PROPER 27C - Job 19:23-27a; Psalm 17:1-8; 2 Thessalonians 2:13-3:5; Luke 20:27-38 -

11 November 2007 - A sermon preached by The Rev. Peter A. Munson for St. Ambrose Episcopal Church, Boulder, Colorado

 

God of the Living

 

INTRODUCTION - A Grief That Continues On...

 

Last Sunday - the Sunday after All Saints’ Day - we remembered and prayed for some of the saints who have gone before us, who are now with God. Two of the people on that list were my mom and dad. My mom died over six years ago, my dad over eleven years ago. Julia has commented once or twice that she was surprised I didn’t show more grief when my parents died. In the case of my dad, he had a long battle with Parkinson’s disease before he died. I always felt - and maybe this was true for my mom and my sisters, too - that we did a lot of the grieving before by dad ever died. My mom seemed pretty lost after my dad died. They had been married over 51 years, after all, and the latter part of her life was largely consumed with taking care of my dad.

 

After these eleven years, I don’t know that I’m any more of an “expert” about grief and grieving than I was before my parents died. I can tell you that these are the two biggest losses I’ve experienced, when it comes to losing someone close to me. I can tell you that I’m not done grieving yet. That’s probably obvious in the way that my folks keep popping up in my sermons from time to time, and in my prayers. There are some days, in fact, that the loss of my parents hits me even harder now than it did when they died. About a week ago, I was wishing that my dad have been here to give me some advice about my job, and to tell me what it was like for him when he was 50, and I just balled my eyes out in a way that I never have since my dad died. I have a feeling some of that is still to come with respect to my mom, too. So I can’t tell you how to grieve. I don’t know what “normal” grieving is. There doesn’t seem to be any such thing as normal, when it comes to grief. All of a sudden I am doing something...

 

I go to a baseball game, and suddenly I am back in Little League, and I hear my dad’s voice, suddenly booming out loudly, above every other voice in the stands, reacting to my plays - good ones and bad ones - or reacting to an umpire’s call...

 

I return to Folsom Field to watch CU play and think about where my dad used to stand at the very top row in Section 218, when I was an undergraduate, when it was still the very top of the east stands (it isn’t anymore, thanks to the luxury boxes)... I think about how at half time, I used to leave the student section, and go join my dad, and stand with him there, and watch the rest of the game with him... (and as I type this right now, at 4:12 on a Sunday morning, 11-1/2 years after my dad died, the tears just start to flow again - no, I’m not done grieving the loss of my dad, yet)

 

I go hiking and I think, I used to hike this trail with mom and dad... mom was looking around and tripped and wiped out here, and got up and joked about how she shouldn’t be looking around at the scenery when she was walking... I suddenly see a chickadee here, a dark-eyed junco there, a nuthatch here, a dipper bobbing in and out of a little mountain stream there, and I think of my mom and dad and their love of birds, and they are suddenly right there with me on the trail... no, I mean it, I can feel their presence right there with me, in that moment...

 

I arrive at a mountain lake, and I pull my fishing pole out of my pack, and put it together, and put a Dardevle on the line, and cast it far and deep, and think of my dad, and all the time we spent fishing in different lakes in Rocky Mountain National Park, and how I am now carrying on that tradition with my own children...

 

I think about how my children barely knew my dad, how they never knew him when he wasn’t sick, how even Julia never knew my dad when he wasn’t sick, how they missed getting to know the vibrant, jovial, friendly, larger-than-life man who the guests met when they came inside the Sweet Memorial Building (the Program Department building) at the YMCA of the Rockies, and wanted to know more about Estes Park, or what would be a beautiful hike for them to take in Rocky Mountain National Park, or what Trail Ridge Road was all about, and my dad would stand there behind the counter, and give them all sorts of ideas about where to go and what to see...

 

Veterans’ Day or Memorial Day or the 4^th of July comes around again, and I think about my dad always putting out the flag in front of the house on those days... I think about his stories of fighting in Burma during the last year of World War II, and then looking for MIAs in China for a year after the war ended, and then going to CU on the GI bill, and graduating in two years and nine months, and living in “Vetsville”, not too far from Folsom Field, in those Quonset huts (named for being made in Quonset Point, Rhode Island) that stood for many, many years after the Vets, their wives, and their children had come and gone.... and I think to myself, why didn’t I ask my dad to tell me more about his experiences in Burma and China, and why didn’t I listen a little more attentively when he did talk about it?

 

No, I’m not done grieving yet, and I don’t have a clue when I will be done, thank you very much.

 

Perhaps this isn’t just my story. The name is not Holger “Muns” Munson or Coranelle “Corky” Barrett Munson, but you have a loved one - a parent, a child, some other relative, a close friend - who you still miss like crazy, and they keep popping up into the very midst of your life, and you realize that you’re not done grieving yet.

 

THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD

The Sadducees didn’t believe there was such a thing as the resurrection of the dead. If Jesus’ opinion means anything to you, and I’m guessing it does, he thought they were nuts. Jesus says to them, in effect, “Remember that story about Moses?” You can almost hear the Sadducees saying, “Which one, Jesus? Moses is pretty big in our tradition!”

 

And Jesus replies, “The story about the bush.” I just love that! That’s all he needed to say - “the story about the bush” - and they were all on the same page.

 

“And the fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed, in the story about the bush, where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.”

 

Jesus says some strong words here.

 

He says it’s a “fact” that the dead are raised.

 

He reminds them that in Moses’ encounter with God through the burning bush (Exodus, Chapter 3 and the first half of Chapter 4, if you want to go back and read it when you get home today), that God said he was the “God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob”, and referred to all those patriarchs, who had died long before Moses’ day, in the present tense. In other words, they were still living with God, those many years later.

 

And Jesus says to the Sadducees, “for to him [that is, God] all of them are alive.” All of them - those who have died and those who are still on this earth, are all alive to God, because those who died in faith have been resurrected.

 

If you want to translate it into a more American context for a moment, the God of George and Martha Washington, the God of Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln, the God of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott King, our God sees these folks as being just as alive as you and me. They are with him. We are with him. To God, we are all alive.

 

SO WHAT?

 

I don’t know if I can say too much more about the resurrected who live with Christ without misspeaking, without trying to explain a mystery that cannot be explained.

 

I will say this: the fact that my folks keep popping back into my life feels like more than just my memory at work. Sometimes their presence is very real, very palpable - I can feel them with me. The common bond between us is God. The common bond between us in Christ. Christ is in me. And they are with Christ. And the God of all creation is not bound by time, and somehow, this God is not affected by who we define as alive and who we define as dead. And in the mystery of all that I am trying to explain, but which I can’t explain, I suddenly know, in certain moments - as God knows - that my parents aren’t dead, but alive and well, and continuing on from strength to strength, still growing with God, still becoming what they did not fully become in this world, still growing into what they are destined to be - with God.

 

CONCLUSION

 

My dad used to always say to me, “Pete, do your best.” Do your best in this life. Do what you can to grow into the full stature of Christ. But do not despair if you are drawing near to the end of this life, and you aren’t where you want to be. Because this life isn’t the only one you’re given. Remember what Moses heard, in the story about the bush. “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” He is the God of all faithful fathers and mothers - of all tongues, all nations, all generations. And they are all still alive with him, all still growing from strength to strength.

 

Jesus said it. I believe it. In my very cells, I have experienced it to be true. He is not God of the dead, but of the living. For to God, all of us are alive.