Pentecost 23: November 11, 2001
Veterans' Day

"Now He is God not of the dead, but of the living;
for to Him all of them are alive."
St. Luke 20:38

Joy Davidman - C.S. Lewis' wife - in her book,
"Smoke on the Mountain,"
which is an exposition of the Ten Commandments -
tells the story of how the sins of Family
are visited upon their subsequent Children.

In teaching about how important
the Fifth Commandment is to:
"Honor Thy Father and Thy Mother,"
Joy Davidman tells of a Family that had
a young five year old boy and
That they also had
the husband's 90 year old father living with them.

The Old Man's Daughter-in-law resented him
because he was messy at the table -
Sometimes with his palsied hands
he would spill food on the floor and
sometimes food would dribble from his mouth.

One day the daughter-in-law angrily said to the old man:
"If you're going to eat like a pig -
then I'm going to treat you like a pig."

So she put the old man by himself
at a small table aside from the family's table.
She also put side boards on the Old Man's tray.

She then told the Old Man -
Now you won't be spilling food all over the place and
we won't have to watch you eat like a pig.

So the Old Man ate alone - apart the from dinner table -
his eyes twitching & blinking as he watched
the others eat at the Family Table

Still food would spill from his shaking fork and
still food would sometimes dribble from his mouth.
One day - the Mother saw her young boy in the back yard
hammering and sawing on some old wooden planks.
What are you doing asked the boy's mother?

The little boy replied:
"I'm making a tray with some side boards
for you and Daddy for when you get old."

The Fifth Commandment not only warns us
to honor and to give respect which
our Parents deserved -

But also, the Fifth Commandment warns us:
That what go around - comes around."

It is certainly true -
that the misgivings and
the dysfunctions of the Family -
The mores and attitudes of our Culture -

Are handed down to the Children -
and to subsequent generations -
thus perpetuating the Sins of the Family and Society -
Thus continuing to wreak sorrow & misery
upon the world in which we live.

This kind of life cannot be called a living faith -
but it is a dead faith - that is not of God.

* * * * * * * *

In the Gospel of St. Luke -
We have the story of the Sadducees who came to Jesus -
They were an ill wind that blows no good.-
for here again they were trying to make fun of,
to humiliate and to discredit Jesus.

In order to make their point -
They oftentimes were devious - underhanded.
To be sure they were not a very good example
of those who represented the Priestly caste.

The Sadducces did not believe in the Resurrection -
so on the pretense of sincerely inquiring & questioning
something about the after-life -
(which remember - they didn't believe in the first place),

They came to Jesus with a very unusual -
actually with an absurd & a very silly situation -
About which they wanted Jesus to Pontificate.

You know they situation they presented -
Of how a woman who had seven husbands -
all of which died in succession -

Then the question:
"Now who in the Resurrection
whose wife will she be?

The question should not have been whose wife will she be -
But considering the fate of her seven husbands -
The question should have been:
Which of the Seven Husbands would ever
be foolish enough to give her another try?

The insincerity - the absurdity of such questioning
exposed the Sadducees' hidden agenda
Which was to ridicule and to discredit Jesus.

However - Jesus - in a very respectful way
puts them in their place -
"There is no giving or taking in marriage in the Resurrection."

"So that's that - Do you have any other silly questions."
(Thank God that poor woman
will not be able to inflict herself again on any of those seven men).

This story - this event - exposes the insincerity -
the dishonesty - and the deviousness of the Sadducees.
And their hidden agendas.

Remember what Calvin Miller said in the book "The Singer,"
"Obscenity is not exposed flesh -
but obscenity is exposed intentions."

Also this story contrasts the devious character of
the Sadducees with the forth-rightness and
the simple honesty, the integrity and the sincerity of Jesus -
The One as the Scriptures testify -
"In whom there is no guile."
One thing about Jesus that we know for sure -
Is that He didn't have a hidden agenda.
Jesus was always up-front with His followers -
with what was expected of them:

With Jesus-
There would never be any surprises.
"Any who would come after me -
must take up their Cross & follow me."

Jesus was a Man of Impeccable Character and Integrity -
with Him - there was no double-talk -- one knew what to expect -
For Jesus was not into deceit & playing games -
With Jesus - there was never any
"Bait and Switch."

Jesus didn't promise one thing and
then offer something else.

In a world of double-talk - of mixed messages - of deceit
Of Bait & Switch

It is so very refreshing to come upon One
whose whole Life and whose actions were
the essence of sincerity of integrity -
and One whose Word and whose actions were not a contradiction.

Of One who had no ulterior motives -
other than as a Man of Truth - to be faithful to
The Calling and the Mission for which God sent Him.

When Jesus told His Disciples :
"In My Father's House are many Mansions
And that He had prepared a place for each one of us ,"

These words are beyond our experience -
Jesus is speaking of a Truth that we cannot prove -
However - we believe these words -
Not because they are easy to believe -

But we believe these words because of the One who spoke them.


For Christians - we can not always believe what others tell us -
But we can always believe the Words of Jesus -
If there is any one in this world whose words
that we can truly believe -
It is Jesus.

We bet our lives on Him - on His words
On his truth - on His way and on His Life.

