Dear Friends,
My hope and prayer is that all of you are safe and
secure and of good health of body, mind and spirit. The Session will be making
some decisions in the coming days regarding holy week, but until now I will be
printing my sermons and sending them out, as well as trying to record them and
get them up on Facebook and our web page. (If these don’t work look for them on
YouTube using the sermon title). The
Mission project is still planning to give out food on March 27 and the church
officers will be checking in, now and again, to see how all of you are
doing. In the meanwhile, here is a
prayer for a Pandemic that I picked up off the internet:
May we who are merely inconvenienced remember those
whose lives are at stake.
May we who have no risk factors remember those most
vulnerable.
May we who have the luxury of working from our house
remember those who must choose between
preserving their health or making the rent.
May we who have the flexibility to care for our
children when their schools close remember those who have no options.
May we who have to cancel our trips remember those
who have no place to go.
May we who are losing our margin money in the tumult
of the economic market remember those who have no margin at all.
May we who settle in for a quarantine at home
remember those who have no home.
As fear grips our country, let us choose love.
During this time when we cannot physically wrap our arms around each other, let
us yet find ways to be the loving embrace of God to our neighbor. Amen.
God’s
peace and blessings be with you, Pastor Dave
“Marriage
is Made in Heaven , So is Thunder and Lightning”
Matthew 22:23-32
23The same day some Sadducees came to him, saying there is no resurrection;
and they asked him a question, saying, 24“Teacher, Moses said, ‘If a man dies childless, his brother shall marry
the widow, and raise up children for his brother.’ 25Now there were seven brothers among us; the first married,
and died childless, leaving the widow to his brother. 26The second did the same, so also the third, down to the
seventh. 27Last of all, the woman herself
died. 28In the resurrection, then, whose wife of
the seven will she be? For all of them had married her.” 29Jesus answered them, “You are wrong, because you know neither
the scriptures nor the power of God. 30For
in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like
angels in heaven. 31And as for the resurrection of the dead,
have you not read what was said to you by God, 32‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of
Jacob’? He is God not of the dead, but of the living.”
This is the word of the Lord, thanks be to God.
Years ago, I was walking through a craft fair and came
upon a tent where the craftsman was making wooden signs for people’s home. One
sign hanging there caught my attention. It read, “Marriage is made in heaven,
but so is Thunder and Lightning!” Which
may be an appropriate way to look at today’s scripture. The scripture from
Matthew’s gospel is the third encounter between Jesus and the religious
authorities. In the first two the authorities asked questions of Jesus that
they thought would trip him up, and in the process discredit him as a true
teacher (rabbi) and leader. The first two questions dealt with issues of
authority and allegiance, today the question is about scriptural
interpretation. Specifically, how does Jesus understand the commandment found
in Deuteronomy 25:5,6 where it reads: When brothers reside together, and one of them dies and has
no son, the wife of the deceased shall not be married outside the family to a
stranger. Her husband’s brother shall go in to her, taking her in marriage, and
performing the duty of a husband’s brother to her, 6 and
the firstborn whom she bears shall succeed to the name of the deceased brother,
so that his name may not be blotted out of Israel” and how does this commandment impact
husbands and wives when they have been resurrected.
Those asking the question
think that they have presented Jesus with a trap. He will either refute the
Torah (the law of Israel) or he will denounce the concept of resurrection. To
deny either one of these would bring rejection and ridicule by the crowds. Or
so they thought. They present the
dilemma. A woman married, her husband died, and she was left childless. Her
brother-in-law in keeping with the custom marries her. He dies as well. The
custom continues through five more brothers, until the widow finally dies. The
religious leaders then ask, “In the
resurrection, then, whose wife of the seven will she be?” When confronted with the first two questions,
Jesus asked a question back to his interrogators, but in this case he lays it
straight and declares that his questioners are wrong. They are wrong because
they did not understand scripture or the power of God.
How could it be that
these learned men of faith did not understand the two key elements of faith—God
and the scriptures that support our belief in God? If we look closely at the text from
Deuteronomy that speaks about levirate marriage, the text has little connection
to matters regarding the resurrection. The levirate law practice was put into
place to guarantee two things. First, if would promote care for the widow and
the orphan upon the death of the woman’s husband. It was a matter of justice.
The widow would not have to fear for her welfare if her brother-in-law took her
in. Secondly, it would protect the name of her husband. It would guarantee that
the property would stay within the family of the deceased husband that an
inheritance could be given to any future generation, and it would also stop the
widow from selling off the property in order to survive. It was a very
practical law for the welfare of the community. It has nothing to do with resurrection. Jesus
knew that and I suspect the Sadducees did too.
Jesus’ second claim, that
the Sadducees knew little about the power of God is a bit more difficult to
explain. According to the ancient
writings the historian Josephus and the book of The Acts of the Apostles, the
Sadducees rejected the idea of life after death as well as the notion of
spirits or angels. In other words they come into this discussion under a
pretense of believing in something that they as a body have long negated. Which
means in matters related to the idea of resurrection they have already removed
themselves from the discussion.
