Jeremiah 31: 27-34
Psalm 119: 97-104
2 Timothy 3: 14-4:5
Luke 18: 1-8

A few years ago I paid a visit to “Province House” in Charlottetown. I hadn’t been there very often, mostly because it’s a tourist and school filed trip destination. When I lived in Wallace, Nova Scotia, I learned that the sandstone for the building came from the Wallace Quarry, just a little more than a stone’s throw from the manse in which I lived! Pun intended!

We usually think of stone as hard and impervious, but if you look at the floors of the main entrance of Province House, facing Great George St., and at the stairs you will quickly see that at least this kind of stone anything but hard and impervious. The footsteps of over a century of tourists and politicians have certainly left their mark. We also know that persistent traffic will wear ridges in a highway and when water lies in the ridges the danger of hydroplaning is greatly increased.

We have maxims about persistence such as, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, again” and we tell small children the story of the “little engine that could” who chugs ever so slowly up the hill panting, “I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I can!” We value persistence – unless of course it is a teenager asking for a favour that you, as a parent or a teacher, have denied, and denied and denied. Sometimes a parent has had enough and gives in, or on the other hand, lowers the boom and removes privileges, instead of granting them.

Jesus frequently used parables as a way of showing the people to whom he was preaching, what God was like and what God’s ways were like. Parables tease the mind into active thought because they usually have a twist that causes the hearers to scratch their heads and wonder what it is that Jesus was getting at. Most sound like the have the wrong ending and to at least some of the first hearers they would sound wrong.

I don’t watch a lot of afternoon tv, except on a rainy Monday or when I am eating at an odd hour. One of the shows I usually happen upon and then go past is “Judge Judy”. Of course it is a ‘made for tv’ drama and the presentation of the sometimes inane and often bizarre cases must be carefully scripted or extensively edited. Judge Judy does not value persistence and only has so much time for each party to the suit but she does seem to value justice, personal responsibility and fairness. She is often very sarcastic as she delivers he verdict and makes no bones about telling people they are lazy, or liars, gullible or very fortunate not to have lost more than they have.

The parable in today’s gospel is about a persistent widow and an unjust judge with a heart of stone. Widows in Jesus day had very few rights and could not inherit their husband’s property. A widow was at the mercy of the relative to whom the property went and if he did not treat her well, she was left out in the cold. It is possible that her case involved such a problem. However it was an issue of justice, of her not receiving what was due to her. The judge has a reputation for not caring. Not only did he not care he had no respect for people or for the laws of God. We are told simply that the persistent widow wore the judge down until he granted her justice. Perhaps she called on him at the office and at the places where he went during the day, and at his home. Perhaps he couldn’t get away from her. We know that she was given justice by the judge, not because he was just and saws the rightness of her case, but only because he was sick of her pestering him. This parable is portrayed in the gospel as an argument “from the lesser to the greater”. The argument goes like this: if even a cold, uncaring and corrupt judge will grant this woman justice, how much more will God grant us justice, because God is the ultimate grantor of justice, caring and love.

It’s an explanation that makes sense to one part of my brain but there is something else about it that just does not sit quite right. (Pause) That interpretation can give us the impression that we can go to God with our prayers and we can ask and when that does not give us the desired result, we can ask and then ask again and again. Does this parable imply that God will answer all prayers with a “yes”, especially if we nag and nag and nag?

Even when we take into consideration that this is a parable about justice not about any run of the mill request that we might bring to God, we are still left with more questions than answers. What happens when the answer is “no” or there does not seem to be an answer? Does it mean that we did not pray hard enough, or that we did not have enough faith, or that we did not qualify on some other ‘faith-front’? Does it mean that God does not care about us. Looking at the parable in this light raises more questions than it answers.

As I was doing some reading on the passage I discovered the thoughts of those who challenged their congregations to look at this passage the other way round! If the shepherd looking for a lost sheep could be an image of God and a woman looking for a lost coin could be an image of God why not a justice seeking widow? What if we are the judge; what if we are the one being petitioned?

