COMMUNITY CHURCH OF THE MONTEREY PENINSULA
P. O. BOX 222811
CARMEL CA 93922
(831) 624-8595
Rev. Paul Wrightman, Pastor
Independent and United Church of Christ
April 18, 2021
Dear Friends,
Carole is on vacation visiting her sister in Grass Valley. She will be back in the office on Wednesday, April 21st.
Pam Klaumann is home from the hospital and making progress in healing each day. Please continue to keep her in your prayers.
We did not have Lois & Judy’s current address when this year’s church directory was printed. Since then Lois has reconnected and would like everyone to add their address and phone numbers to their directories:
Lois Varner & Judy Peiken
1519 Costa St
Seaside, CA 93955
(831) 277-9598 (Lois’ cell)
(831) 884-5014 (landline)
Many of our renters are making plans to return, and we are making good progress in getting ready for them to come back.
All of us are looking forward to resuming in-person worship in our sanctuary on June 20th.
Stay Safe, Take Care,
and Always Remember that Jesus IS Emmanuel – God WITH Us. Pastor Paul
WORSHIP SERVICE FOR APRIL 18, 2021
INTRODUCTORY READING: William Sykes
I once had the good fortune to meet George Appleton in his home in Oxford. He describes eternal life as ‘a quality of life, the kind of life which Jesus had, human life permeated by the grace and love of God. . . Jesus taught his disciples they could have eternal life now, the perfection of which will come in the dimension beyond death.’ I feel he gets right to the heart of the matter in these few words. If we want to know more about this quality of life we can go to the Gospels, and see for ourselves a life permeated by the grace and the love of God. As we read, we might become aware of this grace and love of God welling up inside us, and experience eternal life for ourselves. One of the great joys of Christianity is to experience moments of eternal life in this present life, and thus have an assurance of eternal life in the future.
SUGGESTED MUSIC Peace My Friends – Ray Repp
Catholic Hymns – Vocal, Piano, free MIDI tracks You Tube
OPENING PRAYER Angela Ashwin, Contemporary
Jesus, remember me,
as you remembered the man who was dying next to you.
Jesus, remember me,
as you remember all who are lonely and frightened.
And, when I die, take me into your loving arms,
and show me that your kingdom has never been far away.
Amen.
LORD’S PRAYER
Our Father,
who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done on earth
as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgiver those
who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
and the power, and the glory,
for ever, and ever.
Amen.
SCRIPTURE READING Luke 20:27-40
Some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came to him and asked him a question, ‘Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies, leaving a wife but no children, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother. Now there were seven brothers; the first married, and died childless; then the second and the third married her, and so in the same way all seven died childless. Finally the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be?
Jesus said to them, ‘Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. Indeed they cannot die any more, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection.
And the fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed, in the story about the bush, where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.’
SERMON: JESUS’ UNIQUE TAKE ON ETERNAL LIFE
Rev. Paul Wrightman
(The underlining indicates what I would emphasize if delivered orally.)
There are only a handful of readings from the Gospels that are appropriate for the Easter season: the two disciples that Jesus meets on Easter evening walking to Emmaus, doubting Thomas, and the story of Peter’s forgiveness. I’ve preached on these texts year after year. This year I’d like to do something different and look at a text about eternal life that describes an event that happened before Jesus’ death and resurrection. Among other things, this text shows us that resurrection came as no surprise to Jesus, and that he had already developed his own unique take on eternal life.
Don’t be alarmed if your first reaction to our Scripture text for today is that it comes across as exceedingly strange. This is because the question that the Sadducees posed to Jesus was intended to sound outlandish to those listening-in on the original conversation.
To understand the deliberately ridiculous nature of their question, we need to remember that although the Sadducees and Pharisees are often linked together in the Gospels because both groups were opposed to Jesus, in terms of their respective beliefs, these two groups were hugely different.
The Pharisees believed in the resurrection of the dead at the ‘last day.’ They believed in angels. In addition to the Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures, they accepted the prophetic and wisdom writings as the revealed word of God. In addition to the written word of God, the Pharisees accepted a complex oral tradition which consisted of thousands of added rules and regulations, such as the multitude of injunctions concerning the Sabbath. They looked forward to the coming of God’s Messiah, whom they believed would be a victorious warrior like King David.
