Earth is Where Heaven Starts - The Rev. Gigi Miller
When I worked as a technical writer for Qualcomm, I was asked to develop a user manual for a newly acquired electronic mail program, Eudora. This was long before Microsoft Outlook and Gmail cornered the email market. A brilliant engineer had expanded Eudora’s capabilities, and now the program was ready to be sold commercially.
I got a copy of the program, started working through it, and called up the engineer to talk about the manual. He enthusiastically agreed to meet and suggested I review the first two chapters he drafted on sending and receiving messages. To say they were exhaustive would be an understatement. Each chapter was over thirty pages, filled with test charts and diagrams showing how the code moved from one database to another. It was a lot. When we met, I gently told him that, even if we removed the proprietary material, the chapters were still too long; the average person wouldn’t understand or care about how Eudora worked. They’d just want to know which button to click to send a thank you email to Aunt Sally. The engineer had lost sight of the people who were going to use his product.
I thought about this experience when I sat with our Gospel reading. Jesus is finally in Jerusalem, where he’s made some enemies among the powers that be. Jesus and his motley crew of disciples show up at the temple every day preaching a message of God. The temple authorities are getting increasingly frustrated by how eagerly people respond to Jesus’ revolutionary teachings of grace and forgiveness. First the Pharisees try to trap him into saying something blasphemous, then the scribes take a crack at it.
Finally, the Sadducees step in to put the humble rabbi from backwater Nazareth in his place. These were the temple elites who, unlike Jesus and the Pharisees, only accepted the first five books of the Torah as law; they didn’t recognize the prophetic writings or Psalms as the Word of God. So, they didn’t believe in resurrection, which is why, in the words of Sunday School teachers everywhere, they were “sad you see.”
Anyway, they begin by name checking Moses and ask Jesus a trick question about a particularly unfortunate woman. You may have heard of the musical Seven Brides for Seven Brothers; this version is One Bride for Seven Brothers.
The Sadducees are referring to Levirate marriage; a man is obliged to marry his brother’s widow, so the brother’s possessions would remain in the family line. Levirate marriage ostensibly shelters the widow and any children from the marriage by putting them under the protection of the male-dominated hierarchy. In practice, it’s an aspect of patriarchal societies, like that of first century Palestine, which view women as the property of men, considered, as author Nancy Lynne Westffield writes, “disposable, discardable, and exploitable by the law.” After the woman is handed off to all seven brothers, the Sadducees slyly ask, “Whose wife will she be in the resurrection?”
Haven’t we all heard or read similar gotcha arguments on talk shows or in social media feeds lately? They usually start with “What about,” “What if,” or “I’m just asking” and then use a group of people as talking points to ridicule someone else’s opinion. Just like the Sadducees’ query of Jesus, many modern debates ignore the humanity of the very people used in them. It’s sometimes easy to forget that real people – with unique stories of love, loss, and wonder - are at the heart of everything, whether it’s a dispute or an email project.
Jesus isn’t taking the Sadducees’ bait; he always sees the person in the narrative. As if to underscore the humanity of all, Jesus doesn’t even scold the Sadducees for their dehumanizing premise; he engages with them instead. Jesus affirms the woman’s dignity and worth, as he provides a luminous picture of the afterlife.
Jesus explains that God’s realm is nothing like the world we live in; it will be so different that we can hardly conceive of it. All the institutions, laws, and systems we construct and then corrupt to guard our lives and property will be obsolete. In the new earth, everyone will be “like angels and the children of God.” Those lost will be found, those battered and beaten down by the world will be raised up, and those forgotten will remember their beloved nature in creation.
In just a few sentences, Jesus turns the Sadducees’ argument inside out. If folks just cease to exist after they die, how can Moses speak to “the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob”? Wouldn’t God have said something like “I used to be their God, but they’re dead?” Instead, Jesus says “he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.”
It may be a little disappointing that Jesus doesn’t give more specifics about the resurrection. But like the Eudora email program, maybe we really don’t need to know details we can’t comprehend. We trust that the message we send will be received, and, because we are Easter people, we trust that God is waiting for us when this earthly life ends. We will join those separated from us by death in an everlasting life unlike any we could have imagined. As the psalmist says, we will all “sing to Lord a new song” while “the seas make a noise, the rivers clap their hands, and the hills ring out with joy” in heavenly accompaniment.
As we wait for our place in the world which was, is, and is to come, Jesus is calling us to make our time in this world a little more like God’s vision of hope, love, and dignity. Theologian Barbara Brown Taylor writes, “If you can breathe into it—well, that’s when heaven comes to earth, because earth is where heaven starts, for all who are willing to live into it right now.”
We just saw a video in which you all give examples of how you are doing just that - building compassionate relationships by sharing your gifts and time. Even as situations change in our St. Andrew’s community and the wider society, a fundamental question remains. What would Jesus do? Reveal the Divine light in everyone, do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God.
