I recorded the message and you can listen to it here. One of the congregants was very excited about singing, so you might hear her comments in the mix. Don't worry, though, there was lots of singing!
The texts for the day are:
Luke 20:27-38
ON THE SURFACE, today’s lessons seem to be all about the tragedy.
First, Job. God loved him so much and was so confident in his faith that disaster fell all around his ears. So much for prosperity, right? Job started out as a rich guy, and ended up losing everything… because God thought he was absolutely the best.
But Job was adamant. Job, which is some of the oldest literature in the Bible. WAY BACK THEN Job was saying what the Sadducees in the Gospel lesson did not want to hear:
Job said, essentially, that his Redeemer LIVES, and that he will live too.
Job said that God is about life.
So it was not a new thing that Jesus brought to the story. LIFE had been there all along.
But then along come those Sadducees who had decided that, well, sure, life was lovely but NO WAY could there be a Resurrection. Nuh-uh. And they were going to trick Jesus. Prove that resurrection doesn’t even make SENSE.
Their story had all the elements: the rule of Law in the form of a woman and some brothers who were all following the rules set down by Moses.
The rules were about taking care of women in a pretty restrictive society…. They were to protect the woman.
But that’s not exactly how the story went when the Sadducees told it. They took a law that was meant to protect vulnerable women with no means of support and turned it into a game. They turned it into a legal exercise for them to sit around and debate.
They did not know the first thing about that poor woman!
If they were really worried about her, how could they have listed it as a countdown? It’s a little like that song…
Ten little ducks went out to play, over the hill and far away...
It reads like a countdown rather than a realization of the horrific circumstance of losing SEVEN husbands in one lifetime.
It completely glosses over her pain and anguish… not to mention the reason for continually marrying the next brother. Where is the part about protecting that woman? Where is the realization of what that law from Moses was about anyway?
For them, it was just a legal exercise. Not a life.
How often do we encounter that kind of thinking, though?
We turn the real problems in people’s lives into legal exercises. Rules that don’t connect to humanity.
The health care system, for example… it’s all about the insurance rules, isn’t it?
My blood pressure has always run on the high side and my doctor is adamant that something terrible is going to happen to me. I faithfully take the medicines she prescribes, I exercise, I try to eat healthy food. But my blood pressure is always high.
It irritates my doctor, this situation where my body does not act like she thinks it should.
It irritates me, too, though. Because I never hear a single word of sympathy, or encouragement. Just more news about all the bad things that might happen.
My doctor SAYS she is concerned about my life, but she really isn’t all that interested in what I think are the most important parts of my life. All she talks about is how I might die. It does not matter to her that my life might be about more than the numbers connected to my blood work.
Just like the Sadducees.
They did not know that women – she was just a hypothetical case. It’s likely they had never been in a deep conversation or even close around a widow. Around what widowhood means in the life of a real human being.
They did not care about her grief.
They just wanted to prove a point – that resurrection doesn’t make sense.
They were saying, in effect, that there was only death. That only death mattered. Over, and over, and over. Laws and death. Death and legal requirements.
It seems, in fact, that their intense resistance to the idea of resurrection was more important than the life of a poor, grief-stricken woman. They did not want to think about that woman and all those men living a painless, redeemed life. They wanted to win the argument so they could keep their positions of power.
They had wandered so far away from the God that had been spoken in the earliest of stories about Job.
And I think that broke Jesus’ heart.
Because I’m pretty sure what Jesus heard was a grief-stricken family that lost seven sons. The pain and difficulty of the life of a woman who was passed down from one brother to the next as each husband died.
Jesus was all about life for everyone, especially those in the most pain He always noticed the pain because that’s what had to be healed for a fulfilled life.
Jesus was the living, breathing fulfillment of what Job said: I *know* that my Redeemer lives. The shout of joy and redemption that we cry out every Easter.
Jesus came to teach us about life in the present and life eternal. When those 7 brothers would live. When the woman would live, released from the pain and uncertainty of a family with lots of sons and very bad luck in living!
And so it is for us, too.
The Jesus who proclaimed love and life on earth
Who showed us how to live
Also shows us that we are – EACH AND EVERY ONE OF US –
100% valuable.
Jesus, the one who proclaimed that each of us is worthy of living forever.
The one who took up the cross because we could never do it ourselves
Who was unwilling to sacrifice us, so Jesus sacrificed himself
Jesus, who died and then showed with his own body that Resurrection is real.
The Sadducees were wrong.
There IS resurrection.
My doctor who can only see a future of disaster for me is wrong.
I can live fully now in body and mind and spirit, and I will live forever in Jesus, regardless of the medical establishment’s averages.
In Jesus, we are all free dto live the life we have been called to live right now.
And if living is hard here today, then we can know there is also a better life:
The life that God gives us in Jesus.
The life that never ends.
Where every person is important.
