”Resurrection” Vance L. Toivonen
READING Luke 20:27-38
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? For the seven had married her." 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 anymore, 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."
READING John Shelby Spong, A New Christianity for a New World
The primary task of a faith-community is to assist in the creation of wholeness – not goodness, but wholeness. That community’s raison d’être is to be the place where each person can be nurtured into being. This wholeness we seek, the wholeness that comes to us only in community, includes our shadow, which is never separated from our being. Some of us need to be rescued from our goodness to be made whole, while some of us need to be rescued from our evil. But none of us can be made whole until good and devil are bound together inside one being. That, I believe, is a community function. That, I believe, is the work of the church. That is why the church is called “the body of Christ.”
SERMON
So, what’s new? Really, do you ever know how to answer that question when someone asks? I usually go blank. Or we say, “Nuthin’. What’s new with you?” It’s kind of like a game of hot potato, throwing the question back and forth because neither one of us has an answer for it. And as I wondered about why this is, I discovered that one possible reason might be that we are less than adept at inviting newness into our lives. We are basically rut-based people. We cherish routine, and ordinary, and cling to sameness as if our lives depend upon it. But the key to life, the key to longevity and vitality, is not stasis, or sameness – but newness.
Oprah’s new flavor of the month is Dr. Mehmet Oz. This fall he has been on her show as often as twice a week, and the new book he and his partner have out is on aging. I remember learning in grade school about Juan Ponce de León and his legendary search for the fountain of youth. I guess there really is a so called fountain of youth in Florida, or at least a fountain. It’s not really THE fountain, but people still travel to St. Augustine, FL and drink from it thinking maybe it’ll do ‘em some good.
Dr. Oz and other research scientists are now speculating about a potential fountain of life within all of us. The fountain flows at the chromosomal level. At the ends of our chromosomes are telomeres. As we age, and as our chromosomes are used for replicating more cells in our bodies, they can get frayed. The more frayed they become, the less effective they are at replication. When we can no longer create new cells we age, and we are more prone to disease in our bodies. The extent to which we create newness in our own bodies is the extent to which we experience vitality as we grow older.
There is an enzyme which sounds very similar to telomeres. The enzyme is called telomerase. This is where a good deal of work is being done right now. The question behind the work is, ‘how do we increase telomerase in our bodies?’ Some articles have been seen in newspapers touting telomerase as an elixir of life – but these headlines are nothing more than premature, ink-stained, wishes.
Dr. Oz is putting a physiological spin on this old mythology of the fountain of youth, looking at the mechanisms in our bodies – what contributes to disease, and aging, and death, and what contributes to health, and youth, and an extended quality of life. But before you run out and buy his book let me suggest one very simple foundation for exploring this subject – we gotta wanna. We need to have enough desire within us to make the necessary changes that will accommodate longevity and vitality of life. Furthermore we must adopt the philosophy that newness and change are the foundations for living – new ideas, new experiences, new ways of doing things. Stasis and sameness may be comforting for us, but they will not contribute to a longer life.
A lot of this you already know, to be sure. I think it is the wisdom that Jesus touches on in his conversation with the Sadducees. The Sadducees did not believe in bodily resurrection; and I’m not so sure Jesus did either. That concept was not codified until the creeds were written hundreds of years later. But what Jesus does say here is that resurrection life, life after death, is patently different from life before death. Whatever was before is no longer. Marriage is the pre-resurrection norm. Post-resurrection, Jesus says, people are neither married nor given in marriage. Something changes in the transition. In fact, it is quite logical when you think about it. Something MUST change in order for there to be a transition.
The writings of Paul predate the gospel of Luke by 30 or 40 years. In I Corinthians Paul recalls the Last Supper and has Jesus declaring, “This cup is the new covenant…” (11:25). In 2 Corinthians Paul writes, “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” (5:17). In Ephesians Paul addresses the divisions between Greeks and Jews by stating, “He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace.” (2:15). And in Colossians Paul delivers one of my favorite scripture passages:
But now you must get rid of all such things anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator. In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all! (Colossians 3:8-11).
And, if I may, one more quote from the book of Revelation, another favorite of mine, from the 21st chapter:
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away." And the one who was seated on the throne said, "See, I am making all things new." (vv.1-5a).
One of the major themes resonating throughout the New Testament is that God is about doing new things; that God is about transformation. At the core of traditional Christianity lies this concept of bodily resurrection, which makes a good deal more sense, I think, when it grows out of lives that are lived open to newness and transformation. We watched the film Gandhi last Sunday night. When people fought and engaged in violence against one another, he fasted until the violence ceased. He devoted his life to the idea that human beings could live new lives on this planet, that they could live justly and equitably together. Muslims and Hindus were at odds, and, to echo Paul’s words from Ephesians, Gandhi saw “one new humanity in place of the two.”
On Monday I looked again at this text and sermon title, scratched my head and wondered what had gotten in to me at the time of its choosing. But here I am speaking about something I can only speculate about, at least as far as any correlation between resurrection and physical death. I’m sure we all have our various opinions about immortality. One of the many things I cherish about you, about this community of Hope, is that here we do focus more on the here and now, rather than pie in the sky by and by.
It has been said of some ultra-religious Christians that they can be so heavenly minded that they are no earthly good. I think a lot of people of faith are slowly waking up to the reality that life on this planet matters, that justice matters, that peaceful living matters. I think this trend will continue. I think everything we do that enriches our humanity, and invites congruence within us and among us, is life giving, vitalizing, and resurrecting. My faith is part of that vitalizing process for me. In fact, since I have begun looking at Jesus from a post-critical side of doubt and confusion, I have found new energy to do the work, and new questions to ask along the way – both of myself as an individual, and of us as a community.
More than anyone, I think, Paul spiritualizes this resurrection process. For him it is about the passing away of the old and the emergence of the new. Just as our bodies need to renew themselves through those chromosomal dynamics I mentioned earlier, so we need also to find ways to renew our spirits. I think that is one of the reasons we gather here together, hoping for renewal, for new insight into living. Early followers of Jesus believed this renewal was somehow tied to reflection upon the life of this remarkable human being, Jesus. I think everyone that took three hours plus out of their lives last Sunday night to sit through Gandhi experienced a certain degree of renewal by opening themselves to this remarkable life. Gandhi was Jesus for India in the first half of the 20th century.
For me, the life and teachings of Jesus comprise a kind of telomerase for my inner spirit, the enzyme for renewal and new life; my fountain of youth, to some extent. I don’t have much more to say than that, but I will share with you something new in my life. If you were to ask me, “What’s new?” I would say, “A song.” It’s a song that happened to me Tuesday, (that’s what songs seem to do, lately – sort of happen to me). And as I wrote this sermon I realized that it may have happened for inclusion at the conclusion of this sermon...So here it is. It’s called The Beauty in You.