Well, we are coming into the ‘season of questions’: questions around the Thanksgiving table, questions around the Christmas dinner table. Many times those questions are lovingly asked, as family and friends re-unite and catch-up and check in: “Well, can you tell us about life in the big city? How are classes going? What new projects are you working on?”
You know when you get asked a genuine question, how the asker truly wants to learn and hear more because they care about you and are genuinely interested in you, and what you have to say. Open-heated questions.
And then there are other questions...questions that are not bolstered with a backdrop of support or any clear intention of loving curiosity and concern or excitement. These are mean-hearted questions.
Have you ever been asked a mean-hearted question? — Questions that are meant to “catch” you or point out some shortcoming? Questions that are really just meant to embarrass you, even as they might be skillfully worded to make the asker look totally innocent, even well-intentioned? Sometimes ridiculous scenarios are created just to see how you’ll react or respond. Again, questions that are just trying to make you look bad. I’m afraid these kinds of questions can show up during the holidays too, during this season of questions, and throughout the year as well.
They could even be the exact same examples I just gave...but the tone is so different. “So tell us about life in the big city.” (clear disdain for a location or choice you made to move away) “How are classes going?” (knowing full well that you’re not in school at the moment, unlike other siblings) “What new projects are you working on?” (hinting at some past failures or a pattern of jumping from thing to think without finishing)
Some questions, friends in Christ, are just cruel.
Ahhh, pay attention to questions these days, and in this quickly-approaching holiday season. (And pray for God always to be on your/our lips and in your/our heart, as you/we both ask questions and respond in the coming days.)
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Jesus, once again, is experiencing the latter forms of questions here in our text — the kinds meant to embarrass and “catch”. And certainly a ridiculous scenario (even to ancient ears). You can almost hear the cruelty to the Sadducees’ tone.
But Christ, once again, uses their mean-heartedness to teach us a lesson about God and offer a vision of justice and peace. Often the asker of the cruel question has no desire to learn, and I wonder if the Sadducees never learned from Jesus’ response. But we we get to. Two thousand years later! We get to look with fresh eyes and consider Christ’s response.
“Whose wife will the woman be?” they asked.
And Jesus responds with a vision of heaven: In God, that is, in heaven, a woman will not be passed down like an object, from brother to brother. In God, everyone is valued fully — the text says, they “will become like angels”. In God, no one is cast aside or passed along crudely. In God, mean-heartedness and cruelty is no more. Tears and pain are no more. In God, dying is no more. Jesus gives us a glimpse of heaven. Can you imagine? I hope that you can! And that these strange ideas in this text today might even give us direction and instruction for how we live now. What would it look like to lift others up like angels?! (And let our selves be seen too...as angels?!) That’s the image in Luke here! Do you see yourself as an angel?
Are we capable of seeing and treating each other as angels?
Each person that walks into this church this next week, can we welcome them as angels? What if you envision each person who comes into your business or classroom, or sits at the cafe table next to you or waits at the stoplight across from you...as an angel?! Not just someone to be passed by, passed down, passed over, like the widow in the Sadducees scenario. But angels.
(Maybe their example is not that ridiculous, after all, when we think about how carelessly we can overlook one another because we’re always in such a hurry, or suspicious, or actually somewhere deep down believe we’re better than someone else, that they’re not worthy of angelic dignity...)
This text is a wake-up call, friends in Christ. To see our neighbors, to see strangers in our midst, to see family members and community partners … not just as fellow human beings … but as angels! Talk about resurrection! Christ lives (“I know that my redeemer lives”) and so do we...and not just as mere humans but, in Christ, we live as angels, like angels, for one another and for this hurting planet!
Friends, we can glimpse, we can live into a bit-o-heaven even here and even now, even in these mean-hearted days! Our God is a God of life and is calling us to open our eyes and our hearts even now. This new life is ours, and it’s not just for after we leave this earth!
Our God is a God of the living, a God of “the now”. And this God has come near to be with us...in wine and water and wheat and wherever God wants to show up! This community, this congregational meeting today, this neighborhood, this city, even about this Capitol Beltway!
This God of the living has chosen to come along side us, and so we start living anew today — Open-hearted. Interested and caring. Noticing others, slowing down to appreciate the angels all around us! This is our call.
This is grace again, showered down on you and on me. Thanks be to God. Christ will come...and Christ is here now. AMEN.
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