Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on All Saints’ Sunday. Based on Luke 20:27-38.
To modern ears, this whole notion of a widow marrying her dead husband’s brother is just weird, or perhaps repulsive. Let’s spend a little bit of time trying to understand what’s going on. In that time and place, women were most certainly second-class citizens. There were some who had wealth, but by and large, women didn’t own property. They were essentially dependent on the men in their lives: first their fathers, then their husbands, then their sons. I can’t say that marriage had nothing to do with love, but certainly, marriage was centered on practical necessities. Men would get together and make appropriate arrangements for women.
Meanwhile, inheritance laws favored sons as well. When a man died, his sons would inherit his property and would continue the family line. If a man died without a son, and certainly if he died without any children, then who would inherit?
To address the issues of care for women and continuation of the family, levirate marriage was introduced. That’s what the Sadducees were talking about. If a man died without a son, then his widow would marry his brother. Any son who issued from that marriage would be considered the son of the deceased man. He would be expected to take care of his mother and to inherit the deceased man’s property.
This is kind of strange, right? I mean, not only is it strange to modern ears, but also, it’s a tortuous way to deal with the fact that women were powerless. Wouldn’t it be better if women could just fend for themselves? That way, they wouldn’t need a man to take care of their needs. If they were widowed, they could inherit their husband’s property and go on living.
That’s how Jesus describes the resurrection. He says, essentially, Look, you people are going to all these lengths to deal with a problem that has a fairly simple solution. Instead of levirate marriage, or indeed any marriage, being needed to care for disempowered women, all people will be supported by God.
The four Gospels have recurring discussions of the kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven. Let’s assume for today that those are synonyms and look specifically at what the author of today’s text had to say about God’s kingdom. First and foremost, the kingdom of God is good news! In particular, it is good news for the poor, who shall inherit the kingdom. Entering the kingdom of God requires single-minded perseverance and is costly, but at the same time, it’s the outgrowth of something small like a mustard seed. It requires childlike faith, and wealth can be a barrier to entering it. It is here now, in our midst, but is also yet to come. It’s an already-but-not-yet transformation of Creation.
Complicated, right? Taken together, these disparate perspectives are teaching us that the kingdom of God is just different from what we know. It’s a different form of existence that can only be explained in paradox. Let me read to you from Luke 13, verses 29-30. “Then people will come from east and west, from north and south, and take their places at the banquet in the kingdom of God. Indeed, some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last.” Jesus taught that people will come from all over the world to God’s banquet table, while social hierarchies would be overturned.
There is a recurring theme in the Old Testament that the Israelites were special. They were specially chosen by God to be a priestly people. They failed in their task and were exiled, but then God relented and re-established them. So there was a presumption that they would be first in God’s kingdom. Yet Jesus taught that the “last shall be first and the first shall be last.” He was trying to get them to understand that God’s ways are not like our ways. You cannot earn your way into heaven by following some rules, like the Jewish power structure at the time was teaching. Instead, God chooses who will eat at his table, and chooses people from north and south and east and west.
Let me give you an analogy. You’re all familiar with the ACT and SAT, right? The ACT is scored on a 36-point scale. The higher your score, the more likely you are to get into a good college, though there are other factors involved as well. Supposing you get into college, you need to work hard and learn, so that you can be successful after college, and continue to learn and work all through your life.
Well, suppose instead that your ACT score determined your whole life. Not just in some metaphorical sense, but literally. Suppose that if you earn a 30 or above, you are given a mansion and a credit card that you never need to pay off, but if you score below a 30, you are thrown out into the streets, penniless and naked. There is no second chance, no change to your circumstances after the test is over.
Doesn’t that sound ridiculous? Now, some among us would be OK with that plan because we would be “in.” But I personally couldn’t live with the thought that 93% of the population would be irredeemably doomed to a life of squalor. I don’t think anyone who proposed such a plan would ever be elected to the school board or city council, let alone emperor of the world.
And yet, that’s something like what a lot of churches preach. They say, be careful what you do in this world, or else you’ll be doomed to eternal torture in the fires of hell. Or maybe, they say you have to pray a certain prayer, which would be more like getting one specific question on the ACT correct. Can you imagine a world in which one question, asked and answered while you’re a teenager, determines your whole life trajectory, with no hope of change?
Now imagine that instead of living to be 60 or 80 or even 100 years old, we all live to be 1000 years old. How much more ridiculous does this become? Make one mistake as a teenager and suffer for 1000 years?
Well, if you believe in forever, then this life is just a blink of an eye. I cannot believe in a God who would decide eternal glory or eternal damnation on the basis of what we do in a few short years. I think people who preach that just can’t imagine eternity. If we are raised to eternal life, then even 1000 years is as a day.
So, why are we here? If the purpose of this life isn’t to decide whether we go to heaven or hell, then why bother with it at all? Well, I compare it to school. We have a few short years to learn as much as we can. We learn how to treat each other and how we want to be treated. We learn to appreciate the pleasures and pains of these clay jars that contain our eternal treasure. We have great loves and great heartbreaks. We carry all of those lessons into our next life.
As an aside, you may wonder why I go elk hunting every year. No, it’s not about the meat. The camaraderie is part of it, but just a small part. To really enjoy elk hunting, you have to have a real passion for suffering and misery. You spend a week or more being cold, wet, and tired, and push yourself to your absolute limits. Then, you know where those limits are.
It’s like a competitor I saw on American Ninja Warrior once, Jessie Graff. She got to the last obstacle, which was the Elevator Climb, where she had to climb up 35 feet using only her arms with two ropes that worked like an invisible ladder. She failed, but she was smiling the whole time. Afterwards, she said that she was pushing herself to her absolute limit and loved that feeling of using everything she had.
That’s why we’re here. We learn from those great loves and great heartbreaks, those pleasures and pains in our lives, and use them to transform the world to match God’s vision. Like schoolchildren, we cannot really achieve God’s vision, but we can push ourselves to the limit and see what is possible in this world.
Do you remember the song, “Rock and Roll Heaven,” by the Righteous Brothers? “If you believe in forever, then life is just a one-night stand. If there’s a rock and roll heaven, well, you know they have a hell of a band.” They sang about all of the great musicians who have entered God’s kingdom ahead of us. How amazing it will be! Someday, the Beatles will be reunited. Someday, we’ll hear all of the amazing things Jimi Hendrix has learned to do with a guitar. And not only that, someday, we’ll hear Mozart and Beethoven and Rachmaninoff performing their works. We’ll know how the psalms were meant to be sung. And that’s just scratching the surface.
Now, do I think all of those people prayed the sinner’s prayer and passed the test? No. Well, I don’t really know, but I certainly doubt Mozart and Beethoven did, since that wasn’t the prevailing theology at the time. Would it be heaven without them? Would it be heaven without my Uncle Dick, and Grandma Lois, and Grampa Pete—who I didn’t even meet, but I’ve heard so much about? I don’t think so. Heaven is a place of eternal joy; how can it be joyful without the people we love?
That’s why I believe we are all saints bound for heaven. Some people may take a little longer to get there. Some people may need to keep on learning after they die. But hey, eternity is a long time, right?
But let’s try not to be people who need to spend 1000 years in remedial education. Let’s focus on learning all that we can about living with each other, about sharing God’s love, about loving God with all our heart and mind and strength, about loving our neighbor as ourselves, in this life. Then one day, we’ll know how we did, and where we still fall short, but our savior, Jesus Christ, will keep teaching us, keep showing us his way of love, while we dine at table in his eternal kingdom. Amen.
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