Resurrection Eyes

'Some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came to Jesus 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."'

--Luke 20: 27-38

Every week I find a spot somewhere to sit – usually a coffee shop, or maybe a place to eat lunch- and I have a little sign that reads “Free prayers and conversations.” You wouldn’t believe some of the folks who stop by and talk with me and some of the things that they have to say. Some are prayer requests – even from folks who say they don’t believe, but they ask me to pray for folks who do – or one time when a random stranger handed me 20 bucks and said in a Northeastern accent: “Here, Fadda, this is for the church!” Sometimes, though, I get a little tripped up; someone will have a deep theological question that I can’t easily answer, one in which it feels like I’m caught in a kind of trap. One such question I’ve been asked on more than one occasion is  If the resurrection is real, what’s it like?

Weekly setup.

I’ve tried, in those moments, to remember how Jesus answered a question like that. We find him this morning during the final week of his life, teaching in the Temple.  After confrontations with scribes, chief priests, and Pharisees, now it’s the Sadducees’ turn to go toe-to-toe with Jesus, the only time they ever do so.  We talk a lot about the Pharisees, but who were the Sadducees?  The Jewish historian Josephus described the Sadducees as wealthy, urban, conservative aristocrats.  Where the Pharisees cared little about politics—anyone could be in power as long as the Pharisees got to exercise their faith—the Sadducees were the high priestly class, part of the collaboration system with the Roman Empire, and hell-bent on maintaining their wealth and status.  They followed only Torah—the first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures—and ignored the prophets, the Psalms, or any other wisdom literature.  They did not believe in a day of resurrection; after all, if you’re rich and powerful, who needs an afterlife?  Nor did they believe in a coming Messiah. Both events would cause a disturbance to their carefully ordered lives.  So when they approach Jesus with a question about resurrection, they are not at all being sincere, but rather they just want to trip him up with a question designed to humiliate him and his ridiculous belief.  This moment is “gotcha journalism” at its finest, to borrow a line from a colleague.  

Their question goes something like this:  OK, Jesus, if there really is a resurrection, suppose a woman’s husband dies and they have no children, prompting the man’s brother to marry her in accordance with the Law, but he dies childless, and the pattern continues until the woman has married all seven brothers without bearing a child. So whose wife will she be at the resurrection?

You can hear the smugness come through, can’t you?  We got him, they’re saying to themselves, maybe even with a dude-bro fist bump or two.  Then Jesus responds, and his response is so profound that Luke says in the very next sentence following the end of our reading today, that nobody dared question him from this point forward.  

Jesus confronts the Sadducees. 

So how about that response? The Sadducees think that if there is a resurrected life, then it must follow the same pattern and rules as this one, and this life is governed by Torah, the Law.  In the Law there is the prescription for a man to marry his dead brother’s widow if no children are born.  The reason that this Law exists is to maintain justice for the widows, to be sure that they are not forced to live as beggars after their husbands’ deaths.  It is a well-meaning law, but it fails in one crucial way:  it treats women as property.  “Whose wife will she be?” they ask, implying a sense of ownership.  

Immediately, Jesus rejects this.  His rejection is not of marriage but of possession.  He acknowledge that in this age people are “given” in marriage, but it is not so in the age to come; that is, in the resurrected life with God.  It’s important to remember that in Jesus’ day marriage was not an institution oriented around romantic love and affection between two people, but a rather it was an economic institution, whereby families’ allegiances were maintained in the giving of a daughter away in exchange for a dowry. But, as Jesus points out, in the resurrected life with God, no one is “given” in marriage because that great sacrament from God that makes two become one is not about possession or property but about belonging; the couple’s belonging to each other, which reflects all of humanity’s belonging to God.  As our own marriage rite says, it is a reflection of Christ’s love for us, a reminder of that belonging.  To imply that a woman would remain the property of a man in the age to come is to infer that God’s future is merely an extension of our own present, but Jesus makes clear that resurrection entails transformation into something new, or in this case into that original vision of how God intended for people to be in relationship with one another.

