Sermon: "Honoring the Saints" (Luke 20:27-38)

Last weekend, I attended the cemetery tour sponsored by the Long Beach Historical Society. Costumed actors portraying residents from Long Beach history stood by the graves where the people they were portraying were buried, and told us about their lives and the history of Long Beach.

One of the historical figures who was portrayed was a woman who is buried there at Long Beach Municipal Cemetery, with her husband buried on one side of her, and her lover buried on the other side of her. Needless to say, her story was quite an interesting one.

Gee, wouldn’t it have been interesting if they had had actors portraying not only this woman, but also the husband and the lover? It does make one wonder how they are all getting along in the afterlife.

Then again, if Jesus’s response to the Sadducees is any indication, things are so different in life after death, that our ways of thinking do not even come close to understanding them.

The hypothetical situation presented by the Sadducees is even more extreme than the case of the woman buried at Long Beach Municipal Cemetery. The Sadducees didn’t even believe in an afterlife, but they came up with this situation to test Jesus and see how he would respond…

Their question centered on a woman whose husband died, and who remarried his brother, who died, and then remarried his brother, who died, and then remarried…

So, the Sadducees asked Jesus: “Since you say there is a resurrection, to which of the brothers will she belong to? How can there be one bride for seven brothers?”

Jesus’s answer, basically, is that you Sadducees are just trying to trick me, but in doing so, you only display your own ignorance. Jesus said that things in the life to come won’t be as they are in this life.

In other words, you can’t even imagine what it’s like.

Therefore, most of what can be said about the life to come can only be said by way of metaphor. Streets of gold, stuff like that. Or in abstract terms: we can talk about dwelling in the presence of God’s love, forever.

Which, for me right now, is a good enough description.

As for those who have already died: Paul writes in his letter to the Hebrews, we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses. People from the past are with us in the present.

And Paul mentions specifically: Abraham, whose faith was tested by God; Isaac, his son; Jacob, his grandson; Joseph, his great-grandson, who saved his people after being sold into slavery; Moses, who humbled himself, casting off his royal privilege on behalf of his people.

He also mentions Rahab, Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel… all of whom form a great cloud of witnesses that surrounds us.

I was reading a recent article by a theologian, who was writing about how these saints from the past spoke to her. Not just in a figurative sense, but in some real, though hard for her to explain way, they were communicating with her, guiding her, and that they do so for all who would listen.

This is kind of embarrassing stuff for people who have been academically trained to talk about, because academic training really is of little help. Academic training insists that you back up your ideas by citing other sources. My own academic training – and the fact that I’m more of a thinker than a feeler – make this a difficult subject for me to talk about. How do I explain something that Jesus says is basically beyond understanding?

Yet I have heard voices from the past speaking to me. I have heard the voices emanating from that great cloud of witnesses. And, appropriately enough, they spoke more to my head than to my heart.

Earlier this fall, I attended the opening reception of a new exhibit at Rancho Los Cerritos, celebrating 150 years since the Bixbys first came west.

One of the exhibits mentioned Reverend George Hathaway.  There wasn’t a whole lot of information there, just a brief mention, yet it was enough to capture my imagination. I wondered if Reverend Hathaway had any words to speak to me. I began investigating, researching, and here’s what I found…

Reverend George Hathaway moved from his home in Maine to Rancho Los Cerritos in 1877. Long before he made that move, he was an avid abolitionist who joined the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1833, participated as a conductor on the Underground Railroad; and he served as a volunteer Union chaplain during the Civil War.

At Rancho Los Cerritos, you can see the first edition copy of Uncle Tom’s Cabin that he owned. He passed it down to his daughter Martha, who then gave it to her nephew Llewellyn, who remodeled the Rancho in 1930.

I began to think that Rev. George Hathaway is one of those saints from the past who speaks to us today; or, at least, that he speaks to me.

After all, he lived right here in this community.  Perhaps he even walked the land where Bixby Knolls Christian Church is now.

