God of the Living

November 9, 2019 God of the Living Luke 20:27-38 22nd Sunday after Pentecost Year C Children’s Time Show pictures of heaven, which is you view of heaven. Heaven is somewhere beyond what we can understand. But it is also the place where God lives and we see God clearly. God is with us right here, but we don’t always realize it. Luke 20:27-38 Common English Bible (CEB) Question about the resurrection 27 Some Sadducees, who deny that there’s a resurrection, came to Jesus and asked, 28 “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies leaving a widow but no children, the brother must marry the widow and raise up children for his brother.[a] 29 Now there were seven brothers. The first man married a woman and then died childless. 30 The second 31 and then the third brother married her. Eventually all seven married her, and they all died without leaving any children. 32 Finally, the woman died too. 33 In the resurrection, whose wife will she be? All seven were married to her.” 34 Jesus said to them, “People who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage. 35 But those who are considered worthy to participate in that age, that is, in the age of the resurrection from the dead, won’t marry nor will they be given in marriage. 36 They can no longer die, because they are like angels and are God’s children since they share in the resurrection. 37 Even Moses demonstrated that the dead are raised—in the passage about the burning bush, when he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.[b] 38 He isn’t the God of the dead but of the living. To him they are all alive.” Footnotes: a. Luke 20:28 Deut 25:5; Gen 38:8 b. Luke 20:37 Exod 3:6, 15-16 Common English Bible (CEB) Copyright © 2011 by Common English Bible Offertory Prayers Note: The prayers relate to lectionary texts selected for use in Discipleship Ministries’ worship resources. All November 2019 prayers connect with the “Abiding in the Reign” Series. November 3, 2019 – Twenty First Sunday After Pentecost God of redemption and reconciliation, we come to you this morning, hoping for a peek at the Divine in our lives. We are reminded that, like Zacchaeus, Jesus calls to us across the divide of our failures and offenses, beckoning us back into the family. While there is no price set on this reconnection, when we accept that reality, we cannot contain an outburst of generosity. May our gifts be used to right wrongs and to draw others to the life-transforming love of Jesus. In his holy name, we pray. Amen. Luke 19:1-10 November 10, 2019 – Twenty Second Sunday After Pentecost God of all time and space, we bring our gifts to your altar, knowing your presence with us transcends our time on earth. You are the God of the living, right here and in your heavenly kingdom. As we give, we pray that our gifts will be used for compassion, justice, and reconciliation. We pray that we might see a glimpse of your heavenly kingdom right here in our earthly days. We pray this in the name of Christ, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen. Luke 20:27-38 If you could ask Jesus any question what would it be. I am sure that we all have a lot of questions. One of the major questions that we all seem to have are about the afterlife. Is there really life after death? What is heaven like? Is there a chance that any of us will ever get there. No matter how long we have been in the church, we all have these questions. It seems that Jesus spent most of his ministry trying to explain heaven to us. We still don’t really know what heaven will be. The best Jesus could explain to us is what heaven will be like. And is still does not make sense to us. I think that what we do know is that heaven is a good place, a happy place where God is. Heaven and Earth There are a lot question the Bible doesn't answer about the Hereafter. But I think one reason is illustrated by the story of a boy sitting down to a bowl of spinach when there's a chocolate cake at the end of the table. He's going to have a rough time eating that spinach when his eyes are on that cake. And if the lord had explained everything to us about what's ours to come, I think we'd have a rough time with our spinach down here. Michael Green, Illustrations for Biblical Preaching, Baker, 1993, p.184. I don’t want to keep us long, so I am going to try to keep this short and not tell a lot of stories. This is one time where the story that Jesus tells it all. Jesus has started to ruffle some feathers, and those in charge are not only taking notice. They are getting irritated. The Sadducees were a group of priest who believed strictly in the written scriptures. They did not believe in the resurrection – because Moses never spoke of the resurrection. They did not believe in life after death. And Jesus did. So they challenged him with a question of what happens if a woman marries seven times, when she sees all seven husbands in heaven, who will be connect with? Seems like a logical question, But it was not a question at all, it was a trap to get a reason to attack Jesus. The good news is that during this time of confrontation, Jesus always won the argument, he understood enough to get out of trouble – and they killed him anyway. The saducees were sad you see – because they only believed in what was in what made sense to them. They only wanted to hear what made sense to them. When they asked Jesus a question, they already had an answer in mind. Jesus crime - trying to take them beyond their present understanding. Heaven is a place that is somewhere beyond what is already here. Somewhere just beyond our reach, beyond our comprehension, beyond what we can see right now. Personally, the concept of heaven has always been a little boring to me. When I think of heaven I think of being stuck in church all day and all night. With people who never do anything wrong and who sing church songs all day. Not my idea of a good time. I didn’t have very imaginative Sunday school teachers growing up. But Jesus explains heaven as the place where the presence of God is with us all of the time, and all of the things that we struggled with in life will melt away, all of the questions we wanted to ask will be answered. Heaven is the place where God lives. What about you- what does heaven look like to you? Is that a place that you want to go someday? How much are you willing to change in order to get there? Most of us are just as sad as the saducees – we are not willing to change, we want things to stay the same. When we ask questions of Jesus – we too have already made up our mind of what the answer is. The lesson that Jesus is teaching us God is the God of the living and not the dead. When we are not open to what is beyond our understanding, then we are dead in spirit, even if we are living in the body. What Can We Do to Be Partners with God in Mission? At a church-growth workshop the leader, Bill Easum, who himself grew a church from 29 members to over 2,400 members, said that too often the questions