24 Pentecost, Year C

"THE LIFE EVERLASTING"
Proper 27 -- Job 19: 23 – 27a; Psalm 17; II Thessalonians 2: 13 – 3:5; Luke 20: 27 – 38
Given at Trinity Church, Mt. Vernon, Illinois; Sunday, November 11th, 2007

“We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.”

With these closing words of the Nicene Creed, we affirm our belief that there is life with God at the end of our earthly life.

Life after death is at the heart of the question that the Sadducees posed to Jesus, heard in our Gospel reading from Luke, chapter 20, today.

But since Jesus affirms the reality of everlasting life, today’s Gospel account calls us to examine our focus on the two lives we are leading: the everyday, physical life of this world, and the eternal life that we are guaranteed by Jesus’ resurrection.

We can illustrate the dual focus by portraying each of them as a circle, and, to get a sense of the double focus we Christians are called to maintain, by overlapping the two circles….the overlapped area of the two circles represents our life in this world, and the eternal life that is already under way as a result of our baptism and our coming to faith in Christ, the two existing in our lives here and now.

Before we can consider how we might best maintain our focus on this life and the life of the world to come, we should consider the background of today’s interaction between the Sadducees and Jesus.

Not much is known about the Sadducees, who were one of four main groups which could be found in Judaism 2,000 years ago.[1] The second century historian, Josephus, sheds some light on them, telling us that they were a “philosophical school” whose name was taken from Zadok, King David’s high priest. As such, they were an upper class group, associated with the priests of the Temple in Jerusalem, who were quite traditional in their outlook (they not only rejected the concept of a resurrection, they also accepted the authority of only the five books of Moses, and they rejected the existence of angels). In maintaining each of these beliefs, they differed from the Pharisees,[2] for the Pharisees accepted the concept of the resurrection, the existence of angels, and they accepted the authority of the other writings in what we now call the Old Testament.[3] In addition, the Pharisees recognized an oral tradition which had been passed down through the ages, whereas the Sadducees rejected that oral tradition.[4]

So the Sadducees were a very traditional group, while the Pharisees were more progressive. As an interesting footnote, it’s worth noting that the Sadducees did not survive the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD, while the Pharisees did, so the treatment of the Sadducees is not very favorable in the Jewish rabbinical writings of the post-Temple period.[5]

So the Sadducees “tip their hand” rather quickly in asking Jesus to rule on the rightness of their question….For Luke reminds us that they “denied the resurrection”.[6] Their question, “at the resurrection, whose wife will the woman be?” rings hollow.

Now the mechanism the Sadducees use to pose the dilemma to Jesus is the ancient practice of levirate marriage. In ancient times, if a woman was left as a widow, it was her husband’s brother’s duty to marry her (providing support for her and the surviving children in the process), and also to provide an inheritance for the deceased husband by fathering children so that the family name could survive.[7]

You see, in those days, the way a person achieved immortality was through the inheritance of children….a person “lived on” by being the seed of a new generation.

And now, as we consider the importance of raising up a new generation for the survival of the nation, we can begin to understand Jesus’ response, for the procreation of children was the main purpose for marriage (as we can see in the institution of levirate marriage).

But in affirming the reality of immortality through resurrection, Jesus instructs us that, in the life everlasting, there will be no need for marriage, nor for the procreation of children, for persons who achieve the resurrected state will never die, thereby negating the need for a new generation to replace the current one. Jesus affirms this (verse 36) by saying, “For neither are they able to die.”

Jesus’ own resurrection affirms the reality of the resurrection. His resurrection is the basis for our own hopes for life everlasting….St. Paul says as much, reminding us that, if there is no resurrection, we are the people “most to be pitied”,[8] for we have placed our hope in something that is a complete falsehood!

But St. Paul goes on to portray Jesus’ resurrection as the “first fruits”[9] of believers. In essence, Jesus’ death and resurrection becomes the “seed” of new and unending life for all who are in Christ.[10]

If then, Jesus’ own physical resurrection from the dead assures us that we, too, will join Him in His resurrection, then when does this new life begin?