How many times has God tried to ‘get at’ us in rather persistent ways. I remember reading a book once about a pastor who had gone into a street ministry because of God’s persistence. It was no accident, but rather a direct result of God’s call to him. Fpr various reasons he had decided that he needed to spend more time in prayer, so he set aside a time, shut his study door and got down on his knees, but try as he might the prayers would not come. He was restless. He could not think of anything to say. His eyes kept drifting to a certain magazine on his desk. He got up off his knees and put the magazine out of sight but still could not get it out of his mind.

Finally he gave in to the temptation, sat down and opened the magazine. In it was an article about those who live on the streets of his city and the violence with which they live and die. He realized that his eyes had been opened to the pleas of God to him to care for these, God’s children.

We are mistaken when we think of prayer as trying to change God’s mind, or convince God that something is right, or just, or good, because of our eloquence or our reasons for wanting this or that. Prayer is about much more than that. Prayer is about changing us through the relationship of faith.

Most of us are really good at the “gimmie” prayers. We pray for this or for that, for ourselves: we pray for a better job, for patience, for health, or as that song says, for a Mercedes Benz. There is nothing wrong with at least some of those prayers but that’s not all there is to it

Prayer is an activity of the community and the answers to prayer are an activity of the community. As a community and as individuals we may pray for an end to poverty, but we must realize the more we pray the more God is calling to us to hold us responsible for answering that prayer. Ler by God’s Spirit we grant justice to the hungry, the oppressed and the downtrodden.

We often expect the answers to prayer to be free, at least have no cost to us. I heard of one church who prayed for more people to come to church and then complained about the wear and tear the extra people put on the building! Prayer is not answered in Harry Potter fashion, by magic. There is always a cost. The justice that God seeks comes from those with the power to grant it.

This parable is as challenging to us as it was when it was first spoken into reality all those years ago. In this parable we are charged with being God’s people:

Through the poor God is banging on our doors for justice, but all too often we give only lip service and a few groceries. The granting of true justice would involve the social changes needed to make food banks and social assistance unnecessary

Through abused women and children God is banging on our doors asking for safety from violence and the fear of violence but we answer by upholding so called “family values”, the “right to privacy” and the maxim that a “man’s home is his castle” and “she made her bed and must lie in it”! We are called to change, to educate, to provide a safe haven for those who need to get out of the situation in which they find themselves and to actively promote the changes needed so that family violence and sexual abuse will be a thing of the past.

Through the people of the Sudan God is banging on our doors but the problem is so large, we may feel that we can do nothing useful. We may feel that we have no business interfering in another country. We also know that if we ignore the cries for long enough they will all be dead. We are haunted by Rwanda but need the will as individuals, as community and as a country to effect positive change.

Through the lonely, God calls us to a schedule that meets more than our own needs. Through the children in our own lives God calls us to reorganize our priorities so that we focus on spending time with the child rrather than buying more things to make up for our absence.

We are called to hear the plea of God through these folks and to reflect on what is true justice in tehse situations. Justice is not receiving what we want; it’s about aligning what is real with what god desires for all human beings. The cost may be small or great but justice is not magic. During the civil rights days of the Southern USA the people who marched for justice faced fierce dogs and guns with rubber bullets and water canons but they continued to sing in faith and hope, “deep in my heart I do believe, we shall overcome someday”

Nicolae Ceausescu held Romania in the grip of terrible oppression and yet the people retained hope. The people of Europe hoped for a free and unified Germany and the Berlin Wall fell. The people of Russia continued to go to chuch, and through long years of communist oppression believed that their prayers would be answered, believed that they did matter.

No the outcome fo persistent prayer is not brought about by of God waving a magic wand, yet the outcome is no less miraculous. It is no less an answer to prayer when when we can trace the changes, when we can see the results of protests, our sacrifice.

