Year C

Luke 20:27-38

The Very Rev. Denise Vaughn

The Living God of the Saints

“I know that my Redeemer lives!” Job cries out with all the saints! When I hear these familiar words, perhaps like me you can’t help but hear the music and begin singing the words of the great Easter hymn by Samuel Medley. And of course, Handel wrote a glorious solo piece in “Messiah” that follows the “Hallelujah” chorus that carries forward the joy and reason for the joy of the Christmas season, proclaiming hope in the face of everything that would deny it: “I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth. And though worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God.” Handel and Medley along with Christian saints through the centuries, have heard Job’s cry as a witness to the resurrection of Jesus and thereby to their own resurrections.

Yet, when Job cried out in despair “I know that my Redeemer lives!” he was more than likely not proclaiming a belief in resurrection. Judging from many OT texts, including the text today, belief in the resurrection was not a part of the world of ancient Israel. It was a later doctrine, developed in the centuries after the exile. And as our gospel text for today shows, it was still a controversial claim in Jesus’ day. The Pharisees believed in the resurrection of the dead; the Sadducees did not. Therefore, we may ask why this statement is in the midst of the book of Job? A book or story filled with themes of suffering and justice.

The story of Job is a story of one who is abandoned by his family and friends and cursed by God and where does he turn? He turns to the only source of help left—he turns back to the God whom he had just accused of destroying him. Certainly he is angry with God. He wants a written record of all that he has been through, so that he can present it to God and demand a satisfactory answer. It does not occur to him, in his pain, distress, and fury, to stop believing in God. And what does he want from God? Does he want justice or his health back, his wealth and his family? Perhaps, but more than anything else, he wants to stand in the presence of the living God and hear he is loved. In the midst of his suffering, he foresees the wonder of a living redeemer to save him.

And in the end, against all odds, his hope is fulfilled. He sees God; and having seen God, he finds life again. He sees his Redeemer. Though the book of Job does not proclaim an explicit belief in the resurrection, it does help to eventually lead to the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead. God leads God’s people again and again, from slavery to freedom, from exile to homecoming, and from death to life. And the church through prayer and preaching and beautiful music has proclaimed through the ages that this Redeemer is Jesus the Christ. A word of hope in the face of despair and death and so appropriate on this All Saints’ Sunday when we remember and celebrate the saints of today and those who have gone on before us.

The saints, including Job, are ones who keep on believing against all odds, to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of the living who is faithful even until death and beyond. It is this living Lord who is encountered in today’s text by some Sadducees. The Sadducees are questioning Jesus about a mystery they have already rejected. They do not believe in life after death or resurrection. The life to come is a puzzle to us all. So the question from the Sadducees is one that we can relate to even today. Yet, their questions are not for the purpose of a genuine conversation, but for the purpose of prompting a debate, with the hopes of proving to the onlookers that Jesus is not trust worthy or knowledgeable.

Jesus, rather than taking the questioning as a personal attack he uses the moment of questioning as a time to teach about the nature of heaven and the love and mercy of God. As he so often does, Jesus shifts ground. He explains that the resurrected life is quite different from the earthly life. He explains how Moses witnessed to the resurrection “in the story of the burning bush where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” God was and continues to be the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Death is the end of many things, but it is not the end of the living God. We live in a certain time, but God is immortal and according to Jesus, this proves the resurrection that the Sadducees denied.

Theologian Karl Barth, in the last hours of his life was working on a lecture. In that last lecture, he wrote of God as the God of the living in these words: “All live to him, from the Apostles to the forebears of yesterday and the day before yesterday. They do not have only the right, but also relevance in the present to be heard.” To God all of these ancestors are alive and are an example for our lives. Such communion with the saints that precede us belongs to the praise of this God who is “God not of the dead, but of the living.”  We have this good news that all the children of God, the saint’s, will not be forsaken even in death because Jesus was raised from the dead, we too will be raised to life eternal with God. Even death cannot separate us from God.

Paul continues this message of assurance in his second letter to the Thessalonians. The Thessalonian Christians have grown extremely agitated by claims that the “day of the Lord” or the second coming of Christ was already occurring. Paul reminds them in this second letter, though still very near, the “Day of the Lord” had not yet arrived. They were not abandoned or left behind. They are loved, chosen, and called by God. This whole passage celebrates this gift of life. Thanks are due to God “Who from the beginning has chosen and called God’s people “through the sanctifying work of the Spirit.”

Paul wanted everyone to know that we matter to God. That Jesus died for us. He rose from the dead and now, that same living Christ lives in us. The conclusion of the passage, with its reminder of what Jesus and God have already accomplished, insists that God’s future may also be trusted.  Across the generations, God does not give up on us and does not abandon us. Ever present, faithful, trustworthy, and true, the triune God’s overflowing love toward the world draws us in and sends us out, in the power of the Holy Spirit and in the name of Jesus.

God’s sustaining presence, goodness and mercy means that we can live a life of hopefulness even in the midst of difficulty and pain. It means that we do not have to fear death because the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is not the God of the dead Jesus tells us, but the God of the living; for to him all of them saints that have gone on before us that witness to the living God in their lives, are alive. And they call us to cry out to the world “I know that my Redeemer lives!

Read words to Medley’s “I know that my Redeemer lives!…