Last weekend’s All Saints’ worship brought tears to many eyes. The names of those who died and who are now fully alive in God stay with each of us, whether personally known or unknown. In the Gospel lesson this weekend, Jesus is challenged with somewhat of an eternal word puzzle by some religious leaders who did not believe in the resurrection from the dead. Those who challenge Jesus follow a line of thought from Hebrew law regarding the care of a widow. They ask Jesus about how this all works out in the afterlife.
Thankfully, Jesus does not engage, but as usual, shifts the conversation into deeper and more life-giving waters. Jesus tends to our human frailty and limitation by reminding us of our home in God. Our human frailty and limitation are where we begin and end. Each day of our lives, we depend on God’s abundant generosity and life-giving love. We will strain against our human frailty and limitation and seek control, mostly out of fear. When we embrace our vulnerability, we come home. The Gospel lesson closes with this hopeful promise: “Now God is God not of the dead but of the living, for to God all of them are alive” (Luke 20:38).
The poet T.S. Elliot interprets Jesus’ promise in a remarkable way in two passages from his Four Quartets. These images are worth pondering in this weekend’s worship and holy conversations:
Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
the world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living. (Four Quartets: East Coker, T.S. Elliot)
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time…
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one. (Four Quartets: Little Gidding, T.S. Elliot)
Yours in Christ Jesus,
Pastor Peter