Take Nothing For the Journey - September 22, 2021

Luke 9:1-6

Jesus summoned the Twelve and gave them power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases, and he sent them to proclaim the Kingdom of God and to heal the sick.

He said to them, “Take nothing for the journey, neither walking stick, nor sack, nor food, nor money, and let no one take a second tunic. Whatever house you enter, stay there and leave from there. And as for those who do not welcome you, when you leave that town, shake the dust from your feet in testimony against them.”

Then they set out and went from village to village proclaiming the good news and curing diseases everywhere.

I don’t like this gospel passage. Not one little bit. I don’t like to be reminded about the great commission calling that ends the book of Matthew because it makes me uncomfortable. It is virtually impossible for me to even think about taking up the task of bringing the good news of the gospel to strangers who may react negatively to the offer.  The possibility of just one bad experience one time does the job just fine.

We live in a place and time that is referred to as being post-Christian. We Christians have had our time in the sun but in the eyes of many, we blew it. Our faith has been tarred and feathered by revelations about decades of abuse and mistreatment of the most vulnerable members of society, most sorrowfully our children. We are seen as bigots who deprive those who don’t believe like us of their basic human rights. That is not how we see it but the sting of rejection causes me to look away, wincing from the sound of the accusations.

Still, the call to evangelize has not faded away. It has become all the more important and we need to see the call expressed in the gospel reading as being personal, individual to each of us and we are invited to respond in the full measure our station in life will permit. I ask, what do I, an older, white, male, straight, orthodox, conservative, rich guy have to offer anyone? Do I have any hope of proclaiming a message with any relevance to anyone who does not look and act like me? Not much, I would imagine, not much at all.

There is no doubt, however, a message for me to hear in the passage. I am challenged to listen to hear what is being said and respond. There are 4 ways of listening I would like to touch in the coming weeks. I am going to use all 4 now by way of introduction to come to some understanding of what we are supposed to hear being said to us because we are all alike.

1.  The natural world. God speaks to us through beauty and the marvels of nature. How can the natural world reach out to us about this passage? Perhaps we can just imagine the journey. I pull up an image of the countryside they would pass through as they go from village to village. There are fields with sheep and cattle, vineyards, farms with grain, and other foodstuffs being grown. The sun is shining brightly as you would expect. Maybe there would be some kind of adverse weather to endure as they traveled. I close my eyes and walk with them. I listen to the hard scratch of the gravel crunching beneath my feet. I feel the heat of the sun on my shoulders and smell the smells of fields and soil. I can hear the wind or maybe irritating gronking of ravens calling out from the olive groves. Nature would keep the disciples folded up in its broad arms while they travel. I can let it gather me as well.
2.  Human life. The passage has been weighing on my mind for several days, so I have had time for it to simmer. Perhaps the solution for me is to not think in terms of big changes or life-altering efforts. On Monday I had the need to go downtown to run some errands. As I was returning to my
   
   
   car, I arrived at the corner at the same time as I grizzled, handicapped old guy, wearing torn and tattered clothing and an Aussie style hat so common among defeated Viet Nam war vets. He had a grungy gray beard and unkempt locks of hair escaped from under this hat. He used a cane to help him trudge along. I accidentally made eye contact so I had no choice but to react to him. Shamefully, he was the kind of guy I would try to avoid if I had the choice but, on this day, I was committed. I had to do something. I smiled and greeted him. I held my hand offered to help him step up on the curb gut he waved me away. “I got it,” he said. He stepped up on the curb and started down the street away from me. I did what all good cowards do. I just walked past him, got in the car and drove away. I did not look back then but I have looked multiple times since the moment. The event bothered me. There was more I could have done, should have done, wanted to do but I lacked the insight or will to act. The unsettled feeling tells me I have to do things differently next time. I met the Bishop recently and his words to me echo in my ears. “Go be a missionary to the people of Montana,” he said. He had no interest in hearing about my life contemplation and service at the Sycamore Tree. I realized I was so busy finding ways to say “no” to big ways to be a missionary, I missed the little one right in front of me. Lesson, I hope, learned.
3. Sacred scripture. This scripture reading caused me to listen to the words written as they speak to what is asked me. Not big things, at least not now, but little things I can easily do often. Little things. Hmm. I have heard that before. I think the rest of the sentence is "with great love". Do little things with great
   
