{"id":1938,"date":"2025-11-09T21:02:39","date_gmt":"2025-11-10T02:02:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/?p=1938"},"modified":"2025-11-09T21:02:41","modified_gmt":"2025-11-10T02:02:41","slug":"something-god-alone-can-see","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/2025\/11\/09\/something-god-alone-can-see\/","title":{"rendered":"Something God Alone Can See"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">A Sermon for the Salem United Church of Christ of Harrisburg, PA<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor \u00a92025<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">22<sup>nd<\/sup> Sunday After Pentecost\/C \u2022 November 9, 2025<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu\/texts\/?y=384&amp;z=p&amp;d=84#pericope_gospel_reading\">Luke 20:27-38<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-audio\"><audio controls src=\"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Something-God-Alone-Can-See-11925-8.57-PM.mp3\"><\/audio><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Isn\u2019t it good for us to gather here this morning? The Book of Job imagines all the angels of the Lord gathering one morning; I think it was just like this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>One day the angels came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came with them.The LORD said to Satan, \u201cWhere have you come from?\u201d Satan answered the LORD, \u201cFrom roaming throughout the earth, going back and forth on it.\u201d [Job 1:6f]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Well, none of you are Satanic but you\u2019ve been out in the world. How was your week? What did you see that made you angry? What did you see that uplifted you? What was troubling? What made you smile? You\u2019ve had to answer some questions: what\u2019s for breakfast? What are we doing today? Why is that guy standing in the middle of North Third?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Here\u2019s one you probably didn\u2019t spend any time on this week: \u201cHow many angels can stand on the head of a pin?\u201d What do you think? Supposedly, this was a big theological question in the Middle Ages. Actually, historians now find almost no evidence anyone worried about this until after the Reformation when people began to make fun of it. The answer depends on whether you think angels have substance. If they don\u2019t, then an infinite number can stand on the pin; if they do, then just one. There: out of all the questions you\u2019ll have to answer this week, that one is settled. You can go onto more interesting questions like what are we doing for dinner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I bring all this up because today\u2019s reading from Luke is about a question no one is really asking, just like the angels on the pin. Last week we left Jesus going to dinner at Zaccheus\u2019 house; we\u2019ve jumped ahead of the whole Palm Sunday story and Jesus is in Jerusalem where he encounters a group of Sadducees. It\u2019s the first and only time we hear about the Sadducees in the Gospel of Luke. They\u2019re a group centered at the temple who were generally more well to do than the Pharisees we\u2019re used to hearing about. They\u2019re actually&nbsp; opponents of the Pharisees. You see, the Pharisees have accepted the prophets and some books lie Job called \u2018the writings\u2019 as God\u2019s Word\u2014holy scripture. The Sadducees, on the other hand, are purists; they only accept the first five books of our Bible, the Torah.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWhy are we talking about obscure first century Jewish theology?\u201d, I hear you wondering. Hang in there with me; we need to understand this question Jesus is being asked. Now, The prophets speak of God resurrecting the people of God. Ezekiel, for example, says<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>[God] asked me, \u201cSon of man, can these bones live?\u201d I said, \u201cSovereign LORD, you alone know.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Then he said to me, \u201cProphesy to these bones and say to them, \u2018Dry bones, hear the word of the LORD!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is what the Sovereign LORD says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. [Ezekiel 37:3-5]&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>This ability of God to resurrect and make new is central in the prophets. So the Pharisees are preaching this. But as I said, the Sadducees don\u2019t accept the prophets, so they don\u2019t accept resurrection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jesus is preaching resurrection. He tells his friends that he is going to be killed in Jerusalem but God is going to raise him up again after three days. So, the Sadducees have come to confront him about this and that\u2019s where we pick up the story in Luke. Do you ever ask a question without really caring about the answer? My dad did this: \u201cWhat do you think you\u2019re doing?\u201d I\u2019ve done it. \u201cWhat\u2019s all this mess?\u201d That\u2019s what the Sadducees are doing: they\u2019re asking a question without really wanting an answer; the answer they want is Jesus saying, \u201cWow, I don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So they\u2019ve come up with a rule from Deuteronomy. This is the rule.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>If brothers are living together and one of them dies without a son, his widow must not marry outside the family. Her husband\u2019s brother shall take her and marry her and fulfill the duty of a brother-in-law to her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The first son she bears shall carry on the name of the dead brother so that his name will not be blotted out from Israel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>However, if a man does not want to marry his brother\u2019s wife, she shall go to the elders at the town gate and say, \u201cMy husband\u2019s brother refuses to carry on his brother\u2019s name in Israel. He will not fulfill the duty of a brother-in-law to me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Then the elders of his town shall summon him and talk to him. If he persists in saying, \u201cI do not want to marry her,\u201d his brother\u2019s widow shall go up to him in the presence of the elders, take off one of his sandals, spit in his face and say, \u201cThis is what is done to the man who will not build up his brother\u2019s family line.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That man\u2019s line shall be known in Israel as The Family of the Unsandaled. [Deuteronomy 25:5-10]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now, there are some things where our common sense can lead us astray when we put them back in the Bible. One of them is the whole concept of a widow. Throughout the Torah and the Prophets, God shows a particular care for widows. But who are these women?