“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves…”
~~Ranier Maria Rilke💛
Are you aware that St. Mark’s has a transition team? Headed up by Tim Swygert, the transition team is responsible for all aspects of facilitating a smooth transition from our old structure to the next. This includes packing and moving, storing stuff, and lots of other details too numerous to mention. Do transitions give anyone else anxiety? Thank God for Tim and the team!
The Sadducees seem to be experiencing some transition anxiety as they interrogate Jesus in the temple.
While I understand the human desire for certainty about life after death, it’s hard to take seriously the question the Sadducees ask Jesus. Sure, they’re referring to Levirate marriage law in Deuteronomy, but it’s disturbing to hear a woman so blatantly objectified. There must be a better question.
The Sadducees were an educated and elite sect of Judaism, active from about the second century BCE until the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE. They were mostly priests responsible for pretty much everything that happened in the temple, and they seemed to take this job very seriously. Of the three prominent first-century Jewish sects —the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Essenes — the Sadducees did not accept the concept of a general bodily resurrection of the dead, the prevailing Jewish theology of the afterlife. What did they believe? It’s hard to say, because they and their writings did not survive the destruction of the Second Temple, and anything we do know comes from those who were likely opposed to them. The Sadducees seemed comfortable in their beliefs without the need for any other teachings outside the Torah, such as from the prophets, and they certainly seemed suspicious of anything the prophet Jesus had to say.
“Teacher, you have spoken well,” some scribes say to Jesus. And they ask him no more questions, Luke tells us.
Anxiety averted? I’m not so sure. Who still has questions about the resurrection?
At lunch the other day, my sister admitted that she will sometimes text our dad, who died three years ago this month. She showed me her phone. All her texts were received. Don’t judge.
My parents died so close together, and after 65 years of marriage, I cannot tell you how many people tried to console my siblings and me by saying, “At least they are together.”
There’s another story of a woman in a caregiving facility, hanging on to life by a tiny thread. One day, the woman is visited by a kind chaplain. Trusting him, she confides in a small, frail voice, "People keep telling me soon I will see my husband in heaven."
To the chaplain’s great surprise, the old woman suddenly sits straight up in bed and blurts out loudly, “I spent seventy years of my life with that man! Do I have to spend eternity with him, too?
Let’s be real: resurrection is nearly impossible to grasp from our limited human perspective.
That said, I really appreciate Jesus’ respect for and sensitivity to the diverse theological beliefs of the Sadducees. Loving our neighbor means meeting people wherever they are in their faith journey, encouraging their curiosity, and welcoming their questions.
You’ll have a chance to practice a little with our confirmation class during coffee hour today. Please stick around. I hope you will welcome their questions and share your own. We can all be teachers for one another.
In these last days before his death, Jesus is teaching in the temple. Scholars note that Jesus teaches in spaces accessible to all bodies, including women and children.
The temple is a main focus this week. We might pause here to consider the function of a temple. How does a physical structure encourage communion with God? How might it interfere with or inhibit communion? Do we need a physical structure to encounter God?
Next Saturday, all are invited to join me and others from our diocese for a pop-up Eucharist at Schooley Mill Park. We will hike a short distance and worship in creation, hoping to stimulate some new conversation about where and how we do church.
Haggai’s book is short—only two chapters—but offers a historical perspective on the rebuilding of Solomon’s temple, which was destroyed in 587 BCE.
Along with Zechariah and Malachi, Haggai is a post-exilic prophet, one of the 12 so-called minor prophets. After seventy years in captivity, returning Jews likely had limited memory of their homeland or their temple. Surely, they had heard stories. But they’d made new lives for themselves in Babylon. When they returned to the “land of milk and honey,” things had changed. They had changed. It was likely easier to stay in their comfortable homes than to do the demanding work rebuilding their temple. Haggai’s job was to encourage them and remind them of God’s abiding presence. Haggai was chair of the transition team, kind of like Tim.
As our own exile approaches, we might consider this to be a cautionary tale. How can we attend to our transition anxiety while doing the important work of rebuilding?
Our new Inreach Program, spearheaded by Gail Gerdes, is designed to help us do just this. You’ll be hearing more about it in the coming weeks. Perhaps you will feel called to participate.
As we move through our transition, we will need people to keep both our inreach and outreach ministries going. We’ll need our elders to remind us where we’ve been, and prophets like our fantastic building committee to help us stay focused on the future.
We’ll need workers of all sorts, young and old, and in between. It will be challenging, fun, and sometimes crazy making. As we watch our new building going up, as we continue praying and caring for one another, we will be co-creating something new with God. Not every church community gets a chance to do what we are doing. I pray we will listen faithfully for where God might be calling us to participate.
At St. Mark’s, we have this excellent tagline: Built on faith, rooted in love. Very soon, it will be tested, as the proverbial rubber meets the road. If we can acknowledge our anxiety and do the good work over the months ahead, continually reminding one another of God’s presence with us throughout, I think we’ll be in good shape.
As followers of Jesus, we’re all called to be on the transition team. We’re all called to share the good news of the resurrection with one another and the world.
I spoke with an old friend on Friday who’d not only grieved the loss of his wife to cancer but also received his own scary diagnosis. Now, ten years cancer-free, he told me the doctor had spoken the word “cure.” Thanks be to God. My friend asked for prayers that he would stay healthy and alive. He’s 72. “How long do you want to live?” I asked him. “Forever,” he said facetiously. No worries there, I thought. But I’ll still keep him in my prayers.
Rather than focusing on an incomprehensible future, I think our better question just for now might be: How can we move most faithfully and gracefully through the next transitions? My sense, based on Jesus’ example, is that if we’re patient with ourselves and one another, we will get there together, and resurrection will be ever so much clearer to us from the other side. Amen.