The original vision of God, as we have said before, is justice for all of God’s children.  This is an important piece to remember, because, as collaborators with Rome, the Sadducees had a stake in maintaining unjust systems.  Of course, they will deny a resurrection, or some life to come with God, because if there is no resurrection then this life right now is all there is and the only opportunity for God’s justice to be realized, and that is bad news for a population under Roman occupation.  It’s bad news for anyone who has known and still knows the sting of injustice, the endless cries that fall on deaf ears.  But the reality of resurrection gives hope to the oppressed, a promise that there will come a day when God will break through, and justice will roll down like waters for all of creation.  Such a promise was terrifying for the Sadducees.  

What is the one thing that people in power are most afraid of? Losing their power. Resurrection takes the power that humanity has tried to claim, over one another, and over life itself, and gives it back to God. Resurrection reminds us, reassures us, that, to quote the prophet, “My ways are not your ways,” says the Lord. In our time we see this with the fast rise of artificial intelligence and the attempts by the billionaire tech-bros – something of a modern-day Sadduceess – to overcome that pesky little problem of death, so that their power and influence will live on forever. But only one thing lives forever, and that is love. The love of the God who is love, the love Jesus embodies in feeding the multitudes, healing the sick, and letting the state kill him, only to mock death to its face three days later and show the world that even the grave can’t hold down love. The rules on this side of the kingdom, a side that is permeable and broken, no longer apply. Our addictions to possessions, prestige, and power, have no place in a resurrected life. 

How fitting, then, that we read this passage one week after All Saints Day? We were reminded then that those we love but see no longer are alive in the resurrected life that will be ours one day; a life that is beyond the injustices of our own time because God is God, not of the dead, but of the living – for God there is no distinction between the two; “life is changed, not ended,” our burial rite says. This is the life that is to come beyond death, yes, but it is also the life that is to come here, on earth as in heaven. It is a promise for which we all hope; truly, good news for the poor. Resurrection is simply the nature of who God is, and cannot ever be understood with minds that cannot imagine a reality beyond their own experiences, as the Sadducees had. We can keep scratching the perpetual itch of uncertainty, waiting for more proof to be given so that we have a better answer and understanding, or we can start seeing life, the life right now, as well as the life to come, through resurrection eyes. The proof will be in the living. 

I Mean to Be One Too

I wanna tell you a story about a saint. You won’t find any schools or hospitals named for this person. No icons. His name was Sam Dotson, and he was a saint on earth if ever there was one. Sam was born up a holler in Pound VA in 1946. He was a quadriplegic and lived with cerebral palsy. Given up by his mother, he was raised by his paternal grandmother, but once she died he entered a nursing home, where he would live for the rest of his life. I first met Sam when I was about seven or eight years old; a group of folks from my home church of All Saints in Norton, who had attended Cursillo, which is a Christian renewal weekend, decided to start up a little worship service at the nursing home where Sam lived. He had this big motorized wheelchair and spoke with the help of a computer that he typed with his index finger. I’d sit with him and sing along with the songs – his favorite was always I’ll Fly Away, he shared that with my mother. 

With Sam Dotson, circa 1995.

Sam loved basketball, and as it turned out, my dad was the coach at the local college right across the street, so many nights my mom and I would wheel him over, and he’d sit there at the end of the bench with me, watching intently and always reacting to every play. The team thought so much of him that they dedicated the seat directly across from Sam’s spot in his honor. 

What I remember most about Sam is his grace and attentiveness. My mom was going through some hard times in those days, and she would often go and just sit and talk with Sam because she knew he’d listen and that he cared. One time, being the dumb little kid that I was, I asked Sam if he blamed God for what happened to him. Who wouldn’t, I thought. He immediately shook his head over and over again and typed out his response on that little computer. He said he never blamed God or got mad at God because he was grateful for every single moment that God gave him. I’ve never seen someone who understood the meaning of gratitude quite like him. I can still see him, can still feel his hugs, and hear him say, in his own voice, as we’d leave his room, “Be good.” Always. Be good.

Sam died in 1997 at the age of 51. By all accounts he lived a much longer life than doctors originally expected, but it still didn’t feel at all like enough time. My family were actually the last folks to see him there in Norton Community Hospital. I think of Sam every All Saints; in fact, one year in college the church I was attending invited folks to write down the names of people who’ve been saints in their lives and told us to hang on to them. I still have mine. 