St. Paul fleshes out this important point in Romans, chapter six….We read in verses three through five the following, “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? We were buried therefore with Him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with Him in a death like His, we shall certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like His.”

Paul seems to be assuring us that the reality of the resurrected, immortal life is already ours. It’s ours for the claiming, here and now (although we have not received this new life in all of its reality yet – we receive by way of God’s guarantee through Jesus Christ).

If he is right about that (and, it’s fair to say, that has been the clear Christian conviction since the beginning), then the new and everlasting life we have in Christ is already a reality, even as we continue to live in this earthly life.

So, this earthly existence and our immortal life overlap, like two circles which are intertwined.

And so, before we leave the topic, we ought to consider the issue of focus…

What should our focus be, since we have two realities at work in our lives at the same time: earthly and heavenly life?

Should we be like the Sadducees, firmly rooted in this physical life, anchored as they were in the truths of the past as they had been received from Moses, devoted as they were to this world, its glory and its finality?

Or, should we be like the early church in Thessolonica, whose members seemed to spend a lot of time looking into the skies, awaiting the Lord’s return in the clouds with the blast of the trumpet?[11]

Down through the ages, Christians often seem to come down on one side of the equation or the other….

For example, those who focus on the reality of this world tend to emphasize the importance of leading a moral life, doing “good works”.

By contrast, those who are anxiously awaiting their arrival in heaven, there to be in the Lord’s presence, face-to-face, often pay little or no attention to the realities of this life, and the associated problems of the world that confront us as Christian believers every day.

We are called, however, to a dual focus….we affirm this in our Rite I Holy Communion service as we hear the “Summary of the Law”, Jesus’ own words (from Mark 12: 29 – 31), “Hear what our Lord Jesus Christ saith: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all they heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself…”[12]

These words call us to consider the eternal nature of God and our inheritance in everlasting life through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We cannot ignore the reality of our unending joy in the presence of God when this life is over. We are called to ponder that reality, and to prepare for it by a life of study and prayer (one of the main reasons for our worshipping and studying together!). The focus of this first commandment is on God.

However, we are also called to love others, reflecting the love that our Lord Jesus Christ showers on us by virtue of his death and resurrection. (Make no mistake: the reason we love others is because Christ first “loved us and gave Himself up for us, an offering and sacrifice to God”[13]…we cannot generate this sort of love on our own, nor are we able to self-generate genuine acts of love without the indwelling of the Holy Spirit of God). The focus of this second commandment is on others around us in this world.

Like two circles intertwined, we focus on the life we lead in this world, even as we focus on the life of the world to come.

May the Holy Spirit enable us to keep both lives in focus and in balance.

AMEN.

[1] The others were the Pharisees, the Essenes, and the Zealots.
[2] The Pharisees were primarily a lay group, unlike the Sadducees, who were associated with the priestly group.
[3] St. Paul incited a heated argument between the Sadducees and the Pharisees by speaking to them of the hope of the resurrection. See Acts 23: 7 – 10.
[4] For an excellent treatment of the Sadducees, see the commentary Sacra Pagina, Volume 3, pp. 312 – 319 (Collegeville: Collegeville Press, 1991).
[5] Sacra Pagina, p. 312
[6] Verse 27
[7] The requirement for Levirite marriage (the name comes from the Latin word for “brother-in-law”) are laid down in Deuteronomy 25:5.
[8] I Corinthians 15: 19
[9] I Corinthians 15: 20
[10] Paul’s argument may be found further along in I Corinthians 15, verses 36 and following.
[11] See I Thessalonians 4: 13 – 18 and II Thessalonians 3: 6 – 13. Apparently, many in the church there were idle, waiting for the Lord’s immanent return.
[12] Book of Common Prayer, 1979, p, 324
[13] Ephesians 5: 2