   
   love. Of course, Therese of Lisieux said it and they made her a doctor of the church. I guess there is something to the idea of little things with great love. I think I can give that a try.
4. Interior Silence. The words that have escaped the recesses of my mind onto the screen did not just show up. I waited and listened for them to come, for them to point the way to go, for them to give the calm that comes from a resolve to act differently. I let the thoughts, images, ideas, and concepts just roll around like little rocks in a bucket until God’s voice echoed through my heart. Little things with great love. I can do that. I will do that and see where it leads me.

I have reason to go back downtown later this week. Will I have a chance to practice what I have come to accept? Probably not. God does not often allow us the opportunity to be prepared to respond to the opportunities he wants us to consider. If we read the passage again, we will understand, me very reluctantly, we are not to be prepared in advance in order we might trust the Holy Spirit to guide us in every aspect of our mission. Yikes. I will be more alert, however, to what I might discover and I promise I will have the courage to try again. Amen.

Our Lady of Sorrows

John 19:25-27

Standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple there whom he loved he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, your son.” Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother.” And from that hour the disciple took her into his home.

Luke 2:33-35

Jesus’ father and mother were amazed at what was said about him; and Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother, “Behold, this child is destined for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be contradicted and you yourself a sword will pierce so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.”

While I wish I could roll back to the clock to a time when many of us gathered around the table and broke open the word with each other while we broke bread together, we all have to recognize we have drifted far downstream from there. I suspect the time is coming when I won’t be able to join you regularly as I become more involved with the community here and we travel more. If this summer does not serve as a strong indicator of what is coming I would have to confess to not paying attention.

That being the case, I want to focus closely on what I am moved to share with you after a summer of prayer, reflection, and study. First, I want to share with you the process by which I enter into the reflections I have shared with you that you might be able to add them to your regular spiritual practice. Second, in the coming weeks, I want to share with you some lessons I am learning about listening to God.

 
Back to today. Rather than lay out the full process of the rough order of the steps I follow with some regularity in one big bite, I will share parts of the process with you over the next few weeks. 

Steps:

1. Read. Read the text slowly several times. Often I will read it out loud a few times just to be sure the reading sinks into my consciousness. 
2. Analyze. Next, I will reflect on what the text is saying while trying to divert my opinion away from the review. Most of the time the gospel will very clearly tell us what we should do or not do in a given situation. What is the message being sent?
3. Investigate. I will then look for the context of the passage. Where was He? Who was he talking to? What preceded and followed the chosen passage? How might the historical setting deflect us from the truth based upon what know today? If I was present at the time how would the experience affect me?

As I read and investigated the passage an image began to emerge in my mind and soon I could not think of anything else.  This statue by Michelangelo is called the Pieta. Let’s use this photo of the statue to help us focus on the heart of the gospel.  

We are including Visio Divina as part of our reflection process so let’s take a minute to study the statue and try to take in everything it represents as we look at step 4. 

4.   Ponder. I will let the scripture roll around in my brain for a time. Usually, I will take time between steps 3 and 4 to let things percolate. Often time I will get several different impressions that when I consider them further turn out to be dead ends. Sometimes something never develops and I will just pull up some other reflection. It happens. 

5.   Focus. When an impression begins to develop like a photo I play with it and see how it intersects with my life and what I should learn from the picture revealed to me. 

Release. When I have a more fully formed view of the message, I look at what the message means to me. There is always a lesson to embrace and from the emotions will follow. Gratitude. Commitment. Forgiveness. Inspiration. Love. Whatever the feeling, it reflects the grace of God and there is Joy that comes from the grace given and then shared.