Every week in worship we pray, “thy Kingdom come, “ but do we really mean it? Will Jeremiah’s words have any impact on us? Do we believe, with the early church that the Christian way is what Jeremiah was talking about. If Jesus were to come tomorrow would he find in us a faith of persistent justice seeking or would he find a faith of convenience and self-interest. Will he find people who believe in Gospel justice. Will he find people who believe what they pray and live what they pray and pray what they believe and pray what they live.

Will the Son of Man find faith on earth?

The choice is ours!

Joel 2: 23-32
Psalm 65
2 Timothy 4: 6-8, 16-18
Luke 18: 9-14

Hope Springs Eternal

In the 1930's a large percentage of the Canadian Prairie was transformed into a dust-bowl. At that time my grandparents farmed a section of land south of Regina. I recall doing research on the so-called “dirty thirties” when I was in junior high school and while I had plenty of books as secondary sources, the primary source was my grandmother who was in her 80's at the time. Among other things, she recounted to me the events of the day she woke in the morning to green fields and went to bed to brown ones. She recalls the year the cut worms threatened to destroy the entire crop once again but the gulls arrived and ate the worms, saving a percentage of the crop. She reminded me that gulls are sea birds and that part of the Saskatchewan prairie is far from anything that could be considered sea!

Eventually my grandparents packed themselves and their four children into the car and headed for Prince Edward Island, my grandmother’s birthplace, where there was no more money than there was in rural Saskatchewan, but because it was a place where anyone with enough land for a bit of a garden and a few animals, had enough to eat. My grandfather learned how to saw lumber and crush grain with water power and to farm in a completely different kind of environment.

It was a time of scarcity: food and money and particularly a scarcity of hope. Yet they, and many others, held on to their hope and acted in faith and trust. Both moving away and staying put and sticking it out, as a response to crisis in economy or politics or ecology, can be signs of hope. You could say that to have hope is to live forward into the future and to trust in the god who goes with us.

When we read the passage from the book of Joel we need to keep several things in mind. First we need to know that the rains came in autumn. The cereal crops were planted in the autumn and the harvest was in the spring. I suppose that the summers were far too hot to grow anything. When there were no fall rain there would be a drought and no crop, or a very poor one. Then if the locusts came, and there were enough of them, a crop could be gone in a matter of hours. These things were a constant worry for the people of Palestine and, apparently, the time of Joel was akin to the ‘dirty thirties’ on the Canadian prairie, or the bizarre weather patters prairie farmers have endured for the past ten years or so.

Secondly, the phrase ‘the day of the Lord’ need some explanation. It is not a reference to a 24 hour span of time, or a set of events occurring over a very few days, but is rather a reference to God’s breaking into the world in special ways to bring new salvation. The Exodus, as an entire event, was seen as a day of the Lord; a day in which God acted to save and redeem the people. The birth, life and ministry of Jesus was ‘a day of the Lord’. The “Day of the Lord” came to be symbolized by bright light and became a central focus in the worship of the Hebrew people, in much the same way all of our worship services celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. It was not just a day of judgement in which God would “ punish the bad people and send them to the lake of fire” as much as it was “a time when God’s purposes and salvation would be both revealed and enacted.” It was not seen as an “end of the world” kind of event. It was not the “afterlife” as popular Christianity has understood this term. The day of the Lord was very much a this word thing, but it was ‘this world, with a very great difference’. It was, of course, a desirable thing, if you were on the Lord’s side! It was a day of justice and salvation. It gave hope and meaning to life when the circumstances of life were nowhere near what they people envisioned as God’s will for creation. The task of the prophet was to get people to be accountable for their own unfaithfulness while reminding them that God’s ultimate will for creation was salvation, in all of it’s forms. The prophet was not called to predict bad events, or good events, but to call the people to faithfulness and to outline the consequences of not following god’s ways.

