Day 335 - The God of the Living

A sermon delivered Nov. 10, 2013 at first Presbyterian Church, Soddy Daisy, TN
OT Reading: Job 19: 23-27  *
NT reading: Luke 20: 27-38

The resurrection. It reminds me of the favorite old hymns, such as, “In that Great Getting up morning, fare thee well, fare thee well, ’ll be dressed in robes so white, singin’ I’ve been redeemed…” or, “When we all get to heaven what a day of rejoicing that will be…we all see Jesus we will sing the victory…” but in this exchange about the resurrection, Jesus talks about the God of the living, not The God of the dead…What is his point?

By now, the religious leaders were entirely fed up with Jesus. Since Jesus set his eyes on Jerusalem and left Galilee on his journey to the cross he has caused uproar and trouble. He called himself the Son of Man and the people hail him as God’s Messiah.  The confrontations on this trip are a real-life education on the foundation of discipleship, resisting temptation, finding and giving forgiveness, faith and duty, and the Kingdom of God.

If you entertain the idea that Christian discipleship is a bed of roses, the hard teachings on this journey pop that bubble.  Jesus describes a hard and challenging road like he walks. There will be conflict within families and trying times choosing loyalty to faith over loyalty to the world.  He says always be on guard against stumbling because we will meet temptation and stumble.  He warns us not to cause the little ones to stumble, else we put a millstone around our neck. At these words, the disciples can only plead fearfully, “increase our faith.”

If you still think the life of the Christian disciple is easy street, he tells us the story of the servants and the master. If we expect a reward in the here and now for faithful living, we are in for a surprise.  Jesus asks, “should the servant expect the master to fix and serve him dinner as a reward for doing what a servant’s duty requires?”  We should ask who is our Lord and Master? Jesus said, “when you have done all that the master ordered you to do, say, ‘We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!’” In other words, do the right thing, because for the person of faith it is the right thing to do.

On faith, he encounters the poor Samaritan leper, the lowly outcast who is barred from the temple and by implication, from God. He is the only one of ten that realizes he was healed in God’s presence and comes back to worship. Jesus says, “your faith has saved you.”

If we continue to wonder when will we reap our due blessing for being faithful, Jesus uses the persistent widow and unjust judge to tell us to pray persistently, without ceasing, for the return of the Son of Man. That is when you will find your blessing.  But Jesus wonders, “Will the Son of Man find faith on earth when the Son of Man returns?”

He asks this because he understands the pride of the Pharisee and humility of the tax collector and Zachaeus, the chief Tax Collector. Jesus presents us a choice to go “all in” or walk away.  “All in” doesn’t mean giving up all your possessions, though you must remember all your gifts belong to God. “All in” means putting your entire faith in the Son of Man and working ceaselessly for the kingdom of God.  “All in” means following your vocation - God’s calling for your life.

Some commentators describe this journey to Jerusalem told by Luke as a spiral slowly spinning around Jerusalem in an ever-tightening radius until we are face to face with the cross. 

Jesus has entered Jerusalem; now everything is “all in.” Jesus makes no pretense about who he is. In a rage, he rids the temple of its moneychangers, calling the Temple his Father’s house. The Sadducees, the chief priests, the scribes and all the leaders of the people have had enough at this point and begin looking for ways to kill Jesus.

They try to trap him with three questions. Jesus humiliates and infuriates them with his replies. The first question: “By what authority are you doing these things?” He replies, “Did the baptism of John come from Heaven or humans?” If they answer “Heaven” they affirm the claim Jesus is the Son of God; and if they reply “man,” they alienate the people who believe John was a prophet sent by God. They can only answer, “We do not know.”

Then they try a second question to cast Jesus as a rebel against Rome, “Should we pay taxes to the emperor?” Jesus asks for a coin with the emperor’s likeness on it and says give the emperor the things that are the emperor’s and give to God the things that belong to God.

Exasperated and angry, they ask this third question about the resurrection based on the example of the levirate marriage.  If a man dies before leaving a male heir, the next of kin is to marry his wife and provide an heir. The Sadducees supposed the kinsman dies before producing an heir and the same event repeats until all brothers have married her and died without leaving an heir. When the woman dies if she is resurrected who of the seven is her husband? (What do you think?)

The answer is none of them, but we must understand the Sadducees to appreciate the answer. They were the aristocratic, priestly class that comprised part of the elite of Hebrew society. The Babylonians assimilated the richest part of captive societies because this is how they ensured success of their own society.  When the Sadducees returned to Jerusalem they took over the temple leadership.