The Sadducees, on the other hand, with the exception of believing the Torah as God’s inspired word, would have none of this: they rejected the prophetic and wisdom writings, as well as the oral tradition. They scorned belief in the resurrection and in angels. They considered hope in a coming Messiah to be wishful thinking.
Interestingly, nearly all the priests and aristocrats were Sadducees, and lived in Jerusalem. Economically, they were the one percent of their day, and they actively collaborated with the Roman occupation.
It is easy to see why they rejected the prophets, because the prophets were vehement in their denunciation of a corrupt priesthood and of a wealthy aristocracy who showed no concern for the poor.
It is easy to see why they wanted no Messiah to come and make things right, because they instinctively knew that if the Messiah came and made things right, their inherited positions of power, prestige, and wealth would be swept away.
It is easy to see why they aided the Romans in their occupation of Israel: in exchange for their collaboration, the Romans guaranteed the continuation of the status quo, making sure that the priestly and aristocratic families of Jerusalem maintained their privileged positions.
Not surprisingly, the Sadducees were hated by the common people, and strongly disliked by the scribes and Pharisees.
The immediate context for understanding today’s Scripture reading, then, is the Sadducees approaching Jesus and asking him a ‘nonsense” question about a resurrection they flatly rejected, a question they thought would be sure to stop Jesus in his tracks and greatly embarrass him.
The question hinges on an ancient law given in the Torah that states that if the husband in a marriage dies without leaving children, the brother of that husband has the duty to marry his brother’s widow, in order to provide children to keep the family line going.
As one writer remarks concerning this law: “This law existed exactly because the only way of bluffing past the universal reign of death was by having children.” (James Alison, Raising Abel, p.36)
The Sadducees deliberately pose a ludicrously far-fetched example of this law in order to mock belief in the resurrection: an unfortunate woman is widowed seven times, having to marry, in succession, all seven brothers of a large family because each of them dies before being able to give her a child. Finally she herself dies, undoubtedly worn out from being forced to marry seven times.
The Sadducees’ outlandish question to Jesus – meant to provoke laughter in the crowd overhearing it – is whose wife will she be in the resurrection.
Actually this question may not be quite as outlandish as it seems. I’ve been asked several times by persons in second or third marriages if they will, in heaven, get stuck with previous partners. My response to this question is that the marriage which “takes,” the marriage which embodies true love, is the one that will last in some form.
Jesus, in today’s Scripture text, tells us that, in the resurrection, marriage as we know it in this dimension, will be no more.
I always used to feel sad at this response from Jesus, given the fact that I, like many, and hopefully all, of us hope to be in a loving relationship with my spouse through all eternity.
I used to feel sad about this until, years ago, in reading a theologian whose name I can no longer recall, possibly C.S. Lewis, who wrote concerning this passage, that one of the things we can be sure of in heaven is that God’s reality for us there will always be incomparably better than anything we can possibly conceive of here.
The writer said that there is never anything less in God’s Kingdom, but always more: more intimacy, more relationality, more love, more joy.
The theological punch-line for Jesus himself, however, comes immediately after he talks about more-than-earthly-marriage in heaven. It occurs when Jesus says to the Sadducees: “And the fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed, in the story about the bush, where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.”
Notice the brilliance of Jesus’ debate skills here. The Sadducees do not accept as the authoritative word of God anything that is not in the Torah, what we know as the first five books of the First Testament, or Hebrew Scriptures. They think that they have Jesus backed into a no-exit corner because the Torah seems to make no explicit mention of the resurrection.
For Jesus, no problem.
They don’t accept anything but the Torah?
Very well, then, he’ll meet them on their own ground by limiting his rebuttal to the Torah, and quoting to them two key sentences from the book of Exodus.
Jesus’ argument assumes that his debate partners will remember the actual words that God spoke to Moses at the burning bush: “I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (Exodus 3:6).
Note that God does not say “I was the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob”. . .
For Jesus, the great “I am” of God, in addition to being God’s personal name, also reveals the reality of God’s eternal present, and the eternal life of people who have died within God’s eternal present.
This is an eternal present in which Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob – hundreds of years dead at the time Moses received this revelation – are caught up in God, and thus, for God and for them, still living.
For me, the truly remarkable thing about Jesus’ use of this text from Exodus – itself one of the most significant texts in all the Bible – is the breathtaking way in which he uses the personal name of God, “I am,” to prove the reality of the resurrection.
