Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Today's text

Luke 20:27-36

Some Sadducees--those who argue that there is no resurrection--approached Jesus] and they put this question to him, “Master, Moses prescribed for us, if a man’s brother dies childless, the man must marry the widow to raise up children for his brother. Well then, there were seven brothers; the first, having married a wide, died childless. The second and then the third married the widow. And the same with all seven, they died leaving no children. Finally, the woman herself died. Now at the resurrection, whose wife will she be, since she had been married to all seven?” Jesus replied, “The children of this world take wives and husbands, but those who are judged worthy of a place in the other world and in the resurrection of the dead do not marry because they can no longer die, for they are the same as the angels, and being children of the resurrection they are children of God.

Prayer

Forgive us our presumption, Jesus. Who are we to contend with you? What foundation for argument can we offer to you who dwell in intimacy with the Holy Wonder? What source shall I footnote to overwhelm your understanding and turn the tables on you?

Nonsense, all of this. Yet, you invite us to bring our arguments and objections, our deductions and highest flights of reason. Bring them all, you say. And it is well that we do. Our intellectual tussles with ourselves and you are doorways of relationship.

But what can we know of you and the mysteries of eternity that lie hidden in your soul? You abide in the One who is Love Eternal and Everlasting Surprise. You dwell in the One who is undivided and irreducible, despite myriad human attempts to confine her to human proportions.

Our intellectual thrusts never reach the heart of the matter. For the heart of the matter lies beyond all human understanding, wrapped in the mystery of everlasting love. And from there you invite us to expect a barrier-breaking resurrection and redemption beyond all human reason from the One who is Life.

We will continue our arguments as long as we breathe, Jesus, struggling to know what we can, for that is how the Holy One made us. But at the end of each day, may we lay our battles down and simply hope in a love that transcends our reach, there to find the peace that mere comprehension cannot provide.

Pr. David L. Miller