He is not here

 

SERMON PREACHED at HOLY TRINITY,
RINGWOOD EAST

ORDINARY SUNDAY 32

 (November 12^th) 1989

READINGS

Haggai 1:15b—2:9
Psalm 98
2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17
Luke 20:27-38
 

Jesus was constantly challenged to answer questions brought to him by sceptics. Often the scribes and the pharisees sought to trap him with their questions, but on this occasion it was a group of sadducees who came to him.

The sadducees, as Luke tells us, did not believe in the resurrection. Belief in the resurrection of the dead was, at the time of Jesus, a relatively newfangled doctrine championed by the pharisees and other modernists. The sadducees were suspicious of such innovative doctrines, preferring to stick strictly to the letter of the law, the Torah.

If the suspicion about newfangled doctrines sounds familiar, compare it with the ordination of women. Newfangled, unprecedented belief in the resurrection of the dead took over from the traditional centuries-old belief that death was it. Does this have implications for those whose opposition to the ordination of women is based on tradition – on the traditions of scripture? Those with ears, let them hear.

The story told by the sadducees, though unlikely, is possible. It is a story based on the levirate law of marriage, a law designed to keep property within a family and to ensure an heir from within a family to whom property would be bequeathed. But the sadducees were seeking to bait Jesus with the story, so that he will be forced to deny the resurrection.

This perspective of course is too limited. Too earthly. Their understanding of the hereafter is crippled by limitation to their understanding of the here and now. Their belief is not in a miraculous and awesome God who is the God of the astounding, but in a somewhat myopic, pedantic God, whose relationship to the world is unspectacular and pedestrian.

Jesus, the one who dares to call God “Abba,” will have none of this, and refutes the question by simply commending the hereafter to the world of imagination. It will not be like this but – just imagine. As with all the biblical prophets, he seeks to draw an opulent, attractive picture of that which is to come. God is the God of all to whom his promises are made, and his promises are not thwarted by the petty event of our death. God’s promise of love and of eternity transcend our puny mortality.

I should say at this point that much fuss is made about remarks made in 1985 by David Jenkins, the Bishop of Durham. I would that more people had sought to listen to what Jenkins was really saying. Do not limit your understanding of the resurrection to a mere body, there is more at stake on Easter morning than flesh and blood.

That said, I must emphasise again that Christianity is not on about the immortality of the soul. That is a pagan doctrine far older than Christianity, and has nothing to do with the God of Jesus Christ. But the nature of Christ’s resurrection, the details of the body resurrected, these are red herrings. It is the pronouncement, “He is not here, he is risen,” that rings down through history.

It is that pronouncement that breathes hope into human existence and will continue to do so for as long as we reach out to the world around us and proclaim, “Jesus is Lord.” Or to put it another way, an inclusive way, Jesus is in control of life and of death.

It is that news that we take out to the world.

 

The Lord be with you,