Resurrection Eternal

Now there came to Him some of the Sadducees (who say that there is no resurrection), and they questioned Him, saying, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that IF A MAN’S BROTHER DIES, having a wife, AND HE IS CHILDLESS, HIS BROTHER SHOULD MARRY THE WIFE AND RAISE UP CHILDREN TO HIS BROTHER.  Now there were seven brothers; and the first took a wife and died childless; and the second and the third married her; and in the same way all seven died, leaving no children.  Finally the woman died also.  In the resurrection therefore, which one’s wife will she be? For all seven had married her.” (Luke 20:27-33 NASB)

One of the peculiar aspects to the Hebrew Scriptures is the progression of their understanding of “eternal life”.  It is my suspicion that much of religious understanding was simply experiential.  People died…and remained dead.  Therefore people don’t rise from the dead.  Except people did.  So there is some sort of resurrection, but it only happens on special occasions or to special people.

The thing is that there seems to be some sort of belief in existence after death from a very early human history.  It became extremely developed in Egypt, but even so, the earliest human habitation (Jericho) shows evidence of some sort of belief in some of the earliest layers.  There’s not a lot of “evidence” for such existence, so how does “experiential religion” account for such belief?  And believing in “life-after-death” isn’t the same thing as believing in “resurrection”.    So how did some make this connection?

The prophets God sent to Israel seemed to have no problem believing in life, life with others, after death.  Isaiah wrote of it, Ezekiel wrote of it, but Elijah and Elisha actually bring people to life.  Think about that.  Elijah and Elisha didn’t go, “It’s not possible”, they just did it, believing that God makes it happen.  How did they know if it had never happened before?  I suspect that it had done it before but it didn’t make it into the annuls of Scripture.  It wasn’t germane to the story of God’s work with His people, so it was left out; in much the same way details of King Omri were left out (1 Kings 16:16-30).

I think Levirate Marriage is one of those progressions toward believing in resurrection from “life-after-death”.  It’s not spelled out that it came from that, but I think the importance it had indicates it does.  So here’s how I get there:

Eternal life can be understood in terms of living in the memory of your offspring.  You live in their minds and therefore live eternally.  If life is defined relationally, then this makes a degree of sense (see earlier entries on this topic).  So, if a man dies childless, unless the rules of Levirate Marriage are carried out, his eternal life is over.  When someone refuses to carryout the process, they are, in effect, taking his eternal life from their brother or relative.  It’s serious seen from this point of view.

So while the Sadducees didn’t believe in a resurrection, they did believe in eternal life; just not some sort of “spiritual existence”.  They stopped at the Levirate Marriage rule with their understanding of “eternal life”.  This would make a certain amount of sense for “priests” for whom lineage was everything.  Their understanding would be simply that people die and experience nothing, but live on through their offspring.  Resurrection would imply the possibility of experience after a physical death.  And if death is relational, then death becomes true only from one perspective, the perspective of those still on earth.

Here’s my point, God has revealed to us that there is life, existence and relational experience, after our brains stop waving.  So, why do we focus so much on this one?  Why, if we know that there’s more to follow, do we let this life distract us from that one?  I think it’s because we know so little of the one to come.  We fear what we don’t know, and know more of the loss of this life than the gain in the one to follow.  And if you think about it, God has set it up that way, and perpetuates the lack of knowledge of what’s to come.  We can surmise about His motives in that, but we’re still left with a blind-spot about what’s to come.  What we do know is that it’s life with Him.  I believe He wants that to be enough.

So, is it enough for me?  Is it enough to know that I have eternity with Him facing me?  Will that define my actions and decisions today?  Will that modify my attitude at work, with my co-workers, with my customers, with my circumstances?  Or will it affect how I deal with my wife and daughter?  Will my belief that this is nothing compared to what I have coming change how I deal with my day and those I encounter in it?  Will it change how I face my future, the future of my church, my community, and my plans?  If it does, how will it change or affect these things?  How is my faith in my Master actualized in my behavior and attitudes?  How is eternity with Him driving my point of view, my paradigm, and my life direction?

To put it another way, why do such petty stupid things get me upset if this is nothing to compared to what’s to come?  If I believe that why do stupid things bother me?  Why do I fear?  Why do I get angry?  Why do I have any other emotion than joy all the time, because I have an eternity already.  What more is there that can compare with that?  Why am I tossed off kilter by the small things when I have such an enormous thing already secured?