The memorial the church recognizes today is the sorrow of our lady. The lesson is not just to remind us what Mary endure as the mother of Jesus to also recognize the suffering of others, other mothers, other parents, other human beings. Mary’s suffering grew out of the sorrowful death of a man who was also divine and so through her suffering, we are all saved. Mary would have us also look at others who suffer, all others, in fact, and not just a few. If we can somehow wrap around the suffering we all endure, our suffering will have a purpose if we give it back to God and share it with him. The consolation for Mary was the resurrection of Jesus and her life with him in eternity. Our consolation is our suffering will lead us to eternal if we have the faith to look beyond the present tribulations to life in the hereafter. 

 Look again at Mary. What do you see in her face? I see acceptance and in the acceptance, there is one more Fiat – let it be as God intended. Let her example help us come to acceptance. 

The Vineyard

GOSPEL

Matthew 20:1-16

Jesus told his disciples this parable:
“The Kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out at dawn to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with them for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard. Going out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace, and he said to them, ‘You too go into my vineyard, and I will give you what is just.’ So they went off. And he went out again around noon, and around three o’clock, and did likewise. Going out about five o’clock, he found others standing around, and said to them, ‘Why do you stand here idle all day?’ They answered, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You too go into my vineyard.’ When it was evening the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Summon the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and ending with the first.’ When those who had started about five o’clock came, each received the usual daily wage. So when the first came, they thought that they would receive more, but each of them also got the usual wage. And on receiving it they grumbled against the landowner, saying, ‘These last ones worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us, who bore the day’s burden and the heat.’ He said to one of them in reply, ‘My friend, I am not cheating you. Did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? Take what is yours and go. What if I wish to give this last one the same as you? Or am I not free to do as I wish with my own money? Are you envious because I am generous?’ Thus, the last will be first, and the first will be last.”

We know this passage well. It has popped up often over the decade plus we have meeting together. Despite this, the passage seems different to me this time around. 

 

I want to get back into the groove of Wednesday meetings and I have been away from the practice of lectio divina for some weeks, I decided to review the reading for 8/18 a few days in advance just to get things going again

 

The day I chose was particularly hot even though we seem to have been caught up in a heat wave the likes of which I don’t remember experiencing in years. I came inside to the respite of AC after having worked in the yard for several hours. I had tried to find the sweet spot to mow after the dew dried but before the heat fired up in the afternoon but there was not of a chance to hit it that day  The humidity was up, the dew point temperature of 72 which is unheard of in this part of the world. The point is the air was steamy before I even took a step.

 

Tired, hot, sweaty and parched, I experienced the reading in a different, darker and more negative way. I found myself rooting for the workers who had been first hired and labored away through the heat of the day for the same pay as those who barely broke a sweat. It did not seem fair. What we receive for our work and effort should be measured for what we give. Somethings should not be and are not equal. I could understand for the first time just how honked off the guys hired first might have been. 

 

Fortunately I usually don’t settle down to write after the first review. I like to let the readings percolate some before I try to engage them with purpose. I put the reading aside but I was troubled by the impression and I wondered how I could have such a different take as I had that day.

 

We went to the Vigil Mass for the Assumption of Mary on Saturday. During the quiet time before Mass, the Matthew came to mind again. I still had the lingering effect of the different take on the reaction of the first workers hired. What they felt still felt very real and very emotional even sitting in the coolness of the church. The context and perspective I had for the parable seems to have been permanently amended. 

 

Something else developed as well, however, as I reflected further on the nature of work if the fields of Lord. Yes, it can be difficult at times but what kind of work are we talking about? To be more specific, to work in his kingdom is to engage in far different work than just tending to a vineyard. Or a yard. Or an insurance business or an auto repair shop. Those kinds of work are part of what we are hired by the master to do but there is more. Much more. We are called to bear witness to the gospel, to meet the needs of the poor, to offer care, compassion and empathy to the physically or mentally wounded. Our job is to also pray, sing praises, study his word with each other and to help save lost sheep. 

