Ready Or Not - Week One: "You're Asking The Wrong Question"

 

It’s Almost Advent (but still Pentecost)

We will spend some time preparing for the Advent season with a three-part sermon series titled "Ready or Not." 

This three-week series will help us prepare our hearts for Advent, because even though we know the story of how Christ came into the world, we can still be surprised by it. 

The truth is, we will always be surprised by Christ, but if our hearts are open, we can glimpse what we can do “in the meantime,” as we wait for the world to change.  Because it will.    

Today, we will read a passage in which a group of religious leaders attempts to outwit Jesus in a theological debate over the resurrection.  As you can imagine, trying to debate Jesus isn't the thing that goes well for them.    

But first, I'd like to prepare us for learning by discussing something that doesn't seem related to our story.  

Have you ever tried to explain to emerging generations how things “used to be?”  

I know that every time I lecture my kids on how different the world of my youth was, they kind of roll their eyes and endure my diatribes.  But honestly, I don't think that they can even comprehend what I am talking about because the world has changed so much.  

Remember “Must-See TV?” There was a time when entertainment events were not on demand.  You had to go to movie theaters to see movies, at least when they were popular.  You would have to tune in to see television series unfold when they aired, and you couldn't go back to watch them again, at least until they appeared on VHS or DVD.  

You would have FOMO if you missed out on these things when all your friends were talking about it the next day.  

We could never have imagined a different world.  

Just like my kids can never really grasp what it was like back in the day, and I could have never imagined the one that now exists, we struggle to truly imagine a world that is made right, and where all of the challenges we are facing now will seem a relic of a bygone age.  

This is why it’s so hard for us to imagine a different world than the one we inhabit.  Our imagination isn’t big enough to grasp it.   

The religious leaders who were confronting Jesus in the story we're about to read could not imagine the kingdom of God that Jesus was teaching about, and because of this, they were living way too small in the present.  

BEING READY FOR A NEW WORLD MEANS BEING ALIVE IN THIS ONE. 

Luke 20:27-38

27 Then some of the Upright Ones (Saduccees), who say there is no rising again from death, came to Creator Sets Free (Jesus) 28 to question him also.  "Wisdomkeeper," they said, in the law Drawn from the Water (Moses) gave us these instructions: 'If a Tribal Member should die before having children, then his brother should marry his widow and give her children.  This way the man will have descendants.'  In a family of seven brothers, the oldest took a wife, but died without children.  The next brother married her, but he also died with no children.  A third brother married her, and like his other brothers, he died with no children.  The same happened to all seven of them, and last of all, the woman also crossed over to death.  When they all come back to life in the new world, whose wife would she be, since all seven men married her?" 

A word about the Sadducees and their beliefs about the afterlife.  They did not believe in the resurrection, unlike the Pharisees.  Which leads to an old joke about them being "Sad-you-see."  

They present Jesus with a ridiculous scenario (one they’ve used before, no doubt).  But what they don't count on is that Jesus ignores their question and points to their lack of imagination in his response.  

"Marriage belongs to this present world and to the ones who life in it," he answered.  "The ones who are chosen to rise to life in that world will not marry for they will be like the spirit-messengers.  They will never die, for they are the children of the Great Spirit who raises them again to the new life. 

Jesus essentially tells them they are asking the wrong question.  Because they are trying to frame the idea of a new world with all the trappings of the old one. 

The question is really about death, and God’s power to overcome it.  When we live without the fear of death, we can imagine a better world unconstrained by all the things that trouble us in this one.  

And then he said, "As to the dead rising again listen to what the Sacred Teachings tell us that Drawn from the Water (Moses) said when he saw the burning bush.  He calls Creator the "Great Sirit ofo Father of Many Nation (Abraham), He Made Us Laugh (Isaac) and Heel Grabber (Jacob).  He is not the Great Spirit of the dead, but of the living.  To him all are alive."  

Jesus presents a vision of living that is free from the fear of dying.  

When you become free from fear  (especially of death), you are loosed to be fully alive in this life.  

We can’t embrace a hopeful future by living in the rear-view mirror. 

What Is Jesus Saying To The Church Today?  

• Live ready to demonstrate what a life without fear can offer. 
• Live ready to lift the value of each human being.  
• Live ready to show what it looks like to be fully alive. 

BEING READY FOR A NEW WORLD MEANS BEING ALIVE IN THIS ONE.