Sermon: Post Election Meditation
Text: Luke 20: 27-38
November 7, 2004
Kendall Brown Kendall's Notebook Page 33
This morning has turned out to be one of the most challenging mornings in my ministry for coming to the pulpit with a message. I would rank today above the Sundays after 9/11, 2001 in challenge. For the pews of our churches this morning are a reflection of the nation. The best word for summing in up is divided.
As a result of the election, our pews are occupied with some who have reason to feel quite victorious and with others with equal reason to feel quite defeated. I take very seriously the motto of the United Church of Christ, “that they may all be one” from Jesus’ own prayer for his church. But the ideal of that oneness becomes excruciatingly difficult to find when faced with preaching to defeat and victory at the same time.
In a manner quite serendipitous today, the lectionary reading for this morning stands ready to offer some suggestion. The story is about the religious rulers who came to Jesus with a question which was for all intents and purposes a trick question. The leaders weren’t just any leaders. They were Sadducees. The Sadducees were the heirs of the temple priesthood who traced their party or faction (if you will) all the way back to the high priest, Aaron. The Sadducees had survived the exile and they were the ruling party in the temple and religious community in Jesus’ time.
The word “Sadducee,” itself, bears witness to their sure footing in the history and tradition of the Old Testament. “Sadducee” is the Greek rendition of the word “Zadokite” or the descendants of Zadok, who was King David’s high priest. There were a number of priestly houses or parties in ancient Israel. The Sadducees were the ones responsible for the assembling of most of the Old Testament’s legal texts and traditions.
The Sadducees differed with other temple parties, the Pharisees in particular, on one theological point. Some of them believed in the resurrection of the dead and the Sadducees did not. I think it is safe to assume that the religious leaders were as divided over this issue as solidly as people in our country are apart over issues that have become politicized.
So the Sadducees did exactly what we do with our divisions. They went to Jesus and attempted to drag him into their fight. They put a question before him, which they assumed that he would answer one way or the other - with the choice of answer being either to agree with US or agree with THEM. Actually, the Sadducees who approached Jesus had a little more mischief in mind than simply co-opting Jesus. Their real intent was to ask him a question which they had figured would embarrass or discredit him no matter how he answered.
But most of us, rather Republican or Democrat or Independent or Ralph Naderite, are not like the Sadducees. We do not share the Sadducees interest and intent to discredit or embarrass our Lord. But we do share the following characteristics with the Sadducees:
We are divided even as the Sadducees and other religious groups were divided.
Like the Sadducees, we do bring our issues to the Lord
Like the Sadducees assumed, we assume there can only be one way for Jesus to go if asked about our issues
Like the Sadducees, we expect that there can be only one way for Jesus to think and of course that way has to line up with our way.
The very laws, which the Sadducees taught and upheld, required that a man take his brother’s childless widow as his wife. This law is recorded in Deuteronomy 25:5, and was designed that the dead man’s name be carried on through the children of his wife by his brother. By this law, it would have been possible for some widow to be the widow of a number of brothers, maybe even as many as the seven as mentioned in the question. The Sadducees reasoned that what is lawful on earth in this situation would be adulterous in the afterlife if indeed Jesus’ teaching about the resurrection was true. The rational and obvious conclusion for the Sadducees was that certainly there could be no resurrection of the dead for God would not set up any situation either in the here and now or the hereafter that would be essentially an adulterous situation for the woman.
Jesus spoke to the Sadducees. He spoke to their quarrel with other leaders. He spoke to their rationalization. He pointed out to the Sadducees that their assumption about the resurrected life was all off base. They assumed that the resurrected life is a mirror image of this life. Jesus pointed out that the resurrected life is a whole new life, not just a remade life, nor mirror-image life of this life, and that in the resurrected life there is no giving and receiving in marriage for all will be different, made completely different and completely whole. Like the Sadducees we come before Jesus unable to imagine that there can be anything different. One of the hardest things of all to image this morning is that we indeed can be made one.
Oneness never meant for Jesus, nor for us, that we all be alike, that we all be the same. The oneness of Christ is before us this morning even as it was before the Sadducees who came to Jesus with their divisive question.
There is the oneness of invitation to all. We are all invited to come and eat and drink at the same table from the same loaf and cup. There is the oneness of being guests. We are all guests and there is only one host at the head of the table and our host is Jesus, our Lord.
There is the oneness of Jesus’ Lordship. We can separate ourselves from that Lordship by letting other forces and powers take rule in our hearts and our lives. Whether our party of preference won this last Tuesday or lost, we all need the humility, that comes not from our defeats, but the true humility that comes from knowing that we cannot live without our Lord.
Whether our party of preference won this past week or lost, we all need to know that our self worth comes from having a lord who has won us and not from having won an election for ourselves. Likewise our self worth cannot be taken from u by having an election because no matter who we are our Lord has not lost us.
Whether our party won or lost this past week, we need not be made empty by defeat nor filled by our victory for we are called to a table to be emptied of self and to be filled by the love of Christ.