churches ask themselves are questions that are motivated by a desire to maintain whatever is comfortable. That's why some wag has said that the seven last words of the church are "We've never done it that way before." Bill Easum spoke of the three greatest sins of the church, and one of them was, "We're more in love with our traditions than we are with our missions." If we are intent on preserving the patterns of church life we've grown comfortable with, we'll soon discover that God has moved on and left us behind. God is always out there ahead of us, leading us into the future, and if we want to be working hand in hand with God, we have to be willing to ask the right questions. Not, "What can we do to preserve what we find comfortable?" but "What can we do to be partners with God in mission?" The first question leads to a church that is dead and declining; the second to a church that is alive and dynamic. Larry R. Kalajainen, Extraordinary Faith for Ordinary Time, CSS Publishing Company This morning we have honored those who have sacrificed so that we can have life, and we also have welcomed new members in our midst. We have a chance to welcome the living God in our midst, we can have hope that God is still speaking and we are still listening – to something beyond or understanding. The Road Stops Here Pastor Edward Markquart of Seattle tells about a poem titled, “The Midnight of March 31st.” It’s a story about a drunken truck driver. Markquart imagines this driver trucking across Eastern Washington. Finally he comes . . . in his mind . . . to the end of the highway . . . [The highway] seems to stop at the top of a hill that he can’t see over . . . it is impossible for him to imagine that the road goes on. And so he pulls off the highway and into a tavern and shouts to everyone: “People, the road stops here. The road stops here. It doesn’t go any farther. That’s impossible.” And everybody in the tavern laughs. They tell him that road goes all across Washington and even across the United States. But the drunken truck driver is convinced the road goes no farther than the hill he can’t see over. Then Markquart adds these wise words, “By analogy, many people drive out of our church and they drive up highway #99 after the funeral, and they drive into Washington Memorial Cemetery, and the road pulls right up to a grave which is carved out of the ground on the top of a hill. And many people think: the road stops here; the road stops here; there is no more; it is impossible for the road to go any farther.” But, of course, the road does go farther. Death is not the end of the journey. There is more beyond. A healthy approach to death is to deal with it as a time of transition. Death is but a journey from this world to the next. May we all have to strength to follow that road – the road that leads us to heaven. Amen. Additional illustrations…….. A Theological Curveball A certain minister has made it a policy for many years to refer "six-year-old theology questions" to his wife. Since she has taught very young children for many years, he says, she has a much better grasp than he does of how to address the questions which little kids ask. The other day, a first-grader brought a drawing of a skeleton into class where she teaches English as a second language. The titled across the top of the drawing read "Inside of Me." It was designed to teach children that everyone has a skeleton inside of them. He unfolded it proudly and showed it to the class. One little girl from India was astounded at the thought that she and others had this scary-looking skeleton inside them, and so she pressed the issue a bit farther. "Even you got one of these inside you, Mrs. K?" The teacher replied, "Yes, I have one, too." The next question was the theological one. "Even God got one inside him?" Now in a class made up of children from many different countries, cultures, and religious backgrounds (most of them not Christians), you can imagine that this question had the potential for major theological debate. I doubt if I'd have had the presence of mind to give the answer the teacher did; but, as usual, her expertise in six-year-old theology saved the day. "If God needs a skeleton, I'm sure he has one," she replied. "God has everything he needs." This apparently satisfied the theological curiosity of the class, and they got on with the lesson. Asking questions is an essential part of learning. If we don't know something, we look for someone who does and we ask. The only dumb question is the one you don't ask. We learn by asking questions about what we don't know. Larry R. Kalajainen, Extraordinary Faith for Ordinary Time, CSS Publishing Company Heaven Dr. W. A. Criswell, the beloved pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas, was once asked, "Will we know each other when we get to heaven?" His answer, "We won't really know each other UNTIL we get to heaven." Michael Green, Illustrations For Biblical Preaching, Baker, 1993, p.184. Philosophers and Pessimists When it comes to talking about the hereafter, I like the words of St Paul: "No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived, What God has prepared for those who love him." Resurrection is not some natural right that we are given. It is a remarkable gift from the grace of God. Gratis! Some Greek philosophers believed that we are, by nature, immortal spirits. The human body and life on earth are but crude prisons that we endure like caged eagles. For them immortality is our right, which is restored at death as we escape to our true element. Pessimists on the other hand said we die like any animal and that is it. Look at Ecclesiastes and you will find this emphatic despair. But Christianity said two things: To the pessimists Christianity answers: "No! You are wrong. There is a gift of life after death." Death does not snuff out the candle of our soul. To the Greeks: "No you are wrong. The body is not a cage; it is a good gift to be used in this life. Death is real to be sure but it is not an escape, a loophole by which we escape the sentence of living on earth. God gives us the gift of life: Earthly life and Resurrection life: Both are Gift! Both are Grace!" Brett Blair, www.Sermons.com. Adapted from a sermon by Australian Pastor Bruce Prewer. Love the Questions Remember Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet? An aspiring poet from America wrote the famous poet Rilke in Germany with questions about his art. In one of his replies, Rilke writes, “Love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language….Live the questions now. Perhaps then someday far in the future, you will gradually...live your way into the answer.” Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet, translated M. D. Hurter Norton, W. Norton and Company, Revised 1954, 1962 King Duncan, adapting Josephine Young Case’s At Midnight on the 31st of March, an out-of-print title published in 1990 by Syracuse University Press (originally published by Houghton Mifflin, 1938)