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The Rev. Laura Matarazzo
Nov. 11, 2007 ---  Twenty-Fourth Sunday after Pentecost

I read a poignant story this week about a woman whose elderly father cam to speak to her about his inevitable death. Gently, he told her that he had decided to be buried beside the beloved wife with whom he had spent the past ten years—his daughter’s stepmother. This, of course, meant that he would not be buried beside her mother, and he wanted to know how she would feel about that. Luckily, they were meeting at a favorite diner, over coffee, and the woman made some reference to the coffee’s quality and to their history of meeting there to give herself time to ponder this unexpected intention. She thought about her mother, who had died too you; she thought about her father and his current wife whose first relationship had been interrupted by the second world war and then, blessedly, renewed when they were both alone in their later years. Finally, she said to her father, “I don’t see a single reason why not. Mom doesn’t mind, not now. And if being buried next to Karen is something that would please you, then that’s what you should do. A generous and loving response, this. –-one that gives us a fleeting glimpse into eternity. 

This morning’s gospel is about eternal life—specifically, that part of eternal life after this one, when we are raised to new and unending life with God.  

It begins with a political foray…the Sadducees intend to discredit this presumptuous itinerant preacher with a question that pits their law against his belief in resurrection. They draw this picture of multiple marriage that complies with Levitical law and challenge Jesus to explain how those marital relationships will look in the hereafter. They unwittingly set him up for a powerful description of resurrection life. 

For Jesus will be bound by neither their earthly concerns nor their legal structures. They have asked about resurrection and he moves directly to the next life. He speaks about the nature of life lived in the immediate presence of God. In that face-to-face place, where one’s relationship with God is unmediated by any human construct, we will be changed. In the resurrection, we are “like angels” Jesus says—that is, pure and clear reflections of God’s love and mercy. In the next age, the structures and relationships that have organized and supported us here on earth are no longer needed. Because there and then, our closeness to God creates fullness of being—for everyone, married and unmarried, young and old, sick and well! Nearness to God effects an unknowable completion of God’s work in us. In the next age, we are healed and made whole and empowered…to be what or to do what we cannot say now. 

Job knows this. Job, who has lost all of his children and his property; Job, whose body is covered with loathsome sores from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head; Job, whose closest friends condemn him…Job, in the face of indescribable suffering, declares, “I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth; and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then in my flesh I shall see God.” He is saying that there is more than the misery he suffers, something other than what he is now…because God is. And because God is, Job will be…not this afflicted, diminished human being, but something else, something new. 

We who have come after Job have the gift of his steadfast faith and the even greater gift of Jesus Christ. We “see” everlasting life in the person of Jesus. From the moment of his birth, when the angel Gabriel names him “Emmanuel,” to the riverside where John the Baptist calls him the “Lamb of God,” to the image of the dove and the voice of God claiming him “Beloved,” we know that there is a reality about this Jesus that is different…a relationship with God that is immeasurably intimate. In Christ, we see and know the potential for everlasting life with God even as he shows us the way to it. 

Jesus embodies love that is eternal…in his being he manifests the love that binds us to one another, heals, feeds, teaches, transforms us; the love that bridges the short span between this life and the next. At every turn, whether he is proclaiming forgiveness or feeding the hungry, Jesus gives us glimpses of the power that promises eternal life. He opens our eyes and hearts to a kingdom where human limits are redeemed by the incomprehensible wholeness of divine presence. And, thus, he gives us a vision and he gives us a hope that can change our earthly lives. This vision of pure love, of endless provision, of real justice and of constant mercy can guide our faithful way in this world.  It is our sure hope of resurrection to new life that will draw our hearts and minds and bodies to action consistent with that vision. This is why Jesus tries to tell us, in so many ways, what the kingdom is like—so that we will live as though it is already here; so that we will participate, actively and lovingly, here and now, in eternal life with God. 

If we look, just briefly, at the chapters prior to this one in Luke, Jesus is calling us to kingdom living. He tells the rich man to give up his obsession with wealth; he gives the blind man who asks for it new vision; he transforms a greedy tax collector into a just and generous brother; he demands that we invest our gifts and talents for a rich return…risking our wealth for the sake of closer relationship with God; and he suggests that we get our priorities straight when he says, “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s.” This world can, indeed, begin to glimmer with the light that blesses the next world because we can love in our small, human ways. 

I believe that this is how the woman in the story I told is able to let go of what we can imagine must have been thoughts and emotion that might have squashed her father’s heartfelt desire. She must have known that her mother was woven into the fabric of a love so great that it really made not difference at all where her father’s body was to be buried. She, herself, must have felt wrapped in a portion of that fabric, or at least brushed by its fringes…that love so great that it transcends our earthly laws, soothes our deepest hurts, grows what is good and just and true in us and, finally, calls us to eternal life with God. 

She must have known that in the end we belong to God and not to each other. It is in God that we live and move and have our being. Eternal life is already here, my friends. We are IN it. Our God is the God of the living…for to him, all of us—here and beyond—are alive…and beloved. Thanks be to God! Amen.

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