Emmanuel Church, Bungay, Suffolk

The Minister's Sermons

"A Legitimate Use Of The Scriptures" by Revd Bruce Waldron - 4th November 2004
	Luke 20: 27 - 40
	Some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came to him and asked him a question, "Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies, leaving a wife but no children, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother. Now there were seven brothers; the first married, and died childless; then the second and the third married her, and so in the same way all seven died childless. Finally the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her."
	Jesus said to them, "Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. Indeed they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection. And the fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed, in the story about the bush, where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive." Then some of the scribes answered, "Teacher, you have spoken well." For they no longer dared to ask him another question.
The Sadducees didn't believe in anything after death. The reason they didn't believe in life after death was because they took the Bible literally, and for them, the Bible was the Torah, the five books of Moses. From their perspective, they didn't go in for that new fangled trendy modernist approach that accepted the writings of prophets like Isaiah and Hosea that were only created a few hundred years ago into the Bible. Far less those rhythmic religious poems that people called Psalms. They didn't like the history books of Samuel and Kings either and as for the Book of Ruth, it didn't even mention God. Don't even start to talk about the so-called Songs of Solomon. They knew that the real Bible was what Moses wrote, and there was no talk of life after death in the Torah so it doesn't exist.
To the Sadducees, this belief in life after death was a modernist trend to be resisted and Jesus, who was definitely a modernising, popularist preacher of the liberal school, needed to be put in his place. So they put to him a question that had presumably been used before with good effect.
From their simple, literalist interpretation of Mosaic law, they asked Jesus a question to which there seemed to be no answer, so indicating, hopefully, just how ridiculous and foolish this idea of eternal life was. Also, it would be putting Jesus back in his box at the same time.
It's easy to be a bit satirical about the Sadducees. For one thing they no longer exist and so they can't defend themselves. But it's easy to understand where they were coming from in their beliefs. For them, including the later books of the Bible was viewed in the same way that we might feel if someone suggested that the writings of St Francis of Assisi or Augustine were to be included in the Bible, or even Luther's writings.
After all, many of the prophetic books that Jesus quotes from are only written a few hundred years previously. Moses writings were supposedly written something like 1200 years previously. You just don't include in the Scriptures writings that are only a few hundred years old. It is easy to understand their problems with the later writings.
So, what was wrong with the way they confronted Jesus? When we look at what the Sadducees tried to do to Jesus, we can see strong parallels with the way some people still use the scriptures today. They set Jesus up, using their perception of the Bible as a means of knocking Jesus down. The issue in question is; 'For what purpose are the scriptures given to us?'
Why has God inspired people to write them down, then to re-write them, copy them out by hand time and time again, interpret them into our own language, give their lives to exploration of their meaning, give their lives to hide and protect them from people who wanted to destroy all texts relating to Jesus, give their lives to get the Bible into people's hands, get thrown into prison over it, like John Childs did, get burned for it like Wycliffe and Huss? Why has all this been done?
Certainly not to give us a weapon to knock people down. There is something quite macabre about anyone using Holy Scriptures to try and destroy and ensnare an opponent. And yet, it is a part of our Christian history too. And we shudder when we hear of the times when people used scripture as a weapon to have people tortured and burned. The Scriptures are not given to be used as a weapon against another.
Jesus used scripture as a means of trying to bring people to faith, to help them be more compassionate, to get them to question their rigidity and hardness of heart. He was particularly disparaging of people who used the scriptures to put burdens on people's shoulders but without a willingness to help them bear that burden. The Scriptures are there to help bring people to faith. They are to be used with God's love for the other, not as a political weapon. As John wrote towards the end of his Gospel story, "These things are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.."
It seems quite a travesty when people use the scriptures in a negative, attacking and destructive way and if we hear it being used that way, or even find ourselves slipping into this Sadduccean or Pharisaic way of doing things, it is time to stop and go and have a good long session of prayer and get our hearts right with God. The scriptures are there, like Jesus, to save, not to condemn.
The second negative about the Sadducees encounter is about the way they looked at the relationship with God. Jesus' answer to the Sadducees presumes that the relationship God seeks to forge with us in life, continues after the body ceases to function. But the Sadducees seem to be trivializing that relationship. They are reducing the issue of our relationship with God down to trivialities about how we keep to the legalities of familial law. They are assuming that legally and domestically things will be just the same and of course they won't be.
The Mosaic Law they referred to required that if your next of kin died, you had to take his wife and any children and look after them. It was a form of social security. A widow had to have someone who was responsible for her, so she didn't starve and wouldn't be forced into prostitution. The next of kin had that responsibility.
It is assumed that there won't be a need for social security in heaven. There is also a hint in Jesus answer that in God's presence, the intimacy and trust and love that ideally reach their pinnacle in human love and marriage, are the norm for all the residents of heaven.
What does seem clear from Jesus words and from other parts of the scriptures, is that it is understood that the relationship we forge with God now, is continued, and the relationship we forge with the rest of Gods creation is a part of that. As John wrote: Those who say, "I love God," and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. 21The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also. John is concurring with that is a consistency between our human relationships and our relationship with God.
When we pray, "Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us," we are displaying that consistency, between our relationships here and our relationship with God. When Jesus says, "As much as you did it to the least of these, you did it to me" He is acceding to that consistency.
That's why it is so inconsistent for the Sadducees to try and pull Jesus down with the Scriptures. They are not there to be a weapon for offence and wounding, but for salvation. When Jesus said, "You don't know the scriptures" he wasn't criticizing just their memory of verses, but the Spirit of the Scriptures and their purpose. The question that sits underneath this encounter is, "What is a legitimate Spirit within which to use the scriptures?"
God is God of the living: it's an ongoing consistent whole this relationship with God and with each other. Brendan Byrne, Melbourne College of Divinity professor of New Testament Theology wrote about Jesus response, "The relationship God seeks to forge with human beings here and now is one that transcends death; otherwise it
Paul's perspective is that we will all be changed. What that word "changed" means is a matter of speculation and people can argue about it forever. What is sure is that one day, every one of us will find out. What is also sure, from a Christian perspective, is that we are given the tools we need to build a relationship with God now, and that relationship will not cease when the body gives up its function.
What is also central in our Christian understanding, is that our relationship with God, forever, is affected by what we do now. So we may be changed, but there is also continuity. Things will be different, but our relationship with God is in the making now. Time may be no more in heaven, but at this moment, it is a very significant factor, and our relationship with eternal God is being forged right now, in our time, in our relationship with all that God has placed around us.
What the Sadducees were doing was the antithesis of what Christian faith is all about. They were using Scripture and their faith as a means of ensnaring another. Jesus went to the cross because of just such a use of religion and scripture. May God help us to always use the scriptures to seek and save, never to score points, never to harm, never to injure. Always to heal, and restore and save.