People of the God of the Living

People of the God of the Living

Sermon for MCC New Haven

November 10, 2013 / 25^th Sunday after Pentecost

Rev. Brian Hutchison, M.Div.

  

Haggai 1:15-2:9

Luke 20:27-38

 

         The prophet Haggai speaks of the first temple that had been destroyed Jerusalem.  He asks, “Who is left among you that saw this house in its former glory?  How does it look to you now?  Is it not in your sight as nothing?”  There’s no beating around the bush for Haggai. He gets straight to the point.  The people of Israel don’t want to face the fact that their temple has seen its last days.  They have beautiful memories of its past.  They remember when life was comfortable, normal, and without worry.  But now, now that the house of God is gone- how on earth can the people continue to meet God?

         In the prophet Haggai’s next breath, he reminds the people, “Yet now take courage, all you people of the land says the Lord.  Work, for I am with you, according to the promise that I made you when you came out of Egypt.

         The still small voice in Haggai’s heart has told him wisdom of things unseen- I AM with you.  I AM- as in the Great I AM… with you, in you, around you, beneath you, above you, and will be- always!  God reminds the people that they used to be in slavery.  They used to be lost in a place that they could not call home.  They used to follow the constant commands of another people.  To you- both gay and straight folks, I can say, “ God is with you, according to the promise that God made you when you came out of the closet.”  When you came out of the bondage of fundamentalism, legalism, heterosexism…. For many of us sexism and misogyny.  We, the remnant of MCC New Haven, are here having stepped beyond the rubble of the church of the past because we remember the bondage we were once in under some other consciousness.  MCC drew us in because we recognized the presence of God here.  But what now?

The voice of God continues speaking to Haggai, “My Spirit abides among you; do not fear.”  I’m going to shake things up all over the earth and all the treasures of the nations will pour into a new house.  The splendor of the house to come shall be greater than the former- and this place will be given prosperity.

What I believe this scripture is saying to us today is that no matter where you are, Spirit abides with you.  Whether you are sharing Communion at this table here, or breaking bread with friends and family this coming Thanksgiving or even on any common day, Spirit abides with you. God shakes things up so that blessings can fall into your life!

You don’t need anyone else to experience the love of God because it lives within you.  BUT… But, community is where we have the wonderful opportunity of sharing together in the diversity of the Body of Christ.  In our diversity, we bounce off of each other and shake up our stagnant existence. Community is also where we can be encouraged for the journey and reminded through ritual and song the story of being a people of faith who together can change the world for the better.  That is the benefit of church, when done right.

In the Gospel reading today, Jesus encounters some religious leaders called Sadducees.  Whenever I read about the Sadducees, I remember the Sunday school song from my childhood that goes, “I don’t want to be a Sadducee.  Cuz they’re too Sad-you-see.  I don’t want to be a Sadducee.”  They are sad- you see, because they don’t believe in the resurrection, or in their understanding, life after death.  Even the knit-picky Pharisees believed in life after death!

Some Sadducees challenge Jesus with a ridiculous “what if…” question about the law.  In their understanding, if a man dies childless, the wife is required to marry the dead man’s brother so that a child can take on the legacy of the deceased.  They ask, if there is life after this, then whose property will the wife be of all 7 men she married?  Jesus isn’t stumped by their seemingly difficult question.  He simply tells them that all of this marriage business, this business of men owning women and children having to somehow fulfill the shortcomings of their parents- this business is not God’s business.  In other words, you have made up this game.  To God, after this reality there is no marriage.  After one dies, the controls of others over your life are released and we are free in God. Some queer theologians such as Ronald Rolheiser have suggested that in heaven, we are not married so that we will have the freedom to love and have pleasure with everyone, just as God does.

And Jesus isn’t talking about just literal life and death.  Jesus is talking to about death of our former perceptions.  We remember in the same gospel of Luke in chapter 9, verses 23-25: “The Jesus said to them all, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.  For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it.  What does it profit them if they gain the whole world, but lose or forfeit themselves?”  Episcopal priest and world-renowned preacher Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor speaks to this in her memoir of faith called “Leaving Church.”  She says… “Like every believer I know, my search for real life has led me through at least three distinct seasons of faith, not once or twice but over and over again.  Jesus called them finding life, losing life, and finding life again, with the paradoxical promise that finders will be losers while those who lose their lives for his sake will wind up finding them again.  In Greek the word is psyche, meaning not only “life” but also the conscious self, the personality… You do not have to die in order to discover the truth of this teaching, in other words.  You only need to lose track of who you are, or who you thought you were supposed to be, so that you end up lying flat on the dirt floor basement of your heart.  Do this, Jesus says, and you will live.”

I know that losing the past has felt to many of you like losing yourself, or at least a part of yourself.  And with loss always comes grief- that is as long as there was some attachment to the thing lost.  I will never stop anyone from grieving and don’t let anyone else stop you from grieving either.  It is a God-given process of healing. As Barbara so wisely reminds us, you can only live when you have first become lost- and when you have allowed yourself to lose that which no longer serves you.

But when the grieving process is over, you can’t stay in that spiritual place. You may feel sad for a while, but sad is not what you are.  Make a habit of instead of saying, “I am sad” or “I am depressed,” saying rather, “I feel…” I AM is a powerful statement that taps into the stuff of God. Affirm what you truly are: a beloved child of God. At the end of today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus affirms life after death by affirming that God is not the god of the dead, but the God of the living- and to God all are alive, even the saints of old.

God is not concerned with the rubble of what was.  God will not bring gossip of the past into the present or the future.  God is concerned with all those who choose to live regardless of loss.  African American pastor and theologian Howard Thurman’s words, no matter how many times I hear them, ring true: “Don’t ask the what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it; because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”  Folks, don’t let your love, your joy, your peace, or your passion die with the old temple.  Don’t confuse that temple with the true temple- the true vessel of God which is you- where those invaluable virtues are held without harm for the opportune time when you come alive and do what you have been longing to do all along- God’s transformational work.  Just as the legendary phoenix is said to rise from the ashes, may we each- and as a community be empowered to embrace New Life, vision, and prosperity by the power of the Eternal Spirit.  Amen.