The Sadducees were extremely conservative on religion. They deny the status of scripture to all non-Mosaic writings, including the scrolls of the prophets and the writings (Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs and Psalms). They recognized only the Pentateuch, the first five books attributed to Moses.

They maintain nothing in those five books supports a personal afterlife or resurrection. For them, it is simple, if you live under the Law as a righteous person God will protect you while they live. Only the family name and memory of your righteousness (or not) lives on.

This religious belief and the fact men inherited everything in thepatrilineal society of the Pentateuch made the role of descendants a major issue. The most important thing for a wife was to give the husband a male heir to perpetuate the family name. This is the reason for the obligation of the nearest male relative, typically a brother, to marry the wife who had no male offspring. In its most negative sense levirate marriage viewed the wife as property or at least as person without independent property rights to perpetuate the family name. In its most positive sense, the levirate marriage ensured the welfare of the wife through the security of marriage. But that security might be illusory. You can imagine in some cases a close relative may not want to marry the wife. You can read the story of Naomi, Ruth and Boaz to it learn about that.

The Sadducees thought levirate marriage reduced the idea of resurrection to ridiculous on its face based on their rigid view of scripture. Their question intends to make a shamble of the whole idea of resurrection because it contradicts their literal understanding of the Pentateuch.

The Pharisees, on the other hand, took great interest in the question. They and other Jews recognized the writings of wisdom and the prophets as scripture and  believed in a resurrection and took Job’s comment seriously. (a point of trivia: The constitution of the Jewish Bible was not settled until about 4 centuries into the Christian era.)

Jesus turned the Pentateuch against the Sadducees. He quotes Exodus 3:6, God says God is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; therefore, God is saying they are alive, hence there is a resurrection and God is the God of the living not the dead.

Jesus denies the whole question because there is no marriage in Heaven. But he didn’t make it easy to understand what happens in our resurrection. He will say to the thief on the cross, “Today you shall be with me in Paradise,” but what is Paradise? In the Gospel of John, He says he is going to his Father’s house to prepare a room for us, and whoever believes in Him has eternal life.

But Jesus never really makes it any clearer than here in Luke 20:34-38, “³⁴Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage; ³⁵but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. ³⁶Indeed they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection. “³⁸Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.”

It leaves us with the idea our physical bodies are not there any more.  Paul tried to answer this question for the Corinthians in 1 Cor 15, with the idea of a spiritual body and a physical body.  

Paul was a Jew of the Diaspora, a Greek Jew. Greek philosophy, especially the part called Gnosticism was very influential in shaping Paul’s understanding of the body and afterlife and for that matter most of Western thought today.

We have grown up hearing about body and spirit from the earliest age so it all sounds natural.  There is a physical body that dies, and a soul or spirit that persists. Taken to its unhealthy extreme, this idea says the body is something bad because it is susceptible to the forces of an evil anti-god struggling with God. Our bodies are locked in that struggle between God and this anti-god hoping for the freedom of the spirit. This extreme view, besides being polytheistic, denies the importance of all the teachings of Jesus and preaching of Paul about human compassion and the focus on fellowship and the life here and now.  Paul would never go further than to say we have a physical and spiritual body.

In 1 Cor 15:35-44 Paul says … “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?”...There are both heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is one thing, and that of the earthly is another…So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable…It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body.

Paul and Jesus are on the same page. Jesus tells the Sadducees marriage is a perishable physical relationship. In the resurrection there is no concern about living and dying because we are alive as children of God, like angels. One of my favorite hymns captures this idea. It is Isaac Watts’ paraphrase of the 23^rd psalm “My Shepherd will supply my need.”  The last stanza says, “then we will find a settled rest, no more a stranger or a guest, but like a child at home” as as I add, at play before the Father’s feet.

Jesus says the Sadducees do not open their minds to the reality of God but cling to mortal ideas of God. It is a trap we all fall into when we think of the resurrection in worldly terms of husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, and sons and daughters. It is a fact of our mortality that we are tied to this earthly body, it is natural and hard to avoid. When we think about immense happiness of Heaven we often turn to our emotional connections to family and close friends. Jesus says when we think about the happiness of resurrection, we should think about our relationship with God not with the world.

All we know is that resurrection is a glorious new life without end and with no worldly things that decay. In some mysterious way, we become a part of God.

