November 10, 2013
Standing Firm in Tradition
- Luke 20:27-38
- Dr. Teri Thomas
Have you ever noticed how sometimes life doesn’t make sense? The pieces we have always counted on, no longer fit. It seems that just when we think we know what is and what isn’t we run into something that wasn’t but now is. And in the midst of it all we think we know what we believe but then all of a sudden it no longer seems to work in the situation. Sometimes it is difficult to understand the teachings of our faith in the light of new circumstances. We turn to the scripture to find guidance and direction for our lives but sometimes what scripture says doesn’t work with our experience.
I have been asked- I broke the law, am I condemned?
I am divorced and the Bible says if I re-marry I commit adultery.
Does that mean I have to be single forever?
The Bible says a man shall leave his parents and join his wife.
Does that prohibit same sex marriage?
Can we really use the scriptures which were written in another time
under very different circumstances as a guide for living today?
That all depends on who you ask.
In the Gospels, the Sadducees were the extreme conservatives of their day.
They rejected belief in the resurrection based on their strict interpretation of the Torah.
In the first five books of the Old Testament,
the Books of Moses or the Torah, there is no mention at all of resurrection.
So when the Sadducees ask Jesus about the resurrection,
they are not really interested in knowing about the resurrection
or considering what Jesus has to say on the matter.
Instead, they pose a riddle that is on the level of “Can God make a stone so big he cannot lift it?”
They refer to the custom of levirate marriage and concoct a scenario that could conceivably happen but would be highly unlikely. One of seven brothers married a woman and had no children, and then he died. As was often the custom, to care for the widow and to provide sons another brother married her, and the same thing happened to him--no children and then death. All seven brothers married the widow and all met with the same fate--you guessed it--no children and death. The seven-time widow eventually herself died. Now came the perplexing question. “In heaven whose wife of the seven is she?”
If I were Jesus, I would have begun my answer by saying, “You would have thought by the time the fourth brother had died that the rest of them would have thought twice about marrying her.” But instead he reminds them that God is God of the living, not the dead. The question they had asked was inconsequential. He is basically saying, “Our concern should be about the living.”
The Sadducees show us the danger of becoming so locked into a particular way of thinking and viewing reality that we are no longer open to anything new. Certainly the truth of the Scripture does not change. But changing times open new ways of viewing that reality. The rigidity of the Sadducees caused them to miss out on the joy of knowing Jesus as the Christ.
In Mark’s account of this same encounter after Jesus has silenced the Sadducees the story continues-
One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he had answered them well, he asked, “What commandment is the first of all?” Jesus answered, “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
To love God and to love neighbor as yourself! Jesus says to his inquisitors that that is the important stuff in life! Who cares who will be married to whom in heaven; it is all about loving God and loving neighbor!
It’s clear in the gospels that Jesus has no time for those who merely want to play games.
He has no patience with those who merely want to prove how smart or righteous or perfect they are. Usually those who waste his time don’t come off very well—
indeed, after this exchange, Luke writes, “They no longer dared to ask him another question.”
However, Jesus always has time for questions that are real.
Because the questions deep in our hearts are what lead us to be in relation to him.
Jesus always has time for questions like this:
• Can you heal my child?
• I have a demon that torments me and I can find no rest. Can you help me?
• I have lost my way to the circle of life. Can you bring me back?
• No one will come near me--because they say I am unclean. Do you love someone like me?
When people offer these questions to Jesus, the answer he gives is not a slogan or a sound bite. The answer he gives is himself. When the Sadducees or the Pharisees ask Jesus their trick questions, they usually get parables: stories that will puzzle their minds and invite them to look at the world in a new way.
But when women and men bring Jesus their deepest yearnings, he engages them. When genuine people come to him with genuine questions, he touches, he encounters, he relates. He invites people to journey with him on the Way. The Latin root of the word “question” means “to seek.” It’s where we get the word “quest.” To ask a real question is to enter on a journey; it’s to begin traveling on The Way.
Our deepest questions don’t have simple answers. Instead they are doors to walk through. Jesus says, “I am the Way” because with him and through him we live our way into answers.
So let us take heart. We can bring our deepest questions to Him—the questions for which we want a new answer, like:
• Does God love me?
• Are we alone?
• Can people find Shalom?
We ask Jesus these questions because he is who he is.
Jesus is the door to newness; he is the Way to new life.
He invites us to think of a new world: a world where the old rules do not apply.
He invites the Sadducees to lay aside their old understandings
and think of a new world in which the living and the dead are connected;
where love is more important than law.
It is not as if none of the old rules apply.
Paul tells the Thessalonians- do not be shaken or alarmed
do not be deceived - do not give up on scripture.
It does matter what you believe.
And we know the Good News of the gospel and God’s grace give us stability in a turbulent world. This loving grace gives us encouragement in our present circumstances and an enduring hope for the future. We have a confidence that both empowers us and strengthens us to excel in word and deed.
Paul writes- So then, brothers and sisters,
stand firm and hold fast to the traditions that you were taught.
Love God
Love neighbor.
Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and through grace gave us eternal comfort and good hope, comfort your hearts and strengthen them in every good work and word.
Resources:
Ministry Matters™ | Blog @ www.ministrymatters.com/all/blog/author/ministry_matters
Love The Questions, a sermon by Rev. Porter Taylor, November 07, 2004