"It's a Trap!"

The texts for this sermon are: 2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17 and Luke 20:27-38

It’s a Trap!

It seems like one of those strange and frustrating word problems they gave us when we were in school: A train leaves Vandalia traveling at 75 miles per hour and another leaves Columbia traveling at 63 miles an hour - how far does each go before they meet one another?  But of course it’s not as simple as doing a bit of math - the question the Sadducees ask is tough and doesn’t have a good answer.  But then, it’s also a trap.  The Sadducees weren’t really all that interested in Jesus’ answer - they didn’t even believe in the resurrection.  Like the talk-radio personality/news show pundit who invites an extreme member of the opposite viewpoint onto their radio show, the Sadducees were baiting Jesus by asking a ridiculous question and expecting him to give an answer that painted him as the fraud that they all saw him to be.

But Jesus doesn’t miss a beat.  Just as he’s done with every question he’s been asked by the scribes and the Pharisees in this marathon of challenges and responses throughout this whole chapter, Jesus not only answers the question that the Sadducees pose to him, but he answers it in a way that actually addresses the beliefs of the Sadducees and gently corrects those beliefs in the process.  Since the Sadducees only believed in the first five books of the Old Testament, or the Torah, as authoritative scripture, Jesus’ answer from the book of Exodus shows not only that he understands the beliefs of the Sadducees, but that he also respects them enough to answer them on their own terms and to teach them in the process.  But at the same time, Jesus recognizes a trap when he sees it, so he moves beyond the pettiness of the question itself and into the deeper reality of the gospel that he has been preaching throughout his entire earthly ministry.

But here’s the thing: while Jesus’ answer clearly impresses the Sadducees - no one even dares to challenge him again until his betrayal - it doesn’t give us a lot to go on, does it?  Sure, he confirms what he’s said all along and reiterates that there is a resurrection, that those who are raised will be called “Sons of God,” and that life as we know it in the resurrection will be different from anything we may have come to expect… but doesn’t that only leave us with just more questions?  We put a lot of stock in the resurrection - we preach it boldly and with hopeful confidence.  We witness to it every year at Easter.  Every Sunday as we gather for worship in front of this empty cross, we are reminded of it.  As we come closer and closer to the Advent season, we’re reminded that even as Christ has already been born, Christ is still coming again because of his resurrection and ascension, and every time we take Communion together, we celebrate that very future promise.

But when we stop to think about it, we really know precious little about the resurrection beyond the pictures we’ve painted in our imaginations.  We know the images - the “Littlest Angel” drawings of cherub-like angel children wearing footy pajamas, tiny wings, and golden halos and harps.  We imagine Peter at the pearly gates, the start of so many jokes, as he welcomes the saints into the heavenly kingdom where the roads are paved in gold, the buildings are made out of clouds, and everything is serene and white.  At some point, most of us have even probably imagined the kind of heartwarming reunions we’ll have with loved ones, if not even the famous men and women of the Bible and of history.  Just after we share that fond and happy embrace with the ones we’ve been waiting so long now to see again, the lines form up around men and women like Moses, Jesus, Abe Lincoln and Einstein as people rush to see the people who inspired them in life.  The collies we had while I was growing up come bounding around the corner, barking and licking in excitement to see “their boy” come back to play with them like he did so long ago.  And we finally get to ask Jesus all those burning questions we’ve always wanted to ask about the mysteries of life, the universe, and everything.

All these images and more are the fantasies that we’ve built for ourselves to find comfort and hope in the promise of the resurrection - they’ve permeated our hymns and traditions in the church as we sing about the glad morning that we fly away to the home we have in Gloryland that outshines the sun.  Popular artists sing about those same promises, singing about what they’ll do “when they get where they’re going,” about how they can “only imagine” what heaven will be like, and about the comfort they find that there will be no more “tears in heaven.”  And while there’s nothing wrong with imagining these scenes and finding comfort in them, they can be just as much a trap to us as the Sadducees meant their question to be for Jesus.

If we focus so strongly on these images of the resurrection and of the kingdom that is yet to come, it can lead us to forget about the call that we have today to point to the kingdom that is already here in Jesus Christ.  If we worry too strongly about what it will be like, about who will be in and who will be out, about making sure that people are in, we miss the point and get caught up in the trap of our fantasies.  This is the nature of the encouragement that Paul gives to the church in his letter to the Thessalonians as the church looked with anticipation almost two thousand years ago to Christ’s return and the final defeat of evil, pain, and death that would inevitably come with that return.  The church couldn’t afford to get distracted in their looking ahead and to spend their waking moments gazing into crystal balls trying to determine when that day would come: they had work to do here and now to continue to invite people to be a part of that kingdom, to help do everything they could to make that kingdom a reality as they continued Christ’s mission in the church.

So then… what is it that we’re supposed to take away from this passage?  What is the good news for us as we continue to live in this state of “already and not yet?”  Do we dare to continue with these fantasies of fond reunions with loved ones lost?  Do we stop talking about the resurrection due to how much we don’t know about it?  Or do we simply just say “it will happen” and leave it at that?  Jesus doesn’t give us any easy answers to those questions - we know that the resurrection life will be entirely different, but beyond that, we’re still left to our imaginations.  But Jesus still says something that is both profound and encouraging, and it’s easy to miss it in our hurry to continue through the story.  After pointing to Moses’ encounter with God in the burning bush and God’s introduction of Godself as “the God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob,” Jesus tells the Sadducees, “Now God is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living; for to God, all of them are alive.”  It’s a strange statement to make, but when we stop to think about it, it’s perhaps the most incredible statement of the resurrection in this entire passage.  We don’t know every detail about the resurrection - we don’t know how we will look, what our experience will be of eternal life.  But we do know that our scriptures are filed with the promise of resurrection and that in both the Old and the New testaments alike, God promises God’s people that there is a kingdom yet to come, a time when death shall be no more, and a time when we will experience the resurrection.  As Frederick Buechner writes, “God makes us no promises about death, God makes us promises about life.”  And we also know that we worship a God who keeps those promises.  So no matter what the fine details are, no matter how different we think that this resurrection will be, we still have this one thing to continue to give us hope and that should inspire us to continue proclaiming the promises of the Gospel to the rest of the world:  God is the God of the living, and there is life eternal in the resurrection.  That’s the whole story: God wins.  God’s promises will be and are being kept, even as we sit here today.  Because we proclaim with our very hearts that our God is the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, and that this same God is the one who raised Jesus Christ from the dead as further promise of what is yet to come for us.  To God, the God of all the living, be all glory and honor, now and forevermore.  Amen.