Jesus then reminds him
that when the people of Israel speak of their ancestors, the ancient patriarchs
and matriarchs, they speak of them in a manner of them still being alive and
present with God, as in “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God
of Jacob? This declaration is made in the present, not the past, tense.
Add to this the words of
the prophet Isaiah, “Your dead shall
live, their corpses[a] shall rise. O dwellers in the dust, awake and
sing for joy! For your dew is a radiant dew, and the earth will give birth to
those long dead.” (Is. 26:19) and
Jesus had pretty well proved his assertion about them and their lack of faith
and knowledge.
I don’t think the point
of this confrontation is for Jesus to win the argument. Nor do I think he is
trying to make more enemies as he pretty much has the Scribes, Pharisees,
Herodians and now the Sadducees all working against him. I believe Jesus wanted
to help his disciples keep their hearts and minds in the promise of the
resurrection. I am pretty sure that Jesus is not trying to argue for or against
marriage now or in the resurrected life.
What Jesus knows is that in just three days he will be arrested,
tortured and executed. He knows that he is going to the grave and his disciples
faith will be tested like it had never been before. They had come to Jerusalem
full of hope and dreams for the restoration of Israel. They had come to see
Jesus take his place on the royal throne of their ancestor King David. They had
prayed for and hoped for a new life for them and for the people of Israel. And
then they would be confronted by death: a death so incredibly out of their
control, a death that they could not stop, that they could not avoid. The death of their dear friend, their
teacher, the healer, their master and Lord, Jesus would grip them with a pain
so deep that it would be near impossible to hope and believe in the
resurrection no matter how many times Jesus told them he would rise. If you add
to this the immense amount of fear that what happened to Jesus could happen to
them as one of his followers we can easily understand Jesus wanting to lift up
the power of God that is ever present and in the midst of them, that power of
God that says no matter what happens, I am still the Lord of life, and you will
see life again.
I share this because this
is the first Lent when Jesus is not walking that lonesome road alone. The whole
world is walking with him as we wrestle with the pandemic of Covid-19. The news
seems to state that things will get worse before they get better as the number
of those infected and affected by the virus grows day by day. It is just normal
for us to fear in the face of over that which we feel so powerless. In this state we try to control that which we
can and so we might find ourselves buying way more toilet paper and Lysol then
we ever thought we would need. In our anger over this powerlessness it is also
natural to look for a culprit, someone to blame for how uneasy we feel. Like
those disciples we want to scream out, we want to point a finger, and yet all
we can do is seclude ourselves in our own upper rooms—filled with our doubts
and despair.
We though are the
resurrection people. God is not god of the dead, but God of the living. Even in
the midst of this tragedy that will have long term effect on everything from
our hygiene to our economics there is reason to hope—in fact there may even be
reason to sing. Father Richard Hendrick OFM shares his thoughts in his poem,
“Lockdown”
Yes
there is fear.
Yes
there is isolation.
Yes
there is panic buying,
Yes
there is sickness.
Yes
there is even death.
But,
They
that in Wuhan after so many years of noise
You
can hear the birds again.
They
say that after a few weeks of quiet
The
sky is no longer thick with fumes
But
blue and grey and clear.
They
say that in the streets of Assisi
People
are singing to each other
Across
the empty squares,
Keeping
their windows open
So
that those who are alone
May
hear the sounds of family around them.
They
say that a hotel in the West of Ireland
Is
offering free meals and delivery to the housebound.
Today
a young woman I know
Is
busy spreading fliers with her number
Through
the neighborhood
So
that seniors may have someone to call on.
Today,
churches, synagogues, mosques and temples
Are
preparing to welcome and shelter the homeless, the sick, the weary.
All
over the world people are slowing down
and
reflecting
All
over the world people are looking at their neighbors
In a new way.
All over the
world people are waking up to a new reality…
To how small we
really are.
To how little
control we really have
To what really
matters.
To Love.
So we pray and
we remember that
Yes there is
fear…
But there does
not have to be hate.
Yes there is
isolation…
But there does
not have to be loneliness.
Yes there is
panic buying…
But there
doesn’t have to be selfishness.
Yes there is
sickness…
But there
doesn’t need to be sickness of the soul.
Yes there is
even death…
But there can
always be a rebirth of love
Wake to the
choices you make as to how to live now.
Today, breathe.
Listen, behind
the factory noises of your panic
The birds are
singing.
The sky is
clearing.
Spring is
coming.
And we are
always encompassed by Love.
Open the windows
of your soul,
And though we
may not be able
To touch across
the empty square…
Sing!
May the God of Love and
Mercy hold all of us in these times of fear and anxiety and touch all our hearts
with the hope and the power of the resurrection through our Lord and Savior
Jesus Christ. Amen.
