Living the Resurrected Life Today, Together

Pentecost 22, Year C, Proper 27

Sermon for November 9, 2025

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts all be for the greater glory of God, today and always.

Well, good morning, Epiphany. Good morning. And hi to everybody zooming in today.

If it's okay, I'd like to begin with a story. Once upon a time, 14 years ago, Lauri and I were living and working in Columbus, Ohio. (Don't hold that against us.) We were in the late stages of raising our family of three children. Confident Claire, our oldest child, had graduated from Purdue University, her mother's alma mater, and was engaged to be married to a wonderful young guy named Adam, whom we loved very much, whom she met at Purdue. Carrie, our feisty middle child, was in her second year at Notre Dame. Her father's alma mater... go Irish! And Danny, our shy yet kind youngest, was a sophomore at Upper Arlington High School competing on the men's aquatic teams, both water polo and swimming.

We all were looking forward to Claire and Adam's wedding day, set that year for May 21st. With me traveling a lot, and both girls living in Indiana, and Danny gone all day, Lauri decided to work retail to stay busy, earn some extra spending cash, and take advantage of the employee discounts on the stylish clothing at Talbot's. One late winter evening at the store, Lauri encountered a woman trying on a lot of clothes and asked if she could help her select something just right for her. As they got to talking, Lauri asked whether she had a special occasion coming up, because she seemed interested in buying an unusually large number of outfits. "Oh, yes indeed," claimed the woman. Then she cheerfully gave Lauri a tri-fold pamphlet with information about the coming apocalypse, accompanied by the rapture of true believers.

The big event was to occur a couple of months in the future, precisely at 5 PM Eastern Time on May 21st. That was not only Claire and Adam's wedding day, it was their actual wedding hour. Lauri's customer explained, "I've never really had any nice clothes before, so I'm using my savings to splurge. Our church has a lot of parties and celebrations planned before the rapture, and I want to look nice before I go." When Lauri came home and told me this odd story, I chuckled and said, "Well, I hope you didn't open a credit card account for her because she won't be around to pay it off." No, the woman paid in cash, and that's a true believer, don't you agree?

Maybe you've forgotten that predicted apocalypse, because I think there have been a few more since that time. And at that time, in Columbus, at least, it was in the news and it gained a lot of general awareness. So, fast-forward to Claire and Adam's beautiful and joyous wedding day at St. Patrick's Episcopal Church in Dublin, Ohio.

As the reception right afterward began, I, as father of the bride, stood and welcomed Adam's and our families and closest friends, and I offered a few words to mark the occasion. I began with this. "Ladies and gentlemen, I have some good news and some bad news.”

Our guests quieted down. "First, the bad news. The rapture was scheduled to occur a half hour ago, and uh-oh, we're still here... But wait, now the good news. If the rapture had occurred a half hour ago, and we were included somehow, wouldn't we end up at something like a wedding banquet? So who knows, maybe we're in heaven right now."

I have often wondered whatever happened to the woman Lauri outfitted. What was it like for her and her husband the morning after, after the ruptured rapture? Sorry about that. Did they stay at that church? How might that disappointment have affected their faith? What kind of lives did they go on living after that? Most important, did they attempt to return the clothing? (Ha.) Well, now I share this story to illustrate a premise. For good or bad, how we think about the afterlife ultimately determines how we live in this life. This certainly was the case for Lauri's customer, but I think it's true for everybody.

Have you ever asked yourself what your expectations might be for heaven?

I mean, look at us. Most of us are nearing or past the three score in 10 years allotted in Psalm 90 for the typical human lifespan, right? Now, let me read Psalm 90, verse 10.

"Our years are three score in 10, or if we are strong, four score. But even the best of them are struggle and sorrow. Indeed, they pass quickly and we soon fly away."

Basically, I guess we get 70 years to live, and if we're lucky, and if we're built for it, maybe 80. But those last years are full of travail and trouble, and regardless, a human lifespan isn't that long anyway, right? We will end.

We're elders in this life, right? Most of us are going to confront some kind of apocalypse fairly soon, I would imagine. The rumor going around in this life is that no one's getting out of here alive. So maybe it's time we gave what's coming next a little thought.

Jesus' strange encounter with the Sadducees in today's Gospel reading provides another example of the link between one's attitudes about the afterlife and one's behavior in this life. Let's recall the scene.

But first, who were the Sadducees? These guys are not to be confused with the Pharisees or the Zealots or the scribes or the Herodians or any one of those groups in the first century that were trying to either control or manipulate Jesus. It's understandable if you can't keep it all straight.

Here's a memory aid my fifth-grade religion teacher, Sister Regina Gertrude, shared with us. She explained, "The Sadducees didn't believe in the resurrection, so they were sad, you see?" Good old Sister Regina Gertrude.

