From Generation to Generation Luke 20: 27-38 Pastor Katie Shaw Thompson Highland Avenue Church 11-6-16 For awhile I kept my grandmother s old kitchen table. I kept it not because it was especially beautiful or because it was in especially good condition. I kept it because when I sat down to it, put my hands on the wood, and closed my eyes I could almost hear the conversations of my childhood, see her hands passing food around the table, and hear my uncle s laughter. I believe in life after death, though I m not at all sure how it works. I have learned enough about what scientists today believe to wonder if bodily resurrection is more like these atoms and cells I now use being recycled into dust and ash, becoming once again a part of the cycle of death and rebirth of our planet and multiverse. I have sat quietly long enough in old houses, churches, and monuments to wonder if there is some energy we leave behind at least in certain places. I have been fortunate enough to have experienced the kind of love in this life that I am certain is not only worth living and dying for but is also the kind of love that no suffering, sin, or death could stop. It s the love of friends, my children, my sister, my grandmother, and my sacred partner in life, and yet also a love that comes from somewhere beyond all that. It s a love that I can sense when I sit in silence and focus on my breath long enough. It s a love I know no one could take should they try to put me in prison, starve me out, or take my life. In today s scripture text, the Sadducees ask Jesus a question about the life beyond death. They didn t believe in resurrection. 1
They thought the only way for someone s life to continue would be through their children and their children s children. Their practice of marrying a widow to her brother-in-law if she had no children was due in part to this belief. It could also give women a bit of economic leverage in a time when supporting themselves on their own would have made for a harshly meager existence. So, the Sadducees made up a ridiculous question, So, Jesus if you teach resurrection, and a woman is married seven times to seven different brothers, whose wife is she after resurrection? They intend it to be a question that stumps this new, radical teacher. But as the story goes, he neatly sidesteps their trap and lays out some truth about the nature of God. He draws from one of their favorite scriptures. He talks about the story of Moses and the burning bush and how Moses referred to the great I AM as the God who is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and so, since Moses can t be wrong and God is the God of all living these long gone ancestors must be living still at least to God. After that they didn t dare to ask him any more questions. I m not sure Jesus disproved the Sadduccees idea that something gets passed on to our children. Maybe they were on to something. But what Jesus does do is make lots of space for his teaching that there is something more to the life beyond death. That there is something that we know in this life that continues even beyond the grave. I believe this to be true. I don t know what the next life is like, Jesus doesn t say a lot more about it. But I do believe, there is some connection to the love of God we can experience in this life 2
and I do believe that connection cannot be broken by anything. It is a connection that will sustain us in times of trouble. It is a connection that will continue no matter who is elected president no matter what violence or suffering may come our way and no matter the reality of our certain bodily death. I passed my grandmother s table on to my sister who doesn t yet have small children to knock it down in it s rattly unstable condition. But after a few of her own moves, I m not sure what she did with it. Or if she even still has it. But that s not what s important. It s not the table I am grateful for. It s the love that was shared around it. For the other thing Jesus tells the Sadducees in response to their ridiculous question, is that in short, in the next life, these rules of economics and social standing will not apply. Marriage is for this life and not the next, he says. I m not sure if pressed, if Jesus would say the love two people share is for this life only and not the next. I don t think that s what he s addressing. What I hear him addressing are the rules, traditions, and customs we give ourselves for our time and place and the way we will have no need of those rules in the next life. I wonder if that is wisdom we can pick up and use now too. For example, I have tried my hand this year at my grandmother s raisin-filled cookie recipe. But for the most part I don t cook like she did. I even found a substitute for lard in that cookie recipe. But I don t think we need to keep everything the same to honor the gifts our ancestors gave us. 3
I also don t think we have to do everything differently to keep from avoiding the mistakes (painful) our ancestors made. We have the benefit of learning from the generations who have come before and adapting that knowledge to our own time and place in order to best serve the generations who will come after us. I think sometimes the best way to honor the past is not to let it dictate our future but to give us firm roots from which to grow new branches. Sometimes the best way to share the bread we have been given is to break it. Not everyone gathers around the kitchen table for every meal. It is what it is. Many of us whether we like it or not find ourselves often enough breaking bread in front of the television or passing bits of food from the front seat to the back seat of the car. Yet, there is still something special --perhaps even more cherished if it s a rare occasion-- to sitting down to a meal with beloved company. Throughout the gospels Jesus transforms these would-be ordinary breaking bread moments into extraordinarily holy moments. From Luke, the book from which we read today, comes the story of the time the unrecognizable, risen-from-the-grave Jesus revealed his identity to two travelers on the road to Emmaus by the way he broke bread with them. There are the stories of Jesus eating with sinners and giving new life and new status to those outcasts. And there are the stories of Jesus turning a few loaves and fishes into enough to feed thousands. In each of those stories, the loaves and fishes do not appear out of thin air. 4
They are materials gifts which when taken, blessed, broken, and shared by Jesus are multiplied into enough to feed the entire gathered body. When this congregation first began meeting over a hundred years ago there were only a few people, sharing their limited gifts of money, time, and talent But before long it grew, they called a pastor, they found a rather new and partially unfinished building and dedicated it in 1901. In the 1950s, the built this sanctuary. All throughout its history this congregation has taken risks to follow Jesus through the establishment of this congregation through equal housing movement, and the sanctuary movement and up until today with our anti-recruitment work, our racial-justice work, and our support of the full worth of LGBT persons just to name a few. We sit here in a building prepared for us by those who have come before. we sing the songs they wrote we walk in the places they walked. We experience God in the way we do as a faith community in part because of the gifts they have shared, the table they have set before us, and the way God has used, multiplied and transformed their gifts. let us draw to mind the gifts of the last generation with gratitude. Let us open ourselves to making peace with our loved ones past for any of the hurts that still linger. Let us ask God what we can do to be part of God s holy work of multiplying the gifts we have been given as this generation in order to pass them on for the good of the next generation and for the glory of God. May it be so. Amen. 5