Sermon preached by The Reverend Dr. Harold T. Lewis

SERMON PREACHED BY THE REVEREND DR. HAROLD T. LEWIS, RECTOR CALVARY EPISCOPAL CHURCH, PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA ON THE TWENTY-FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST 11 NOVEMBER 2007


"In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be?" (Luke 20:33)


When I read this morning's Gospel, I immediately thought of a Mother Goose nursery rhyme that goes like this: As I was going to St. Ives I met a man with seven wives And every wife had seven sacks And every sack had seven cats And every cat had seven kits Kits, cats, sacks, wives How many were going to St. Ives?

The nursery rhyme is generally thought to be a riddle, and one that ends with a trick question. While those who don't get it immediately start to multiply wives, cats and kits to arrive at the correct answer, the clever responder knows that the answer is one, namely the person reciting the rhyme, the only one "going to St. Ives." The others were simply "met" and were assumed to be going somewhere else. I wish today's Gospel was as easy to decipher.

It might be helpful at the outset to say what this story is not about, or, more particularly, what it is not meant to explain. It is not meant to address the issue of 21st century Episcopalians who have been down the aisle more than once, who are perplexed as to whose spouse they will be once they pass through the Pearly Gates. The story is not meant to answer Hilda's query: "Will I be stuck with that nerd Billy whom I married right out of college when I didn't know any better, or can I spend eternity with my soul mate Johnny, with whom I lived happily ever after?" --- after Billy, that is. No, to understand the Sadducees' question, one has to understand a basic tenet in Jewish law. The Sadducees are referring to what the Torah calls "levirate marriage," which was a kind of social security plan in the ancient world. A woman, it will be remembered, enjoyed no status of her own, and therefore, if a widow, had to rely on her children to take care of her. So the law dictated that if a man dies childless --- it's all about the men, after all --- it is his brother's duty to marry his widowed sister-in-law and beget children. Not only would this ensure that the woman would be cared for in her old age, it would also ensure that the dead brother's name would be perpetuated, and the race preserved, an idea central to the teachings of Judaism (see above under "increase and multiply").

This is the context in which the Sadducees present their hypothetical riddle which seems on its face almost as silly as the Mother Goose rhyme. In the theoretical situation they present to Jesus, a brother obeys the law and marries his brother's widow, but dies before his wife has any children. His six brothers all suffer the same fate, so that at the end of her life, the poor woman has been married and widowed eight times, sans offspring. The Sadducees ask Jesus: "Whose wife will she be in the resurrection?"

Now something should be said about those asking the question and why. The Pharisees, as you remember, were known for their rigid adherence to moral codes that was so stringent that they lost sight of the meanings of God's commands. The Sadducees, on the other hand, were akin to modern-day Biblical literalists. They made no allowances for tradition or reason. And since there was no specific reference to resurrection in the Torah, so far as they were concerned, it simply did not exist. What is more, the Sadducees were all members the upper classes of priestly families. They were rich, controlled real estate and the marketplaces in the Temple precincts. They "fared sumptuously every day," and were, in short, the wheelers and dealers of Jewish society. Not unrelated to this profile, they did not believe in the resurrection or any kind of afterlife. Why would they? In addition to theological reasons for their position, they had heaven on earth, everything they could have hoped for or desired, and more.

But the Sadducees had at least one thing in common with the Pharisees. Both groups took delight in trying to trick Jesus, to confound him with their arguments, and ultimately to attempt to show that he was fraudulent. So the real purpose of the Mother Goose-like riddle they pose to Jesus was to get him to concoct an answer on the same level, using the same vocabulary that they did. But Jesus, whether dealing with Pharisees, Sadducees, or individuals like Nicodemus or the rich young ruler, always manages to cut through the verbiage and deal with the real point. He refuses to major in the minors.

My friends, aren't we like the Sadducees? Don't we major in the minors? If we think about resurrection at all, if we think about afterlife, if we think about life after death, what are the questions that plague us? I'll give you a few examples: "If I die at the age of 95, will I be 95 when I get to heaven? Or can I pick my favorite age, say 37?" Listening to the words of Saint Paul, immortalized by Handel, "Ye shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye," we muse "Will I be no longer bald?" "Will my gray hair disappear?" Or maybe even, will I be entitled to more gray matter in heaven? Such questions are consonant with the fact that even in life, we are into denial about death, a point which Nate Rugh, in his excellent sermon on All Souls' Day, drove home by holding up the example of the ageless and unchangeable Vanna White. Such preoccupation with minutiae is nothing new. Paul addresses the problem in the fifteenth chapter of First Corinthians. "Some will ask, 'How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?' You foolish man . . What you sow is not the body that is to be . . . So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable."

Jesus tells the Sadducees --- and us --- that the rules of human relationships will have no currency in the resurrection, where we will no longer be what we were, but like angels and children of God. Whereas, Jesus explains, we on earth marry and are given in marriage, marital status will be of absolutely no importance in resurrection life. More important, death, which was the real problem in the Sadducees' story ---- since the plans of each brother were thwarted by his untimely demise --- will no longer be an issue, because once in resurrection life, you simply can't die anymore. Besides, Jesus says, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is the God of the living and not the dead.

The verse, "Ye shall all be changed . . . in the twinkling of an eye" is preceded by an important statement. Paul says "Behold I tell you a mystery." Hello? Mystery, last I heard, means that something is beyond our comprehension. In moving us away from the minutiae and into the big picture, Jesus presents us the truth about resurrection and everything else in broad strokes. We try to comprehend the big picture, and we spend our lives trying to fill in the blanks, with varying degrees of success, but that's all right. We recite in the Creed, "I believe in the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come." The Catechism, near the back of the Prayer Book, has this to say about those words: Q: What do we mean by the resurrection of the body? A: We mean that God will raise us from death in the fullness of our being, that we may live with Christ in the communion of the saints.

That's good enough for me, and I trust it is good enough for you. I don't have to know if that means that I'll be 185 pounds again on resurrection morning,, or if, once in heaven, I will again be able to sing the tenor solo in "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" with a range that includes the D above high C.

One of the saddest developments of "the recent unpleasantness" is that we live in a church in which we who are willing to live with the tension of mystery, we who believe that revelation is a dynamic and not a static process, we who believe, like Hooker, that scripture is to be understood in light of tradition and reason, are roundly criticized for abandoning the faith, for dismissing the so-called "plain meaning of Scripture," and for rejecting the teachings of the church.

It may be well nigh impossible to win such people over with theological arguments. The best we can do, perhaps, is to live a resurrection life, a life in which we long for God to give us new life and hope; a life in which, "toiling up new calvaries ever" we seek and find life in the midst of death; a life in which we bring to this altar week by week, our selves, our souls and bodies to be a reasonable, holy and living sacrifice, a life in which we praise the God who ever gives us that life to grow in relationship with God and with our sisters and brothers along the pilgrim way.

Let us pray: Jesus lives! Our hearts know well nought from us his love shall sever; Life, nor, death, nor powers of hell tear us from his keeping ever. AMEN.