God made with the people and renews the promise. Even the rubble of the temple cannot stop God’s covenantal purpose to draw God’s people into hope, and participation in the life of God.
In the Luke passage today, Jesus points back to the exodus as well, evoking the memory of Moses before the burning bush. In Moses’ work we see the power of the Holy Spirit, bringing about God’s will and purposes for the people that lead to life. The God of the covenant heard Israel’s suffering in Egypt and saved them. So also, this God of the living reaches into the suffering situations of all people through the ages and seeks to save them. The saving work of Jesus Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, is at work to heal, redeem and transform us. The encounter with the Sadducees today provides Jesus with an opportunity not to debate a fine point of marriage law or end times speculation but to point backward to God’s saving history via Moses and forward to the abundant life that God desires for all humanity through Jesus Christ.
Jesus arrives in Jerusalem before Passover. He made a grand entrance on a cloak-covered donkey. And for the first order of business, he rebukes the money changers in the outer temple; certainly not a way to make friends with the religious leaders. His reputation as a teacher has long preceded him. So he spends his remaining days teaching in the temple. All sorts of people come to him with questions, scribes and chief priests and Pharisees. And almost all the questions they bring are traps: “By what authority are you doing these things?” “Who gave you this authority; is it divine or human?” “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor or not?” If you listen closely, you can hear the “if” in these questions. “If you are who you say you are (and we know you cannot be) then let’s see you answer this impossible question.” The Sadducees are religious leaders who deny the resurrection and emphasize the acceptance of the written law alone and they that know Jesus has been teaching about resurrection. They also know that the word resurrection is nowhere found in the law and the prophets-the Old Testament. Then, resurrection cannot be true, and they have a sure-fire trap to prove their case.
The trap the Sadducees set for Jesus is the “one bride for seven brother’s question. The law says that a man must provide an heir to his brother’s widow if she is childless. If this happens six times—or even twice—in a family of seven brothers and all are resurrected, the woman would have seven husbands. Therefore, resurrection cannot be true because this kind of bigamy is a violation of God’s law. The Sadducees are certain Jesus will trip up on this question because they already know the answer. But as usual Jesus takes them on. First, he tells them that their ideas about resurrection are wrong.
Resurrected life is a new way of life-life without death; life without marriage, because you will no longer need marriage. Children of God will live in union with God their creator. Then Jesus’ next step is to beat the Sadducees at their own game. When God speaks to Moses at the burning bush, God tells Moses: “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. These words are written in the Law and are true. Therefore, Jesus reminds them that God is the God of the living. Not God of the dead. Since the books of the Law tell us that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob died, and they also tell us that they are now alive in God, then resurrection must be true.
Paul’s prayer to the Thessalonians in his second letter celebrates this gift of resurrected life. Thanks are due to God who “from the beginning” has called God’s people though the work of God’s Spirit “so that you may obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.” During these times you are to “stand firm and hold fast to the traditions that you were taught.” Today we may not be dealing with the same exact issues that Paul was dealing with in the early church. And we are not arguing so much anymore about multiple marriage partners, or struggling with a return from exile as in Haggai. However, what Haggai, Paul and Jesus are saying makes sense today because we are living through an age of overwhelming change in our cultural contexts and in what it means to be Christian communities. We are in survival mode and need transformation.
Thus we need all the more to proclaim that God’s covenantal promises and enduring presence remain in the church today. These gifts are given to us each day to help sustain and embolden us for Christ’s mission. The good news of Jesus Christ is that God does not give up on us and does not abandon us even in death. We have this wisdom from Jesus, we have examples of this faith and belief in our tradition, and we are strengthened for our own lives here as we walk this Christian journey. Through the resurrection we can believe God’s promise of new life. Jesus does not answer all our questions. What he does is point us to a God whose faithfulness to those whom God has called is immeasurable and forever, and in that faithfulness we find all we need to endure all that life and death will ask of us. “I am with you” promises God. “Now may our Lord Jesus Christ and God our Father, who loved us and though grace gave us eternal comfort and good hope, comfort your hearts and strengthen them in every good work and word.”