&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>They are women in a patriarchal society. They couldn\u2019t own property; they couldn\u2019t function in regular economics But if they can\u2019t own property and can\u2019t earn money, how will they survive? Add to that is the fact that many women were widowed when young. When we say \u2018widow\u2019 we often think of an older woman who has lost her husband late in life. But Israel had to consider how to care for young women. So they did what many societies have done; they provided a way to marry them off.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Israel also had a particular concern about biological descent. God\u2019s blessing was understood to be carried on this way. So it\u2019s important that each family be continued. This rule takes care of both problems. Who\u2019s going to marry a widow? I\u2019s not a matter of romantic attraction; there\u2019s a rule. The rule is, your brother marries her, has children with her, and those are considered your children. Problem solved, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Except for all the problems this raises. What if these two don\u2019t like each other? When Jacquelyn and I were married, I had two brothers. My brother Allan was tall and handsome, much more handsome than me. My brother David is more charming than anyone I\u2019ve ever known and he\u2019s a rich lawyer. But you know, love isn\u2019t always reasonable. This text comes up every three years and it came up about a year after we were married. After the service, Jacquelyn quietly said, \u201cNo matter what happens to you, I\u2019m not marring either of your brothers.\u201d The Sadducees think they\u2019ve found another problem: \u201cIf, as you say, Jesus, there is resurrection, whose wife will she be after marrying seven brothers?\u201d It\u2019s a gotcha question!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I think of them gathered around, someone proposes the question, just as we heard: \u201cNow there were seven brothers; the first married a woman and died childless;..\u201d And so on. I think of them smiling in their arrogance, knowing they\u2019ve got him. The crowd is quiet, listening, Jesus looks back at them for a moment, perhaps sad at their lack of imagination, their lack of faith in God creative power, and simply says,&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>&#8220;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. [Luke 20:34f]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Wow. That\u2019s it: God\u2019s able to create and recreated and resurrect is so far beyond our present experience, our present lives, that we can\u2019t carry all the things we know into it. So there\u2019s no problem; God\u2019s love is so great, it\u2019s beyond what we can imagine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jesus isn\u2019t content to brush aside their gotcha question, though. He goes on to point something out from Exodus, from the very scripture the Sadducees claim to represent.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>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.Now he is God not of the dead but of the living, for to him all of them are alive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is what we should take away from this section: God is God of the living and all of us are all the time alive to God.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The closest we can come to this is the way parents are with children. Every parent, I think, has this experience: they are alive to us in their whole history, in all their ages. May is 35 but in my head, she\u2019s also the little girl who was fabulous at her sister\u2019s wedding when she was 10, she\u2019s also the 15 year old who taught me to enjoy alternative music and rap, she\u2019s the 20 year old college girl and so on. The same is true of my other kids. My daughter iAmy has grown kids now but to me she\u2019s still the high school girl who outsmarted me. She used to go out on Saturday nights; she had a midnight curfew. I\u2019d do that dad thing starting about 11:30; I\u2019d start thinking she was going to be late and get mad. By 11:45 I\u2019d be all worked up. By 11:55 I\u2019d be ready to deliver a real dressing down to the late Amy. But Amy would sit outside in the car with her date until 11:58, then waft in just as the clock struck 12. I\u2019d be obviously mad, ready to yell, but with no reason; she was on time. She\u2019d look at me and say, \u201cWhat?\u201d And I\u2019d have to stifle it. Maybe you know how awful it is to go to God full of unexpressed righteous anger. I could go on about Jason as well. What\u2019s true is that all these are alive to me in all their ages, not just their present.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That\u2019s what Jesus is saying about how God is with us: we are all present to God&nbsp; in all our ages, in all our lives. Our past is present to God. Our present is present to God. And our future is present too, beyond death. Death is one of the structures of this world, not God\u2019s love. We don\u2019t know how this works; we don\u2019t know what this is like. So we imagine all kinds of things, most of them based on what happens here. That\u2019s fine, as long as we realize that\u2019s us. God\u2019s love is beyond ours, beyond our imagination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We\u2019re going to sing a song in a few minutes that\u2019s one of my favorites: \u201cIn the Bulb There Is a Flower\u201d. Most of you know this song: in the bulb, there is a flower, in the seed, an apple tree. There\u2019s nothing about a bulb that suggests a flower. There\u2019s nothing about a seed that suggests an apple tree. Yet that\u2019s their future. In the same way, Jesus is telling us, nothing about what we are now is big enough, full enough, to show God\u2019s love for us. He invites us simply to believe in the love of God, beyond our imagination, beyond our experience. In that love, we are, we were, we always will be, embraced in the love of God. Who you truly are, who you truly will become, is indeed, as the song says, \u201cSomething God alone can see.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Amen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>God is with us: we are all present to God\u00a0 in all our ages, in all our lives. Our past is present to God. Our present is present to God. And our future is present too, beyond death. Death is one of the structures of this world, not God\u2019s love. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[53,371,3,32],"tags":[407,156,33],"class_list":["post-1938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-afterpentecost-c","category-luke","category-sermon","category-year-c","tag-afterlife","tag-death","tag-resurrection"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1938"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1938\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1941,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1938\/revisions\/1941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}