November 5, 2004
Unexpected
Pentecost 23/27C Lk 20.27-38
Herewith some thoughts on Jesus and the Sadducees, an encounter and reminder for our time:
How easily we impose our notions and our experiences framed by this world on what God may have in store for us in a newer age. By doing so, we underestimate the power and authority of God.
Jesus’ encounter insists that we be open to the unexpected gifts of grace. We must take care lest our understanding of the past — including our reading of scripture and tradition — makes us unable to see new manifestations of God’s will. God is constantly making all things new.
As well, the story warns us against limiting the range of God’s grace as though some could be beyond it. If even the dead are not beyond that grace, then surely no race or social or economic status or even religion can escape it.
This refreshing news of the gospel in Jesus’ hands can and must inform the way we live together as a society of law and order. Our systems of government — and of churching, especially — are only consistent with that news in that they enhance and enable justice and peace, love and freedom. They are altogether contrary to it when they seek to restrict it by imposing our own limited understandings about the ways we must live together.