 

It is not just the work that is different but the pay is different. What we get for serving in the kingdom can’t be measured in a way we can fully understand. Eternal life? That is the promise and it is be all and end all of our faith but I don’t think about eternal life as I go through the day. I am far too simple minded and short focused for that to be any kind of real motivator.  I know I am not alone. It is also a fact no matter how hard we work, we can never earn what is freely given to us. At the end of the day, our pay is unmerited no matter how hard or long we work. The return is not a return, it is a gift we chose to accept by offering faith and service. 

 

In our mission to evangelize, re-evangelize and to convert and re-convert, we don’t place any kind of limitation in what we hope our pilgrims receive. We want them to receive full measure. We rejoice when they gain even taste or glimpse of the kingdom we are trying to share. In fact we are often happiest for those who arrive the latest. The father in the prodigal son loves both sons the same. All that matters is for them to respond to the embrace offered by the kingdom. 

 

Sitting here this morning on cool rainy morning, it occurs to me, the work I do every day is not about the reward promised for some day in the future, I do it for today. I do it for how it makes me feel right now to know I am in the kingdom and my brothers are here with me. I am absolutely certain you come to this table for the exact same reason. 

 

Lord, help us to do your work today to help find workers for your vineyard. 

Matthew 5-17

We have said that Matthew’s gospel is primarily directed at a readership with a Jewish background. It is clear that their Jewish background and traditions were things which it was not easy for Christian converts to give up. Both Paul and Matthew go out of their way to assure Jewish converts that Christianity is not a rejection of Judaism but its natural development. It is everything that Judaism is and more. 

So, in today’s passage which continues the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus solemnly assures his readers, “Do not imagine that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets. I have come not to abolish but to complete them.” Jesus has not come not to terminate the Law but to bring it to a higher level. (In a rough simile, it is like the upgrading of a computer by e.g. increasing its memory. It is still the same computer doing the same things, only better and faster.) The vision of Jesus helps us to see the Law in a new light. 

So Jesus says that the Law is still to be observed. Of course, we will see very clearly in the following days exactly what Jesus means. He is not saying that every single injunction of the Law (some of which seem very strange to us) has to be literally observed but rather that the spirit behind those injunctions is still in force. His words are meant to console but they are also a challenge, as we shall see. The New Law does not mean simply the addition of new elements. There is what we would call now a ‘paradigm shift’ to a Way which goes beyond laws to the Law of Love. 

In our Church, too, we need to be ready to move forward creatively to new ways of understanding our faith and living it out. The traditions of the past are still valid but we must never get bogged down in them to the extent that we do not respond to the clear signs of the times. Tradition can be understood in two ways: either as a fundamental belief that has existed from the very beginning or simply a way of doing or understanding things which has been around for a long time. 

When will the Church stop changing? we hear some people ask. The answer is, Hopefully never. The day we close ourselves to change is the day we die, as Paul warns us in the Second Letter to the Corinthians. To quote Cardinal Newman, To live is to change; to be perfect is to have changed often. He knew about change. He made radical changes in his own understanding of the Christian faith, changes which he saw as unavoidable although they involved great sacrifices on his part and led him from the Anglican to the Catholic Church.

Talitha Koum

Jairus’s Daughter. 