The truth is that I believe, but clearly need help with my unbelief.  The faith I profess hasn’t yet become so thoroughly pervasive in my life that I know nothing else.  Not yet.

What’s your view through the fence this morning?

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Passion Week VII

On one of the days while He was teaching the people in the temple and preaching the gospel, the chief priests and the scribes with the elders confronted Him, and they spoke, saying to Him, “Tell us by what authority You are doing these things, or who is the one who gave You this authority?”  Jesus answered and said to them, “I will also ask you a question, and you tell Me:  Was the baptism of John from heaven or from men?”  They reasoned among themselves, saying, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ He will say, ‘Why did you not believe him?’  But if we say, ‘From men,’ all the people will stone us to death, for they are convinced that John was a prophet.”  So they answered that they did not know where it came from.  And Jesus said to them, “Nor will I tell you by what authority I do these things.” (Luke 20:1-8 NASB)

Did you every hate it when your parents would tell you to obey “because I said so”?  Have you ever heard the term, “it is what it is” (probably original with Yogi Berra)?  Well, this word “authority” used here in Luke is sort of like that.  In Greek usage, the word has both a legal and a simple “unhindered” usage.  In other words, it refers to actions which are not prevented for some reason, but also to the right or legally granted right to act.

But the elders questions are not redundant because they examine two options.  They first ask, “…in what sort of authority…”, and then “…who gave you this authority?”(emphasis mine)  The connecting conjunction is “or”, meaning that both were not assumed to be true.  Either Jesus had this authority derived from some quality, or the authority was derived from another Person.  They didn’t consider it being both.  It was ironic that, in Jesus’ case, it was actually both.  He explains this ironic situation in His parable that follows.

Jesus explicitly refuses to answer.  He bargains with them asking them to reveal what they thought of John’s Baptism.  They feared the crowd stoning them (seriously?), so didn’t answer.  Therefore Jesus refused to answer.  But had He answered, what would He have said?  How could He explain that He had the authority by qualitative nature of being the Son of God, and it was therefore also derived from God the Father?  How do you explain that to people looking at a man in rumpled robes, dusty sandals, scraggly beard, and bad breath?  He didn’t appear in such royal powerful qualities one would expect of Deity.

The truth we often miss is that the people saw a person, much like them.  He was at least so much like them that He was too far removed from God to be any more like God than they were.  How could they have been expected to see beyond the human before them to the divine beneath?  We wouldn’t.  So Jesus’ refusal to explicitly answer the question isn’t strange at all.  In a sense, He also feared the crowd’s response.  It wasn’t time, not yet.  But soon, the crowd would be seeking His death, and it would be granted.  Again, He explains that in the parable that follows as well.

So, what is my lesson?  It has to do with authority.  I believe that, as children of the Creator of the universe, we have authority.  And I believe that, like Jesus, our authority is both qualitative and given.  Our authority is derived from our status as children and given to us by our Father.  I know I behave as if I have nothing, I’m poor, I’m wretched, I’m worthless, etc.  But if I truly believe that my Master has redeemed me, then how can I believe those things about myself?  Certainly my status before my Savior cannot be founded upon a personal quality within myself (self-righteousness).  But He has justified me, and is sanctifying me.  That means I am righteous because of His qualities.

I know that I tend to debase myself, probably in false humility, so that I don’t appear proud.  But authentic assurance in qualities derived from my Master is not pride, it’s faith.  I have authority derived from my Master, I ask and act in His name.  In fact He commands me to act and ask in His name.  I really struggle with this because it’s very easy for me to rely on myself and my abilities or knowledge.  I can appear to “have it all together” to other people.  The problem is that maintaining that facade drives me to crash and burn.  I can’t believe my own press, for my own good.  Instead I have to acknowledge the derived quality of my authority, and act authentically in His purpose and design.

I can dig further down, but that’s deep enough for one entry.  What’s your view through the fence?

Giving = Sanctifying?

