Spirit of Life
Why is it that we are so afraid of the unknown?
Is it possible that our discomfort with not knowing firm answers to big questions steals from us some of the mystery of God?
Do we trust that which we cannot know?
How do we develop faith in that which we cannot see? Can we approach the unknown with hope and anticipation rather than fear and trepidation? Do we gain anything with such a hopeful approach?
We have just three chapters left on or our 52 week journey with author Brian McLaren in We Make the Road by Walking. And as I mentioned last week, we are nearing a summit and the trail feels tricky at times.
Our 50th chapter begins with these words:
We all will die someday.
My, my, my. It feels like the deep end of the pool all of a sudden.
Maybe for some of you that is just a statement of fact.
And I am willing to bet that for some, we have expectations of what that means.
Today, I invite you to take a deep breath and face that sentence head on - we all will die someday.
And I invite you to face that sentence with an open heart. One that is willing to sit with some mystery.
I am inviting you to suspend whatever expectations you have of what death is and what resurrection is and what happens when our bodies fail.
And I want to invite you into a kind of celebration.
A celebration of who God is and what God is doing.
A celebration of time as we know it and time that is beyond our understanding.
A celebration what happens when we embrace the promise of God and choose to live changed by that embrace.
A celebration of fearlessness, openness, of life well-lived.
Let’s begin with our Gospel lesson.
In our text from Luke today, the Sadducees are quizzing Jesus, seemingly in an effort to support their point about the rational problems of belief in resurrection. If the law permits a widow to marry the next brother as the one she has been married to passes away, does the woman suddenly have multiple husbands in the afterlife?
C’mon Jesus, how can that possibly work.
There is a lot going on here in the bigger arc of the story of Jesus.
The Sadducees only held the first five books of Hebrew scripture, the Pentateuch, as authoritative. And by their interpretation, resurrection was not part of these first five books.
This encounter with the Sadducees is part of the rising tension between Jesus and the religious authorities in Jerusalem prior to the crucifixion. In Luke’s gospel, this particular encounter is after Jesus has triumphantly entered the city to adoring crowds. The chief priests and the scribes have confronted Jesus asking about his authority and Jesus has shot back with a provocative parable condemning them.
Now the Sadducees are throwing shade, trying to capture Jesus in some heresy perhaps. But they are also throwing shade at the Pharisees…who do believe in the resurrection.
In Jesus’ answer to the Sadducees, he points to two things:
First, that perhaps the religious authorities misunderstand what it means to be “resurrected.” What happens in our bodily lives is entirely separate from what is beyond bodily life in the resurrection. What happens here and now in the body is not what happens there after the resurrection.
Second, Jesus suggests that in Exodus, Moses’ experiences God in the burning bush and God declares in that God IS the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob – using the present tense – God is their God (even though their bodies have departed). He’s making the case that somehow, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob remain with God even though their bodies are long gone.
So there are two things to wrestle with here. What lies beyond this bodily life isn’t knowable in the context of our current existence – all we know is it won’t be like it is. AND God is in it all – the past, the present and the future. Always has been, always will be.
I can’t craft those words without thinking about the Gloria Patri sung in every service I attended as a kid – as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be – world without end. But what world?
And the Psalmist points to the utter incomprehensible nature of God’s time – for our generations must be like the blink of an eye to an infinite God.
And so, our scriptures point us today to mystery. To the basic idea that something happens when we die but that the details of that are not ours to know and understand on this side of death.
I want to acknowledge how hard this can be.
We are finite beings with finite words and finite experiences.
And all we can do is use our experience to try to understand what we cannot see.
And that has limits.
And it is hard for us to accept limits.
Limits like, maybe we can’t know.
Maybe we cannot possibly understand.
Where does that leave us then?
I think it leaves us with mystery.
I have watched so many folks contort themselves to craft some sort of rational understanding of heaven and hell, some sort of rational understanding of what it means for God to take on a human body, some sort of rational understanding of what it means for Christ to be with us even now, some sort of rational understanding of how the Spirit indwells.
But I think, when we spend too much time working to wrap our brains around it, we forget to let our hearts be melted by amazing mystery. We forget to surrender to God, letting GOD be the divine one, and letting ourselves be limited because we are only human.
I wonder…
I wonder what happens when we let the mystery be just that? Mystery. The unknown. The unknowable.
Does it open up space in our heads to just let God be God and to live our lives right now in fuller ways?
McLaren notes, “To be liberated from the fear of death – think of how that would change your values, perspectives, and actions. To believe that no good thing is lost, but that all goodness will be taken up and consummated in God – think of how that frees you to do good without reservation. To participate in a network of relationships that isn’t limited by death in the slightest degree – think of how that would make every person matter and how it would free you to live with boundless, loving aliveness.”
As Christians – as followers of Jesus – we practice mystery.
We practice the mystery of following in the footsteps of one who was fully human and fully divine.
We practice the mystery of following one who conquered the grave and ate again with his friends.
We practice the mystery of remembering him, sharing body and blood broken and shed for us.
We practice the mystery of bearing that body in ours into the world.
We practice the mystery of being a part of the body of Christ, being in the body ourselves.
At our very best, we practice mystery.
Let’s begin here today at the communion table.
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