"...IN MY FLESH I SHALL SEE GOD"

 Sermon preached by the Rev. Michael Anderson Bullock

[Job 19:23-27a; 2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17; Luke 20:27-38]

In my first parish experience as a priest, I remember the priest I worked for telling me about an interesting pastoral experience he had.  That experience came to mind as I thought about the question portrayed in today’s gospel: the one the Sadducees asked Jesus about the woman who had married (in succession) seven brothers, all of whom died.  The issue presented was: in the “resurrection”, whose wife would she be?  (Feminists arise! Why isn’t the question: What husband would she have?)

The pastoral story that my boss told me was about a man who made an appointment with him to deal with two items.  First, he wanted to get married; and second, he wanted to introduce his soon-to-be-wife to the priest.  The man was in his fifties, not a young groom to be sure, but he had, nonetheless, waited this long to marry and understandably was eager to move forward.

So it was that the man and his fiancée came to the meeting.  Introductions were made, followed by the exchange of stories about how they met and some discussion of their motivation for marrying.  To the question why the man wanted to get married, he responded with an astonishing bluntness.  “I’m not made to fly solo”, he said matter-of-factly.  My impression is that the rest of that initial meeting led to several more chats to prepare for the nuptials.  And my boss did officiate at the wedding of these two.

But soon thereafter, tragedy struck the couple.  Within a relatively short period of time, the woman died.  More to the point, within a few months of the funeral and the burial of his wife, the now widowed man once again made an appointment with the rector.  As with the first contact, the purpose of this second interchange was to introduce the priest to his future wife and to make the necessary plans for the wedding.

Gently noting that this decision to remarry came delicately soon after the death of the first wife, the priest asked about the timing of the man’s decision.  The man’s answer, true to form, was direct and astonishingly blunt.  “You know that I told you the first time, I am not made to fly solo.”  At this, and with woman’s clear approval, the three moved forward to prepare for the wedding.  After the required conversations and preparations were accomplished, my boss officiated at the man’s second marriage.

Yet, unbelievably, tragedy struck again.  The second wife also died; and after a few months of time --- you guessed it! -- the man made another appointment with the rector to introduce the third woman he was intent on marrying and to seek the priest’s help in making the necessary arrangements for their ceremony.

Stunned by these calamitous deaths and the man’s apparent lack of grief – or was it resilience, the priest and the new, “3-point-O” couple met.  With a gentle pastoral tone that had to be painful to regulate, my boss pursued how the man was dealing with the loss of his two wives and also attempting to address the short amount of time between their deaths and the man’s decision to remarry!  Without pretense, the man simply reiterated his consistent reasoning: “I am not made to fly solo.”  At this memorable refrain, my boss leaned forward in his chair, almost bending at the waist toward the woman and innocently asked her: “How are you feeling?”

As I say, this unusual pastoral incident came to mind when I read today’s gospel lesson and was reminded of the woman in Jesus’ gospel story: the one whose sequential nuptials evidently fatally overwhelmed the seven brothers as husbands.  (Gotta admire her!). In the case of the Sadducees trying to blind-side Jesus with their question about whose wife she would be in the resurrection-life, I think we are left with one of those marvelous occasions in which Jesus parries his inquisitors’ thrust and skewers them with their own malevolent sword.

As Jesus indicates, the issue about life in the context of resurrection is not to what extent resurrected life is simply an extension of the life we know – that is, life on our terms, only perfectly recast.  No, what the Sadducees don’t get is that resurrection is not just a “second chance” at life but rather resurrected life is a fully transformed existence – that is, it is what life is like on God’s terms.

This is not only the point of my sermon; but I also want to take this opportunity to speak with you about resurrection life, especially how resurrection life applies when those we love die.  The time when most of us wonder about resurrection life is at the time of death of a loved one or at a funeral.  And as I personally and painfully have learned, moments of death and funerals are not good teaching times.  So, a few thoughts now in advance about what is packed into the question: In the resurrection, whose wife will the woman be – or for that matter, in “heaven” which of the seven brothers is strong enough to be her husband?

First, some important contextual information, lest we succumb to being fruitlessly entangled in the weeds with which the Sadducees’ question is so tightly wrapped.

For instance, that the Sadducees asked about “resurrection” was an immediate and telling tipping of their hand – something Jesus was quick to suss-out.  You see, ancient Israel contained three defining theological, social, and political parties: The Pharisees; the Sadducees; and the Essenes.

We spoke about the Pharisees last week.  They were the party that initially struck a reformer’s perspective in the practice of Judaism.  Having been conquered multiple times by a succession of pagan rulers, Judaism had become dangerously watered down by the consequential series of secular oppressors.  In their reforming mode, the Pharisees called Israel back to the basics of the Law and the Prophets, which included a belief in resurrection.

