Living without fear of death

By Rev. Heather J. Blais, Rector

​This month while we are getting ready for holiday fairs, thanksgiving, and the incarnation at Christmas, the gospel lessons assigned to the lectionary take place during the week of Jesus’ death. It can be helpful to spend some time recalling that week. 

Today’s gospel lesson from Luke takes place during the week of Jesus’ passion. Jesus has made a triumphal entry into Jerusalem, riding on a colt.  
People laid down their cloaks before him, as a way of conveying their understanding that Jesus was an entirely different kind of leader.  One who proclaimed a vision of God’s kin-dom, whose values were in stark contrast to that of the Roman Empire.  Most leaders within the religious establishment would have found this display deeply alarming. So much so that by week’s end, Jesus was arrested, tried, and executed by the state as a criminal. 

Some of the Pharisees in the crowd spoke out to Jesus: 
“...order your disciples to stop”(19:39).

Yet Jesus responds to their demand by saying:
“...if these were silent, the stones would shout out” (19:40).

It’s fitting then, that as Jesus continues into the city, he begins to weep. He wept over the city with sorrow, disappointment, and grief. Those in religious leadership had so misunderstood him, so misunderstood God’s message, that further sorrow and pain awaited them, “...because you did not recognize the time of your visitation from God”(19:44b). The pain and sorrow they would face was not a condemnation. Rather it was the natural result of their lack of curiosity, or even openness, that God might be amongst them, in and through Jesus. 

While in this state of grief, Jesus walks into the outer part of the temple, where a marketplace is set up. Some elements of that marketplace were standard protocol, as they needed to ensure that the animals being sacrificed were unblemished. Yet some sort of misuse or abuse was taking place in that sacred space. The injustice and disrespect of it shifted Jesus from sorrow to anger, and he began to drive those sellers out of the marketplace. 

It is worth noting - if we ever doubt Jesus’ capacity to fully understand our experience of sorrow, disappointment, grief, anger, injustice, and the isolation 
of these feelings, we need to take a closer read of the gospels. Jesus experiences each of these feelings with a fullness that reminds us we are never truly alone in our sorrow, anger, or any other experience. 

These are the feelings Jesus would have been carrying with him, as he began to teach in the temple in the coming days.  A tenderness right beneath the surface. 

During this time, some leaders within the different sects of religious leadership engaged Jesus in oral arguments. They hoped to discredit or disrupt his movement, as they perceived him as a false prophet. 

First were the Pharisees, who asked questions like:

• Tell us, by what authority are you doing these things? (20:2).
• Who is it who gave you this authority? (20:12).
• Is it lawful for us to pay taxes to the emperor? (20:22).

Each time Jesus would answer their question, by turning the question on its head, and getting to the heart of the matter.  After no real luck, some Sadducees took a turn. They told a story of a man who had died, leaving behind a childless widow. According to the law, the deceased man’s brother would marry the widow to protect her, and to preserve his brother’s name, estate, and lineage (Deut 25:5-19).
The hope is the widow would become pregnant, and the child would be considered the direct heir of the widow’s deceased husband. In the Sadducees story, the deceased man’s brothers keep dying, leaving his widow childless, until finally she has married all 7 brothers without producing an heir for her first husband. Then they ask, in the resurrection, “...whose wife will the woman be?” (20:33).

This question is highly irritating. First and foremost, there is no pastoral heart shown for the woman. She has buried seven husbands, and grappled with the pain, isolation, and grief of infertility. And in this story, the concern is whose property is she in the afterlife.  The question becomes more irritating when we recognize these leaders are not seeking a serious answer. Unlike the Pharisees, the Sadducees do not believe in resurrection. The question is asked with the hope Jesus might misstep in his answer. 

Commentator Kendra A. Mohn writes,“The Sadducees seek to force Jesus to expose how ludicrous the idea of resurrection is. In his rebuke, Jesus demonstrates how it is, in fact, ludicrous to try to understand the resurrection 
in terms of this life. He asserts that the rules we put in place to navigate this world are not important, or even relevant, in the next one, because it is so fundamentally different from what we normally experience.”* 

We try to understand eternal life with our orderly way of thinking and being. Except the things that matter here, do not matter in the same way in eternal life. We cannot fully comprehend resurrection life. A place where there is no more death or dying; where there is always enough; where all are welcome and everyone is inherently valued. 

In resurrection life, we stop being somebody’s property or agenda and the isolation we know at times in this life is gone forevermore. It is so radically different, we cannot fully understand it. Jesus responds to the question in an unexpected way.  

In the verses following our lesson, the text says,
“ …they no longer dared to ask him another question.” (20:40).

As onlookers, we can notice Jesus seems to be preparing for his own death. In doing so, he is teaching us how to live our lives without fear of death. 
Because, our God, “...is God not of the dead, but of the living”(20:38). While our physical bodies and our time on this earth is fleeting; our souls live onward in resurrection life. 
Commentator Mohn goes on to ask:
    If through Jesus, we are all children of resurrection, how does that free us?
    What is it like to live without fear of death?

I quite love this question about fear. What is it like to live without fear of death?

I’m not sure we can fully grasp what it is like to live without fear of death, but I love the idea of striving to live that way. 

As followers of Christ, we trust and share a collective hope in a vision of bringing about God’s dream for this world, here and now, while also trusting in the fullness of resurrection life. We believe in living our lives with a radical hope and love that lets us abandon beliefs and practices that lead to judgment, exclusion, and scarcity. 

We chose love and action. 
We choose full inclusion and welcome. 
We choose abundance, gratitude, and community. 

The way in which we most clearly take that leap of faith, and strive to live without fear of death, is in our baptism. Today we will renew the promises of our baptism alongside Rena, in anticipation of her baptism, and next Sunday, we will do the same alongside Chloe in anticipation of her baptism. 

We have been discussing these promises in our Teen Confirmation class, as well as, in our Episcopal 101 and Newcomers Group. The challenge of really living into these promises if we take them as seriously as we are called to do is quite overwhelming. 

We explored how it's more about our intention of striving to live into them, than about doing so perfectly. If we long to live into the promises of our baptism. An easier way in, may be picking one of the promises we make today, and really striving to live into that promise very well. Reflecting on how we are doing with it each day, and finding new ways to embody the promise that make sense for this chapter in our life. If that peaks your curiosity, I would encourage you to reflect on which of these promises you most need to be living more intentionally as we seek to grow in our faith. Then over the course of the next month or so, spend time reflecting on how we are doing living in that promise. While the hope is we strive to live into all of them, some seasons of life require us to focus more on one. Knowing and trusting that as a community, we are collectively living into these promises, as we help one another to keep growing in our faith. To keep trusting in the promise of resurrection life, so we might live a life without fear of death, and in so doing, empowering us to live a life of love. 

As we prepare to head back into the world this week, I invite us to further reflection: What baptismal promise is God calling us to tend to, especially now?  Amen. 

Lectionary
Haggai 1:15b-2:9
Psalm 145:1-5, 18-22
2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17
Luke 20:27-38

*https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-32-3/commentary-on-luke-2027-38-6

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