Back then this area was all undeveloped, but four miles south of here the new city of Long Beach was being developed, and George Hathaway was one of the founders of First Congregational Church.  There’s no doubt that he influenced the progressive mood of this city in his push for justice and equality.

I’ve tried to find out more about him, his life, and the things he stood for as a preacher and as a resident of this area. I have a friend who volunteers at the Rancho, often playing the role of George Hathaway’s granddaughter, Fanny Bixby. She came and did a presentation – as Fanny Bixby – and met with our CWF group not too long ago.

Fanny Bixby grew up at the Rancho, and was herself quite a radically progressive woman.

Anyway, after two trips to Rancho Los Cerritos, all the information I had is what I just shared with you. There isn’t a whole lot of information out there about George Hathaway, but I did find a little more online.

I discovered that, before he moved to the Rancho, he served in the Maine legislature. And I discovered that, at his memorial service in 1891, it was said of him that “he was a man of remarkably clear thought, who had great power of clear and forcible expression. He was a man of very positive and strong convictions… He was the stuff of which reformers are made… He was a man of fervent enthusiasm for everything right and good.”

Of the people who lived at Rancho Los Cerritos, Rev. George Hathaway is one of the lesser known. I am now probably one of the few people in the world who know at least these few details about his life, and now you are as well. Maybe my strange interest in Reverend Hathaway is just that, and I’ve done nothing but bore you in telling you about him. Not everyone likes history, I know.

But standing there at the Rancho, it really did seem to me that I heard his voice calling to me, urging me to be a better citizen, a better preacher, and a better Christian. I hear him calling me – calling us – to continue the work in which he was involved, working for justice and for equal rights in our city and in our country.

Anyway, back to the Sadducees. Did you notice how they framed their question? “Whose wife will she be?” they asked. One of the presumptions in the question that the Sadducees posed to Jesus was that women belong to men. “Whose wife will she be?” they asked. In other words, to which of these men will she belong to?

Marriage in Jesus’s time was not an equal partnership between man and woman. The phrasing that women are “given and taken” in marriage speaks to how women were viewed; they were controlled by the men. The reason a brother would be obligated to marry his deceased brother’s widow is that because, without a husband, she was at a definite disadvantage in society. A woman’s interaction with society took place through her husband.

Some people today still feel that women should be viewed that way: controlled by men, who can do whatever they want to them. During this election campaign (that we are so ready to come to an end), the way some men speak and act toward women came to light, showing that too many men still have attitudes toward women that haven’t evolved much since ancient times. I think we have many voices from the past that speak to this issue: Jesus, who dared to engage in conversation with a woman at a well as equal; Paul, who said that in Christ there is neither woman nor man; and possibly even Rev. Hathaway.

By the way, in his reply Jesus said that, in the age to come, women will no longer be given in marriage. If the Sadducees pictured a heavenly game of tug-o-war between this woman’s earthly husbands, with her in the middle, Jesus was quick to cast that image aside.

In the age to come, women will no longer be given in marriage. There will no longer be an unequal partnership between men and women.

This sounds to me like an idea that George Hathaway would be a strong advocate of. I wonder, if we listened for his voice speaking to us, would we hear him calling for equal pay for equal work? Would he be excited by the potential election of the first female president in U.S. history, and if so, would he see that as a motivation to further improve the situation for women, breaking down the barriers that still exist?

I think he would.

His granddaughter who I’ve already mentioned – Fanny Bixby – fought for women’s right to vote. She was inspired by stories she heard of her grandfather welcoming a woman to speak at his church back in Maine. Fanny Bixby also became the first policewoman in Long Beach – one of the first in the country – and she spoke out against war, worked for peace, and on all sorts of topics she expressed her opinion to the Long Beach City Council.

This is history, but I think it is more than history. If those who have died really are still alive in some way, doesn’t it seem likely that they really do speak to us, in some way, today?

What about those who have been a part of Bixby Knolls Christian Church in its 70 years? What do they have to say to us?

