3rd Sunday before Advent: Job 19: 23-27a, 1 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-end and Luke 20: 27-38
In an interview last month, Bill Nighy said: “I think about death 35 times a day”; he continues “I know it’s gonna happen, but I think that maybe at the last minute somebody might make an exception”
It's an apt and fascinating remark given his latest film called Living in which he plays Mr Williams, a widowed civil servant in post-war County Hall who’s been given 6 months to live. At that moment he realises that he’s not been living fully, but literally shuffling paper, deferring decisions, sticking to his routine.
When Mr Williams reflects on what he’d say when he’s called to meet his maker, he expresses the mortal prognosis we all share. He decides to get something done; to express gratitude and kindness; to find space for wonder, playfulness and song; to leave a modest legacy of social justice.
It’s an extraordinary and exquisite performance: every movement understated; every gesture refined; every word a whisper; every emotion restrained. It’s increasingly joyous - shot through with humanity and hope.
If you can see it, do; it might well be a cinematic parallel to the question in today’s Gospel. The Sadducees were asking a question about what happens when we are called to meet our maker; but doing so from the starting point of their own scepticism.
They turn talk of life after death into an absurdist riddle exaggerating the human concerns of this life: marriage and family life, death and childlessness, law and legacy.
Jesus does not respond on their terms. Resurrection cannot be grasped in earthly terms; their imagination is limited and makes God too small. They approach the question through hypotheticals rather than faith.
As one commentator puts it: “To speak of God as a living God, the Bible means not merely that God is real or alive, but that God, as the beginning of Genesis makes clear, is the very source of life. Therefore, God is just as capable of raising people from the dead as of giving life.’
This divine life is different from human life; resurrection life is different from lives lived from birth to death. Of course we have questions but we can’t resolve them in simply human terms. Resurrection takes us beyond the logics of bio-medical and physical realities; instead Jesus’ life, death and resurrection, the story of Easter, invites us to stretch our imaginations.
Part of what Jesus’ response to the Sadducees reveals is that resurrection speaks of liberation and the reversal of human injustice. Our scriptures place widows within the realm of God’s preferential option for the most vulnerable; yet here she is treated like chattel, a possible means of continuing the family line. Even her grief and loss is, in this instance, amplified and abstracted for the sake of debate.
For those longing for all those longing for consolation and peace, resurrection is a radical hope. Given our human experience of anxiety, loneliness, disappointment; those times when love is met with unkindness or control; and also the inevitability of our mortal prognosis, then this hope is a matter of life and death, as well as life beyond death.
For Jesus, and in the letters, we see marriage as an earthly institution for the good of human beings - goods of faithfulness, mutual comfort and not just family life but the building up of community through generosity and compassion. It is a good commended alongside being single - through choice, circumstance and calling - as we seek to live in love of God and neighbour.
Resurrection is the entering into an eternal love - where there is no more suffering, crying, pain or death. Being caught up in such a depth of love can bring comfort; whilst here and now we treasure our earthy ways of loving. Loves which are fragile and tender, imperfect and evolving; the love of friends and siblings, parents and spouses.
In Jesus, we see love divine made perfect in our human weakness. He takes up his cross, bears the weight of our capacity to wound and be wounded. He takes all that separates us from God and others to his final breath. Like a seed, his life is buried in the ground, dying to bring forth new and abundant life.
In him, love has the final word; in him all things are restored to Godself. Love’s redeeming work is done - where thy victory, o grave?
Jesus invites us to walk this way. To take up the cross in this life - and follow the way of new life. There we find love in community and intimacy beyond any human loving. In Thessalonians we hear of several dimensions of this life.
There is the hope of being gathered together in this universal, peaceable, consoling love. Hard though it is to conceive, poets such as John Donne have given us a vision of life beyond darkness, dazzling, silence and noise of one equal light, one equal music.
There is also the lived reality of life on earth shaped by this heavenly hope: we are assured that God loves us in Christ Jesus; we are assured of salvation, the promise of healing and making whole; we are also assured of the Spirit being at work in us. So we hold onto eternal comfort, this good hope; but we also commit to the work of comforting the hearts of others, of strengthening them in what we say or do.
In Living Mr Williams finds his own way of putting into practice this purpose. Around him, we see others wanting to order their own lives - for the good of community or for self-interest, the blossoming of love or the shuffling of papers, expressing gratitude and sharing food.
As we gather to celebrate this Eucharist, we come in gratitude to share heavenly food in earthly bread. We eat for the laying aside of self-interest and the good of community. Here we pray that love blossoms making strangers, friends. Here there is sacrifice and joy, mystery, wonder and hope. Here our grief, pain and betrayals are transformed as we become restored penitants.
Here we are recalled to serve a Kingdom where no-one belongs to another; but where all are beloved of God. Here in a way, the patriarchy of the Sadducees' trick question dies. Before we eat together, we pray ‘thy kingdom come’. We pray that the radical hope of the gospel might make us free to live for others in love.
We serve the God of the living. The great I AM who was and is and is to come. The one who makes all things new and whole and alive. The one who invites us to repent and grow and flourish. In the power of the life-giving Spirit, we serve a living and loving God who came near to us in Christ Jesus.
Like Bill Nighy we know that death is going to happen; but we trust in a rather more radical exception than mere continuation; the exception is life eternal offered through God’s merciful and loving judgement. So we can declare, like Job, with confidence: I know that my redeemer lives and that we shall see our God here on earth and in the world to come.
© Julie Gittoes 2022