I remember well the groundhog that lived under my doorstep in Wallace. Now my doorstep was comprised of several massive pieces of cut sandstone from the local quarry and it was far too heavy to move or tear up. I would see the little critter sunning itself on the doorstep from time to time, but unless I looked out the second storey window without making any noise, any human activity would scare it away. Some time after I discovered the groundhog I realized just what had happened to the “giant Russian” sunflowers I had planted that spring. I had planted the seed at the proper time and almost all of them came up. The plants grew to a height of about 6 inches, but then one day all of the leaves just disappeared. I did not know what had happened to them, until I put two and two together. The year before, one or more, skunks ate all my tulip bulbs the very day they were planted. They next week I planted more bulbs with an almost equal amount of fresh mothballs and the skinks kept their distance and the blooms were saved. Saving my plants from the groundhog proved to be a little more difficult. I filled his burrow entrance with dirt and scared him away whenever I saw him. Finally, though when he has eaten everything of mine he wanted to, he moved on to greener pastures and he did not come back the next spring.

There are things we can do to help hope along and then there are the times that we will just have to bide our time.

The people of Joel’s day had endured a great plague of locusts. Even the prophet seems to suggest that it was God’s punishment for their sin. Yet the overall emphasis of this passage is one of God’s gracious redemption. It focusses on the images of what the reversal will be like. There will be plenty of food. The crops will be plentiful. The people will no longer be ashamed to be called ‘children of Israel’. The people will learn, once again, to praise God.

Even more important, in this time, there will be an awareness of God and God’s ways. The beautiful verses about the dreaming dreams and the seeing of visions speak of the fact that in Joel’s day there were very few people who had visions, people had lost their hope and God seemed to be silent. The term “visions” do not refer to the kinds of spooky or scary we might see on some television shows about the occult or the supernatural,. but a to a certainty in the mind of someone of the way things could be. In the 1960's Dr Martin Luther King stood on the steps of the Washington monument and said, “I have a dream ...” and as he outlined that dream it was clear that it was not only a description of his hopes for the civil rights movement but also for the future of his country and the world. He envisioned a time where things were different, where things as ‘they were and had always been’ were not the way they had to stay.

It would seem to me that the visions and dreams of these long ago people to whom Joel spoke looked forward to a world where there was enough for everyone, where locusts did not destroy their hard work and where God’s name was spoken and revered always and where there was justice in great abundance.

In many ways those same visions are appropriate for us today. Parts of our own country have been devastated by flood and drought and the reality of a world economy has meant that one mad cow has almost destroyed our export bef market.

If it’s not bad news about another kidnapping for murder in the middle east it’s a hurricane that threatens the lives and livelihoods of many people. As Canadian we watch the US election coverage with a feeling of helplessness because while we can’t vote we and the rest of the world will be greatly affected by the outcome.

It is as if the locusts are threatening or have already destroyed and we are wallowing in despair. Of course, there are always those who don’t really know that there is anything to worry about.

The dreaming of dreams and the seeing of visions is NOT the same as ignoring the reality around us, on the contrary, it is living them into being. It is taking the hope that is given to us in the scriptures and by those we call prophets and knocking the words, “It’ll never happen” out of our vocabulary. It is about dealing with the reality we have by speaking God’s word of love and hope and comfort and change to it. It’s about living knowing that God wills for us something more and better and greater, but at the same time recognizing that God is fully present in all of the brokenness and pain and difficulty.

What do we envision, as a society and as individuals, for ourselves and for the world? Do we envision a world where God’s promises fall only on us, or where God’s blessings are showered upon all the people of the earth, and even the earth itself. It is interesting to note that if the reading from Joel had begun with the 21st verse the blessings would be proclaimed on both the soil and the animals. We are reminded that God wishes to bless all of creation and that the consequences of human unfaithfulness extend not just to human beings as individuals and as community, but to all of creation.

What do we envision as a church, both as individual congregations or Pastoral Charges and as the United Church of Canada? Do we envision a church marked by an awareness of God’s love and grace or a church where we feel that we are here by our own merits and others are not really welcome, until they change. Does everyone belong, or only those we like?