What about those in our own families? How do they speak to us today?

And how can we honor all the saints who now surround us in a great cloud of witnesses?

I’m not sure how it is that the voices from the past speak to us. But I’m glad the church has set aside a day in its yearly calendar for us to remember the saints, and to let their lives speak to us again.

"Seeing and Believing" (John 20: 19-29)

Our scripture reading describes what took place on Sunday night, but first, let me remind you what

happened Sunday morning. Mary Magdalene had gone to the tomb, and saw that the stone had been pushed aside. Jesus’s body was nowhere to be seen. Confused and upset, she wept there at the tomb.

A man she did not recognize approached and asked, “Why are you weeping?”

She thought he was the gardener; she said, “Please, sir, if you have taken his body, tell me where you have laid him.”

The man called her by name: “Mary.” She then recognized him as Jesus, come back to life.

Mary went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord!” and she told them all about it.

But it wasn’t enough to comfort them or ease their fears. After all, she was just a woman.

In all four gospels, the first people to bear witness to the resurrection are women. Unfortunately, in the Roman Empire, women were not considered reliable witnesses.

Luke’s gospel even says that after Mary Magdalene and some other women tell the male disciples about the resurrection, their words seemed to the men an

idle tale, and the men did not believe them.

And yet, the women were right, of course. All four gospels describe them as the first witnesses to the resurrection, the first preachers of that good. This is just the beginning of the radical role women would play in the early church, providing leadership in so many ways. It was so radical, in fact, that even some scripture writers found it hard to accept women in positions of leadership. The apostle Paul accepted it and even spoke to women as equals, but other writers, some writing in Paul’s name, could not accept this, and it was they who wrote things like “women should keep silent.” They were still too attached to the way of the world to accept that, in Christ, both male and female are equal.

Evidently Jesus’s own disciples had a hard time accepting it as well. They had heard from Mary Magdalene that Jesus was alive, but they themselves had not yet seen him. They had not seen him since the soldiers led him away to be crucified, and they had fled in fear, not even staying by the side of their leader, their brother, their friend, as he was nailed to the cross.

So, having not seen Jesus with their own eyes, but only hearing it from her, they remained afraid.

Which is why, on Sunday night, they were hiding inside behind locked doors. They wanted to put as much of a barrier between them and those they were afraid of as they could. Those who got Jesus might be after them. They wanted a wall, a barrier, between themselves and those they were afraid of.

What they didn’t realize is that when you build a wall or lock a door – I’m not just talking about the disciples now! – when you build a wall or lock a door, to keep out those whom you are afraid of… you really need to stop and ask yourself: on which side of that wall or locked door is Jesus? You build a wall to keep “them” out, but what if Jesus is on the other side, among “them”?

In this case, Jesus was on the outside, but he passed through the walls and locked doors to come in and stand among the disciples. It’s interesting that in some of the Bible stories, the resurrected Jesus has a flesh and blood human body; a body which, obviously, is not capable of passing through walls and locked doors. Here, it seems his body is more of a spiritual presence, which can pass through solid material.

Jesus appeared among the disciples. They saw him with their own eyes; with their own eyes they saw that what Mary Magdalene had said was true. And they rejoiced.

There is no mention of them rejoicing when Mary Magdalene told them he was alive. Hearing about it, I guess, wasn’t enough. They needed to see.

But on Sunday night, Thomas wasn’t there with them to see. He arrived later. They told him about it, but he still didn’t believe. He needed to see.

Did they give him a hard time about it? Or did they remember that they, too, didn’t believe when told about the resurrection, that they, too, needed to see? Did they give Thomas a hard time, or did they remember their own disbelieving? And if they remembered their own disbelieving, do you think they went to Mary Magdalene and apologized for doubting her? Do you think they went to her and said, “You were right. You were the first to know, the first to bear witness. Why don’t you be our leader?”

Hmm, maybe not.