If any one offers you an explanation of resurrection that goes beyond,  “We continue to live in a relationship as a child of God according to God’s purpose,” please realize you are listening to an opinion not a fact. Our bodily existence will end. We will live on but we do not know how because we cannot know the mind of God.

We do know from the time we spent on this road from Galilee to Jerusalem that how we use this physical body is very important to our future well-being. Jesus left us many instructions for living this physical life.

At the beginning of his gospel (1:1-4) Luke says his objective is to record an orderly and accurate account of things passed on by eye-witnesses and servants of the word that we may know the truth.

He relies heavily on the Gospel of Mark.  In the confrontation with the chief priests and leaders of the temple Mark (12:28-34) describes a final fourth question following the one on resurrection. Luke moves it to the very beginning of this journey as he leaves Galilee (10:25-28). It makes sense that Luke did it because the question and answer puts this entire journey and resurrection into proper perspective.

This is the question. A  lawyer, perhaps a Pharisee, asks Jesus, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus asks him, “What does the Law say?” The lawyer replies, “Love the Lord with all your body, soul and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus congratulates him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.”

And so here a Pharisee’s question at the beginning of the journey to the cross encapsulates the entire path to the Kingdom of God. Our resurrection as a child of God depends only on these two commandments.

I’ve decided I’m not going to worry or lose sleep over what it is going to happen in the resurrection, how or if I will react on seeing my mother and father, my grandparents and good friends. I encourage you to try to do the things I try to do, keep your eye on the prize, remember that God is the God of the living not the dead, and all the lessons on this journey from Galilee to Jerusalem about living, especially those two commandments. They sound easy but Jesus says we will stumble because striving to be a child of God is hard work. As Paul puts it, train hard and run the race the best you can. In that “Great Getting Up Morning” the faithful will understand the mystery when the question no longer matters.

God has a wonderful sense of humor about faith, doesn’t he? He must completely love us and expect us to do the same.

* note: all scripture comes from the Oremus bible Browser (www.bible.oremus.org), an NRSV text.

Day 328 - Get Down Out of That Tree

A Sermon delivered Nov 3, 2013 at First Presbyterian Church, Soddy Daisy, TN
Epistle Reading: 2Thessalonians 1:11-12 *
New Testament Reading: Luke19:1-10

If you have followed the last several sermons, you know we are following Luke’s account of the journey of Jesus from Galilee to Jerusalem where the cross awaits. Along the way up the Jordan Valley he has attracted crowds of people, the sick and blind, Pharisees and religious leaders, believers and the curious. Each experience becomes areal-life teaching experiences for his disciples and us.

Ten chapters after Jesus set his eyes on Jerusalem, his journey to Jerusalem is almost over. Next week we will be in Jerusalem, but today, we are here in the oasis of Jericho, the busy gateway city lying at the base of the hills ahead of the steep climb to Jerusalem. It is a good place to encounter the chief toll collector.

Along the way from Galilee Jesus has encountered all kinds of people who are attracted to him and demonstrate faith in various unexpected ways. We saw the outcast Samaritan leper who was the only one of ten to realize he had been in God’s presence and returned to praise Jesus. Jesus said his faith healed him.

We heard about the importance of humility in the story of the Pharisees arguing about the best seat at the table. We heard about the challenge of the narrow gate - to hold onto faith when the world tests many who fall away.

We encountered the persistent widow who sought justice from an unjust judge until she got justice. It is Jesus' lesson encouraging persistent prayer for the fulfillment of the Kingdom of God.

We learned the obligation of faith is to do the right thing,  not for a special reward but because it is the right thing to do. We learned about the love of God who will seek out one lost sheep of 100.

Last week we listened to the really sneaky story of the Pharisee and the tax collector. Jesus said we cannot get to the humble repentance and blessing of grace of the sorrowful, despised tax collector until we acknowledge we are the prideful Pharisee who needs to recognize God’s grace and repent of our pride.

Today it is the chief toll collector and toll roads. Toll roads have been in existence at least 2700 years. In the Roman era, if you traveled in a Roman province you were liable to be stopped on the road at any time by a toll collector who wants to search your belongings for goods you may carry and charge you a tax or toll. People also paid a tax or toll just to travel on the roads, or to cross certain bridges, and the like.

What is the chief toll collector? In these Roman times, a toll collector is another way to say tax collector.  The chief toll collector bids for right to collect taxes for the emperor on an area or province. He is the business person who does the negotiating and managing. The tax collector did all the work. They were considered loathsome occupations and the populace despised them both.

