November 9, 2025
Pentecost 22 / Year C
The Rev. Dr. Molly F. James, PhD
St. John’s Episcopal Church, Essex CT
Haggai 1:15b-2:9; Pslam 98; 2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17; Luke 20:27-38
May God’s Word be spoken. May God’s Word be heard. May that point us to the living Word who is Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
“Some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came to Jesus and asked him a question.” Can’t you just picture it? The smug smiles on their faces. They have spent a lot of time thinking about this, and they are sure they have found the situation that will confound Jesus. They hope they will be able to trip him up and prove their own superiority.
They launch into a long and complicated question about marriage and divorce and the afterlife. Sure they have finally found the way to confound the teacher and make their point.
Except they have started from the wrong premise. They have started from the place of thinking all our human, earthly categories and rules apply in God’s Kingdom. You can just feel the whole mood shift when Jesus answers. There he would be kind, calm, and gracious. Smiling with compassion for all those gathered around while he patiently explains that the Sadducees have got it all backwards. There is so much more to life, all of life, and to eternal life than the simple question of who married who.
I would imagine this Gospel lesson can send us all through a gamut of emotions. Especially if we are self-reflective enough to realize that we have our own Sadducee moments. We too can get caught up in a desire to have power over. A desire to be right. A desire to prove someone else wrong. The temptation to get so caught up in our own worldview that we are unable or unwilling to consider another perspective. Facing the fact that the criticism in this text can be leveled at us is not easy. It can bring us up short and be quite sobering.
And this is why we don’t stop reading even when we feel uncomfortable or called out. Recognized for the fallible humans we are who so often fall short of the glory of God. We keep reading. There is always more to the story. God never leaves us alone in our challenges.
When we keep reading we get to move from discomfort to relief. We keep reading to remember that we are children of God. We are beloved of God. And God’s vision for us and for the world is so much bigger than our human categories. God’s Kingdom cannot and does not fit in the confines of human labels nor our tendencies to create binaries. Who is right? Who is wrong? Who is in? Who is out?
No, Jesus reminds us – in the Kingdom of God there is only in. God’s love is for all of us, and it is not doled out based on status or merit or any other way we like to rank ourselves in comparison to each other. God’s love is an unbounded gift. Freely flowing to all who chose to receive it.
I find this an especially powerful reminder this week. In the midst of all of the challenges going on in our world, our nation, and no doubt our own hearts and lives as well. We can feel overwhelmed by the weight of
the world, and we can wonder how we are supposed to cope. How are we supposed to thrive in the midst of it all?
First, we are to shift our perspective. To have a Kingdom view and not a human view. We are to remember that there is far more to life and the world than the pettiness of human limitations.
And then we are to remember that the Kingdom of God is not just something out there or over there. It is something we participate in building by how we live our lives. How we show up day after day.
If more often than not, we can show up with calm, grounded conviction like Jesus did in the face of the Sadducees. If we can choose compassion and curiosity before judgment and self-righteousness. If we can take a deep breath and hold on to the abiding, expansive love of God even in the midst of our fear, our anxiety, our stress, our anger – even in the midst of all of it. If we can do that, at least most of the time, then I am convinced both our own minds and hearts as well as the world around us will be better for it.
In times like these, when I find the news headlines heart wrenching and life just feels overwhelming. I find it helpful to return to a favorite book (in addition to the Bible of course). It is the Book of Joy. A book that chronicles a multiday conversation between Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Llama. If ever there were two wise spiritual leaders who have known more than their fair share of pain, discrimination, tragedy, etc. Those two men have certainly witnessed first hand the worst humanity can do to each other. And yet neither of them became despondent or cynical. They remain hopeful and joyful.
The Archbishop notes that “Hope is quite different from optimism, which is more superficial and liable to become pessimism when the circumstances change. Hope is something much deeper . . . I say to people that I’m not an optimist, because that, in a sense that depends on feelings more than actual reality. We feel optimistic, or we feel pessimistic. Now hope is different in that it is based not on the ephemerality of feelings but on the firm ground of conviction. I believe with a steadfast faith that there can never be a situation that is utterly, totally hopeless. Hope is deeper and very, very close to unshakeable. It’s in the pit of your tummy. It’s not in your head . . . Resignation and cynicism are easier, more self-soothing postures that do not require the raw vulnerability and tragic risk of hope. To choose hope is to step firmly forward into the howling wind, baring one’s chest to the elements, knowing that, in time the storm will pass.”1
I find that to be a powerful image and distinction. An important reminder to keep ourselves grounded in that which is deeper than circumstances or outcomes. I am also glad that the Archbishop does not end his description there, seeming to imply that to be a person of hope is to be standing alone against the storm.
He goes on to say that “Hope is the antidote to despair . . . Hope is also nurtured by relationship, by community, whether that community is a literal one or one fashioned from the long memory of human striving, whose membership includes Ghandi, King, Mandela, and countless others. Despair turns us inward. Hope sends us into the arms of others.”2
1 Book of Joy, p. 121-2. 2 Book of Joy, p. 123.
So if we want to experience the love and grace, the eternal comfort and hope. If we want to be strengthened in every good work and word as it says in our Epistle for today. Then we know where it is found. It is found right here. In community. In worship and fellowship.
We can indeed be a people grounded in hope in the midst of storms, because we stand together in this community, in the One Church our Presiding Bishop calls us to be, and in solidarity with everyone who has walked on that long road of human striving.
No matter what today or tomorrow or next week brings, hold fast to the truth that we are people of hope. And that we are never alone, even when the storms seem to be roaring. Thanks be to God for that. AMEN.