CEC News and Father Riley's homily from November 10, 2019

CEC News

… Father Riley will lead us in Holy Eucharist November 17 and we will celebrate Morning Prayer led by Mrs. Jane Barnett November 24.

…Vestry meeting after fellowship November 17.

… It is time for our annual giving campaign.  Pledge letters and cards have been mailed.  If you did not receive a letter and pledge form and wish to donate for 2020, please contact Mrs. Brenda Funderburg at bfun@me.com   All donations help us continue our mission in Tensas Parish and are greatly appreciated. Thank You.

… The Rt. Rev. Bishop Jacob “Jake” W.  Owensby will visit us on Sunday, December 8^th to celebrate with us.  A pot-luck luncheon is planned for all to attend.  More news later.



Father Riley’s homily:
22 PENTECOST, PROPER XXVII - C - 19                 LUKE 20. 27-38

The twentieth chapter of Luke contains several attempts on the part of the chief priests and scribes to trap Jesus into saying something they can use against him. First, they questioned his authority to do and say the things he did. Failing in that, they turned their efforts to the issue of paying taxes. Again, Jesus thwarted their attempt to trap him.

In today’s passage, the priests and scribes step back and let the Sadducees take a shot at him through a theological debate over the question of resurrection. Who were the Sadducees?

They were the Jewish elite, the sacerdotal aristocracy from whom the High Priest was chosen. They were educated in Greek and Hebrew. Theologically their special tenant was the denial of the resurrection; neither did they believe in angels.

However, the mass of Jews in Jesus’ day believed in immortality and it was an integral element in their religion. Against the gloom of the present, they had learned to set their hopes on a future age where God would one day set things right by vindicating his elect.

The Sadducees, however, were content with what the present life had to give. They saw no need to budge from the conservative adherence to the older Jewish view that God’s judgments were accomplished in this world alone. Jesus and his kingdom ideas and about the true nature of God was a threat to the status quo. Naturally they had to challenge him in hopes of both discrediting him and his views in the eyes of the people.

The debate on the resurrection in today’s passage, and its equalivants in Matthew and Mark, is the only discussion of this vital topic anywhere in the gospels. In this passage, Christ confirms that there will be a resurrection but not the sort the Sadducees are imagining. In that, Jesus is taking sides with the Pharisees, their theological opponents, who also believed in angels.

The Sadducees consider the resurrection to be a continuation of earthly life including marriage, and thus mock such doctrine with an absurd scenario. Jesus’ response to their test reflected their lack of knowledge of the scriptures, which revealed a complete transfiguration of life in the resurrection, making such an earthly question irrelevant.

In doing so, Jesus makes two points. First, resurrection life will not be exactly the same as the present one. Death will have been abolished. Continuation of a particular family line, therefore, will be irrelevant. Those who are raised will be “equal to angels,” not becoming angels as is sometimes suggested, and to the disappointment of some, but in the sense they will live in a deathless, immortal state.

Jesus is not here suggesting that the resurrection will not be bodily; merely that the bodies of the raised will be, in significant ways, quite unlike our present ones. Second, Jesus proposes that the book of Exodus, one of those that the Sadducees acknowledge as authoritative, does indeed teach the resurrection when it describes God as the God of the living and not of the dead.

The resurrection of Jesus, of course, gave a huge boost to his follower’s belief of both about Jesus himself and about their own future life. Easter proved the Sadducees wrong.

As often is the case, even in our own times, an apparently academic issue is used as a façade for a political agenda. Today we have divisions among us of liberals and conservatives, in not only the realm of politics, but also religion, and our attempt to nail our opponents is frequently every bit as transparent as that used by the Sadducees in their attempt to embarrass Jesus.

The Sadducees had no real interest in what Jesus would say about the state of their hypothetical woman in life after death: they expected to expose what they took to be the absurdity of belief in resurrection. Jesus, however, had another agenda for them, and the church in selecting this text for our reflection directs out attention to a major article of faith.

As followers of Christ, we profess belief in the resurrection. The faith that we profess draws its confidence from the fact that God has raised Jesus from the dead. If Christ were not raised from the dead, as St. Paul says in another place, our faith is in vain. However, God did raise Jesus, and Christ has promised that we too shall share eternal life, a life described for us also as resurrection.

Sadly, there are Sadducees within the Body of Christ, even today, some of whom I have personally encountered over the years. One in particular always comes to mind. She was a long time member of the church serving on the altar guild and as a lay reader.

One Easter Sunday as I stood at the back of the church offering Easter greetings to those who were exiting the church, she took my hand, looked me in the eye, and said you don’t really believe that do you? Referring to my homily on the Resurrection of Jesus.

At first I was without comment, then, I could see that she was serious. Of course I do, I said, don’t you? No, she said emphatically. I never have. Then how can you stand and repeat the words of the Creed, I asked. I just skip over that part and never cross myself at the end. There is no consolation in that I responded and with that said, the exchange ended.

St. Paul in his letter to the Thessalonians speaks of the eternal consolation that the Father has given us out of mercy, and Jesus in his response to the Sadducees in today’s gospel has named that consolation. God is not the God of the dead but of the living. All are alive in God.

Job knew that and believed that centuries before Christ, or the Sadducees for that matter, and was able to endure his present sufferings with the hope that one day he would be vindicated before God as he boldly proclaims in today’s first lesson from one of the oldest books in the Bible I might add.

 “I know that my redeemer liveth, and at the last day he shall stand upon the earth, and though this body be destroyed, yet shall I see God; whom I shall see for myself and mine eyes shall behold, and not as a stranger.”

Job’s words continue to bring consolation and hope to those who suffer from grief and sorrow at the loss of a loved one as they are traditionally used at the beginning of the burial office of the Church and set the tone for that which follows - an Easter liturgy.

So, having been fed by God’s Word, we will in a moment stand and profess our faith in the words of the ancient Creed that culminates in our belief in the resurrection and the life of the world to come. Those who choose to cross themselves at the end of that profession do so as an outward sign of  affirmation.

Likewise, our celebration of the Holy Eucharist which follows our profession of faith witnesses to Christ’s promise in a most tangible and holy way, as we partake of the sacrament of Christ’s Body and Blood and fed on Him in our hearts by faith with thanksgiving, an outward an visible sign of the pledge and hope of our calling. AMEN+

(Readings:  Job 19:23-27a; Psalm 17:1-9; 2Thessalonians 2:1-5,13-17; Luke 20:27-38)