Luke 20:27-38
Good morning, dear friends … it’s good to be here … God has something good for us today … a word of hope, some encouragement … forgiveness; inner peace; renewal of spirit … fresh purpose and great confidence.
We’re God’s people; God’s unconditional love for us never changes … God is shaping our lives to be like Christ … day-by-day; year-by-year - to be ambassadors of the gospel … a light to the world … the salt of the earth.
“Come and follow me” says Jesus, and that’s what we do, and that’s who we are … followers of the Master …
Every day of our life,
He calls …
We get out of the boat, leave our nets behind …
We follow Jesus … so closely, we’re covered in His dust, the dust of the rabbi.
“Peter, you’re looking a little dusty today.”
“You bet I am; it’s the dust of my rabbi. Where He goes, I go. If he walks on water, I’ll do it, too!”
Every time we pick up the Bible and read of Jesus, we follow Him … from Galilee to Jerusalem; from Pilate’s chambers to the cross of Calvary; from the empty tomb to the gates of heaven.
We hear His parables; we witness the healings … we watch the powers-that-be challenge Him and plot His removal … we’re amazed at His courage … we’re moved by His compassion … we’re saved by His death … made new by His resurrection.
Jesus my LORD!
“I am who God says I am. I have what God says I have. I can do what God says I can do.”
In our text today, Jesus is confronted by the Sadducees … a group who didn’t believe in the resurrection of the dead.
From Abraham to King David, the Hebrew people had no concept of eternal life … this life was good enough … when life was over, everyone went to Sheol, the rich and the famous; the leper and the blind, and everyone in between – to Sheol, the land of the dead.
The nations around Israel had a sense of life after death … look at the pyramids … but not Israel … this life was good enough … nothing more was needed.
To have lived on God’s good earth was sufficient … to love and be loved … to enjoy good food and wine … to be charitable with neighbors; to have friends and be respected; to worship the LORD and sing the songs of Zion.
This life was good enough!
But God had something more in mind … God touched the heart of His people and said, “I have something for you beyond this life.”
The thought of eternal life emerged in the mind and heart of the Hebrew people … a new heaven and new earth … death banished; tears wiped away.
Everything made new!
Jesus believed in the resurrection of the dead … but not the Sadducees.
So they confronted Jesus with a question … did they want to learn from Him? Maybe!
But more likely, a less charitable intent … a question to set up Jesus, embarrass Him, discredit Him … a silly question with harmful intent!
A lady on a plan was reading her Bible … a man next to her asked, “Do you believe all of that?”
“Yes, I do!” she said. “It’s the Bible.”
“What about the guy in the whale?” said the man.
“You mean Jonah?” said the lady.
“Yes, three days in the belly of a whale … how could anyone survive?”
The lady paused for a moment, then said, “I don’t know. I’ll ask him when I get to heaven.”
The man said sarcastically, “What if he’s not in heaven.”
“Then you’re gonna have to ask him!” she said.
The Sadducees asked Jesus, “This resurrection stuff. Do you believe that?”
I wonder how long they labored to craft their question … did they meet in counsel earlier in the week? … did they gather that morning? … did they rehearse their lines?
“Here’s a good question … this’ll trip him up for sure!”
“Say it this way Eleazar.”
“Use this tone of voice.”
“All set?”
“Eleazar? Are you ready?”
“Okay, here we go!”
So much time for something so small! Silly!
Earlier this week, on my way to church, coming here on 79th, the light changed, so I stopped – I was on the intersection.
Sepulveda traffic was heavy, and a car had stopped blocking the cross walk to the YMCA.
A man on the southeast corner … the light turned green, the walk sign lit up, the man stood there … looking at the car blocking his way as if it were the Grand Canyon; shook his head with disgust … finally stepped off the curb with a huff, walked two feet out of his way around the car, glared at the driver, and then on to the Y.
I thought: “Silly!”
Time and energy wasted for something so small.
But we all do it.
Someone criticizes your work, and you spend hours fretting about it.
You do your best, but someone questions your motives … and now you can’t sleep at night.
A co-worker irritates the daylights out of you … and you can’t get it out of your mind.
You spend hours explaining yourself … trying to win over your critics … wondering how to get back at them.
Small things!
Silly things … a thousand little silly things thrown into the pathway of our life … 999 of them not worth a second thought.