On the other hand, the Sadducees, represented the kind of Judaism that the Pharisees initially were attempting to reform.  The Sadducees were always small in number, but they were a wealthy, aristocratic group that rejected the Oral Torah tradition and the belief in resurrection.

Now to close ancient Israel’s loop, the third group – the Essenes -- were those individuals who, having essentially said both to the Pharisees and the Sadducees, “a pox on both your houses” – they retreated into the desert to live away from such unedifying toxicities.

Now back to today’s gospel lesson.  In what is the only mentioning of the Sadducees in Luke’s entire gospel, today’s reading portrays a confrontation between Jesus and the aristocratic Sadducee caste, in which the Sadducees seek to discredit Jesus and his orthodox, Judaic belief in resurrection.  Hence, the Sadducees’ ridiculous “gotcha” question about whose wife the woman will be in “heaven”.

What I’d like you to take away from this sermon is that as followers of Jesus, I am afraid that too many of us don’t have a clear, biblically-grounded and informed notion of resurrection. Too many of us seem to be content to limit our sense of resurrection to being a matter of “life after death” or “going to heaven when we die”.  Or, like the Sadducees, many moderns don’t entertain the reality of a life that is stronger than death or simply don’t want to think about it.

In any event, it seems to me that we (like those ancient Israelites that the Pharisees originally sought to reform) are in danger of making the central tenet of the Christian faith (that is, Christ’s victory over the grave) nothing more than a church “buzz-word” – a term we, consequently, slide through as we recite the Creeds of the Faith or a word we expect to encounter in the “Great Fifty Days” with our Easter baskets in hand.

In some small, faithful way, I’d like to help change this.  And the way I want to approach this is by focusing on the last line in our gospel lesson, the one with which Jesus concludes his teaching on resurrection.  Here it is again: “Now [the Holy One] is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to [God] all of [the dead] are alive.”[1]

To the question of whose wife the poor, seven-time-married-to-a-brother-woman will be in the resurrected life, this question: What is it about the church’s understanding of marriage as a sacrament -- or at the least, being sacramental – what is it that might help us see what operates in human marriage that reflects the perfection of life on God’s terms – or if you will, in “heaven”?

The real question at hand is this: What in human life is meant to reflect (albeit, imperfectly) the eternal communion life that is God’s life?

One helpful response is this.  Resurrected life is not just a “second chance” at having life, a kind of post-mortem “do-over”.  Rather, resurrected life (the life we see in the risen Jesus) is a life that is a completely transformed existence.[2]  Point blank, in the God-life, there is no need of “marriage” as we have come to know it because (as Jesus says) “All who have died are alive to God.”  All who have died have the God-life as the matrix of reality.  This is to say that the God-life has no past.  There is no future in God’s “time”.  All relationships are present tense.  God’s included.

Given this, if we are not prepared for such a transforming Presence, we will recoil either from fear or horror to the very Communion, to the very Presence we need.  That inability or unwillingness to be present to God and to the company of “heaven” is, in my belief, the Hell of it!  But … but if we remain open to the reality of eternal love and life, if we can realize and continue to learn how to receive the eternal presence of God, then what we refer to as “heaven” is actually the fullness of a “Holy Communion”.

In our Prayer Book marriage rite, we pray that the couple will be made one.  In Jesus’ “High Priestly” prayer, the Lord prays that we all maybe one.  This is the issue—now and for ever.

If nothing else gains traction with you about this, here is the mantra: Death separates.  Resurrection overcomes the separation and reunites.

In this regard, I love the old prayer we offer at the burial of a loved one.  Grant that, increasing in knowledge and love of thee, [he or she] may go from strength to strength in the life of perfect service [and freedom] in thy heavenly kingdom. Amen.[3]

To whatever extent we are quite literally prepared to “meet our Maker” – ultimately, face-to-face – and to receive the life that fear and death cannot touch, we will grow, and we will embrace the capital “P” Presence of God, at which point in God’s time we will then have the inheritance of the saints – which from the beginning is what we have eternally needed and called to.

Yes, we all do have “miles and miles to go before we sleep”, but God-in-Christ has called us to “awaken to” (this is what the word “resurrection” means) – “awaken to” the reality of life beyond what we make of it: that is, the life that God provides to us in Jesus.

So, in a very real (albeit, incomplete) sense, “heaven” is now!  Don’t wait to die before tasting it.  Don’t miss the sound of it or the feel of it -- now.  There is more to come.  Therefore, together, we do go “from strength to strength” in the God-life we know in Christ.  Amen.

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[1] Luke 20:38.

[2] Andrew McGowan. “’All Live in Him” – Jesus, Moses, and the Resurrection’”. 11/04/25

[3] Book of Common Prayer. Burial I, p. 481.