In the Gospels telling of it, a few of their group appear before Jesus to ask a ridiculous question that frankly always reminds me of the movie Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. Except, of course, in this case, there's only one woman playing the role of all seven brides.

Listen, in my big Irish Catholic family, there were five Sullivan brothers, and I can assure you that each of our wives would attest that one Sullivan is quite enough. Thank you very much. Right, Lauri?

There are two things we need to remember about the Sadducees, though, and both of them point to Jesus' death on the cross just a few days after this exchange. First, they rejected most of what Jesus was teaching. They were first-class religious fundamentalists anchored in the Torah, otherwise known as the law, written by Moses. They overlooked the later books of the prophets and the oral traditions of the rabbis. They were also materialists who not only rejected the resurrection, but any notion of the spirit world, including angels and presumably the Holy Spirit. So naturally, they posed scruffs like Jesus, the self-appointed itinerant rabbi and prophet from Galilee, who preached like he had an intimate relationship with God, acted like he personally had met all the angels, and taught like he had written the scriptures himself.

Second, Jesus was a threat to the Sadducees' wealth and position. They were the cynical big business monopolists and oligarchs of first-century Jerusalem, a combination wealthy political class and conservative religious sect. They were the chief priests and other head honchos who frankly were working behind the scenes with the Romans to keep the money flowing from the cult of temple sacrifice. They enforced this lucrative status quo by keeping the people in line and under their control by having codified the religious requirements on everybody for the annual first fruits sacrifices. All that fine beef and lamb and fowl and grain brought by the faithful was butchered and barbecued by the high priests who were supposed to distribute it to the poor, but frankly kept much of the choice meat for themselves, their families and friends, one presumes also for their security details.

Not believing or trusting in an afterlife, they lived their lives selfishly, getting what they could now, living as if he who dies with the most toys wins.

The group of Sadducees who challenged Jesus with this snarky question weren't interested in his answer because they hadn't asked the question to learn anything new from him or even to trick him the way the Pharisees often tried and failed to do. I think these rich power brokers asked it simply to mock him and the whole idea of the resurrection. But this is what Jesus said in response, most likely for the benefit of his disciples and the crowds gathered around the temple who had come to hear him teach, not for the knuckleheaded Sadducees whose minds had closed long before.

"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 can't 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. That God is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to him, all of them are alive."

Jesus is promising those of us who believe in the resurrection, a time when we shall never die, will be children of God, like the angels, fully alive with the patriarchs, and presumably with every saint and every saved sinner who's ever lived on this earth.

It would only be a few days after this encounter that the temple high priests and Romans would conspire to arrest, condemn, and kill Jesus. And only three days after that, as the gospels attest, he rose from the dead in an indescribable and sometimes unrecognizable body that was able to pass through locked doors, yet still bore the scars he endured in this life. It was clearly him, asking for something to eat, and later hosting a charcoal grilled fish barbecue on the beach for his closest friends, a guy after my own heart.

Do we dare believe this? Can we afford not to? You know, it's all a great mystery.

On one hand, Jesus is explaining that heaven will be quite different than merely an extension of what we most enjoy about this life, including our most loving and intimate relationships. According to Jesus, our lives and our relationships will be changed but not ended. Yet on the other hand, Jesus promises us resurrection in such plain language, and in so many other places across the four Gospels, he describes the kingdom of heaven as a dinner party or, yes, as a wedding banquet, one to which everyone is invited, but only some choose to attend.

Maybe that's what he meant when he told the Sadducees that those who are considered worthy of the resurrection would enjoy it, perhaps implying that those who live in this life in unbelief won't. They will have chosen to have life end when they thought it would, at death. And Jesus also kept saying that the kingdom of heaven was at hand, right here, in front of our noses, right here, right now.

We don't have to wait for death to bring the kingdom to this life. We can sit at Christ's table every Sunday, at every Eucharist. Frankly, we can be there every day if we choose it.

A couple of decades ago, I had a friend and a spiritual advisor share with me that he once had a mystical vision as he approached the altar at Communion. He said he saw everyone who had ever received the sacrament down through the ages at the altar rail with him, and it brought him to tears. But God is the God of the living, not the dead. For to him, all are alive.

Epiphany, friends, I want you to know that Lauri and I are delighted to be with you here as members in this very special congregation. Every time we worship with you, every time we share brunch with you, every time we see Epiphany welcoming the stranger, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and sharing our abundance with others, we feel we're already living the resurrected life.

As long as we continue to live this way, all of us here, now, together, well, we might not notice the change as each of us meets death and crosses over to that age Jesus promises. And finally, I hope the woman Lauri served at Talbot's long ago has found a church like Epiphany and that she now knows that you don't have to go anywhere to find yourself in heaven. Let it be so.

Amen.