He assumes, I daresay he knows, that all those connected to God’s “I am” are by definition, by God’s definition, caught up in God’s eternal present. In other words, even before physical death, they are already experiencing the reality of resurrection, the reality of eternal life.
Equally impressive to me is the breathtaking authority with which Jesus gives his interpretation of God’s great “I am” in Exodus. At least according to all the written records we have, which are many, this particular interpretation had never been made before.
In addition to being an impressive indication of the awesome originality of Jesus, for me, the authoritative and original way in which Jesus, as it were, improvises on the very name of God, is a powerful sign that Jesus had, if you will, “insider information” on God.
I don’t think that this “insider information” came from Jesus consciously knowing that he himself was God. Jesus, according to official Christian doctrine, voluntarily gave up this knowledge when he chose to become a person.
I think that Jesus got his “insider information” from allowing himself to be so in tune with the Spirit of God that he simply knew more about God than any other person ever has.
One final point about this text. James Alison, a major, and contemporary, Roman Catholic theologian and Scripture scholar, points out how our Scripture reading was chosen for inclusion in their Gospels by Mark and Matthew in addition to Luke. And it occurs in the same place in all three: immediately before the Passion narrative, the account of the last week of Jesus’ life.
This gives today’s text a special prominence.
Alison further emphasizes that the reason Matthew, Mark, and Luke all include this event from Jesus’ ministry is that it reveals to us what Jesus thought about God, and God’s eternal present, before his own death.
Jesus reveals to us a God who is death-less, a God who has nothing to do with death, a God who is all about life. Jesus himself trusts that just as God is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the present tense, God will continue to be his God in the present tense as well.
Let me quote from James Alison on today’s Scripture text in his book Raising Abel: “Jesus was able to imagine God, to perceive God, in such a way that his whole vision was colored by God as radically alive, as a-mortal, as in no way shaded by death. Those who started the dispute with him were not able to perceive God in this way, and their theological arguments were, according to Jesus, vitiated from their roots. When Jesus tells the Sadducees that they were greatly mistaken, he is not telling them that they have made a mistake, for example, with respect to some detail, but that their whole perception is radically wrong, distorted, and it is so because it is stuck in a vision which flows from death to death, a vision which has not [risen] to God, the entirely death-less.” (James Alison, Raising Abel, p.38, underlinings mine)
In conclusion, I would say that our Scripture text for today, which at first comes across as highly strange, if not downright bizarre, is actually one of the great texts about God and about hope and about eternal life and about resurrection.
It does nothing less than to invite each of us to include our own names in the litany of saints now living with God and with each other in the eternal present of God’s eternal kingdom.
Jesus does nothing less than to invite us to include ourselves in that foundational text from Exodus: “I am the God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob”. . . and of each and every one of us.
Amen.
QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION
Jesus gives this teaching about eternal life within God’s eternal present before his own death and resurrection. The persons he mentions – Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob – as still alive are all major figures in what many Christians call the “Old” Testament. Many Christians also believe that people like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob cannot enjoy life in God’s eternal kingdom because they did not experience a saving relationship with Jesus.
1. How does today’s Scripture text contradict this popular Christian belief?
What does today’s Scripture text imply about the popular Christian doctrine of substitutionary atonement – that Jesus had to die in my place to atone for my sins in order to save me from eternal damnation and open the door to eternal life?
3. What are some of the implications of Jesus’ teaching that God is entirely about life, not death?
CLOSING PRAYER Diane Berke, Contemporary
The word of death
curves around my heart
like a question mark
whispers
who are you really
what do you care about
what do you really want
what matters
The word of death
presses its way quietly,
insistently into my mind
reminding me
there’s no time to waste
in choosing love
this day is precious
this moment – this one –
is all we have
why wait
why leave unspoken now
a single word
that love would speak
why leave undone
a single gesture
love would express
what could possibly matter more
than love now
than peace now
than forgiveness and freedom now
what foolish reasons
or excuses of fear
do not pale next to the truth
that love is here
that now is all there is eternally
How can I choose less
than to love
with all of my heart, mind, and soul
you
and life
and everything
now
The word of death
comes into my life
bearing a sacred promise
and gift –
calls me to awaken today to life
and the truth of love
as all that matters
and is
and lives.
Amen.
SUGGESTED MUSIC Be Thou My Vision – Selah
Pedro Torres You Tube
BENEDICTION
Patiently and persistently, God loves.
Relentlessly and unconditionally, God loves.
Now and forever, God loves.
AMEN>