The lectionary brings us to this strange reading from Luke's Gospel in which some Sadducees questioned Jesus. The Sadducees were a group of people in that time who tended to be wealthy landowners. They were religiously conservative; that is, they accepted only the first five books of what we call the Old Testament as authoritative. For that reason they rejected the concept of resurrection, which had some support from the Pharisees, another group of people from Jesus' time.
From the dawn of history people have wondered about the finality of death. Job, in the Biblical book that bears his name, asked, "If mortals die, will they live again." But Job's question goes largely unanswered. The first clear Biblical reference to any kind of resurrection is in the Old Testament book of Daniel, which was the last book, or one of the last books, written before the time of Christ. By the time of Jesus many devout Jews believed in a resurrection of some kind. They also believed in angels and the coming of a messiah. The Pharisees held such beliefs. Their rivals, the Sadducees, did not. The Pharisees emphasized ritual purity and strict observance of the Sabbath. The Sadducees, on the other hand, were closely connected to the more culturally and economically advanced segments of the population.
Several interesting things happened as I was thinking about what I would say this morning. No sooner had I emailed to our office staff the title of this sermon, "Can We Talk about Heaven?" when I heard our outside chimes playing "When the Roll Is Called Up Yonder I'll Be There." I took that to be a sign of divine approval (more or less).
As I thought about this morning's Gospel reading and the word heaven, I went back to a couple of experiences from my ministry in other places. On one occasion an associate pastor visited a woman in the church whose husband had just died. Departing from our usual practice, the associate pastor made the visit before checking with me about my knowledge of the deceased. I knew he had had a bad temper for most of his life, and that the marriage had been a difficult one. The associate pastor, attempting to offer comfort, said to the wife, now a widow, "I'm sure you miss your husband, but you'll be together some day in Heaven." To which the widow literally sobbed, "You mean I'll never be free of him?" Not all pastoral visits are completely successful.
On another occasion I was asked to conduct the funeral service for a man who had been attending our congregation for about a year or so, singing in the choir, and offering to do one-man shows or anything else that would get him the kind of attention he seemed to need. I knew he had a wife and that they lived a good distance from the church in another town. I called the wife a couple of days before the funeral service, which was to take place in a funeral home in their neighborhood. She said she would meet me a few minutes before the service, and she would tell me what I needed to know. When I met her, she said gently but firmly, "I know this will be difficult for you, and it's difficult for me. But if you say anything good about my husband, I'll walk out of the service immediately." I think it was the only funeral service I ever conducted where I read Scripture and offered a prayer, mentioning the name of the deceased but saying very little about him. After the burial, I went back to the family home and spent some significant time with the widow, hearing her story, and learning more and more about the different ways we human beings organize our lives.
Luke's hypothetical story about the woman who outlived seven husbands without having children by any of them is also told in Matthew's Gospel and in Mark's Gospel. The purpose of the law referred to was to ensure heirs for the deceased man and to give the widow protected status as a wife, since widows didn't do very well in the culture of Jesus' time. The Sadducees in the Gospel text proposed an almost ridiculous scenario to Jesus, that of a woman marrying a man, he dies childless; she marries his brother. The same thing happens—down through six brothers of the original groom. Not seven brides for seven brothers, but one bride for seven brothers. Where are playwrights when we need them? (On strike, unfortunately, I know. And they have my sympathy and support.)
It seems to me the point the Sadducees were trying to make had nothing to do with the old Mosaic Law they cited, and everything to do with their belief that any kind of resurrection was absurd. As was his practice, Jesus didn't answer the question directly but reframed the issue. What he said in effect was that the categories integral to life as we know it are irrelevant to life in the age to come—or in the resurrection. Throughout his ministry Jesus didn't say very much about life after death. He told a parable about two men who lived very different lives and who found their circumstances reversed in life beyond death. And, as he himself was dying, he said to a man dying beside him, "Today you will be with me in Paradise."
It was Jesus' disciples, especially the apostle Paul, who talked and wrote about resurrection as the consummation of all existence. They talked and wrote on the basis of their personal and collective experience of Jesus as raised from death to life. It is consistent with their witness that the Apostles' Creed ends in the affirmation: "We believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting."
Can we talk about heaven—you and I? Why not? Other people are doing it. Maybe you saw yesterday's New York Times, with the Saturday religious column written by our near neighbor Peter Steinfels. The column is about a book Do You Believe? Conversations on God and Religion. Its author is Antonio Monda, the American cultural correspondent for the Italian newspaper La Repubblica. Mr. Monda interviewed eighteen people and asked them such questions as Do you believe in God? What will happen to you at death? And Do you think religious believers are deluded?
He talked with people like Saul Bellow, Toni Morrison, Salman Rushdie, Spike Lee, Martin Scorsese, Elie Wiesel, Jane Fonda, Richard Ford, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and Grace Paley. I wondered about the make-up of the list until I read that Mr. Monda teaches in the film and television department of New York University. Celebrities as spiritual authorities—an interesting concept, and so American. Why not Desmond Tutu, Aretha Franklin, Bryn Terfel, Jimmy Carter, Leontyne Price, Dean Ornish, Rachael Remen, James Forbes, Joe Torre, Ruben Santiago, the distinguished musicians behind me in the chancel, and lots of other people with name recognition like the eighteen in Monda's book?
For me, if I wanted to talk to people about God and eternity, about resurrection and the dimension of hope, I wouldn't focus on celebrities, although I wouldn't rule them out either. I would try to talk to every person still living who has won the Nobel Peace Prize. I would look for people who are trying to make a positive difference in the world in quiet ways. I would look for people who have been delivered from the hell of addiction or from the torment of guilt and are living constructive lives. I would look for people who are totally comfortable with their feelings and emotions as well as with their thoughts. I would look for people who whistle or sing in the dark—literally or metaphorically.
Can we progressive, liberal, inclusive Christians talk about Heaven? I sure hope so. I'll tell you where I am on the subject. For me it's a matter of trust. As I've said in other sermons, there are things in life I don't understand, realities I can't explain. But as I've experienced the heights and depths of human existence, God has been there—an unfailing presence. I've come to know God's presence as unconditionally loving and completely trustworthy. It comes down to this for me: since God is trustworthy in life, I'm willing to trust God in death and beyond.
Thanks be to God.