November 10, 2019 – Luke 20:27-40
Luke 20:27-40
What Difference does Heaven Make?
Or All Your Questions about the Afterlife Answered
Lectionary 32C – November 10, 2019
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
What difference does heaven make?
Why does it matter that we have inherited this notion of an afterlife?
What is the big deal about hoping for a better future?
One the one hand, for the past 2 and a half thousand years or so,
countless people have hoped for a better life in the world to come when
they ran out of any hope for this life.
For those people for whom their current reality simply would never be changed,
the idea of an afterlife where there would be justice, peace and dignity has provided
comfort and hope when those thing were simply out of their reach in this life.
And that is still true today for those whose circumstances apparently
cannot be changed in this lifetime. This is legitimate and totally understandable.
On the other hand, it is the firm belief of the New Testament that the idea of an afterlife
can change the world now, at this present moment of history.
The New Testament writers had a firm belief that one day God will reign and that
every oppressive power in this universe will be overthrown.
One day, God will reign – and when God reigns there will be peace.
there will be justice.
there will be harmony.
And there will be dignity for every single child of God.
There will be . . . universal neighbourliness.
And they believed that the idea of an afterlife can make a difference in the present because
In Jesus, something very unexpected happened.
It’s true that at the time of Jesus many people – like the Pharisees –
believed in a general resurrection of the dead when
God’s reign finally came in its fullness.
They believed the dead would be raised all together just before God’s kingdom came to earth.
But what no one expected was that before all that happened,
one single person would be raised from death . . . ahead of everyone else.
Yet, that is what the early church – and that is what we – experienced.
Jesus was alone raised from the dead, ahead of schedule.
Jesus is, as the New Testament has it, the first fruits of the coming world.
Jesus comes from the future as it were.
Or, perhaps better, Jesus brings the gifts of God’s future reign into the present.
In this way, Jesus brings God’s promised reign faster and speeds it along.
Jesus brings God’s reign or God’s kingdom to us. Here and now. In the present time.
Jesus re-orders our present relationships now so that they are in line with God’s future reign.
“Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
The risen Jesus brings the future afterlife into the present.
Heaven changes our world now, by coming to us from the future in Jesus.
If we made a movie about this, it might be called Jesus: Back from the Future.
This is what I mean when I say that the idea of an afterlife can change the world now.
I think this is Jesus’ intention in the Gospel story today.
He uses the idea of an afterlife to critique the way things are in the present.
I am pretty sure that he is intending to change the way we relate to each other in the present.
Here’s what happens in the story today.
Jesus has finally made it to Jerusalem, the big city, after travelling for the past 10 chapters.
He made a big ruckus when he entered the city on Palm Sunday.
We know now that he only has a week to live.
The first thing he does in Jerusalem is make a huge upset when he goes to the temple and
overturns the tables of the money changers.
Then, not surprisingly, he is challenged by the religious authorities of the day.
Today it is the Sadducees’ turn to challenge him.
Now, unlike most of the people of that time and place, the Sadducees do not believe in
a general resurrection of the dead.
In confirmation class, we learn that is why they were ‘sad, you see?’
They want to make fun of Jesus’ belief in the resurrection of the dead so they come to him
and try to make the belief look absurd.
In the Old Testament there is a custom that if a man died without children,
his brother could marry the widow and produce a child for him.
Well, the Sadducees say to Jesus, what if there were 7 brothers, all of whom died childless,
and all of whom were married to the widow of the first husband?
In the afterlife, when they are all raised from the dead, whose wife will she be?
Huh, smartypants?
Well, if there is one thing you can take away from the story this morning, that thing is:
don’t get into a debate with Jesus.
He was surely his high school debate team champion.
He says to them: you are very mistaken if you think life in God’s realm is going be like life
here and now; in God’s realm relationships are going to be ordered differently.
When God is reigning in the world to come, things will be different.
And one thing that will be different is that women will no longer be exploited by men.
Now: in a perfect world, we would all be born with the ability to read Greek.
The Sadducees reflect the culture of their time when speaking about marriage:
literally in Greek they speak of “men taking wives,” as if they were property.
But in his response, Jesus does not use that language.
He literally says, “The children of this again marry and allow themselves to be married. But those who are considered worthy of a place in the age to come and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor allow themselves to be married.”
Hm. That’s pretty interesting, right?
Women have a lot more agency in Jesus’ understanding of the age to come, in God’s kingdom.
And apparently that can have an impact here in this age: in this age too, Jesus says,
people can marry and can allow themselves to be married.
God’s future age can re-order relationships here.
In God’s future age, there is no place for human beings to exploit one another.
In God’s future age, people don’t belong to other human beings: they simply belong to God.
And that future can time travel into the present here and now.
Where women have dignity and are not treated as if they were property passed from man to man, God is reigning even now.
God’s future comes into the present when women have freedom in Christ.
God’s future age of justice and freedom can bring justice and freedom into the present, now.
And on Remembrance Day, we can remember that this is how peace comes:
when human beings allow one another freedom and dignity.
For not only women are liberated when God is reigning, but men too.
When men are free of the notion that they “take” women or that human beings somehow
belong to one another like property, they will find the freedom to be something else,
something better, something more, something also freer.
And that is how peace comes – when we are each free to be as God made us.
And if you want to know why the church is still relevant and still important in
2019,
this is the reason: it is the agency tasked with bringing God’s future age into the present.
The church at its best can bring God’s forgiveness, God’s food, God’s healing, God’s inclusion,
and God’s dignity for all God’s children right into the present.
At its best the church can bring re-ordered relationships full of freedom and dignity and love and
sharing into the present.
At its best the church can bring the kind of community we were all intended for into the present.
Just look around – it is happening here at First Lutheran Church.
And when you support First Lutheran Church and when you participate in its ministries,
you are helping to bring God’s future into the present.
Jesus ends his conversation with the Sadducees by proving to them that the notion of
an afterlife is known even to Moses way back in the day, so they should get on board.
At the burning bush, God said to Moses, “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,”
as if they are alive to God, even now.
God did not say, “I was the God Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”
Obviously, Jesus is saying, they are alive to God, even now.
Even the dead are alive to God – for our God is the God of the living.
The dead are kept safe for us, alive in God, until the day we will all be raised together,
and God’s reign will be complete.
God is the God of the living – God desires the things, therefore, that bring life to all people.
The risen Jesus seeks to brings those things that bring life to all people, now.
The risen Jesus comes to bring God’s future blessings into the present, now.
In a few minutes Jesus will come with the bread of heaven and the wine of grace to strengthen us
and give us his life now – life from the future.
Life to make us strong to keep working and, with Jesus, speed God’s promised reign along.
So together, with all God’s children and with all who hope for God’s future,
let us be strengthened, let us keep working, and together let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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