When Jesus had crossed again [in the boat] to the other side, a large crowd gathered around him, and he stayed close to the sea. One of the synagogue officials, named Jairus, came forward. Seeing him he fell at his feet and pleaded earnestly with him, saying, “My daughter is at the point of death. Please, come lay your hands on her that she may get well and live.” He went off with him, and a large crowd followed him and pressed upon him. While he was still speaking, people from the synagogue official’s house arrived and said, “Your daughter has died; why trouble the teacher any longer?” Disregarding the message that was reported, Jesus said to the synagogue official, “Do not be afraid; just have faith.” He did not allow anyone to accompany him inside except Peter, James, and John, the brother of James. When they arrived at the house of the synagogue official, he caught sight of a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly. So he went in and said to them, “Why this commotion and weeping? The child is not dead but asleep.”And they ridiculed him. Then he put them all out. He took along the child’s father and mother and those who were with him and entered the room where the child was. He took the child by the hand and said to her, “Talitha koum,” which means, “Little girl, I say to you, arise!” The girl, a child of twelve, arose immediately and walked around. [At that] they were utterly astounded. He gave strict orders that no one should know this and said that she should be given something to eat.

I have given much thought and prayer about how to unpack this passage, hoping to find a softer, easier landing for what has been revealed to me. Nothing has come to mind so away we go. For nearly every Christian, there are passages in the Bible where the words draw a believer into a crucible, an act where faith and experience are cast into a furnace hotter than the sun. After the smelter cools, the person comes out with the dross that weakened them discarded and their troubles sanctified. What remains is a person changed by the encounter. This simple little story about a synagogue official and his daughter is one place where life shoved me headlong into a crucible which only after a long period of time has left me to rest with memory and shared experience.

The gospel story is simple. Jesus was walking through a crowd when a Jew who normally would have curled his lip at Jesus and insulted him, became desperate enough seek the help of Jesus for his ill daughter. Jesus agreed to come to offer help. Along the way, Jesus healed another person but before they could get to the home of the official, the word came the girl died. Jesus challenged the official, a man named Jarius to have faith even in the face of terrible news. When they arrived at the house, they found a household consume by grief. When Jesus asked why they were grieving because there girl was not dead but was sleeping, they jeered him in doubt.

Now comes the moment of the crucible. “Talitha Koum,” Jesus called. “Little girl, raise up.” The girl woke up and was healed.

Let me tell the story of the crucible. On a fine sunny day like this in June 1986, I accompanied my wife to the baby doctor’s office to check on the health of a baby who was in the 28th week of pregnancy. Life was good. In January of that year we had been graced to adopt a baby boy after several years of trying to have another baby. Our first attempt ended in the 28th week, an event which shattered us but we then were excited to embrace the remarkable truth of the old wife’s tale that the best cure for infertility was to to adopt. A natural baby would soon follow along when adoption would relax the high anxiety of trying to conceive.

During the course of the examination, the mood in the room changed. The Ultrasound Nurse become more and more agitated moving the microphone around my wife’s stomach before the nurse jumped out and ran out of the room. A few minutes later one of the doctors in the clinic, not our normal doctors, came in with a ashen countenance. He used the microphone himself for a few minutes but then all he had to do was turn and look at us and we knew. The baby had died.


The worst part had to follow, an induced delivery and the arrival of a lifeless baby. Calling on our faith to sustain us through another tragedy, we did what as needed. In the hours prior to the delivery, I was drawn back to this verse over and over again.

Thoughts plagued me. Why Jairus and not us? Why did this happen again? Why was it so hard to have a baby? There are no answers understood in the moment, only the stark recognition that resurrection and eternal life requires death. Death, such a strange, terrible and beautiful word.

The nurse wrapped the baby girl up in a blanket and her to me and left us to be alone with the moment. I could not speak. My wife could not speak. We just sat it took it all in or at least we tried to take in the finality of the moment. I wish now I had written more about the minutes we spent together because time has erased many of the details that seemed so vivid then A sudden fury welled up in me and I stifled the urge to scream out in anger. The emotion faded and an unfamiliar voice began to talk. The words I spoke stunned me then and they still burn though my heart today

I said, “Jairus and his family heard Jesus say, “Talitha Koum” and the dead girl woke up and lived again. I can’t begin to understand this but, I name you, our daughter, Talitha and so knowing you will arise some day also but today.” I anointed the baby with Holy Water I had in a bottle in my pocket. How it came to be I had the little squeeze bottle in my possession remains a mystery. Perhaps there was plan hatched deep down inside me to do what I did but I don’t remember any such thing. I repeated the triune baptism ritual and gave the baby over to my wife.