Every life is essential
We all have something to share with each other and with the world.
You are a treasure, a gift, alive, and that is how you can be forever, because of Jesus.
AMEN.
First, Job. God loved him so much and was so confident in his faith that disaster fell all around his ears. So much for prosperity, right? Job started out as a rich guy, and ended up losing everything… because God thought he was absolutely the best.
But Job was adamant. Job, which is some of the oldest literature in the Bible. WAY BACK THEN Job was saying what the Sadducees in the Gospel lesson did not want to hear:
Job said, essentially, that his Redeemer LIVES, and that he will live too.
Job said that God is about life.
So it was not a new thing that Jesus brought to the story. LIFE had been there all along.
But then along come those Sadducees who had decided that, well, sure, life was lovely but NO WAY could there be a Resurrection. Nuh-uh. And they were going to trick Jesus. Prove that resurrection doesn’t even make SENSE.
Their story had all the elements: the rule of Law in the form of a woman and some brothers who were all following the rules set down by Moses.
The rules were about taking care of women in a pretty restrictive society…. They were to protect the woman.
But that’s not exactly how the story went when the Sadducees told it. They took a law that was meant to protect vulnerable women with no means of support and turned it into a game. They turned it into a legal exercise for them to sit around and debate.
They did not know the first thing about that poor woman!
If they were really worried about her, how could they have listed it as a countdown? It’s a little like that song…
Ten little ducks went out to play, over the hill and far away...
It reads like a countdown rather than a realization of the horrific circumstance of losing SEVEN husbands in one lifetime.
It completely glosses over her pain and anguish… not to mention the reason for continually marrying the next brother. Where is the part about protecting that woman? Where is the realization of what that law from Moses was about anyway?
For them, it was just a legal exercise. Not a life.
How often do we encounter that kind of thinking, though?
We turn the real problems in people’s lives into legal exercises. Rules that don’t connect to humanity.
The health care system, for example… it’s all about the insurance rules, isn’t it?
My blood pressure has always run on the high side and my doctor is adamant that something terrible is going to happen to me. I faithfully take the medicines she prescribes, I exercise, I try to eat healthy food. But my blood pressure is always high.
It irritates my doctor, this situation where my body does not act like she thinks it should.
It irritates me, too, though. Because I never hear a single word of sympathy, or encouragement. Just more news about all the bad things that might happen.
My doctor SAYS she is concerned about my life, but she really isn’t all that interested in what I think are the most important parts of my life. All she talks about is how I might die. It does not matter to her that my life might be about more than the numbers connected to my blood work.
Just like the Sadducees.
They did not know that women – she was just a hypothetical case. It’s likely they had never been in a deep conversation or even close around a widow. Around what widowhood means in the life of a real human being.
They did not care about her grief.
They just wanted to prove a point – that resurrection doesn’t make sense.
They were saying, in effect, that there was only death. That only death mattered. Over, and over, and over. Laws and death. Death and legal requirements.
It seems, in fact, that their intense resistance to the idea of resurrection was more important than the life of a poor, grief-stricken woman. They did not want to think about that woman and all those men living a painless, redeemed life. They wanted to win the argument so they could keep their positions of power.
They had wandered so far away from the God that had been spoken in the earliest of stories about Job.
And I think that broke Jesus’ heart.
Because I’m pretty sure what Jesus heard was a grief-stricken family that lost seven sons. The pain and difficulty of the life of a woman who was passed down from one brother to the next as each husband died.
Jesus was all about life for everyone, especially those in the most pain He always noticed the pain because that’s what had to be healed for a fulfilled life.
Jesus was the living, breathing fulfillment of what Job said: I *know* that my Redeemer lives. The shout of joy and redemption that we cry out every Easter.
Jesus came to teach us about life in the present and life eternal. When those 7 brothers would live. When the woman would live, released from the pain and uncertainty of a family with lots of sons and very bad luck in living!
And so it is for us, too.
The Jesus who proclaimed love and life on earth
Who showed us how to live
Also shows us that we are – EACH AND EVERY ONE OF US –
100% valuable.
Jesus, the one who proclaimed that each of us is worthy of living forever.
The one who took up the cross because we could never do it ourselves
Who was unwilling to sacrifice us, so Jesus sacrificed himself
Jesus, who died and then showed with his own body that Resurrection is real.
The Sadducees were wrong.
There IS resurrection.
My doctor who can only see a future of disaster for me is wrong.
I can live fully now in body and mind and spirit, and I will live forever in Jesus, regardless of the medical establishment’s averages.
In Jesus, we are all free dto live the life we have been called to live right now.
And if living is hard here today, then we can know there is also a better life:
The life that God gives us in Jesus.
The life that never ends.
Where every person is important.
Every life is essential
We all have something to share with each other and with the world.
You are a treasure, a gift, alive, and that is how you can be forever, because of Jesus.
AMEN.
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