As families, what kind of home do we envision. Do we envision a family where every member is encouraged to reach his or her full potential, become the people God would have them to be and reach out to help others to do the same, or do we envision a family where there are clear and unchangeable expectations set out for the children to follow even before they are born?

We have answered the call of God who wills for us abundance and wholeness. Even if our lives at present do not enjoy this it is still God ‘s will for us. We are called not to be satisfied with our lot but to embrace God’s vision and to live it into being, in relationship with others and the rest of creation.

God will be with us as we seek what it is that is willed for each one of us.

Amen.

Habakkuk 1: 1-4, 2:1-4
Psalm 119: 137-144
2 Thessalonians 1: 1-4, 11-12
Luke 19: 1-10

I was visiting the Louisbourg historical site a few years ago. Built beginning in 1719, to defend French soil in the New World it was completely destroyed by the British in 1758. What struck me was the height of its original inhabitants. I’m sure the costumes worn by the workers are modern reproductions and have been resized to fit modern Canadians but the beds and doorways in the fortress are the original dimensions. By our standards the average person from the early to mid 18th century was very short. Most historic sites will reveal the same thing: on average, we are much taller these days! As I recall, in order to protect the heads of tall tourists the tops of the doorways in one of the historic sites I have visited were made of foam rubber painted to match the stone walls.

Today’s gospel lesson is about a man who is remembered for his height, or rather, his lack of height. The man was named Zacchaeus and he was a tax collector.

There is a great deal of irony in this pairing of a man named Zacchaeus with the job of tax collector. While the name “Zacchaeus” means ‘righteous or pure one’ he would not have been regarded as such by those who knew him. You see, Israel was occupied by the mighty and often cruel army of the Roman Empire and Zacchaeus collected taxes for Rome. He would have been regarded as a traitor and as unclean and no one would have wanted to associate with him, beside his fellow tax collectors.

The progression of stories in the gospels is important in order for us to be able to grasp fully what Luke was trying to say in this story about Jesus and his mission. In addition the characters in each of the stories are to be held in contrast with one another so that we can paint a clearer picture of the message of the gospel. In the previous chapter, Jesus challenged his disciples’ view of children by welcoming them with open arms and then comparing the ways of children with the way of the gospel. He then encounters a rich ruler who was righteous in every way but whose wealth might well have proven a stumbling block to accepting the gospel. When Matthew tells of this same enounter he tells us that the man went away sad because he could not give up his possessions in order to be free to accept the gospel message. The next event is the healing of a beggar whose only wish was to see again. Then Jesus encounters the tax collector named Zacchaeus. Interspersed among these events are various teachings, including the well known saying about it being easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God.

Tax collectors these days are paid a salary. As far as I know, they don’t work on commission! In Jesus day, they were sent a bill for the amount owed and they paid it up front. It was up to them to collect as much as they wanted. A chief tax collector like Zacchaeus would have had various people working for him. Zacchaeus would have contracted out the tax collecting to these people and , it seems, he profited handsomely in the deal. In order to fund the great projects of the Roman Empire and its armies, the people would have been heavily taxes even without all of the overcharging and corruption that went with such a method of tax collection. The common people resented these tax collectors and regarded them as traitors to their nation and their God!

The gospels present many stories in which the reader’s inital expectations about the characters or the outcome are strongly challenged, or even reversed, and this is one of them. Just after Jesus heals a blind beggar, who ironically already ‘sees’ who Jesus is; he encounters a tax collector who is welcomed and named as a child of Abraham. Most of the original players would have thought that the two could not go together. It is unclear whether he repented and THEN offered his restitution as a sign of that repentance OR if this behaviour was characteristic of his way of working. The tense of the verbs make it unclear.

This certainly adds to the mystique of the story. What if he did that already! He would have been all too easily dismissed as a sinner and an outcast because of his profession. Taking all of these stories together, the message of the gospel challenges any preconceived notions and expectations about who us and who is not a child of God.