The chief tax collector was the worst because everyone presumed he abused his job since he had a lot of flexibility to determine exactly how and what his collectors charged. What he collected and what he owed Rome might be quite different. But the populace knew or assumed these collectors were wealthy because of their job.  In practice, the job had a lot of financial uncertainty since the population was poor and he has to pay his tax collectors and Rome. Nevertheless, Luke tells us with the impression this is a wealthy, successful chief tax collector.

The chief tax collector stands out from the crowd. He would be well dressed, and probably carry himself is a manner reflecting his high station as one of the elite. 

But something is wrong with this story. Remember Jesus has a soft spot for tax collectors because they are among the despised and ritually unclean people that he seeks. He speaks and associates with them, eats at their homes and praises them, not for their wealth but for their faith.

Here in Jericho with its main road to Jerusalem and we meet the chief toll collector, Zacchaeus.  He is short and his name is a Hebrew word signifying he is a  Jew. His name is also a play on words. It means pure, clean or righteous.

Luke does not tell us why Zacckaeus is so excited and motivated to see Jesus. Is it curiosity or has he heard about Jesus already and is counted among the believers?  All we know is short, ritually unclean Zacchaeus wants to see Jesus and whether by intent or happenstance the crowd blocks his view. He cannot find a spot to see Jesus so he runs ahead and scales a tree to get a glimpse.

The scene as Jesus enters Jericho is rowdy. Crowds have followed him and probably many more are attracted as word travels that the man who is the Messiah is coming to Jerusalem. I expect the hullabaloo is a precursor to what will happen on Palm Sunday when he enters Jerusalem.

Use your imagination. We have this well-dressed and wealthy senior official who runs and climbs a sycamore tree to get sight of Jesus. Today he would be the mayor wearing a tuxedo and sitting in a tree down on Market Street. It is not a very dignified behavior and might even be considered humiliating to act so far below his station. 

Remember this is Rome where power and pride are the highest virtues.Why didn’t the chief tax collector have a centurion order the people to let him through, or order them himself because he can make the life of the people hard if he so chooses?

Jesus sees Zacchaeus up in the tree and calls him down saying he wants to stay at his house today. Zacchaeus, the well dressed chief toll collector immediately obeys the bidding of Jesus.

The crowd grumbles with a condescending, complaining critical attitude towards this worst of the worst. (Grumble is the word used previously to describe the way the offended Pharisees described Jesus, the one who associates with beggars, unclean people, drunks and outcasts). Luke tells us all grumbled, meaning everyone including the disciples and the Pharisees were offended that Jesus going into the chief tax collector’s house to eat and rest overnight.

What happens next has drawn a big argument among preachers because of the way various people translate verse 8. This is one of the cases where it pays to remember how personal interpretation and bias influence translation of Scripture. It is clear everyone is grumbling in disrespect for the chief toll collector. But the Greek text literally says that Zacchaeus is defending himself to Jesus against the crowd, saying “I give half my wealth to the poor and when I discover I have cheated or defrauded someone, I repay four times.”

Older traditional interpretation reads “I am giving” and “repaying” not as the present tense verbs that they are, but as future tense verbs, so that the chief tax collector is stating what he will begin doing from this point into the future. For example, “From now on, I will give half my wealth to the poor…” They translate it this way because they intuitively want to think that wealthy Zacchaeus has just converted or gained salvation for his zeal is seeking Jesus today. This interpretation actually carries a subtle bias against wealth and the wealthy (Luke does treat wealth as dangerous and a potential barrier to grace).  These translators assume if Zacckaeus is wealthy, by implication it is dishonest wealth and he is a bad person in need of repentance.

One of my commentaries written by a person that I respect(Fred Craddock, Luke, Interpretation, p 218) insists on the future because as he says, “...this much we know on principle, you can’t be part of a system that robs and crushes other people and be privately righteous.”  I think he overlooks his own self-righteous irony that we all are sinners and few of us look a gift horse in the mouth.

The older and surprising to me, more modern interpretation has Zacchaeus defending himself against the accusation of the crowd, essentially saying, “Jesus, those guys are wrong, I give half my wealth to the poor now and when I discover I have cheated or defrauded someone, I repay fourfold.”  I think it is a reasonable interpretation that Jesus is contrasting Zacchaeus with the the Pharisee in our parable of last week. The Pharisee pridefully went beyond the law but had no respect for people less than him. The chief tax collector is not just going beyond the letter of the law, he is motivated to follow its generous spirit to care for the disadvantaged.

