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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