What I did that day was right thing to do. It declared a faith I doubted, consumed as I was by grief and anger, and it comforted my wife whose faith was triumphant. I know now Talitha will raise up again. We all will. The miracle for Jairus was needed to help Jesus teach the point. There is still no answer why there was no miracle for us and that our daughter fell asleep before her first breath. Such questions are imponderable. What comes to mind is the magnificent son we born to us 15 months later. He is an incredible human being and the challenges he has overcome amaze me. He treats others exactly as the gospel demands. God does not bargain but certainly if Talitha had not died, Brian might never have been born. Another imponderable I have to leave to God.

The crucible has cooled now. My faith is restored and enlarged. The story of Jairus did what was needed by bringing me from where I was to where I am. I don’t know how to describe this place other than to say I have a sure and certain knowledge I am and we are exactly where God intended. I remember John, our first baby who came to prepare the way for the others children given us and Talitha this morning with gratitude for the gift of the resurrection and the promise of life eternal. Amen.

Swine in Brine Mark 5:1-20

The Healing of the Gerasene Demoniac.

They came to the other side of the sea, to the territory of the Gerasenes. When he got out of the boat, at once a man from the tombs who had an unclean spirit met him. The man had been dwelling among the tombs, and no one could restrain him any longer, even with a chain. In fact, he had frequently been bound with shackles and chains, but the chains had been pulled apart by him and the shackles smashed, and no one was strong enough to subdue him. Night and day among the tombs and on the hillsides he was always crying out and bruising himself with stones. Catching sight of Jesus from a distance, he ran up and prostrated himself before him, crying out in a loud voice, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me!” (He had been saying to him, “Unclean spirit, come out of the man!”) He asked him, “What is your name?” He replied, “Legion is my name. There are many of us.” And he pleaded earnestly with him not to drive them away from that territory. Now a large herd of swine was feeding there on the hillside. And they pleaded with him, “Send us into the swine. Let us enter them.” And he let them, and the unclean spirits came out and entered the swine. The herd of about two thousand rushed down a steep bank into the sea, where they were drowned. The swineherds ran away and reported the incident in the town and throughout the countryside. And people came out to see what had happened. As they approached Jesus, they caught sight of the man who had been possessed by Legion, sitting there clothed and in his right mind. And they were seized with fear.Those who witnessed the

incident explained to them what had happened to the possessed man and to the swine. Then they began to beg him to leave their district. As he was getting into the boat, the man who had been possessed pleaded to remain with him. But he would not permit him but told him instead, “Go home to your family and announce to them all that the Lord in his pity has done for you.”Then the man went off and began to proclaim in the Decapolis what Jesus had done for him; and all were amazed.

I have always found this passage to be unsettling because there are seemingly multiple factors found within it that are not perfectly lined up with the rest of the Gospel.

First, at the conclusion of Mark 4, Jesus left the area of capernam where he had been teaching. The last passage of chapter is when the disciples were terrified by a storm at sea and were accused by Jesus of lacking faith. At the beginning of chapter 5, they landed in on the east side of the Sea of Galilee in what amounted to being in a foreign country. This curious because up to this point Jesus had been preaching to his own people, quite literally, in Galilee. Now, however, he was entering into an area where his message would be completely out of context.

Next is the matter of the demoniac. This guy is the baddest dude in the New Testament and not only is there one demon, there are many and even stranger, they recognized Jesus as being the son of God. How did they know?

