Pentecost 24

Pentecost 24 (Luke 20:27-38 (God is the God of the living.)
God did not design human beings for death.

From the very first moment of creation, God designed human beings for life. The life derives from God who is life. God’s life is eternal.

Death entered the world when human beings chose to separate from God. As we separate from God we separate from Life, from Love and from Holiness. The result of this separation is sin and death. The effect of sin and death on the soul is to produce an existence characterized by fear, self will and pride.

From the first moment our first parents chose that original sin, that original separation from God, God set forth his plan of salvation to rescue us from sin and death.

God gave the Law to restrain the power of sin in our societies. God gave the law to serve as a perfect mirror to our souls to convict us and to convince us that we are lost in separation. God sent the prophets to call us to repentance and to preparation.

The prophets hold up the perfect mirror of divine law to remind us how far we have fallen. The prophets proclaim the coming of the Messiah to remind us that we are not only lost in sin but we are incapable of finding our way out of sin. The evidence of this is death.

Death is the first and final reminder that humanity is lost and cannot find its way back. The way back is the way of life, the way of love, the way of holiness. The way back is not the Law. If it were, people could choose perfection and claim immortality as a right.

The way back is not in religion. The Prophets clearly demonstrate that the religious are lost in separation and produce only further levels of separation.
The Sadducees are one of many religious groups that prove the point.
The Sadducees only accepted the first five books of the Bible as God’s word. The Sadducees asserted that God was so holy, so perfect, so transcendent that any human reference to God or name for God was not only inadequate but meaningless. God is the ineffable Mystery.

The Sadducees taught that any teaching about God is not only futile but counterproductive. And so, they also taught that miracles are superstitious interpretations of natural events. Angles are a figment of an over active imagination. And, life after death- especially the teaching of resurrection- is a narcotic that dulls the mind and weakens the will.

The Sadducees taught that belief in an afterlife undermined all human effort to live well in this life and to work to improve society here and now. They viewed the resurrection as particularly offense and nonsensical.

Resurrection means that at some future time God will recreate our bodies and restore not only our lives but our personalities to live in a new and perfect world. The Pharisees believed in the resurrection.

Sadducees believed dead is dead. Once the body dies the person dies. The body decays. Nothing remains and there is no mechanism by which any one, not even God, can reconstruct a dead body and restore to it life and personality.

Neither the Pharisees or the Sadducees believed in an immortal soul that was separate from the body and self existent apart from the body. Both groups believed dead was dead. The Pharisees also believed the resurrection of the body was the means by which the righteous would experience an afterlife.

Jesus spoke of the resurrection. So, the Sadducees challenged Jesus by presenting what they believed would be a plausible but absurd scenario about the resurrection.
Of course, the Sadducees were lost in their own logic and in their own self will. They did not want the resurrection to be real. They were a small segment of the population. They were rich, powerful, and dominated the Temple. Many temple priests were Sadducees. They were quite satisfied to perform the Temple sacrifices and rituals, to collect their fees and to dominate the religious life of the nation.
Jesus quoted Moses to confront their assumptions. They claimed to accept the religious authority of Moses. So, Jesus directs them to what Moses recorded when he heard God speak to him from the burning bush.

God reveals his name as “I am”. I am is eternal self existence. I am is life that has no beginning at some point in the past neither an ending at some point in the future. God says I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

As God is self existence, as God is eternal life, all who are in a relationship with God by grace through faith partake of that divine self existence, that eternal life.
Of course, the proof of this teaching is very close to the Sadducees, the Pharisees and every one else in that generation. The resurrection is not a fantasy, as the Sadducees claimed, nor an esoteric unproven belief as the Pharisees asserted. The resurrection is an historical fact.

It is the personal and physical resurrection of Jesus Christ at a particular moment in time and at a particular place on earth that establishes the fact of the general resurrection God promises to all people. The personal and physical resurrection of Jesus Christ is an event in human history that invites all people everywhere into faith.

Faith is not the same as belief. Belief is the object of speculation. Faith is the result of a personal encounter with the living God in Jesus Christ.

The resurrection can be an object of belief. It can also be the subject of faith.
Jesus reassures us this morning: God is life and all who enter into a relationship with God by grace through faith are reunited with that eternal life that has no beginning and has no end. For God is the God of the living who live forever in the steadfast holy love of the risen Lord Jesus Christ.