I was driving with a friend along a Halifax street looking for the immigration office. After we found it and went in I mentioned to a clerk that the signage was poor because it was small and behind a concrete post. I am not sure whether the answer was just an excuse or not but I was told that most of the immigrants who are applying for citizenship manage to find it. They don’t give up easily because they are very motivated and very much want Canadian Citizenship. I assume the sign is still small and behind a cement post!!

Zacchaeus desire to see Jesus was so strong that he was willing to do something a grown man would never do: he climbed a tree!

One day a woman was listening to her grandchildren say their bedtime prayers. “Our father who art in heave, how’d you know my name?” It’s not a bad substitution for the real words, actually! I wonder: How did Jesus know Zacchaeus’ name. And for that matter why was Zacchaeus so interested in Jesus? What was it about Jesus’ message that had been passed on to Zacchaeus that he was so interested and would go to such lengths to hear the message and to want to see the man who was preaching it?

Imagine that a famous person is due to come through Rexton or Richibucto. It would be just like a parade! People would crowd around the media vans and would line the streets craning their necks for a look. Like they do for parades, fathers would hoist children onto their shoulders for a better look. If it was a bigger place, office workers hang out the windows facing the streets hoping to catch a glimpse of the famous one.

When my sister was much younger and in 4H she got a front line spot for a visit of Prince Charles, because she got to hold the rope that kept back the crowds. He shook her hand and for at least the rest of the day she vowed she’d never wash it again!

Sometimes we make hasty judgements about other people based on what we see on the outside. It may or may not have already been Zacchaeus’ custom to be very careful about his tax collection and to give to the poor. It may have been Jesus’ preaching and teaching that day that prompted this as a new outlook. Whether it was the way he already lived or the way he resolved to live in the future, it is clear that Jesus saw in him a child of God a son of Abraham. It is clear that Jesus know about total and unmerited grace. Zacchaeus did not have to earn God’s love by his behaviour. It was that love, once received, that had the power to change his life from the inside out.

All too often we look at people through the screen of their faults or perceived faults and can’t see anything else. All too often we look at people’s job, or lack thereof, or skin colour, or language and we make negative judgements about their value. However, we cannot presume to equate what and who we value with what and who God values and loves. Jesus’ life and ministry shows us that over and over again.

In the stories that lead up to this one in the gospel we meet the children who were all too easily discounted by the disciples and we encounter the beggar who was blind. Both were regarded with universal disdain but Jesus looked beyond these things and saw their true identity as a ‘child of God’.

If you look at the people that Jesus associated with you can see why his acceptance of Zacchaeus wasn’t much of a problem! Matthew, one of his disciples was also a tax collector. He was frequently accused of associating with a group loosely referred to as “tax collectors and sinners”. Jesus defended his behaviour by saying that healthy people don’t need doctors, its those who are sick!

Late last week, as I was looking at some ideas about the meaning of this passage I came to the conclusion that we as good church people can place ourselves one of two places in this sermon: we can be the unwelcome crowd, or we can be like the tree, lifting Zacchaeus to Jesus. We can stand in the way of people coming into a relationship with God and belonging to the community of Christ. We can say in audible whispers, “Oh, she’s not welcome here!” or “He’s from the wrong side of the tracks, you know!” or “We don’t want their kind in this church!” Or “He’ll never amount to anything; his father was a crook and his grand-father was a crook!” And the list of comments that discount people before they start can go on and on.

However, we could be like the tree, lifting the person seeking a glimpse of Jesus, high above the murmuring and disapproval of the crowd and allowing them to truly hear the word of love and life and the invitation, to wholeness. If we enable them to hear and to encounter the Christ then they may also be able to hear the invitation, “I am coming to your house today.” And that’s what we all want to hear, isn’t it.

The miracle is that God’s love is not divided among us, as if it could be diluted by being given out to too many, it is multiplied and enriched by being offered to all.

