Think Bigger

A sermon preached on November 10, 2019 at Zion Episcopal Church in Manchester, Vermont. 

In this morning’s gospel reading from Luke, we find Jesus talking to a group of devoutly religious people – the Sadducees – whose tradition and interpretation of scripture tell them there is no resurrection of the dead. 

Preachers and scholars alike have often accused the Sadducees in this story of “trying to trick” Jesus with their question – trying to get him to somehow trip up and reveal some great flaw in what he is teaching. I contend the Sadducees are actually engaging Jesus in a healthy, curious and productive way. And I contend that theirs is a clear and reasonable question. 

It’s the kind of question that’s natural to ask when considering the (let’s be real) pretty wild concepts of resurrection of the dead and the Kingdom of Heaven.

The Sadducees present a scenario. So, say there’s a husband and wife, they say. And the husband dies, leaving his wife childless. Then say, as is the custom in this community, his brother marries his widow. Again – this husband dies childless. This repeats through seven husbands. And then, finally the wife, who remains childless, dies. The question is, if there is a resurrection of the dead, how do all these people live together in peace in this coming Kingdom of God? Who is this woman’s husband for all eternity in this scenario?

I don’t think it’s a trick question at all. I think it’s a sensible one. And it gives Jesus the opportunity to teach us all something important about the Kingdom of Heaven.

"Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage” Jesus replies. “But those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. Indeed they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection.”

In other words, Jesus is telling us, “you aren’t thinking big enough.” Jesus is telling us “the Kingdom of Heaven is far grander[i] than we can possibly imagine.”

In my own imagining – and certainly in portrayals in movies and art and cartoon strips and Hallmark cards – the resurrected heavenly experience can look a bit like an “upgrade” of the earthly realm. Maybe the penthouse apartment in the high-rise that is the earthly plane on which we already live.

Jesus tells us through parable and poetry and preaching that the Kingdom of heaven is not an upgrade. It is entirely new. We cannot hang our imagining of it on any of our human-made values. If we try to do so, we will always, always come up short.

To take the example of this morning’s scenario presented by the Sadducees. The unnamed woman[ii] is understood and portrayed as property[iii] being transferred from one man to the next. Her value as well as her identity (or lack thereof) lies with her status as a married woman and her ability to bear a child. And lest we think this entirely a relic of another time and place – as someone who is neither married nor a mother, I can report that a woman’s value in this life is still largely associated with those things.

And, Jesus is here this morning telling us and telling me: this is not how it will be in God’s Kingdom.

Jesus is telling us that in the Kingdom of God human inventions like patriarchy, racism, xenophobia, homophobia – these systems that try to tell us something inherently false about the source of our own value – will die. And Jesus is telling us that we – children of God – will live. As our authentic selves. As God’s beloved creation. In right relationship with God and one another.

And those systems of sin and death that tie us up here on earth? Jesus tells us they don’t matter. Not in the end.

And the thing is, this vision is so beautiful. And it is also so scary. The unknown is always scary, even when it is attached to God’s promise of everlasting life.  

I was discussing this morning’s passage with a friend earlier this week and she shared a sense of grief that Jesus seems to be suggesting her parents (who have both recently died) will not in fact be married for eternity. She has drawn comfort from imagining them both restored to health, able to be together the way they once were.

I wondered out loud if it wasn’t a matter of simply “thinking bigger.” Thinking “grander.” Even in this beautiful vision my friend had of her parents’ heavenly marriage, earthly values and ways of living were still being applied to the upside-down coming Kingdom of God. And so they seemed to be coming up short.

We are incapable of understanding what the Kingdom really looks like, sounds like, smells like, feels like. But we know it is about God. And we know it is about restored relationship. And we know it is about love. So I find my hope in imagining these beloved parents of my friend as together and united in some way we can’t understand – some way that is even deeper and better and more wonderful than what they could have experienced in this life.

The light frosting of November snow on the ground, and the fresh chill in the air this morning reminds us that the season of Advent is knocking at the door. In our readings this morning, we heard a whisper of that season of hope and expectation already. Because during Advent, we await not just the Christ child – God incarnate in the world living and walking alongside us. We also await the coming of the Kingdom of God. “The end of the world” we might say. Or, “the beginning of the world.”

So what are we to do with all this. Does it help to walk around with our “heads in the heavenly clouds?” I don’t think so, because we live here. We live right here right now. We live in a world (and indeed a country) that is unsafe for so many – for black people, for immigrants, for women, for transgender people, for LGBTQ people. All children of God. All with the potential to be, as Jesus says, “like angels.”  

We live in a world where it would seem power is meant to lie mostly in the hands of white men. We live in a world where the construction of race exists, and sorts us all along a hierarchy of assigned value. We live in a world where war and violence seem to be inevitable and ever-present.

We live in a world where it seems to be acceptable for our neighbors to live on the street. To be hungry. To be without healthcare. To be separated from their children. To be arrested, imprisoned or killed based on the color of their skin.

This world is not the resurrected world. And, that does not mean we cannot start to engage in some Kingdom living right here and right now. We can do this by taking a hard look at even the most beloved and entrenched institutions and value systems we know – even ones that for us may be life-giving, like marriage – and remembering that in God’s Kingdom, these things do not matter. Perhaps in doing so we might catch a momentary, fleeting glimpse of the un-glimpseable: the upside-down, inside-out, world of the new.

What will this call us to do, I wonder? Perhaps to feed, to house, to clothe, to visit, to help. To forgive. To love. Perhaps it will call us to engage in conversation with those who disagree with us and to ask questions, like the Sadducees.

Perhaps it will call us to participate with God in this world, in the work of restoring relationship – with God, with all people and indeed with all creation as we live in the hope of the coming Kingdom of God that is so grand and so new we must constantly remind ourselves to “think bigger.”  

[i] Katherine Kelaidis https://publicorthodoxy.org/2019/10/17/our-problem-with-forgiveness/

[ii] Oluwatomisin Oredein: https://mailchi.mp/christiancentury/sc-free-349827?e=76a7c0d67f

[iii] Miguel A. De La Torre in The People’s Bible, pg. 1501