Pentecost 21 – 2025
Luke 20:27-40
Marian Free
In the name of God, Earth-maker, Pain-bearer, Life-giver. Amen.
There are many who tend to think of the tenets of faith as fixed and unchanging that God is one thing and one alone, yet experience shows us that nothing could be further from the truth. Apart from anything else, God is beyond our comprehension we, and we as mere humans, are always grasping for understanding, we are only ever ‘seeing through a mirror dimly’ (to quote the Apostle Paul). God is both known and unknown and our scriptures, our traditions and our dogmas are simply human attempts to put into words and actions the revelations about God that have been made manifest or experienced since the beginning of time. What this means is that over time changes, subtle and not so subtle, come about as believers form new insights, as scientists broaden our horizons, or as the faith moves into and learns from or adapts to new situations.
We should not be surprised that this is the case, for we are followers of that great disrupter Jesus who challenged cherished traditions, confronted outmoded regulations and who insisted that sinners (even Samaritans) be included in God’s kingdom. We are followers of Jesus, Jesus the change-maker who so offended the religious establishment of his day that they put him to death rather than change their fixed ideas about God and faith.
Christianity itself did not emerge from a monolithic, stable belief system. The Old Testament demonstrates that there were changes over time as the people responded to the prompting of the Holy Spirit – through direct communication, through the prophets and through changes in circumstance.
A clear example of this willingness to accept and adopt new insights is demonstrated by the development of a belief in angels and a belief in the resurrection of the dead. Up until the time of the exile in Babylon, neither of these formed a part of the Jewish faith. Prior to the exile for example, it was believed that a person went to Sheol after death, to “a land of deep gloom and darkness” according to Job (10:21). It was thought that all humanity (good and bad alike) would end up in that dark and joyless place in which, the Psalmist tells us, there is no memory of God (6:5). In Babylon, the exiles were exposed to a belief in life after death, a belief which many embraced and incorporated into their ancient faith. Likewise with angels. Winged creatures had no place in the earliest forms of Judaism. Messengers from God, intermediaries between God and humanity, such as those who visited Abraham took the form of people. It is only after the return from exile that angels find their way into our ancient texts. Decades of living among the Babylonians saw the absorption of Babylonian ideas into the Jewish faith.
Change as we know is not always universally embraced. Some cling on to the old ideas, confident that faith is static and fixed. So the idea of a resurrection of the dead was not universally accepted which explains the debate in this morning’s gospel. In the first century there were many different expressions of Judaism – different attitudes to the purity regulations, to the Temple and to a belief in the resurrection. The Pharisees, lay men who preferenced the law over ritual, believed in the resurrection. Sadducees, priests who preferenced ritual over law did not. Both groups in their different ways tried to catch Jesus on the practice of the law or the interpretation of the scriptures primarily so that they could discredit him before the people and in so doing diminish Jesus’ influence and the threat he posed to their influence over the people.
Today it is the turn of the Sadducees to try to trick Jesus. Referring to the law of Moses, they are confident that they can expose the folly of a belief in the resurrection of the dead. Jesus, however, is not is easily trapped and he in turn reveals the narrowness and foolishness of the thinking of the Sadducees. Resurrection life Jesus points out, is not a replication of our earthly existence but something different altogether.
Though they had different ideas about the resurrection of the dead, the Sadducees, the Pharisees thought that they had God and faith and the law worked out. They knew or thought they knew what God wanted and lived their lives accordingly. Jesus, with his new and different teaching, his willingness to break the law and his refusal to conform unsettled their sense of complacency and security. In the end, they felt that it was only by destroying him that they could find peace.
Over the centuries the church has made the same mistakes as their forbears- setting in stone, things that were never intended to be immutable. Yet, at the same time the church has demonstrated a willingness to re-examine ancient practices and beliefs and to acknowledge that at times we have got it wrong and that at times we have caused more harm than good – the endorsement of slavery being the most obvious example. The world and the church is in a constant state of flux. If we are not to become self satisfied and complacent like the Pharisees and the Sadducees, if we are to avoid the trap of believing that we know all there is to know and if we are ready to acknowledge that we do not have the mind of God, we have to develop a a sense of curios expectancy, remain prayerfully open to the movement of the Holy Spirit and examine new ideas thoughtfully and prayerfully rather than fearfully and timidly.
We have to find the courage to admit, as Paul did that our knowledge can only ever be partial because a God that can be fully known is no god and the opposite of faith is certainty. (God is God of the living not do the dead.)
May we have the courage to listen for the voice of the Holy Spirit, be responsive to the winds of change and humbly acknowledge that God, as God, can never be defined or confined by the limits of our minds.
Tags: change, development, exile, Holy Spirit, resurrection, unknowability of God
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