A week later, they were all still in the same place, including Thomas this time. And Jesus once again appeared to them. Thomas rejoiced with the other disciples, and Jesus said “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

You should know that John – more than any of the other gospel writers – goes beyond just reporting the events of Jesus’s life. John interprets these events, draws meaning out of them, and expands on that. He says, “this is what happened … and here’s what it means…”

Actually, he tells you what it means first. John isn’t even really all that concerned with what actually happened. He just wants you to know what it means. Right at the beginning, he doesn’t tell you how Jesus was born, he just tells you what his birth means. He tells you that Jesus was the Word, the light and life of all people, shining in the darkness, and so on and so forth. He never actually gets around to talking about Bethlehem and Joseph and Mary and all that…

And John was writing his gospel to people who had not seen, people who lived many decades after Jesus. He describes to them the significance of the resurrection, and then he writes, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet come to believe.”

So: Mary tells the disciples, but they do not believe because they haven’t seen. Not until they see, do they believe. Then the disciples tell Thomas, but he does not believe because he hasn’t seen. Then Thomas sees, and believes, and then the gospel writer writes to the reader: I have told you all these things so that you may believe.

Which leaves one last question unanswered: Will you believe? The disciples didn’t believe Mary; Thomas didn’t believe the disciples. Not until they saw with their own eyes did they believe. What about you? Do you need to see? Can you believe without seeing? Because “blessed are those who have not seen and yet come to believe.”

Unfortunately, more and more people today are choosing not to believe. And why is that? Because they are looking for Jesus, but do not see him. They want to see Jesus, but Jesus cannot be found.

They do not see Jesus in a church that denies the leadership of women. Obviously. Women were the first to proclaim the resurrection, and yet their leadership is still not affirmed in many parts of the church today.

They do not see Jesus in a church that refuses to affirm and embrace racial and sexual minorities. The early church welcomed people like the Ethiopian eunuch, a man who was sexually different, racially different, and from a foreign land, but many parts of the church today would not welcome him as a member or affirm him as a leader.

They do not see Jesus in a church whose believers rally behind a political candidate who is rude and foul-mouthed, and who frequently makes fun of others, when the way of Jesus is to love one’s enemies and to bless those who curse you.

They do not see Jesus in a church whose members go to worship on Sunday, then trash talk people on social media the rest of the week.

They do not see Jesus in a church that says God demands punishment for sin, that God demanded the death of his own son. It wasn’t God who killed Jesus; it was a sinful world that did that, a world that could not stand to hear about the kingdom of God.

They do not see Jesus among believers who are pro-war, pro-guns, pro-capital punishment, or pro- anything that is violent or destructive, since Jesus himself was nonviolent and confronted oppression armed only with the power of love.

They do not see Jesus among individualistic Christians who care more about their own individual rights and privileges than the rights of oppressed people around the world….

And so on.

Our task is clear:

We need to make Jesus visible in our world today.

We are, after all, the body of Christ. We are the church. We are the gospel to the world.

What does the world see in us?

What does the world see in you?

At work.

At school.

Online.

In how you treat people.

In how you treat your enemies.

In your effort (or lack thereof) to live a meaningful, productive life.

In your priorities, as seen in how you spend your money and your time….

Too many of us look just like everyone else. We gripe about the same things everyone else gripes about, we prioritize our life the same way everyone else prioritizes their life, we’re kind to people who are kind to us, but we complain about those who aren’t. Nothing sets us apart. Nothing allows others to look at us and see Jesus.

Do me a favor: Think of someone in whom you have seen Jesus, someone who – like Jesus – allows God’s love to flow through them…  What is it about that person that allows you to see Jesus in them? Is it their kindness? Their generosity? Their compassion? How is it that God’s love flows through them? Picture that person in your mind – that person in whom the light of Christ shines so brightly.

Can you be a person like that? Can you let Christ’s light shine through you? When others look at you, will they say, “Now, I’ve seen Jesus!” ?

It’s so hard to believe without seeing. So let the world see Jesus… in you.

"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.