In This World

Luke 20:27-38      Some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came to him and asked him a question, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies, leaving a wife but no children, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother. Now there were seven brothers; the first married, and died childless; then the second and the third married her, and so in the same way all seven died childless. Finally the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her.” Jesus said to them, “Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. Indeed they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection. And the fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed, in the story about the bush, where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.”

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I was somewhat more distracted than usual last week when it came to sermon writing time, because … the Cubs won the World Series!  Everybody who grew up on the north side of Chicago, including the suburbs, have been waiting their whole lives for this.  We are all beside ourselves and we don’t know what to do.  I have seen pictures of relatives posing in front of the Wrigley Field sign that now says “World Series Champions,” as if they are afraid it will disappear, and the want the proof that it really happened.

We all have stories of loved ones who watched year after year, always hopeful; stories of those who died never seeing their beloved Cubs go all the way.  I have heard stories about Cubs fans who went to the cemetery bringing Cubs mementoes to adorn the graves of family members, grieving that those loved ones would not see this series.  Even one story about a guy who traveled 700 miles to be at his father’s grave with a radio so they could listen to the game together.  So many tears have been shed along with the rejoicing; very moving stories.

There was also one funny story that popped up on my newsfeed Wednesday night, right after the game ended.  The headline said, “Millions of drunk Cubs fans rioting across heaven.”  One celebrant was quoted as saying, “I’ve waited my entire afterlife for this!”  Is there baseball in heaven?  I don’t know, but there must be a lot of baseball fans in heaven.

At the roundtable we had quite a bit of discussion about heaven – what there is and what there isn’t in heaven.  Not that any of us knows.  But it became clear we have some very strong opinions, some very fervent hopes.  It started with the problem those Sadducees presented to Jesus. 

It’s like a weird word problem.  A far-fetched scenario in which a long succession of brothers dies one after another, trying to fulfill his responsibility to produce an heir for his dead brother.  If a woman ends up marrying all these brothers, one after the other, in an effort to produce children, which one of these will be her husband in heaven?  Good question?  No – it’s a silly question, and it’s also an offensive question.  The Sadducees are mocking him, because they don’t even believe in life after death.

They don’t have any investment in the matter.  They just want to humiliate him.

But as we talked about this at the roundtable, it was clear that we do have an investment in the matter.  It evoked some strong feelings about our relationships to our loved ones in the life after death.  Will we be reunited with those we love?  Will we watch baseball games together?  These  seem crucial question, deserving of some attention.

In truth, we don’t have any reason to doubt we will see our loved ones after death.  The love we know on earth is but a pale reflection of the love we will know in heaven.  It is fine to envision a glorious reunion in the hereafter, where love knows no bounds.  So, yes, we will see our loved ones in heaven.  It just isn’t the point of this story.  This story is going somewhere else.

First, we should recognize that Jesus knows what the Sadducees are up to.  He knows their thoughts on the afterlife, and he knows that they are, at this moment, part of a conspiracy to catch him in some grave error.  The chief priests, the scribes, the elders, and now the Sadducees –  have been throwing everything they’ve got at him all day long.  But at every step of the way they fail because they don’t understand him.  Instead of stumbling, at every step of the way, he shines more light on his message. 

Now when the Sadducees throw this curve ball at him, he doesn’t flinch.  He uses it to make one simple truth clear: the next world is not the same as this world.

Life after death is not just more of the same – not even just more of the good stuff.  If you think of the reign of God as a mere continuation of all the things we like about life on earth, you are missing his point.  The reign of God is radically different.  Because Jesus is radically different.  And Jesus is the foretaste of the kingdom to come.  So in a very important way he brought life after death to us 2000 years ago and we still have it.

Jesus is the resurrection.  In his life, death, and resurrection he brings the life of the world to come into the here and now.  And what’s more, he bids us to live it – here and now.

Richard Rohr, a Franciscan monk, says the mystery of Christ is revealed whenever we are able to see the spiritual and the material co-existing in a moment, an event, a person.  Resurrection is happening by the transformative power of God whenever we see the spiritual and the material co-existing.

This is all very abstract and we need a way to bring it down to earth, so to speak.  Maybe it’s just because I have baseball on my mind, but the best illustration of this I can imagine is Field of Dreams.

In this film, there is an Iowa farmer, Ray Kinsella, who does the craziest thing anyone can imagine.  He plows under his corn and converts the land into a baseball field.  Everyone thinks he has lost his marbles.  He is just heeding the voice he hears, perhaps the voice of the Spirit.  He creates this beautiful playing field, surrounded by tall corn.  Lo and behold, it becomes the place where the spiritual and the material meet.  One by one, long dead ballplayers come out to play on the field of dreams.  This is what makes me suspect that there really isn’t baseball in heaven, because these guys have been waiting for decades to get in a game. 