Jesus commends him for it. “You are a Hebrew and you are seeking to follow the full meaning of the law and salvation has come to you. You are the kind of lost person I have come to find and save ("save/heal" is same word we used for the Samaritan leper, his faith has saved him).”

Like the tax collector last week, the chief tax collector understands his foot is on the shoulders of the people, and he is now working for justice in the world with his wealth. (It is always a dilemma whether to remain part of a corrupt system and work for good, or to abandon it, and in the end it is a personal decision guided by faith and the HS.)

The intervening parable of the rich young ruler that we skipped is connected to our story. You may recall the rich young ruler said he had following the letter of the law since he was a youth and wanted to know what else he needed to do for salvation. Jesus told him to go and sell all his assets and give the proceeds to the poor, then follow him.  Jesus may have tailored his demand to give up all his wealth to show the young man how short his faith has fallen, because here he praises Zacchaeus for giving half his wealth. The point is don’t let your wealth blind you to faith.

 The chief tax collector, one of the ritually unclean outcasts Jesus came to rescue, obeyed Jesus, came down out of the tree and took Jesus to his home. He appeals his defense to Jesus that he is giving a large proportion of his wealth to help the poor because he has positive consideration of his neighbors compared to him.

Let’s think about a different context. The Gospels maintain it is best to share all your possessions and wealth with those in need because Jesus did that at the cross. Such an act puts you in absolute fealty to God, rather than tie you down to the world. This is the point with the rich young ruler. Jesus uses the chief tax collector to talk about how our spiritual orientation controls our actions; that is, how it shapes our perception of our vocation in the world.

A vocation means a calling, not a “job” in the literal sense. God calls each one of us to a purpose in this world. We have no option to choose a vocation, only to respond to our calling to service, or not. We may spend decades struggling to understand our vocation, or completely overlook the fact we may be actually doing it. Your vocation may be being the best parent or businessman that you can be. What “best” means, of course, is the heart of it. Jesus would ask,  “Are you glorifying God and loving your neighbor as you love yourself, or as God loves you?”

The point of the Pharisee, the tax collector and the chief tax collector is that we can’t get to repentance and salvation without first acknowledging our sins; admitting we are the Pharisees in the story, not the penitent tax collector. Only when we find enough humility to acknowledge our pride can we find grace. Then we become the tax collector who knows every blessing belongs to God.

The crowd presumed Zacchaeus to be an evil person who abused them; yet unbeknownst to them, he used half his wealth humbly and silently to help the poor. One message is you can’t judge a book by its cover. You may see someone who looks seedy or may be part of an abusive business, but look beyond the cover to the real person. For example, if we failed to look beyond the cover, every denomination that has cases of pastoral sexual abuse should be judged as unworthy and corrupt. Yet we know we are all sinners and we cannot condemn a church or congregation for the failure of its members, unless the congregation or church choses to endorse the bad behavior.

Most importantly, this is a story of being vindicated as righteous for responding to God’s call. 

The Shorter Catechism, a text many people my parent’s age used in confirmation class ,begins with three paired questions and answers:

1.    What is the chief end of man? Answer: To glorify God and enjoy his grace forever.

2.   What is the rule or guide that God has given us that tells us how to glorify God? Answer:…The only guide is the Word of God …told in the Bible that we understand with the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

3.   What doe the Scriptures principally teach? Answer: What we believe about God and what our duties to God are.

This confession, like all formal confessions, strives to capture what people of good faith understand the call to action by Jesus Christ means. Jesus says our focus on righteous, our ticket to Heaven is heeding our calling to facilitate the work of the Church in the world.

So, yes it is truly glorious for one who earns a million or billion dollars to give it all to the work of God’s church in the world. However, remember giving it all is not the same as buying a ticket to Heaven. Some times less is more. You may be as blessed to earn a million dollars and use $500,000 to help those lost souls in need like the chief tax collector, because that is what the righteous, obedient disciple of Jesus does. The one with the real trouble is the one who earns far less but shares none of it. (Stay tuned for the parable of the talents.) God’s grace rains on those who work to fulfill their vocation because they heed God’s call for their lives.

Every day there is opportunity to be Zacchaeus, the chief tax collector. So,  get down out of the tree and start using our gifts to glorify God.

* note: all scripture comes from the Oremus bible Browser (www.bible.oremus.org), an NRSV text.