Broken World

A Vespers Homily for the Advent Retreat

of the Minnesota Chapter of the Society of the Holy Trinity

Matthew 22:23-33

The same day some Sadducees came to him, saying there is no resurrection; and they asked him a question, saying, ‘Teacher, Moses said, “If a man dies childless, his brother shall marry the widow, and raise up children for his brother.” Now there were seven brothers among us; the first married, and died childless, leaving the widow to his brother. The second did the same, so also the third, down to the seventh. Last of all, the woman herself died. In the resurrection, then, whose wife of the seven will she be? For all of them had married her.’

Jesus answered them, ‘You are wrong, because you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. And as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God, “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob”? He is God not of the dead, but of the living.’ And when the crowd heard it, they were astounded at his teaching.

Homily:

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

The world is not as it should be.

On the one hand, this is the most obvious of statements. Hunger, disease, terror, war, the worship of objects and the commodification of persons: these all remind us that something’s gone horribly wrong. And we all know it. The doctrine of original sin can be affirmed simply by watching the news or opening a window. Yet how strange to think that we should all recognize the brokenness of this world as self-evident. I mean, we are talking about the world, after all. To what exactly are we comparing it?

The ability to distinguish between the way things are and the way things ought to be is not only the basis for all religion but is the defining characteristic of humanity. We alone know right from wrong. We alone ate from that tree. A dog does not suffer weltschmerz upon contemplating the existential implications of its looming mortality. No, the dog just knows instinct and training, emotion, fidelity. Alas, we lack the dog’s innocence. We can see reality’s brokenness because we’re the ones who broke it. We can tell—can’t we?—that this isn’t the world for which we were built.

In our Gospel reading this evening, Jesus is confronted by the Sadducees, perhaps the most baffling of the Israelite sects. We can relate to the Pharisees; we can relate to the Essenes. But the Sadducees are like deeply religious atheists. They don’t believe in angels or prophets. They don’t believe in souls or an afterlife. And they certainly don’t believe in anything so ridiculous as the resurrection of the dead. For them, religion is purely here-and-now, purely about ritual and social control. God gives good things now in response to proper sacrifice—monetary success, military triumph, agricultural bounty—basically a pagan god writ large. For the Sadducees there’s nothing beyond this world. There’s nothing beyond the sword and the coin.

And because they are so wrapped up in the realpolitik of this broken world, they cannot imagine an alternative world, a better world, in which the social structures that have arisen in response to sin and death might be completely unnecessary—because sin and death are simply not part of the equation in the mind of God. Even we, as Christian clergy, having seen the Paschal promise of Easter fulfilled, even we have difficulty imagining such a world, a world in which the laws of thermodynamics simply do not apply. We are baffled by the mechanics of the resurrection: What about entropy? What about cell death? What if some poor woman went through seven husbands in life and now they’re all back at once?

Better, perhaps, to geld such a doctrine, euhemerize it, demythologize it. The Resurrection must be spiritual! Yes, that’s the ticket. Plato and the Gnostics had it right: souls go on but flesh is shucked off like an old cocoon. Wait, no, maybe that’s too airy-fairy. We’d better moralize it, make it into a metaphor: “The Resurrection is the loving memory that we pass on, the echo of our good name and good deeds, so that we might leave a better world for our children, since we are, after all, just starstuff returning to the celestial forge.” Yes, that’s better. At once both ancient Egyptian and New Age. That should sell well. Never mind the fact that any utopia we might build must needs rest upon a foundation of bone left by all those generations who cried out for justice in vain.

But Jesus is having none of our nonsense. How blind we are, we Sadducees. We are so deeply entwined, not simply in a culture of death but in the fallen reality of it, that it clouds our God-given reason and smothers religious intuition. Imagine a world where there is no need for marriage because no children are imperiled. (We can’t.) Imagine a world in which there is no jealousy, for we are all as brother and sister. (We can’t.) Imagine a world in which carnal needs are put aside not because the flesh has been rejected but because it has been redeemed, that our souls may rule our bodies in harmony and we might be as the angels of Heaven! My God, if only!

Yet this promise, ridiculous as it sounds to our reflexive cynicism, rings true in the depths of our souls. We long for the goodness and truth and beauty of God, glimpsed only as shattered reflections in this world. We long for sin and death to be revealed as the fantasy, and for love to be affirmed as our destiny eternal. Jesus speaks to us this simple truth: that the world is not as it ought to be, not as it was intended to be. Yet in Him, in this fusion of God and Man, of Creator and Creation, the work of Redemption is already accomplished, the Resurrection already begun!

And all those who have ears to hear, all sheep who recognize the Shepherd’s voice, cry out in both present agony and future hope, “Come, Lord Jesus! Come quickly! Set it right, set it all right—wipe away our tears, heal up our wounds, give sight to our blindness, and raise every mother’s child from the unholy loam of the grave! Come and fix all things. Come resurrect our world.”

And while we wait, and while we cry, He comes with a mighty power to save us all.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.