(Preached on Sunday, November 7, 2010)
God isn’t the God of dead men, but of the living. To him all are alive. -Luke 20:38
It was a trick question. You realize that, don’t you? The Sadducees are not really interested in, or concerned about, the marital status of this woman. In fact, they don’t consider this a real issue of concern, because they did not believe in the concept of resurrection. They were scriptural literalists and they only followed the Five Books of Moses, (the first five books of the Bible) in which they saw no evidence for the idea of resurrection. No, they did not really need an answer, they were designing a trap.
But Jesus cuts to the heart of the Sadducees’ puzzler using the same rhetorical strategies required to solve this old riddle:
As I was going to St. Ives, I met a man with seven wives.
Each wife had seven sacks; each sack had seven cats;
Each cat had seven kits. Kits, cats, sacks, wives,
How many were going to St. Ives?
The immediate temptation is to do the math, but the correct answer is arrived at by ignoring all the unnecessary verbiage and reframing the issue in simple, straightforward terms. (How many are going to St. Ives? One.)
In the case of the question from the Sadducees, Jesus refuses to get caught up in their ridiculous question. He doesn’t try to explain the resurrection. He doesn’t try to describe the details of the resurrection, so we still have a lot of questions left unanswered by this one and only teaching Jesus offers on the subject. Part of the problem with all the questions about resurrection is that they all tend to focus on me. What will happen to me? How long will it take for my resurrection to occur? What will I be like? Which body will be raised: my 25 year old body; my 35 year old body; my body at the time of my death? Will I be like I am now? Will my present relationships continue? Will we know each other? Will I still have to wear glasses? The questions all revolve around me, me, me; us, us, us.
But the resurrection is really not about us at all. Resurrection is really about God. Resurrection is about the faithfulness of a God who will not abandon God’s own creation, God’s own children. It is about a God from whom we will never be separated – nothing will separate us, not even death. That’s why Jesus answers the Sadducees the way he does. Forget marriage. Marriage is of this world. Resurrection is a whole new world. In that world we will all be with our God – a God who has been known to breathe life into a valley full of dry bones, a God who opens graves and tombs, a God who is the God of the living – not the dead.
This is where Jesus redirects their attention: back to God. He uses a passage of their own scripture, from the story of Moses speaking with God at the burning bush, to illustrate for them the truth of the idea of resurrection. In that story Moses remembers God introducing himself to Moses with the statement that he was “God: God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob!” Notice all of this is in present tense. And Jesus concludes this indicates that God isn’t the God of dead men, but of the living. To God all are alive, even those we know as dead.
What Jesus is speaking about is what the Church came to proclaim with its understanding of the Communion of Saints, or as the book of Hebrews described, the great cloud of witnesses. This understanding of our faith is what we celebrate today as we remember those who have died this past year and as we celebrate All Saints Day. But it is also a belief we live out each and every Sunday.
The fact that when we gather for worship we focus on a reading from this ancient Book, the Bible, is witness to our remembering and honoring the saints of the faith who preceded us. This is our conversation with the dead, our continuing dialogue with the saints about how they have preceded us in this faith. It is a statement that none of us is here, “on our own;” all of us are indebted to the saints for our faith.
Sometimes people say that the church is “old fashioned,” or stuck in the past, too traditionalist and archaic. But we see the past, the church’s history with God, the testimony of the saints as one way that God still strengthens us today as a great resource for thinking and living as a Christian. That is why we pause today to give thanks for the communion of saints, that great cloud of witnesses who believed, and often were persecuted because of their beliefs, who passed on the gospel to us today. That is part of what draws us back here each Sunday: our ongoing connection with those saints who passed on the faith to us. I know that each one of us here today has some special friend, loved one, teacher, fellow church member, wife, husband, parent, writer, neighbor, preacher, or a leading figure in church or community, whose life blessed yours. These are precious people through whom the light of Christ shone and we remember them with deep gratitude.
But we don’t just remember them. Our understanding of the wider communion of saints, the great cloud of witnesses, affirms that when we gather together we also gather with them. For our belief in the resurrection, which we don’t fully understand, but which speaks to us of the faithfulness and love of God, affirms also that we continue to be in relationship, through our connection with God, with all those in that great cloud of witnesses.
William Willimon describes this understanding by telling of the time when his mother died. A woman in his congregation sought to comfort him by saying, “Well, it’s good to know that there’s someone up there cheering you on down here.” That’s not a bad way of envisioning the communion of saints. Sometimes we have it tough down here, in the here and now, living a faithful Christian life, serving Jesus as best we can. God be praised, we are not left to our own devices. The saints cheer us on.
This great cloud of witnesses came alive for me in a new way recently. On our recent trip to Spain, Dianne and I visited many cathedrals, as one often does when traveling in Europe. On three separate trips to France & England, Italy, and now Spain, I have visited many, many cathedrals. They are always impressive, these massive structures in stone and glass with their glorious works of architecture and art, stained glass and sculptures, wood carvings and stunning use of gold, silver and precious gems. I must admit though, that as magnificent, amazing, awe-inspiring and stunning as each cathedral has always been, they have also always felt somewhat cold. They have always felt more like museums than sacred, holy ground.
Quite possibly that was because I never experienced worship in them. That is, until this last trip. In Cordoba we went to visit the Mezquita, a massive mosque in the midst of which the Catholic Church has placed a Cathedral. In that Cathedral they hold a daily mass and since they don’t want to seem to charge admission to mass, you can enter the structure for free until after the mass has ended. We arrived early enough to enter for free and so it only seemed right that we attend the mass which we did. As I sat in the Cathedral listening to the mass being chanted and sung and spoken in Spanish by the cantors, priests and deacons, and officiant, all accompanied by one of the massive organs, my feeling of this massive and stunningly decorated space totally changed. As I listened my gaze was lifted upward and I became very aware of all the statues of the angels and saints, who seemed to be surrounding us in worship. Some seemed to be joining us in praising God and others seemed to be staring down at us, watching us as we praised God. As I looked at them they seemed to become alive, no longer just statues, but representatives of that communion of saints, that cloud of witnesses, who are always surrounding us, encouraging us, and watching us to see how we are doing with this gift of faith which they have passed on to us.
Before his assassination Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador had a practice of reading at the mass the names of members of his church who had either “disappeared” or died the previous week. As the prayers of the community were spoken and the names were being lifted up one after another, the congregation would respond after each name was called out with the statement: “Presente!” Present. Here with us today. Presente: I do not know a better word for All Saints Day. We have called out the names today of some of the saints who have recently joined that great cloud of witnesses. And even now some of their faces and the faces of others we have known rise up before us. Presente! They are always with us. Our lives have been touched. We are eternally grateful for their witness to us. Let us remember today and always that we are never alone. God is always with us. And we are also surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses who are cheering us on, continuing to pray for us, and continuing to offer their lives as guidance for ours. Presente! They are present for our God is God of the living. All are alive to God.