Let us go forth enabling the call of the gospel to be heard by the Zacchaeuses of the world. Let us lift up those who need this word of love. Let us open the way for those who most need to hear the word of life and let us repeat it as often as we can. Let us go forward to live our God’s amazing love and forgiveness. AMEN

Haggai 1: 15b - 2:9
Psalm 145: 1-5, 17-21
2 Thessalonians 3: 6-13
Luke 20: 27-38

Looking at it the Wrong Way

No doubt you have heard the silly riddle that goes like this:

“As I was going to St Ives
I met a man with seven wives
Every wife had seven sacks.
Every sack had seven cats.
Every cat has seven kits.
Kits, cats, sacks wives,
How many were going to St. Ives?"

ONE, of course! The rest were leaving St Ives!

A Minister was having a story time conversation with the children of the congregation. He emphasized, “God can do anything.” One little fellow was very impressed. He replied, “Really?”

“Yes, really,” assured the minister.

“You mean God could make a gigantic rock?’

“Yes, God could do that.”

“And God can move a whole mountain?”

“Yes, of course!”

“Well, could God create a rock so big that even God could not move it?”

(Pause)

Think about it. If you say, “yes, God could make such a rock”, you are actually saying that there is something God cannot do, that is, move the rock. If, on the other hand, you say God couldn’t make a rock that big, then you are admitting that there is something God can’t do!

In reality such questions are utterly futile because they are really designed to sabotage real debate and squelch honest inquiry.

Remember the 1970's TV show, All In The Family? If you ever watched the show you would know that Michael, a.k.a. “Meathead”, is the ‘resident atheist’ and did not believe in God or in hell. So Archie was always trying to get the better of him. In one episode, Archie and Michael, are engaged in a religious argument. “Did you ever tell anyone to got to hell?” asks Archie.

“Lots of times”, answers Michael.

“Well, where did you expect them to go if you don’t believe it exists?” says Archie triumphantly.

“Arch, it’s just an expression!” says an exasperated Michael.

The problem with these kinds of questions is that they are essentially unwinnable arguments and are not really based in any genuine desire for knowledge. Jesus wasn’t interested in the unwinnable argument but this passage clearly shows that he could indeed beat them at their own game.

In today’s gospel account Jesus is continuing to teach the people and is confronted by a group of Sadducees. For his readers who won’t catch the immediate irony inherent in the story about to unfold, Luke tells them that the Sadducees don’t believe in “the resurrection”; in other words, they don’t believe in life after death. The Sadducees accepted only the first five books of the bible as scripture and since there was no mention of life after death there, they denied the possibility of its existence. The ancient Hebrews believed that the only life there was after death came in the children one was able to have. So it became imperative for a man to have children to carry on the family name. There developed from this what seems to us a rather strange custom. If a man died childless, his brother was compelled to marry his wife and father children for the dead brother. It also meant that widows were cared for and not left destitute, but that was not the real purpose of the custom.

The Sadducees were also debaters; they loved an intellectual discussion! Luke goes on to tell us what it was that they asked Jesus. The Sadducees took the custom of brother-in-law marriage and stretched it into an absurd scenario. They cook up an absurd ‘what if”: “what if this remarriage happened SEVEN times before the woman finally died. To whom would she be married in the life after death?”

(Pause)

Wait a minute. These Sadducees did not believe there was any life after death! Jesus knew that this was not an honest question, but an attempt to show him up? Perhaps they were hoping that the crowds would drop away when they had punched a few holes in his teachings.

Jesus, recognizes the question for what it is, and his answer meets their requirement of intellectual reason and intellectual prowess. He does it by quoting from nothing more than the scriptures they accept to show that God is a God of life, and that in God, those who have died are alive. Quoting the well-known story of the burning bush, Jesus reminds them that God’s reference to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, implies that they are, in some sense, alive to God.

He then goes on to tell them that in the resurrection, life will be marked by a totally different kind of reality. There will be no need for marriage because a man will not need children to preserve his name and to help him in the fields and a woman will not need a man to secure her future.