As the Church - as Christian people - as followers of Jesus
Let us strive to be people of Truth and Integrity.
To be sure - the Truth and the Integrity to which Jesus calls us -
Is a rare commodity in this world.

For the way of the world is to take the Truth and to bend it -
sometimes even breaking it.
We sometimes bend it to our own will and to our own selfish ends.
The World took Truth and nailed it to a Cross.

To be sure - rational man has learned to rationalize
almost anything to his own benefit.

Contrary to popular belief -
Murder, lying and stealing are not the only common transgressions,
But the violation of the Fourth commandment
is one that does such grave injustice to God.-
And that is to attribute to God our own selfish desires and ways.

This is what:
"Thou shalt not take the Name of the Lord Thy God in vain,"
Means.

Every Religion at one time or another has veered off
in another direction from God's Truth -
to Mankind's own reprehensible & distorted
interpretation of God's will and Commandments -

And in so doing - has wreaked havoc -
sorrow & misery upon ourselves and our world.

There are none so blind as those who will not -
who are unwilling and who refuse to see
anything else but their own selfish value system.

For the Christian Faith teaches us that -
All that we do - no matter how noble or
how seemingly righteous -
Yet all that we do - still stands under
the scrutiny and the judgment of a Holy,
A Righteous and a Just God.

In the Prophet Isaiah - God says:
"My thoughts are not your thoughts - my ways are not your ways."
How long will we continue to masquerade
our own prejudices as God's will and as God's plan?

How long will we not carefully discover and
carefully discern the difference between our thoughts and our ways
With God's thoughts and God's ways?

How long will we let Culture -
that is
the Mores and the Ethics that Society has bequeathed to us -
that we have inherited - from previous generations
How long will we let those determine how we think and how we live -

As opposed to letting God's perspective be our perspective.
And to be sure they are not always the same.

Someone has said that:
"A Prophet is some one who sees things as God sees them."
The same can be said of a Christian -
For a Christian is one who strives to see things as God sees them.

Spiritual Blindness is the unwillingness and
the refusal to see things as God wants us to see them.

The Christian Life is not a static thing -
But it is a life-long endeavor to more & more
To discover and to discern how to live by God's will.

If the Bible does contain the Word and the will of God -
And to be sure - we believe it so to be -

Then Brethren - if we are sincere about our Christian Commitment -
then we had better be
"In the Word."
We had better be In the Word - not just for six weeks or so -

But as the old song goes:
For January - February - June and July.

In other words - it is my firm and my strong conviction -
That from the Cradle to the Grave -
Christians had better be "In the Word,"
That is in Bible Study - in serious and regular Bible Study.

For it is the Word of God on which we feed -
that sustains our Spiritual Life and
that equips us and enables us to grow.

As St. Paul says - the kind of growth -
That enables us to grow into the full measure of
The stature of Christ Himself.

The goal and the end of the Christian Life is to be transformed -
To have the mind of Christ within us -
to have His will within us.

That is what St. Paul means when he urges us to:
"Have Christ in You."

C.S. Lewis said that Original Sin is:
The dethronement of God and the enthronement of self."

Then if that is true -
The transformation that must take placed within us is:

To think as Christ, to have His thoughts and His Ways -
Replacing our own - so that being transformed -
We may have the mind of Christ within us.

The focus of the Christian in trying to be
a person of truth and a person of integrity
is on oneself -

Our focus is not on the imperfection of others.

Exclusiveness in the Christian Faith
Is very much alive and well in some Churches today.

Exclusiveness is contrary to the mind of Christ Himself.
It is contrary to Him who said:

My House shall be a House of Prayer for all People
Whoever does the will of my Father is my mother -
my brother and my sister.
Other sheep I have that are not of this fold.

Not every one who says to me Lord - Lord -
will enter the Kingdom of Heaven
But He would does the will of my Father in heaven.

St. Paul said that:
"God is no respecter of Persons -
but that whoever is righteous and tries
to be obedient to God - anyone of any Nation -
is acceptable to Him."

Someone has said that we draw circles
to exclude others and to shut them out.

But Christ is always erasing our small circles and
He is always enlarging them and enabling us
to reach out and to be more inclusive.

We let Him be the Judge of who's in and who's out.
For that is not our job.
Only the One who has those nail prints in His hands
will come to be our Judge.

For we each have enough to deal with in our own lives -
Than to merely focus on others.

Sinful Humanity is transformed not in one fell swoop -
But by one person at a time -
And thank God that it has nothing to do with what we think of others -

And hopefully -
we will be reckoned in that number.
We pray that we bwill be in the number of the Redeemed.

The Scriptures today help us to focus on
those things that really matter and
to not get bogged down on pettiness
that distracts us from our true calling -


The kind of pettiness -
Like that of the Sadducees
that focuses more on the faults of others -
Which is really a kind of dead Faith

But ours is a Faith that is alive
And focus is on ourselves

And it is not only others -
Our focus is
In living out the True Faith.
This is what it means to be alive in Christ.

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Text:

"Now He is God not of the dead, but of the living ,
for to Him all of them are alive."

A M E N & A M E N !!!


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