It’s a beautiful thing, but of course it wasn’t without trouble – even crisis.

Richard Rohr says that the movement toward transformation, toward love, always exacts a price.  The world fights transformation every step of the way. In our faithful efforts to move forward, we are shaped by the cross.  Before renewal there is inevitable loss; before being filled by the Spirit one needs to be emptied of all else; and before transformation there must be surrender – surrender of what was to make a way for what will be.

Ray loses a lot for the sake of the dream, the transformation.  He loses money, he loses his reputation, and he almost loses his farm, baseball field and all.  But you know the most interesting thing?  The field he has transformed has the power to transform others.  When they can see it the way Ray sees it, they become transformed by it.  The glimpse of the kingdom has that power.

Well, a baseball field is not a church – although another baseball film, Bull Durham, comes to mind.  Remember Annie Savoy, a worshiper at the Church of Baseball?  But seriously, what might the transformation of a church look like? 

I know of a Presbyterian church that essentially converted their building into a child care facility.  It is still a church – they still actively worship and do all the things they wish to do as a congregation – but they have converted the bulk of the space to a different use.  And it is being used like it hasn’t been for a very long time.

It happened because they allowed themselves to contemplate these two questions: What is the pressing need of our community?  And how is God calling us to respond to this need? 

And so they began the work of remodeling, getting things up to code, and connecting with people in the community who would be their partners.  Every weekday the church is full of young children – the congregation and the pastor minister to these children and their families.  During school vacations, they make additional room for older siblings who need supervision while parents work. 

There were plenty of critics when they decided to do this – and actually, there still are.  But the leadership of this congregation believed they were being guided by the Spirit.  They had faith to follow the Spirit and make this transformation.  You see, it really is happening now.  Transformation. 

Here and now, nearly 500 years after the Great Reformation when Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses on the Wittenberg Church door, God is calling us to be transformed.

It is happening around us.  Whenever and wherever people are seeking to see him more clearly, love him more dearly, follow him more nearly, transformation is happening by the power of God.

I wonder what our transformation will look like?

What If Jesus Didn’t Stop?

We all know the story of Zacchaeus, don’t we?  Most of us learned it well as children.  We may remember illustrations from children’s versions of the story.  Here’s how I always remember it:  Jesus is walking through the town where Zacchaeus lives and there are great crowds of people lining up along the road to see him.  Zacchaeus, a short little man, wants to see Jesus too so he climbs up in the sycamore tree to get a better view.  As Jesus is passing by he stops, looks straight at Zacchaeus, and says, “Zacchaeus, you come down, for I’m going to your house today!” 

So Zacchaeus scampers down and leads Jesus to his home.  During their time there, Jesus teaches him, and Zacchaeus is converted.  Before Jesus leaves, Zacchaeus promises that from now on he will give half his possessions to the poor and make amends to anyone whom he has cheated.  Jesus essentially says, “Good man, Zacchaeus,” and off he goes.

So, my recollection is not entirely accurate.  Here is the Common English Bible translation.

Luke 19:1-10      Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through town.  A man there named Zacchaeus, a ruler among tax collectors, was rich.  He was trying to see who Jesus was, but, being a short man, he couldn’t because of the crowd.  So he ran ahead and climbed up a sycamore tree so he could see Jesus, who was about to pass that way.  When Jesus came to that spot, he looked up and said, “Zacchaeus, come down at once. I must stay in your home today.” So Zacchaeus came down at once, happy to welcome Jesus.

Everyone who saw this grumbled, saying, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.”

Zacchaeus stopped and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord, I give half of my possessions to the poor. And if I have cheated anyone, I repay them four times as much.”

Jesus said to him, “Today, salvation has come to this household because he too is a son of Abraham.  The Human One came to seek and save the lost.”

When the sermon roundtable meets each Monday afternoon, each one has already read some translation of the texts for the day.  While we are together, we look at the NRSV and the CEB.  One of our members brings a copy of the RSV.  Some read their personal copies of the NIV, or other translations.  Every now and then we find a discrepancy between the translations that is worth talking about. 

This past week we noticed one.  It’s a matter of verb tense.  If you were reading along with one of our row Bibles, you may have noticed that the NIV has Zacchaeus telling Jesus that he intends to immediately change his ways.  He will begin giving half his possessions to the poor and repay any whom he has defrauded.  The NRSV agrees with this interpretation, but some other translations do not agree.  For example, in the version I read just now, we hear Zacchaeus saying that this is something he does already.  The older RSV says the same.  One thing, and only one thing, seems clear at this point: the original Greek text leaves this open to interpretation, and thereby leaves the story open to interpretation. 