I share the story of Sam Dotson because every saint has a story, and every one of them deserves to be told. I’m sure that you all have such stories; stories of family members, mentors, teachers, maybe even priests, who have gone on to glory, whose examples still resonate with you. Hold them close during this Fall Triduum of All Hallows Eve, All Saints, and All Souls, because they are very much with us right now. 

I get asked sometimes how someone becomes a saint in the Episcopal Church. What qualifies someone? Do they have to be Episcopalian? No. Do they have to have some miracles attributed to them? No. Our definition of saints is more in line with how the earliest Christians thought about them. These were not perfect individuals, but merely faithful ones. They were the folks whose lives spoke out loud the grace, mercy, and love of God. Many were killed for their faith, yes, but that certainly was never a requirement. And while we do have a process for approving folks onto our official calendar of saints, it’s not as convoluted or lengthy as some others. We Episcopalians believe that while everyone might not be a saint, everyone does have the capacity to be one, because everyone is made in the image of our loving, liberating, and life-giving God. On Sunday morning, the cantors of our parish opened our All Saints Eucharist with a litany of saints, and the chapel was decorated with the pictures of all those folks we love but see no longer. Those named folks, and those known by only a few in those pictures, all have stories, and they all deserve to be told.

On Sunday I invited our folks to look around at the saints who surrounded us that day in ancient icons and modern photography. They are our legacy, not merely the legacy of the Advocate, but the legacy of our everyday lives. They are the ones who have inspired us, loved us, brought us back from the brink, and helped us discover our truest, deepest selves. That legacy is the reason why folks that day were invited to bring their pledge cards to the altar during our offertory, so that they may be blessed for next year, yes, but more than that; so that they may help ensure the legacy of the Advocate, for generations to come. Maybe one day, when we’ve all joined that great cloud of witnesses, our pictures, too, will hang in that chapel on All Saints, and our children and children’s children will point and say, “She’s the reason I’m here. They inspired me with their faithfulness. He always told me to be good.”

I've thought a lot about legacy and wondered too what some of those saints would think about the world today. Would St. Martin still give the coat on his back to the beggar? Would St. Alban give safe lodging to a Muslim imam fleeing angry authorities and die in his place, as he once did for a Christian priest? Would St. Moses the Black and St. Mary of Egypt find anyone to join them in repenting their sins and going into the wilderness to meet God? Where are the saints today? Who will speak truth to power? Who will speak up against the sin of xenophobia and demand, in the name of Jesus, that the stranger be welcomed? Who will denounce the powers and principalities that would willingly take away, especially from children, SNAP benefits and the basic human right to food and sustenance – give us today our daily bread! Who will carry on the legacy of the saints who gave everything – including their lives – for the Gospel of love proclaimed by the Prince of Peace? The saints of God are just folks like me….and I mean to be one too….right? What we do in life, someone once said, echoes in eternity. The saints remind us of that.

St. Moses the Black, who repented of a life of crime and moved into the wilderness to meet God.

Several of the saints that surrounded us on Sunday were depicted in icons, but there is a saying amongst our Orthodox siblings that one’s life is meant to be a living icon. Wherever you go, folks are meant to see Jesus, to know his love, his forgiveness, his hope in something much greater than the powers and principalities of this world. The waters of baptism, with which we were splashed once again, unite us to Jesus, to one another, and to the saints in heaven and on earth. The bread and wine are food and drink for our journey into a world that is often scary, but because we eat the Body of Christ, we can go and BE the Body of Christ. The saints were and are the people who give us the courage to face the challenges of our own times, just as they did, and thanks to the legacy they have left us, we know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that love always wins, and that nothing, not even death itself, can ever separate us from the love of God that we have in Christ Jesus our Lord. 

I don’t know much; I’m just a small town bird lawyer (if you know, you know!). But as I say in most of my funeral homilies, I do know that heaven is real, it has to be because I’ve staked my life on that claim. And I know that whatever it looks like, it is not only the place where the saints feast forever in the presence of Jesus, but it’s something that Jesus himself said has come near. Thanks be to God for Sam Dotson and all the saints in this and every generation who inspire us to make Jesus’ words fully known in our day until the day we are united with them again on a far greater shore. May all the saints, who from their labors rest, pray for us.