Thinking Bigger

Luke 20:27-38
November 10, 2013

So Jesus has been talking about the Kingdom of God and resurrection
and new life and hope quite enough lately.
and the Saducees are trying to trick him
They don’t believe in the resurrection,
so they’re trying to mock Jesus
and show how silly and unworkable the idea is.

They present this woman who couldn’t have children
so by Jewish law if her husband dies, she’s now
his brother’s wife, then if he dies she would
be passed on to the next brother and then next and the next.

They ask Jesus “Who’s wife would she be in this
resurrection you’re talking about, Jesus, they would all be there.
Basically they’re saying, “Who will she keep house for?
She can’t keep the house of seven men.
See how silly Jesus is? this eternal life would be an eternal mess.”

But Jesus doesn’t give into their petty arguments.
When Jesus talks about the resurrection, Jesus is not talking
about spending eternity in a place where all our laws and constraints
and prejudices and shortcomings and status are still in place.
Where one person still keeps house for another.
Jesus is talking about something completely new.
Jesus is talking about new life.
Jesus talking about heaven.

The promise of eternal life with God is central to Jesus message.
Jesus gives us the promise of eternal life.
Salvation, justification, eternal righteousness.
And that promise is a gift to us.
that no matter what happens in this life
we know we will be safe with God.

This gift allows us to face even the worst trials in life with hope.
No matter how bad things get, even if our life ends,
we know there is still hope for our future.
With this gift we are comforted when a loved one dies
we know they are safe with God and out of pain.

It’s not just a duplicate of this world.
For many people that would be no gift at all.

Jesus promises a time where fears and doubts and pain
and sadness will be a thing of the past.
A place where God’s will is always done
Where no one is hungry, where there is no prejudice,
no injustice, no illness, no pain.

And this vision, this future that we hope for and imagine,
we use it today and add bits of it to our present.
The kingdom of God is like that.
It’s like that yeast which the woman folds into the flour
It’s like the mustard seed which grows into
a great bush and takes over the whole field
Our job as Christians is to add bits of Gods kingdom here and now,
We put our anticipated future into our present

And this vision of the future after death doesn’t just belong to Christians
it belongs to most religions in one form or another.
Most of the world holds onto this vision of
a time when everything will be made right.

One of my favorite parables about heaven is actually not from the bible
Some say it’s a Jewish story, some say it’s Chinese
it’s probably from Readers Digest, but I like it anyway.
 
An old man was about to die
and he asked a wise woman what heaven was like
The wise woman led him to a large house with a large table and
an incredible amount of food in the middle,
but the people were all thin and pale and hungry.
All the people at the table
had their arms in casts and they couldn’t bend them.
They couldn’t get the food in their mouths and they were starving
with all the food in front of them.
The old man said, “Okay, I’ve seen hell, now show me heaven.”

They went to the next room and there was the same exact scene.
The same table, the same food, the same people with casts,
but they were full and happy and smiling.
The old man said, I don’t get it.
The wise woman said, “In heaven, they feed each other.”

Jesus has promised a time when all that is wrong with the world will be right again,
where all we will know is care and love and joy.
We get tastes of heaven now, moments of kindness and love and grace
we get stories and promises and images
and we just know in our hearts,
“yes absolutely - that’s what it will be like.”
we resonate with images like that
because heaven is our true home, that is where we belong
eternally at home, eternally alive, with God and feeding one another.

The problem with the Saducees is that they were thinking too small.
God was too small for them. They underestimated God.
Jesus is talking about heaven, eternal life, paradise,
and they are worried about which man’s floor
this poor woman would be sweeping every day.
Jesus tells them, don’t be small -don’t think so small.
God is big. And God’s love for us is strong
and God will not leave us alone.
God is God of the living
and God means to live with us forever.