That car blocking the walkway … not worth a second thought … walk around it, shake it off, who cares? … get on with your life. Don’t sweat the small things.
Stay on the high road … be of good cheer … roll with the punches.
“LORD, silly things will come my way today … little things not worth a second thought … and I’ll not give ‘em the time of day …”
“I’ve got better things to do … higher thoughts and greater ideas.”
LORD, I’ll stay focused on my life … I’ll do the best I can, and let you do the rest.
I trust you, LORD; I know that cars will block my way today … but I’ll walk around ‘em; I’ll not waste time fussing and fretting. I’ve got better things to do.”
The Sadducees fussed and fretted about small things … silly things …
But Jesus didn’t succumb to their game … Jesus didn’t allow silly things to distract Him … He knew what He had to do, and He had to do what He knew.
Stay on the high road … stay focused … we’ve got better things to do.
Sometimes the car blocking my walkway gets to me … I focus on the car, I stare at the driver … I’m bummed, I’m incensed, I’m insulted; my stomach churns.
No, no, no, no … stay on the high road … stay focused … we’ve got better things to do.
A little girl was told repeatedly by her mother, “Don’t climb up on the chair.”
One day, the mother was in the other room; things seemed very quiet. The mother peeked around the corner to see her child climbing up on the chair … but rather than walk into the room, the mother decided to watch.
The little girl climbed up, stood there on the chair, said, “no, no, no, no” and swatted herself.
I have to do that now and then … “no, no, no, no.”
These are not good thoughts … this is a waste of time … it’s a silly thing …
“No, no, no, no!”
I’ll take the high road … I’ll stay focused … I’ve got better things to do.
Jesus stayed focused on the things that count!
Sometimes I ask myself: what really counts? What’s important?
40 Million uninsured Americans?
Environmental degradation?
Humankind’s warring ways?
30,000 children dying every day?
What’s important?
Bad hair day?
The color of the carpet?
You didn’t get your newspaper on time?
What really counts?
Jesus sums it up well: A new commandment I give to you, Love one another as I have loved you.”
Paul writes ten years later: “faith, hope and love abide, and the greatest of these is love.”
In the film, “Dan in Real Life,” a young man says: “Love isn’t a feeling; it’s an ability.”
Yes, an ability to change the world … by making life better one person at a time!
Johtje Vos died on Oct. 10 in Saugerties, N.Y. She was 97.
During the war years, Mrs. Vos and her husband, Aart, lived in a three-bedroom house on a dead-end road in the town of Laren in the Netherlands, with acres of forest behind it. Mr. Vos, who died in 1990, grew up in Laren and knew every stream and field in the area. That allowed him to lead Jews through the woods to the house at night and back into the woods when the Nazis were coming. Each time a German raid was imminent, a sympathetic Dutch police chief in Laren, a friend of the Voses, would dial their phone, let it ring twice, hang up, then repeat the code.
In all, 36 people were saved by the Voses, with as many as 14 hiding in their home at any one time.
One of the survivors said at Johtje’s funeral:
“If Johtje hadn’t done what she did, my mother wouldn’t have survived and I wouldn’t be alive.”
Mr. and Mrs. Vos resisted the notion that they had done something out of the ordinary. Interviewed for a 1992 book … Mrs. Vos said, “I want to say right away that the words ‘hero’ and ‘righteous gentile’ are terribly misplaced.”
“I don’t feel righteous,” said Mrs. Vos, who, like her husband, was a member of the Dutch Reformed Church, “and we are certainly not heroes, because we didn’t sit at the table when the misery started and say, ‘O.K., now we are going to risk our lives to save some people.’ ”
It started one night in 1942 when a Jewish couple asked to be sheltered for just that night as they ran from the Germans. Soon after, another friend asked them to keep a suitcase containing valuables before he was sent to a ghetto.
The Voses were surprised to discover that their friend was Jewish. “We never talked about Jews,” Mrs. Vos recalled. “They were all just Dutch, that’s all.” (New York Times, Nov. 4, 2007).
Love is an ability to stay focused on the things that count … a daily promise:
LORD, I’ll not let the Sadducees get to me … if a car pulls into my walkway, I’ll walk around it …
LORD, I’ll stay positive and hopeful
I’ll not lose sight of the goal.
I’ll take the high road … I have great things to do … life is precious and good …
I am who God says I am. I have what God says I have. I can do what God says I can do.
Jesus my LORD. Amen!
