Collect and Readings for The Third Sunday before Advent – Job 19.23-27a, 15-18, Psalm 17.1-9,
2 Thessalonians 2.1-5,13-end, Luke 20.27-38
The Prayer for today
Almighty Father, whose will is to restore all things in your beloved Son, the King of all: govern the hearts
and minds of those in authority, and bring the families of the nations, divided and torn apart by the
ravages of sin, to be subject to his just and gentle rule; who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of
the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
When you have a favourite author, it is disappointing to get to the end of the last available novel that they have written; a friend of mine, with considerable enforced reading time, felt quite lost after the Cadfael books ran out. I have been known to read books several times in quite quick succession because I couldn’t bear to come to the end of the story.
When we set off on the journey of discovery into friendship with God, there is no problem of getting to the end of him or having to break our relationship with him simply because our physical body has stopped working. We can carry on enjoying his friendship, and an ever-deepening understanding of his nature throughout the whole of eternity. There is no end to God, and, through the redeeming work of Christ, there need be no end to us either, so we can look forward to life beyond death and enjoy the prospect of living in God’s company for ever.
The Sadducees had decided that the idea of resurrection wasn’t workable and therefore couldn’t be true. As so often happens, they were judging God’s ways by human limitations. They worked out this complicated problem to make Jesus realise how silly it is to think there can be life after death. Faced with this conundrum he will surely have to admit that they are sensible and right in their belief.
What Jesus does is to show them that they are asking the wrong question. Resurrection life is not a tangled continuation of the earthly order of things, but a new and different experience, just as real but with whole new dimensions of possibility.
It is rather like arguing that caterpillars couldn’t possibly fly. In their present state and with their present limitations it is indeed impossible, but the freshly emerging butterfly proves that flying is a perfectly natural progression from leaf munching. Few of us w would ever guess that a caterpillar could turn into a butterfly, and similarly we have little exact idea of what our resurrection life will be like. What we do know is that it will be fulfilling and rewarding, full of joy, peace and love.
In the meantime, we are to stand firm and stick to the teachings we have been handed down faithfully through the generations in an unbroken line which can be traced back to Christ himself. That will enable us to discern the false rumours from the truth, and we will be ready to enter the glorious heritage of resurrection life in heaven.
Some things to reflect on:
· Why do you think many who would call themselves Christians find it difficult to accept the reality of life after death?
· Think of any remembered references in the Bible that point to life after death being a reality and look up some others using a concordance. Using these, how would you help someone to understand more about heaven?
God bless and stay safe and well.
Rev’d Fiona Robinson
