A Sermon by Sydney V. (Skip) Jackson — October 11, 2009
Indianola Presbyterian Church, Columbus, Ohio
Text:  Mark 11:27 – 12:27

[The Lord] is God not of the dead, but of the living… — Mark 12:27

After the dramatic story of Jesus cleansing the temple, Mark offers four scenes of conflict between Jesus on one hand and the chief priests, scribes, elders, Pharisees, and Sadducees on the other.  And the first thing we learn is that these religious “authorities” don’t have very much authority at all.  They ask Jesus, “Where do you get the authority to do what you do?”  Yet they can’t answer his question back, because they fear the reaction of the crowds.  When Jesus tells a parable against them, they’d like to arrest him, but again their fear of the crowds stops them cold.  Apparently whatever authority they have doesn’t go very far.

Next the Pharisees ask Jesus a question designed to get him into trouble with a higher authority—no, not God, but the Roman emperor.  “Should we pay taxes to the emperor or not?”  Jesus turns this question on its head.  No, he doesn’t tell them to pay their taxes with what belongs to the emperor.  This isn’t really about paying taxes.  And nothing whatsoever belongs to the emperor, because (as the Psalmist sings) “The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it.”  The coins these religious “authorities” have in their possession betray their allegiance.  They are the “things that are the emperor’s” that are to be given to the emperor.  No wonder they’re amazed.

Finally the Sadducees come to Jesus with a “trick question.”  Priests, Pharisees, Sadducees—although they oppose each other, they unite to attack Jesus.  Mark reminds his readers how the Sadducees claim there is no resurrection, and here they are with a long, involved question designed to prove that the whole idea of resurrection is absurd.  Now, Jesus knows they really aren’t interested in an answer.  They don’t ask as bereaved persons seeking hope and comfort or as believers searching for greater clarity and understanding.   No, this is the kind of “non-question” designed to score theological points and embarrass Jesus. 

To begin with, their question displays its total lack of sincerity by doing something many such questions do—namely assuming the reality of the very thing the questioners explicitly deny.  The Sadducees deny the resurrection, and nothing Jesus says will change their mind.  Yet their question assumes the reality of resurrection.  This is a subtle and clever ploy—one that occurs again and again in theological, ethical, and political debate.  For instance, those who call for tolerance in our world often find themselves challenged with the question, “Aren’t you actually guilty yourselves of being intolerant of intolerance?”  The question attacks the notion of tolerance, yet it depends on the assumption that tolerance is good.  When people attack affirmative action as discriminatory, they clearly assume that discrimination is wrong.  Yet their attack is usually part of a strategy to justify or return to earlier forms of discrimination.  All such tactics involve a kind of “double speak” that can be difficult to respond to.

So we can appreciate how Jesus effectively leaves the Sadducees speechless.  Luke says at this point (and Mark will say in a few verses) that no one dared to ask him any more questions.  But Jesus’ response is more than just clever.  It reveals in the Sadducees our human inclination to apply the logic of this world to the life of the resurrection.  We are all curious about it.  Resurrection, life after death, heaven, paradise—we hear such words and want to know more.  What will it be like?  Scripture is remarkably reticent.  1 John 3:2 says, “What we will be has not yet been revealed.”  Paul says only that we will all be changed [1 Cor. 15:51].  He speaks of “spiritual bodies,” while Jesus says they are like “angels in heaven.”

With so little to go on, we can do one of two things.  We can, like the Sadducees, take the realities of our world—our laws, our culture, our values, our prejudices—and project them on the age to come.  Heaven thus becomes a familiar place… a lot like our present existence, only nicer (and with harps, maybe).  But this is a tragic failure of imagination.  For the present age is dominated by death, while the age to come operates not on the logic of death, but of life.

This is what Jesus is saying when he tells the Sadducees that those who rise from the dead do not marry.  Marriage and the birth of children are needed in this world because people die.  But in the life of the resurrection, no one dies, so it’s not necessary that anyone marry.  There is a radical difference between this age and the age of the resurrection—namely, one is ruled by the logic of death and the other by the logic of life.  The Sadducees, according to Jesus, are wrong because they seek to impose the logic of death on life.  Whereas what Jesus teaches again and again throughout his ministry is that the logic of life must be brought to bear on how we live in this world.  The Lord is, says Jesus, “God not of the dead, but of the living,” which includes everyone, even all of us, here and now.