As we look at his passage and puzzle over its meaning we are left with other, very legitimate questions: “Will we see our loved ones again?” “What will it be like?: “Will I be young again?” We must remember that, in this passage, Jesus is not answering the heartfelt questions of people who honestly want to know.

The Sadducees Jesus met that day were not willing to see anything other than their own long held traditions; their way of seeing things was the only way! Jesus’ words were trying to force them, and others, to “think outside of the box”, as our modern saying goes. He is trying to get them to think of the resurrection in divine terms instead of human terms. He is telling them that the resurrection is not, “the best of the world, writ large”, but much more than that! In a time of great poverty, a heaven pictured as streets of gold and secured by pearly gates would be very attractive. In a time of sickness, the idea of heaven as a place where everyone enjoys perfect health; a place where “sickness is no more” would be very comforting. There are passages which talk about this. The most familiar one is the one about heaven being like a large mansion. There are those that speak of other characteristics and the absence of various kinds of suffering. It is clear that there is a great deal that we do not know. It is also clear that on this matter we are called to live lives of trust in God.

What is also clear is that while we are alive on earth we are called to lives which emulate the gospel message. What is also clear that life here is a gift and human are meant to be happy and fulfilled.

Some people have regarded the “hope of heaven” as an instrument of oppression. Whole groups of people are enjoined to endure the suffering rather than rebel because heaven is only a short distance away and everything will be perfect there. Yet, that seems to me to open ourselves to a way of life which condones injustice and needless human suffering, Getting into heaven is NOT our only purpose here on earth. We are called to live lives of faithfulness and service, not because heaven is our reward, but because we serve and worship a God who wishes us to have abundant life, in all of its forms.

The prophet, Haggai was speaking to his people at a time of reconstruction. They had returned from exile and were mourning what had been lost. The biggest loss was the loss of the magnificent temple, built under King Solomon. Haggai’s message is a call to rebuild and to look forward in trust and hope. Of course the temple will not be the same and may not be as grand, but rebuild they must.

The same message applies to us. We must look forward in faithfulness, not back in the kind of nostalgia that is crippling. Our faith questions must come from an honest desire to wrestle with our faith in the context of our trusting in God. Sometimes we look at the complex questions of faith, and wonder how anything we can do could possibly make any difference. Yet, we are called to do those things which we can. We are called to take the risk of changing “the way we have always done it” for the sake of those who will come after us. We are called to trust even though what is promised seems impossible to our minds.

Remembrance Day is Thursday and on this day we pause in silence when we bring to mind those who died for freedom. Yet, we do so as a people who have come a long way since the end of the two world wars. Old enemies are now friends, and our congregations here represent at least some of those from former enemy countries. Clearly, Remembrance Day should not open those old lines of battle. Yet, we know that there are new lines which have been drawn and new ways of waging war which are much more terrifying than anything which we have ever endured before. We remember, not to glorify war, not to say that everyone in the world must accept our ways and our values, but to press on the cause of peace.

Just so, true peace is more than the absence of war. True peace will not be achieved by the winning of a war, whether it be a war Of terror or a war ON terror! True peace will not be achieved by human methods alone and by a reliance on the machinery of war but by a reliance on the things of God.

When we look at the causes of war, a large one is human selfishness and greed. When the greed of one nation is imposed on another it is often a cause of injustice and oppression. Eventually most oppressed people will rebel or retaliate and the lines in the sand are drawn and sabres rattled.

Surely today’s gospel passage has a message for us. What would a world without war look like? What would the world look like if a handful of nations did not possess their great wealth because of the poverty of many others? What would it look like if we truly followed the Gospel, giving all of our lives over to the way of God, as revealed in the teachings of Jesus. Like the Sadducees, we may not be able to imagine it because part of us does not believe it to be possible, but if our planet, God’s creation is to survive, we must have a vision of it.

So we Remember. We live in trust as a people of faith. We live as those who proclaim Jesus, crucified and risen, our judge and our hope and that in life, in death, in life beyond death, God is with us.

What more could we ask for! Amen!