In the Name of Jesus. Amen.

It's now less than one year until our next state and national elections. All the fussing and fuming and name-calling will increasingly invade our homes under the guise of "campaigning." Through much of that campaigning, if the past is any indicator, it will also be increasingly harder to determine what the real issues are, and where each candidate stands. We all know that political campaigning revolves less and less around what a particular candidate stands for, and more and more around attacking the character of his or her opponent.

This, held up alongside this morning's gospel reading, serves to illustrate the old saying, "The more things change, the more they stay the same." For we see the Sadducees up to the same kind of mean-spirited "discredit your opponent" campaign strategy against the Pharisees and against Jesus that we still see in our presumably more enlightened democratic process today.

That strategy being of three parts:

First: Commit yourself publicly to as little as possible,

Second: ..but force your opponent to take a stand in public whenever possible.

Third: Make his or her position look as ridiculous as possible.

In Jesus' time, the Sadducees were what we would describe today as "the religious right," or perhaps, religious ultra-conservatives. They were biblical literalists, maintaining that the Torah alone - that is, the first five books of the Old Testament, the "Law of Moses" - were the only source of doctrine about God, and of God's law for his people. In those five books, there is no teaching about resurrection. Their belief was simple: if there was a resurrection, Moses would have said so. He didn't. Therefore, there isn't.

"Eternal life" consisted solely of producing sons to inherit the family name and keep one's property in the male family line. Therefore, if a husband died without a male heir, it was his brother's duty to produce a son with his widow. No son = no "eternal life." But in terms of the human body and/or the human spirit: once dead, forever dead. Absolutely no resurrection.

Their arch-rivals, when it came to biblical interpretation, were the Pharisees - whom we might describe today as religious "liberals" on such matters. They believed that the idea of resurrection after death, while not spelled out in so many words, is assumed in the Scriptures which, for them, included both the Torah (or the Law) and the Prophets - that is, the bulk of the Old Testament as we know it today.

Then there was Jesus, neither Sadducee nor Pharisee; one who defies any such categorizing as "liberal" or "conservative." But remember the Beatitudes, according to Matthew? "Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of heaven." "Blessed are you when you are hated and excluded and jeered at because of me ...for your reward is great in heaven." And when you feed the poor, care for the weak and powerless, "you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just." Not to mention the prediction of his own passion, death, and on the third day, rising from the dead. Clearly, the question of whether or not there was a resurrection from the dead seemed pretty well settled for Jesus.

It is this question of resurrection, then, which is the real issue behind the Sadducees' question about marriage after death. They could have cared less about who was married to whom after death, because they didn't believe there was life after death. The Sadducees thought they could trap Jesus and make him look ridiculous, discredit him. They take an earthly problem, not all that uncommon, extend it to the point of absurdity (childless unions with seven brothers-in-law, all of whom die untimely deaths), and then ask Jesus to solve it. Sort of like asking an honorable man the question, "Do you still beat your wife?" and telling him he can only answer "yes" or "no." No matter which way that honorable man answers, he incriminates himself. Similarly, their aim is to set Jesus up and make him, and the whole idea of resurrection, look as ridiculous as possible.

But Jesus is an able opponent. He doesn't engage in the same kind of tactics the Sadducees use. He doesn't set out to make them look ridiculous. He doesn't play along with the "win/lose" method of debate. He isn't interested in winning himself; he wants to win them.

So, he demonstrates that the question they raise is simply the wrong question. It begins at the wrong point. It works its way out of a fatalistic fear of death, and the misunderstanding that God has power only on this side of the grave. By starting at the wrong point, their question, then, leads down an erroneous path - that human manipulation of the marriage laws will accomplish what God can't - eternal life.

But God is God of the living, Jesus declares - earthly living, eternally living - ALL THE LIVING! Why, Jesus asks them, referring to the Torah, would Moses speak of God as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, patriarchs who had been dead for centuries, if they were not eternally alive with God? Moses does not speak of God as the one who once was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but as the one who is yet their God, even these many centuries after their earthly death. They, and others who die in faith, Jesus says, "cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection ...Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to God, all of them are alive."

Powerful affirmation about a by loving God.

I suppose most of our questions about life after death, about heaven and the "hereafter," begin at the same point the Sadducees' did - our fear. Fear of the unknown, fear of powers beyond our comprehension. We want to know as much as possible about what it will be like: what it will look like, what we will look like, will we be able to recognize anyone - and even, who will get in and who won't! For, in our world of technology, in our "information age," knowledge is revered as the only path which leads us out of fear.

Jesus invites us into another dimension of human experience - that of FAITH. To have faith means, above all else, to trust. So for the Christian, there are now two pathways out of fear, two pathways which intertwine: knowledge, about which Paul declares that now we only see as through a mirror, dimly; and trust. Trust that Jesus, in whom the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, speaks all the Truth we really need know about life after death when he says, "Do not let your hearts be troubled [about death]. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father's house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you I go to prepare a place for you? And if I prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you to myself; so that where I am, there you may be also."

And the way that Jesus goes to fulfill that promise for us is by going through that very same gate of death as us. Therefore, death is no longer the way to heaven; Jesus is.

He tells us nothing more about what resurrection, eternal life, is like. Perhaps that is because we already know all we need to know. We know that God is God of the living; we know that God makes promises, and keeps them; we know that Christ was raised and dies no more, and that when we were baptized into his death, we were also baptized into his resurrection, and that we will be raised in a resurrection like his.

Jesus says little about life after death. Instead, he focuses upon the living - which is the meaning of his name, Emmanuel," God is with us. Because we see Jesus embracing the brokenhearted, comforting the bereaved, healing the sick, feeding the hungry, raising the dead, all the way from Nazareth to Golgotha, we can make that leap of faith and trust him at his word.

I received word at 7:30 a.m. one Saturday morning some years ago, that a 47-year-old parishioner, Tom, died, after a nine-month struggle with cancer of the esophagus. The day before he died in his home, he said to his wife, "My time is coming. I'm going to tell my father how much I love him, and I'm not going to die until I hear him say he loves me." A half an hour later, he slipped into a light coma.

Amen.

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