"God of the Living" (Luke 20:27-38)

In the first Lord of the Rings book and movie, Frodo and his companions embark on a journey that takes them over mountains and through treacherous caves. Along the way, there are many challenges to overcome, and many obstacles to conquer. Strange beasts and monsters confront them, and time and time again, the travelers struggle to make it past a monstrous creature, only to find another one blocking their path.

I saw that movie in the theater, and after watching them successfully defeat one strange beast after another, I began to think to myself, “this is getting old….” Incidentally, I think the same thing when tackling various “beasts” at home, monstrous piles of laundry, or stacks of dirty dishes left not only by my family but also by any number of neighborhood kids who pass in and out our door. Just when you think you’ve conquered them all, a new pile appears, and you say to yourself, “this is getting old.”

I imagine that Jesus had similar thoughts. Group after group came to him, to challenge him, to test him: priests, scribes, Pharisees, royal officials. Each of these opponents appeared, one by one, asking him questions that they believed were impossible to answer. Each time, Jesus amazed them with his answer, and they dared not ask him any more questions. But there was always another group.

In today’s scripture, it’s the Sadducees. Not a whole lot of information about the Sadducees has survived through the centuries. In some ways, they were like the Pharisees, although the two groups were bitter rivals. The Sadducees were confrontational, were stricter than the Pharisees, and were considered boorish. It’s probably no surprise, then, that they were not nearly as respected or popular as the Pharisees.

Also, the Sadducees believed that there was no resurrection, that this life was it. Jesus believed otherwise, and so the Sadducees came up with what they thought was a really clever question, in order to trap Jesus and show the flaws in his logic.

The question they asked was about marriage, but you know, it wasn’t really about marriage. It was, of course, about life after death. In their question they referred to Moses, and so Jesus, in his response, did the same. God spoke to Moses at the burning bush, Jesus said; and there, God said, “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” God is the God not of the dead, but of the living; for to God, all of them are alive.

And the Sadducees were silent.

Our God is the God of the living. Our God is the God of all those we named earlier, for to God, all of them are alive. They cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and children of God. They are children of the resurrection.

Our God is the God of the living. The lives of those who have lived in the past – those who lived in faith – guide us even today. They are a cloud of witnesses that surrounds us and speaks to us. We can hear their lives speaking to us, if we listen.

Our God is the God of the living. It is God’s desire that everyone live a life of abundance, a life of wholeness, a life of meaning and purpose. God calls us to be fully alive, now. The lives of the saints can guide us in this.

Our God is the God of the living. How many of us long for a faith that is fully alive? How many of us long to get rid of the deadness that is within, the lifelessness, the dream-like trance that we sometimes feel that our lives have become?

Our God is the God of the living. In what ways have you found life through the church? How can you help our church become more fully alive to others?

I have heard the voices of some of the saints of the past. They came to me in my reading this week. I believe that their voices are alive. I believe they can teach us how to be alive.

Harriet Tubman…. Most of us have heard of her. I think she gets a mention in elementary school classrooms, and children who study her might even remember that she was a conductor on the underground railroad. But how many really understand what she did, how she helped other people to live? I didn’t; not until she came up in my reading this week. I didn’t realize just how fully alive her faith was.

Harriet Tubman was born into slavery, but in 1849 she escaped to Philadelphia. Her family, however, remained slaves in Maryland, and she felt compelled to rescue them. She said, “I was free, and they should be free.” And so she risked her life, over and over and over again, to free not only her family, but over 70 slaves.

She believed that she was guided in her work by God. Maybe, after the third or fourth or fiftieth time, it all started to get a little old, but Harriet Tubman would not stop. She had been given life, a free life, and she knew that she would not be fully alive unless she was doing the work God called her to: helping others find the life that God intended for them.

There were many other conductors on the underground railroad, risking their lives so that others could live their lives as God intended: as free women and men. They didn’t just give lip service to God. They believed in a living God of living people, a God whose intention is that every person may have a life of wholeness, a life of abundance.

Harriet Tubman is alive. Her voice and her story speak to me, calling me to live my faith to the fullest, to not be a lifeless believer walking around in a spiritual daze.

In my reading this week, I also heard the voice of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer was a German who was teaching in England and then America at the time when Hitler came to power. Many church leaders in Germany were silent in the face of Hitler’s rise to power and his oppression of Jews and other groups, but Bonhoeffer was not silent.

What’s more, he chose to return to Germany to confront those evils head-on, rather than remain in America where he would be safe. He believed that a life of faith, a life of discipleship, required one to live one’s whole life committed to doing what was right, living according to the way of Christ, even when it was dangerous or costly to do so. To not live in such a way would be to not live at all. To not live whole-heartedly for Christ would be to live as if you were already dead.

In Germany, Bonhoeffer was eventually thrown in prison, but he didn’t let that stop him. He wrote a number of letters and papers that, in the years since, have inspired countless people to live their lives more fully, more authentically.

In 1945, as World War II was drawing to a close, the Nazis executed Bonhoeffer.

But the God of the living is the God of Bonhoeffer, and Bonhoeffer speaks to us still.

As a pastor, as a Christian, I often think and pray about how I can live a life that is more fully alive, how I can have a faith that is more fully alive. We often think of religion as something that is private, something that is separate from our life or at least something that is confined to a certain segment of our life. That’s how our society views religion. But that’s not the type of religion I want. I don’t think that’s not the type of religion God wants. And that’s not the type of Christian I want to be.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote about the need for what he called a “religionless Christianity.” I think he was talking about the need to stop thinking of religion as separate from one’s life, to stop thinking about religion as a small segment of one’s life. A religion like that isn’t fully alive. Instead, we need to recognize that Christianity is a way of life. In an authentic Christian life, there is no part of one’s life that is separate from one’s faith.

I think this longing for an authentic, fully-alive faith is shared by those who describe themselves as “spiritual but not religious.” And that’s a lot of people these days. They don’t want a lifeless religion. They want a fully alive faith, a faith that is one’s life.

And indeed, the world needs people of faith who are fully alive today just as much as it has in the past. There is today growing resentment and hostility between nations and religions. There is growing hostility among people within nations, people of different political parties.

Like the Sadducees, a growing number of people are becoming exclusive rather than inclusive. A growing number of people are choosing confrontation over reconciliation. A growing number of people are imagining a world filled with people like them, rid of all those who are different.

Extremists of all religions are ignoring their own faiths’ emphases on peace, and are resorting to terror. People are quick to judge one another and even deny them the life God has given them, simply because of political or religious differences. We see the headlines, and know that this is true! Among a large number of people, there is no acceptance or even tolerance of others.

The world today needs Christians who are fully alive. Christians who follow the beatitudes. Christians who love their God and their neighbor. Christians whose faith is real, authentic, all-encompassing. Christians who follow the way of Jesus in everything they do.

In the movie Wall-E, there’s a point where the captain of the Axiom – the giant cruise ship in space – is arguing with Otto, the computerized autopilot. Centuries after humans had destroyed the earth, toxicity levels are finally low enough that life is possible once again, although it would be hard and possibly dangerous to recolonize the planet humans once called home.

Otto argues that everyone should just remain on the Axiom, out in space, where everything is easy and safe. On the Axiom, Otto says, we can survive.

The captain then responds by saying: “I don’t want to survive. I want to live!”

Our God is not the god of the dead, but of the living.