God of the Living
The gospel reading for this Sunday, Luke 20:27-38, is at one level a straightforward
trap with some of those “sent as spies pretending to be honest, in order to
trap him by what he said, so as to hand him over to the jurisdiction and
authority of the governor” (vs20) Jesus is on to it, using Moses to defeat
them.
At
another level this passage speaks to the deep divides within Judaism at the
time of Jesus around what happens when you die. The traditionalist Sadducees
were not into resurrection. It wasn’t biblical. The Pharisees and Jesus were.
But I wonder, if we read the story carefully, is what Jesus is describing here
anything like what we understand resurrection to be about?
This
story is ultimately about God. God is a God of the living! What does that mean
for our daily lives? What does that mean for our priorities? Resurrection is
not just a future hope, but a way of living now. Jesus lived it and invited us
to follow. To live resurrection in the presence of the God of the living is to see
all people as children of God. Or to put it another way, people trumps
theology.
In this week where we remembered the invasion of Parihaka,
what does resurrection offer us in this land? As we commemorate the end of WWI
what does resurrection offer us as we confront the violence in our world today?
As the NZ Parliament passes the Zero Carbon Act what does resurrection invite
us to in our relationship with this world God has given us?
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