It seems like only yesterday I remember it
so well and so does Chris. It was one of the few times we actually
took the same college course. It was a philosophy class. A survey
course of modern philosophy, which meant philosophy since the
Enlightenment. I was just deciding to add philosophy as my second
major. I loved the way philosophy explored questions and ideas
that opened the world and ways of thinking to me. As midterms
approached I agreed to come up to the women's dorm one evening
and study with Chris and her roommate. As I remember it we began
with Leibnitz. Her roommate was late, so we began without her
. After a coupleof minutes Chris asked me a question about Leibnitz
and his thought. I replied,
"You can't ask that question of his system."
"Why not," she asked?
"Nobody asks that question. It makes no sense."
"I just asked it," she replied.
"But you can't ask that, at least not expecting an answer."
Just then her roommate arrived with her books. She sat down and
opened her notes. We told her we had started with Leibnitz. "Good,"
she said, "I have one question." And she proceeded to
ask the exact same question Chris had just asked me, to which
I replied,
"You can't ask that question. nobody asks that question."
And her roommate replied, "I just did."
Every time I read this Gospel lesson I think of sitting in the study area in Andreen dorm at Augustana College faced with questions you can't ask. At first reading this is a very strange lesson. A struggle to know how to interpret. I think it helps to remember that in Jesus' day the Jewish community consisted of a number of religious groups with rather distinctive belief systems. Our second year confirmation students are expected to learn at least a little about each of four most distinctive groups. The Essenes (who we know best through the Dead Sea scrolls). The Zealots (who were political revolutionaries battling the Roman occupying armies). The most familiar group to us were the Pharisees who are the intellectual and to a certain degree spiritual ancestors of modern day Judaism. The Pharisees were teachers of the word based primarily in the synagogues. They believed in life after death, angels, and were anticipating a coming messiah to bring in God's kingdom. The Pharisees were guardians of the law. Many of Jesus disciples were trained by or were at least familiar with Pharisaic teachings. The apostle Paul was a distinguished Pharisee. And the fourth group is the one at the center of our Gospel lesson for today-the Sadducees.
The Sadducees were a conservative group that had somehow positioned themselves to have a lock on liturgical and ritual posts in the great temple in Jerusalem. Wealthy, conservative, the Sadducees were guardians of the law but only what was in the first five books of the Bible-the Torah. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. They did not believe in anything not found in the first five books of the Bible, which meant by their reading there were no angels and no life after death, which is what brought them to Jesus. In today's scripture we have a portion of the New Testament known as the controversy texts-challenges to Jesus-kind of like oral exams to see if Jesus really was as spiritually and theologically gifted as the crowds wanted to make him out to be. Now since the Sadducees did not believe in life after death they placed even more stock in the importance of continuing a family line, and the Torah had some interesting teachings to that end, requiring that if a man with brothers died while the wife was still of child bearing years then the widow was to marry the surviving brother in an attempt to carry on the family line. If that sounds strange to us the situation set forth by the Sadducees comes off as down right bizarre. A man with six brothers dies childless, so his widow dutifully marries a surviving brother who also promptly dies after which the widow marries another brother who also dies and so it goes until the woman has married all seven brothers who have all died childless. Now this was a woman that no one with any sense should have married, but ultimately even she dies. And here the Sadducees ask their question of Jesus "In heaven. which we don't believe in, when the woman is resurrected, which we also don't believe in, whose wife will she be?"
It is important that before we go any further that everyone understand that in matters of faith and religion there are no questions that you cannot ask, at least not in the Lutheran community that we have here at Holy Spirit. Unlike my philosophy study group there is no question you can ask to which I will reply, "You can't ask that." Last Sunday as we read the names of the saints who had died in the past year and then as we gathered in the Circle of Hope Columbarium to dedicate that space there were within the hearts and minds of many questions about the nature of death, the struggles of life and the fairness of God. There is no question that I as a Pastor will tell you that you cannot ask, but what I may tell you is "I can't answer that right now and in our life time we may never know the answer to that question." That will not mean the question should not be asked. In fact, that might be the very reason to ask it.
The problem with the question the Sadducees posed to Jesus was not that it could not be asked. Obviously they were asking it, but Jesus answers by pointing out that the question is asked in such a way that it seeks to limit the answer and even God. The world of Torah law and requirements of marriage, the world of life defined by surviving children and human institutions. These were not the source of answers to Jesus but rather the very problem. There is more, Jesus knew, to God then our institutions, more than our expectations and traditions. There is more to life and faith then knowing the right things to do at the right time, more to our place in heaven than our good deeds and accomplishments. Jesus says that the challenge is not to know what to do when but to know God. To know God. We are a people who are oriented to the bottom line.
When the building committee explored the question of outside fundraisers to help us do a building project the various fundraising groups did their presentations but in the end there came a moment when more than once someone on the committee said, "Okay, we've heard all about what you plan to do, what's the bottom line? How much will it cost?"
We want to get to heaven. we want to be right with God, we want to have a complete and meaningful life. What's the bottom line? We want to evaluate things on our terms and find our answers. Jesus must have smiled after he heard the Sadducees frame their question . He must have smiled and I suspect he shook his head. They just didn't get it. It was the wrong question . They could ask it and using the gymnastics of midrash reflection an answer could be found, but it was the wrong question, looking for the wrong bottom line.
Bottom line. Today is stewardship commitment Sunday, which brings up questions also. There will be some who will be asking, "How much do you need me to give?" Others will ask, "How much should I give?" Still others will wonder why they should give anything at all. For those who have come to understand the Old Testament command that God's people should give a tithe. ten percent, there will come the question, "Ten percent of what? Net income? Gross income?" Or maybe the Moslem requirement to give ten percent of net worth will be considered, which is usually followed by the question "Are you kidding?" The point. of course. is that if you have to ask such questions you don't get it. So many questions for a stewardship day to which the answer God gives is another question . "How much do you want to give?" There are no membership dues. There is no mandated amount. there is only a question. When you look at your life and the grace that God has given you to know forgiveness, to know love, to have family and friends. "Who much do you want to give? How much can you give?" It is the right question, a reminder to us that our God is a gracious God who gives without requirements from us of merit or achievement. "How much do you think would be right? How much would express a right response to God? Considering how much God has given you-how much can you give?"
Last Sunday I showed the children a picture
of my grandfather in his World War One uniform. Most families
have pictures of family members who served their country. There
are lots of those pictures stuffed away in closets and drawers
To most people such pictures are old keepsakes of another time.
But today is Veterans Day. and all the forgotten pictures take
on a slightly different meaning. There are tens of thousands of
veterans whose pictures are all their families ever had of them.
Lives were lived and given that other lives might be lived more
fully, with more freedoms and more meaning, that there would be
less fear and more opportunity in the world. There are some who
would build monuments to such sacrifices and certainly to remember
is important. But Jesus said it really doesn't matter what rituals
or forms you use to recall the past. What matters is the power
of life in the present and the promise of life for the future.
No one gives their life just to be remembered. The true meaning
of a Veteran's day is found not in memory but in the lives now
lived in fullness and promise. Jesus frames our understanding
of this day so clearly when he reminds us Now he is God not
of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.
To be alive to God is to know God and to be known by God.
That is our calling. From the moment of our baptism, nurtured
in the fellowship of the body of Christ. Here in this place our
gifts are made known to us. There is no question this day that
cannot be asked, and by grace there will ultimately be no question
whose answer will not be known to us even as we are fully known
to God. That is the great mystery of faith. Our God is a God who
lives not only in the memory of the past or the hope of the future.
Our God is the God of the living and that means our God is the
God of the present, alive in, around and to us now.
Amen.