For us at the roundtable, it opened up a discussion about judging people based on certain external factors.  Zacchaeus was a member of a hated class – a tax collector – and that was enough, for many people, to judge him without knowing anything about his life or his heart.  Well, we do that too, don’t we?  Sometime we figure it just saves time.  Why spend time getting to know someone you already know you’re not going to like (said with tongue firmly in cheek)?

But perhaps Zacchaeus, this outcast of Jewish society, was actually doing his best to live a life of obedience to God.  It reminds me of the parable we looked at last week, about the Pharisee and the tax collector.  In the parable, the Pharisee did this very same thing: he made harsh judgments about the tax collector based on nothing other than the fact that he was a tax collector.  We know what Jesus thought about that, because he told us – chapter 18, verse 14.

And here in the very next chapter we have a real life example of the same thing.  The crowds around Jesus in Jericho are quick to label Zacchaeus and dismiss him as unworthy.  They judge Jesus, for the sin of associating with him.  And so these two stories, the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector and the story of Zacchaeus, raise a question for us: will we condemn others because they fall into certain stereotypes, or will we keep our hearts and minds open?  Who among us will look at the stranger with hearts open to learn about him and who he is, his hopes and dreams and fears?  Who among us will be ready to love him as he is?

In the words of country western songwriter Lyle Lovett -

God does

But I don't

God will

But I won't

And that’s the difference between God and me.

Is there a chance that we watch Jesus in action and think, “Go Jesus!  That’s just the way God would want you to do it.”  Never once considering that God wants the same from you and me?

We don’t really know what kind of man Zacchaeus was before he met Jesus.  He may or may not have been trying to live righteously – we will probably never know because the jury is out on the finer points of this text.  But the important question has less to do with how Zacchaeus acted than with how Jesus acted.  The question I really want to ask is this: what if Jesus had never stopped that day?  What if Jesus had walked on by Zacchaeus and never met him?  What if nothing changed in the life of Zacchaeus?  That is, indeed, a tragic thing.  But let’s take it further.  Let’s bring it home.

What if Jesus lived in Huber Heights and never stopped to notice the outcasts in our midst – the homeless ones, the ones who act a little crazy, the ones who don’t dress well enough, wash frequently enough, or speak clearly enough?  What if Jesus were here amongst us and didn’t bother to spend time with the ones who had nothing to give him in return?  What if Jesus focused his attention, his love, his grace strictly on getting a return on his investment?

Think about it.  There was nothing Jesus was going to gain by spending time with Zacchaeus.  It wasn’t going to increase his status or get him any favors.  If anything, it would lower his esteem in the eyes of the powerful and respected ones.  Yet Jesus would risk a loss of status for the sake of one who would otherwise be lost. 

Zacchaeus was a lost man.  He had some of the things we hold in high esteem – riches!  Power! Yet he was seeking, longing and searching for something of true and lasting value.  Zacchaeus was a lost man.  So he hoisted up his fine robes and climbed up in a tree –  to see what?  To see the hope of his salvation.

And there he crouched among the branches, hidden from the judging eyes of others, quietly watching as Jesus approached. How badly Zacchaeus must have wanted to see Jesus.  What was he thinking?  What was he hoping?

And what if, at that moment, Jesus walked right on past?  What if he didn’t stop?  What if he did not call Zacchaeus by name and say, “I’m coming to you today?” 

What if salvation did not come to Zacchaeus’ house that day?  I’ll tell you what.  Zacchaeus would still be a lost man.

And what of all the lost in Huber Heights?  The ones who live on the margins, the ones who are ashamed and try to hide the failures of their lives?  What of the ones who muster up the courage to come in here, even though they fear being judged by us for so many reasons? 

Listen: this matters, because these people matter.  It’s a simple truth:  Jesus teaches us in his words and his actions that the ones whom we judge are as much loved by God as we are.  And when we fail to love them as we should we are in our own way condemning them to remain lost.  When we fail to see them, really see them, we are confirming for them what they might have already thought – that they don’t matter in our eyes. 

Whenever we make a decision not to invest in people who can’t help us meet our bottom line; whenever we don’t open our eyes and see the world as God sees the world, we are letting Jesus down.

Brothers and sisters, that is not who we are.  We are the hands and feet and hearts of Jesus Christ – we are the body of Christ in the world.  We are his instruments of love and forgiveness and grace.  And if we are not acting this way, we are not being true to our identity.

We can do better, especially when we do it together.  What seems really scary when we think about going out and doing it all alone becomes much less burdensome when we join hands and commit to doing it as one.  There is no reason that we cannot, as a church, stretch ourselves to become more loving, more open, more gracious, more light to the city of Huber Heights! 

What if we committed to being a church that opens its doors to the least, the last, and the lost?  What if we welcomed them in our sanctuary – every one of them – and also in our parlor, inviting them to sit at our table?  What if we made it our collective mission to learn more about these ones who come into our space, to let them know that they do matter in our eyes? 

What if we try to be like Jesus?