When Jesus cast out the demons, they did not immediately return to Hell or wherever evicted demons are sent, but were placed into a herd of pigs that then stampeded into the sea and drowned. To ancient Jews, sending the demons over the cliff inside pigs made perfect sense. Pigs, after all, were unclean. To locals, however, there would be a loss of context. A whole load of ham and bacon went to waste for no fathomable reason.

I could use a lot of fancy words and concepts to break down this passage because this passage like all other gospel stories, makes sense and it holds together theologically but a hundreds of words can shed any more light than a very simple explanation.

Mark was the gospel meant for gentiles. The trip to the east side of the lake served a message that was not meant just for the Jews of Palestine. It was meant for everyone everywhere. It has to have been uncomfortable to leave a largely homogenous society to go to strange places like Samaria or the Decapolis but it was part of the mission of evangelization. I am called to reach out those who don’t look like me, think like me, eat like or belief like me. I get it. Jesus wants us to get to it and, by the way, be happy about it.

Still, I can’t let go of all of the wasted pork. I think I just heard a sigh from my smoke house, the BBQ grill and the Traeger.

Sad, You See - Mark12:18-27

Some Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to Jesus and put this question to him, saying, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us,‘If someone’s brother dies, leaving a wife but no child, his brother must take the wifeand raise up descendants for his brother.’Now there were seven brothers.The first married a woman and died, leaving no descendants.So the second brother married her and died, leaving no descendants, and the third likewise. And the seven left no descendants. Last of all the woman also died.

At the resurrection when they arise whose wife will she be? For all seven had been married to her.”

Jesus said to them, “Are you not misled because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God? When they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage,
but they are like the angels in heaven. As for the dead being raised, have you not read in the Book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, how God told him,
I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac,
and the God of Jacob.

He is not God of the dead but of the living.You are greatly misled.”

So who were those guys? They pop up through out the gospels and are clearly antithetical Jesus from the first days of his public ministry and remained zealously opposed through the death and resurrection even right up until they were wiped along a along with Pharisees and other temple Jews following the rebellion in 70 AD. Why did Jesus bother with them? They were few in number but their impact on Jewish society in Israel was far out of proportion to their numbers. Why? They were the upper crust, educated, wealthy, politically astute and connected, they were favored by the Romans because they, the Sadducees, were very invested in protecting the status quo. Needless to say, Jesus posed a threat to them because Jesus was all about turning the temple economy upside down. Curiously, they did not believe in the resurrection because they put full stock in the Pentateuch which they believed was silent about a resurrection possibility. When an individual died, they were dead in all ways and there was no possibility of life after death. I find it strange that a group so dedicated to God could be so utterly opposed to a life with God beyond death.

Looking around today, are there movements like the Sadducees present in our society? Who are they? I hesitate to name them lest I come across as entitled and judgmental but I have no choice but look at is happening and I how I see it relate to the gospel. Are there those who claim righteousness but then fail to see Jesus in our lives. Is it right to proclaim belief and the right to worship in freedom but when it comes to living the live demanded of the gospel, they turn away against those who hold fast to belied? No. Is it right for those who are willing to focus tightly on one moral issue but abandon everything else that goes with it? Again, no. Am I guilty of one of these? I am. I regret it but I can’t let go.

Jesus, however, sidestepped the issue neatly by simply denying the legitimacy of the arguments that were so carefully laid out to trap him. Revelation did not end with the Pentateuch, it continued on through history but then after silence of a several hundred years, a last prophet, John, came to announce the prophet who would fulfill all. Resurrection is true, the word did not change but evolved. God did not say he WAS the God of all, he said he IS God of all. He still is.

What does that mean for us today? Modern Sadducees who deny the role of the Gospel to moderate and influence behavior need to be confronted with the the falsity of religious freedom only being about worship. We also, however, have to embrace the gospel in its entirety and not just cherry pick what we think is important because even if it is the most important, it is not to be considered to exclusion of all else.

I don’t know how to do that except to love the next person I meet bearing the entirety of the gospel on my back and in my soul.