20240410: 2nd Wednesday of Eastertide

Readings: Psalm 135; Isaiah 26:1-15; Mark 12:18-27. 

Transcript

Good morning. This is Tim. Trouble coming to you from Sacramento, California. Today's readings are Psalm 135. Isaiah Chapter 26, verses 1 to 15 and the Gospel of Mark. Chapter 12 verses 18 to 27. 

In today's Gospel, we have a sect of the Jews known as the Services. So there there are three major sects of the Jewish religion at this point in time. There are the Pharisees, the Assignees and the Sadducees. Well, the Sadducees came around about 208 B.C. and lasted until about 70 A.D. at the destruction of the temple. And the reason that that's so important is the Sadducees denied the existence or influence of angels in relation to salvation. Only temple rituals were benefits. So of course, obviously, when the temple was destroyed in the in 70 A.D. by the Romans, that pretty much ended their whole reason for being. They denied the resurrection of the dead, and they did not believe in the immortality of the soul. And that there was no afterlife. So what we have today is yet some more folks from from Judy, from the Jewish religion coming up and they're trying to get trick Jesus. They're trying to get Jews to say something. They're trying to to to stumble a lot because nobody likes what he's saying. Originally, he didn't you know, it doesn't like the Pharisees and they're pompous sinners and their ritualistic lifestyle and all that and all the things that they did and how they pointed, you know, made a big show out of everything that they did in worshipping God. So you're going to suggest this Easter, the resurrection of Jesus. They do not believe in resurrection. And in this we're not talking about Jesus. We're talking about the resurrection of the dead. So there's this thing that, you know, God was going to come and resurrect the dead at the end of days. 

So they come in here and so there's this whole thing. There used to be a thing in in of in patriarchal societies where a woman of age and that is a sliding scale, but a woman of age had to be assigned to a man. I use the word is sign it could be her father. If the father died, then it could be a brother, an uncle. But in this case, this is someone who's married. So once you're married, you leave your family and you become part of his family. So now we have, you know, husband and wife. So they bring this whole thing to this whole thing that in the law that said that if your brother's wife died and there were no child, that's a man, then the man must make the widow and raise of offspring for his brother. In other words, he takes over his brother's wife and has to get her pregnant to have children for his brother. Yay! Patriarchy, right? All right. So, I mean, this is this is patriarchy run amuck. 

So they go, okay, so they're young. There were seven brothers and they passed this poor bride around because none of them could live long enough to get a child. And then they all died. And then the woman died. How are they going? How are they going to be in heaven for seven? Had her as a wife. So there's a there's a couple of things that there are some in there, assuming that heaven is like Earth, that you're going to be married in heaven. You're going to have your wife in the all your family line and all this stuff. That was the first mistake. 

And the second part is you don't understand the scripture. Jesus says, there's no reason this is not the reason you're wrong, because you know, neither the scriptures nor the power of God, they didn't understand what they were talking about. And then they certainly did not understand the power of God. He goes on to say, When they rise to the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. So this is one of our glimpses into what is heaven going to be like. Now, unlike the other one we talked about, go to prepare a house. You remember Jesus talked a lot in words that people would understand something they could relate to, which, of course, in the literalist trends, you know, people think there's actually a huge mansion somewhere out in space that we're all going to go to and we each get a room in that mansion if we're good Christians. 

Again, Jesus was trying to describe a place that people would understand, but just how cool it would be, how great a place it would be here. Any time there's there's no marrying, there's no marrying, you know, you're not giving away his bride. We're like angels. Everyone who gets resurrected and goes to heaven, we're like angels in the court of the Lord. And this is something again. We're all equals. All right. And remember, the patriarchy is all about subjecting women. That was a big, big thing. And patriarchy still is today. We subject women their lesser and we claim all these things going back to Eve, which y'all. That's your story, but that's not your. There's other ways there's lots of explanations for that other than the fact that, you know, hey, the world's, you know, evil in the world is his is useful. Eve did not call the fall caused the fall of man. We'll discuss that sometime. But here they're saying that this is God is. I'm the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. And I love it. You know, it's always great. You know, you have this. Somebody comes up and they try to screw with you and ask you. But it is true. It is final. The final sentence. You are quite wrong, conc. That is a mike. Jesus just dropped the mike and off he goes. 

So when we think of heaven and whatever it is, however you want to shape the afterlife for yourself. Yeah. It already says that we're going to be. We're all going to be equals. We're all going to be like angels and all these these hierarchies that we have created for ourselves here on Earth aren't going to matter because every single one of us is equal in the eyes of God. Everyone is equal in the eyes of God. White, black, brown. Yellow. Male. Female. Pick. Pick one of these things that we use to categorize people, to put them down here on earth. They're gone. Everyone is equal in the sight of God. And that's the way it should be here on Earth. Because our job as Christians is to create heaven on Earth. Amen.