Death or life, it matters which you choose.  So it is vital for us to look to the resurrection for new ways of understanding… and living in… and changing our world.  This is what Jesus means when he says that the kingdom of God is among us.  He told stories and parables, healed and fed people, and taught and debated and went to his death so all people might glimpse God’s kingdom and strive to live lives just a little more in that realm and a little less under the sway of sin and death.  And he promised that when all was said and done, the God of the living—the God who is with us and for us in all places and at all times—triumphs over sin and death and makes everyone alive in the life of the resurrection.

How do we know this?  We don’t.  It’s not a matter of proof.  It’s a matter of deciding where we will place our faith and trust… of choosing to live our lives in response to God’s amazing grace.  We will always wonder about the life to come and long to know what it is like.  But the best we can do in that respect is to lift up images and metaphors and stories that speak to us of newness and change, of mystery, and of transformation:  the cocoon and the butterfly; the sprouting seed; the birth of a baby; those wonderful pictures from the Hubble Telescope of new stars being born.  Images and stories will have to satisfy our curiosity for now when it comes to matters of death and life.  But it matters that we choose life.

By way of closing I want to share with you a story I first heard nearly 20 years ago, just before I graduated from seminary.  It’s a children’s story—a story for children of God—about the mystery of death and resurrection to new life.  It was originally written as an attempt to explain death to children.

Once there was a quiet little pond where there lived a colony of water bugs.  They were a happy colony, living in the cool, clear water and scurrying over the soft, squishy mud at the bottom of the pond.
Every once in a while, the bugs noticed how one of their colony would seem to lose interest in his or her companions.  Clinging to the stem of a pond lily, the bug would slowly creep up the stem, moving out of sight until it was seen no more.  The other bugs would wonder what was going on—“Where do you suppose she was going?”  They would wait and watch, but the bug would never return.  So they were all left wondering.  “Wasn’t she happy here?  Why did she go?  Where do you suppose she went?”  No one had an answer to such a strange puzzle.  

Finally one of the bugs gathered his friends in the colony together.  “I have an idea,” he said.  “We must all promise that the next one of who climbs up a lily stalk will come back and tell us where he or she went and why.”  So they all promised.

Then one spring morning, not too many days later, the very water bug who had formed the plan found himself climbing up a lily stalk.  Up, up, up he went.  Until something very new happened.  He broke through the surface of the pond into a strange brightness.  And falling onto the broad, green lily pad, he fell asleep.

When he woke up, he looked around in surprise, unable to believe what was happening.  His body had changed.  As he tried to move he saw he had four silvery wings and a long tail.  As he struggled to move them, the warmth of the sun finished drying his new body, and suddenly he found he could move his wings.  There!  He was flying above the water—a most beautiful dragonfly!

Swooping and dipping in the air, he flew with exhilaration and joy.  Later as the new dragonfly lighted on a lily pad, he chanced to look down into the pond.  There below him were his old friends, the water bugs, scurrying around just as he’d been doing not long before.  Then he recalled his promise:  “The next one of who climbs up a lily stalk will come back and tell us where he or she went and why.”

Immediately the dragonfly darted down, but when he hit the surface of the pond he bounced away.  Now that he was a dragonfly, he couldn’t return to the water.  “I can’t go back!” he cried in dismay.  “No matter how hard I try, I can’t keep my promise.  And even if I could, no one there would even know me in my new body.  I guess I’ll just have to wait until they become dragonflies too.  Then they’ll know and understand what happened, where I went, and why.”  And then the dragonfly winged off into the wonderful new world of sunshine and air. ¹

God is the God not of the dead but of the living, says Jesus.  So choose to live here and now in the kingdom of the living God—the kingdom of life!  Amen and amen.

 

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 ¹ Water Bugs and Dragonflies: Explaining Death to Children, Doris Stickney [New York: Pilgrim, 1982].