Trick or Treat
Notes
Transcript
Trick or Treat. Is it one or the other? Today we celebrate All Saints Day, sometimes called All Souls Day, which is actually on November 1st. It is a day we as a church gather to remember and celebrate the life of the saints who have gone before us. It is a treat to celebrate them and can feel like a trick that they aren’t physically here with us. Almost like we are having a party and a funeral at the same time. Trick and Treat.
As Jesus was teaching in the temple, some Sadducees had gathered around him and were trying to trick Jesus by giving him an extreme example to mock his teaching on the resurrection. There were two primary camps of thought on this in the Jewish faith and it was all based on how you interpreted the law of Moses. The Pharisees felt that the resurrection was alluded to in the Old Testament. The Sadducees felt that there was nothing concrete and so all we have is this life. Nothing after.
So they throw out this example of a woman who had been married seven times but still was childless. This is based of levitic law in the Old Testament that if a man died, the wife had to marry his brother to try and keep the family name going. So the Sadducees are saying, “well she’s been married to all seven men, so in heaven, which one is her husband?
In this case, the Sadducees are trying to make a fool of Jesus and to show that the resurrection isn’t real. Their question has less to do with marriage and more to do with their belief that life after death seems silly. Just a trick. You only live once, right?
Jesus doesn’t ignore them, but engages them in face-to-face conversation and uses it as an opportunity for a lesson. In Matthew and Mark he says, “you are wrong, for you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God.” He says that people of that age of the resurrection neither marry or are given in marriage, nor are they dead but are children of the resurrection.
This passage is where some get their understanding that there are no marriages in heaven. I had a man in my grief group, who after his wife died, was really wrestled with this passage. Week after week he would come and lament over this, saying to me “if I can’t be married to my wife in heaven, then I’m not sure I want to go.” Maybe if you have lost a friend or a parent or a spouse, you know the feeling. You have more questions than answers.
The resurrection just feels impossible to the Sadducees, and so they make fun of it. They assume that our earthly life here will just pick up and continue in heaven. I don’t know exactly what heaven will be seeing as I haven’t been yet but Jesus here is saying that it will be different. Resurrection life is different. Things that are priorities for us here may not be our priorities in the presence of the Lord. And it will be eternal.
The Sadducees want to know the particulars. They are asking question about life after death, but Jesus is saying “you’re missing the point, because they are alive.” The dead will be raised. God is the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Present tense. It’s not that God was their God and then stopped being their God when they died. God is life itself. To be in Christ is to be alive for “God is God not of the dead, but of the living. To him all are alive.”
The man who came to me week after week finally came one day and shared that he had received peace. He cried out to God and felt the Spirit say to him, “it’s ok, you’re gonna like it.” He said, “I don’t know what it’s gonna be like, but I’ve been assured I’m gonna like it.” Similarly Jan Richardson, after losing her husband, said that she came to this place where she knew deep in her bones that her husband abided and that she would know him again. She said that no matter what her relationship to her belated husband would look like, that love was the same on both sides of the veil. One of my friends always tells me that earth has no sorrow that heaven cannot heal. In other words, the grief we carry on earth will not carry over, will not translate into resurrection life. The sorrow of death and oppression and inequality and sickness is the footstool of Jesus.
One of the reasons I love All Saints Sunday is that we gather and we speak the names of the saints and we acknowledge that they are alive in Christ, that they are a part of the body of Christ just as much as we are. They are alive and cheering us on as we journey in faith. They still have a voice and a witness and a presence.
A lot of times I would ask members of my grief group if they talked to their loved ones. Every one of them would say, “yes.” At the graveside. In their home. In the grocery store. In the living room. They would commune with the saints of their lives. I know for myself, I will catch myself talking to the saints of my life, mentors and friends, wondering what they would say now.
Maybe you think it sounds crazy, like talking to a ghost, but I say it is the witness of the saints. Karl Barth in the last hours of his life wrote “All live to him, from the Apostles to the forebears of yesterday and the day before yesterday. They do not have only the right, but also relevance in the present, to be heard also today.” Andyet I sometimes wonder why we treat those who are alive in Christ as any less alive than the Christ who raises them.
One of the best images of this is in Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker when Rey is battling Emperor Palpatine. She has been struck down and she is lying there on the ground and slowly, she starts listening to the voices of the Jedi who have gone before, the saints. She draws strength from them to face Palpatine. It makes me think of Michael W. Smith’s song that says “this is how I fight my battles. It may look like I’m surrounded, but I’m surrounded by you.”
I love this artwork on the front entitled “All Saints.” As the person is kneeling in prayer, they are met and surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, just as Hebrews 12:1-2 tells us. This is who surrounds us.
The Celts had a tradition of searching for what they called the “place of our resurrection.” This place was for them a place that they would live, worship, and work until the day in which Christ brought them into the cloud of witnesses.
Wherever this may be for you, may I also offer God’s table today as a space of resurrection for you. It is not a trick or a ghost story but a threshold between life and new life, a space hosted by God and the fellowship of the saints. It is a space that reminds us of sacrifice and gives us strength. It is a space that holds stories of faithfulness and encourages us to keep going. It is a space that catches our tears and offers us the treat of food and drink, fed by God. It is a space for all the saints, in earth and in heaven. When you come here, all are present at this table for all to him are alive. Your parents. Your grandparents. Your child. Your friends. They meet you here. So come to this table today. Share in the communion of saints, the space of your resurrection.