While Jesus was speaking, a Pharisee asked him to dine with him, so he went in and reclined at table.  The Pharisee was astonished to see that he did not first wash before dinner.  And the Lord said to him, “Now you Pharisees cleanse the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness.  You fools! Did not he who made the outside make the inside also?  But give as alms those things that are within, and behold, everything is clean for you.  (Luke 11:37-41 ESV)

I don’t know if it’s every church, but the one’s I’m most familiar with have problems in that the people don’t tithe.  So, the pastor and elders and leaders all work to persuade people to tithe.  We use various means, but typically it boils down to their devotion to God is reflected in their giving (guilting them into it).  But I think I’ve found a different approach in this passage.

As you read through this dinner party where, again Jesus seems to make His host and other guests uncomfortable, He also throws in this strange statement in the middle.  It’s weird so it’s easy to miss: “But if you give as alms those things that are within, and behold, everything is clean for you.”  The problem I have with it is that Jesus attaches several elements together that I find difficult to connect.

Giving those things that are within makes some sense, if those things are good.  Of course if I give those things that are within as “alms” I suppose that would necessitate those things be good.  What sort of heart would produce something to give to others as “alms” if it wasn’t good, or striving to be good.  But Jesus connects those things that are within with “alms”.  How do I give what is within as alms?

Those things that are within are what?  My love (as God understands it).  My compassion?  Mercy?  Perhaps the ability to overlook negative judgments of others, what they look like, dress like, or smell like; how they talk.  Maybe what I can give as alms from within is my time, or a smile.  Perhaps a conversation, not trying to fix them, but getting to know them.  I honestly don’t know what it will or should look like, but these are possibilities.

But whatever the interior alms look like, giving them has a very unexpected effect.  The context of this statement has to do with washing the hands before eating a meal.  The statement Jesus makes is that the effect of giving alms from the interior is that “everything is clean for you.”  How does one affect the other?  How does what I give to others from those things that are within have anything to do with the cleanliness of what I eat?  Does Jesus even refer to the cleanliness of what I eat?  The context suggests that, and it would definitely be on the heart and mind of a Pharisee and lawyer (it probably never left their mind).  But how do the two connect?

I honestly don’t know.  I’m wracking my brain to get my head around this concept, and I’m really struggling.  Cleanliness of what the Jews ate is way too often rooted in safety or in health reasons.  I think most of the “Holiness Code” of Leviticus was more defining the Jews as distinct from those around them.  There may have been a practical side to the laws in that code, but there was one common thread that transcended “wisdom”.  It was simple obedience.  What truly made the Jews distinct was their whole devotion to the rules of God.  Sure some of those rules kept them safe from dangerous food and difficult laundering problems, but some were simply inexplicable as pragmatic rules.  I think it was supposed to come down to devotion to God.

In that case, what one eats is less important than devotion to God.  Therefore, perhaps Jesus is prioritizing the law of loving your neighbor over don’t eat certain animals.  Later on in this passage Jesus says, “These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others.”  I think that also applies here.  The Pharisees and lawyers were focusing on those rules that showed strict adherence to certain laws that made them look good to others.  But avoided adherence to those laws that actually cost them in their dealings with others.  They strove to merely look good to others rather than be good before God.

In that case, we, I, are just like them.  Churches are full of these people.  Superficiality is easier than true devotion.  Devotion to God really is inconvenient and disruptive to our lives, our activities, our work, what we do for fun, and our schedules.  My wife and I made the decision to search for a house that would enable more ministry.  God directed us to one that fit our budget and was more home than we imagined within our budget.  But it requires more work to keep up.  It requires more time to keep it available to ministry.  It means having to sacrifice our personal space.  Hospitality isn’t mine or my wife’s gifting it has become more our “calling”, so it doesn’t come easy.

But really that’s easier than others around me to make even greater decisions to inconvenience themselves for the Kingdom of God. What we’ve done helps us feel better about having a nice house, but truly we benefit tremendously from it.  Others have made decisions to be devoted to God in ways that hurt their business, endanger their work life, and possibly endanger their families.  We haven’t done that.  But we know enough of inconvenient devotion to God to know that we, even as limited as we have been, are weird in church.  We should be on the bottom of the devotion ladder, not near the middle or top.  That’s just embarrassing, or should be.  I believe Jesus is calling these Pharisees and lawyers to be authentic with their beliefs.  But what they heard was Jesus tearing down their practices.  He wanted them to be real Jews, but they heard Him try to remove their distinction from Gentiles.

So I suppose the question for you is, “What do you hear Jesus saying to you?”