Date: November 6, 2016
“RE
–
MEMBERING”
SCRIPTURE: JOB: 19
–
23
–
27a; LUKE 20:27
–
38
GRACE COVENANT PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, ASHEVILLE, NC
November 6, 2016
The Rev. Dr. Marcia Mount Shoop, Pastor
Luke 20: 27
–
38
20:27 Some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came to him
20:28 and asked him a question, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s
brother dies, leaving a wife but no children, the man shall marry the widow and
raise up children for his brother.
20:29 Now there were seven brothers; the first married, and d
ied childless;
20:30 then the second
20:31 and the third married her, and so in the same way all seven died childless.
20:32 Finally the woman also died.
20:33 In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven
had married her.
“
20:34 Jesus said to them, “Those who belong to this age marry and are given in
marriage;
20:35 but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the
resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage.
20:36 Indeed they
cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children
of God, being children of the resurrection.
20:37 And the fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed, in the story about
the bush, where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham,
the God of Isaac, and
the God of Jacob.
20:38 Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are
alive.”
The Word of the Lord
Thanks be to God
2
For Andy Catlett
1
, remembering is not nostalgia; it is not reminiscence.
So much
of who he was, so much of what the world looked and felt like, so much of
what had always made him
feel
alive was gone.
It was an October day of the corn harvest. Neighbors and family friends in Andy’s
Kentucky town had come together all season to help
young 22 year old Jack bring in
his harvest after his dad, Elton, died in March.
If they could just keep working into the night, they would finish. There were plenty
of hands there to help
—
and it had been a day
that came naturally
—
but as night
began to s
et it, the feeling of urgency came alongside their ease. The pace picked up.
Andy was running the picker. It had been jamming that afternoon and when it
jammed again, he jumped out to clear it but left it running.
His right hand, the hand that led
his good work, the hand that he extended to greet
his neighbors, his kin, the hand
that
connected him to his children’s explorations
and his wife’s affections
—
that hand, his right hand, was in a split second taken into
the picker.
For Andy Catlett, re
–
m
embering is not nostalgia, it is not reminiscence. Re
–
membering i
s finding a way to go on when he
will n
ever again be whole.
How do we live with
the pieces of what’s left when so much feel
s
missing, so much is
gone?
How do we live in a dis
–
membered pre
sent.
Anyone living with loss embodies
this excruciating question.
Re
–
membering invites us
to live into a future that feels impossible.
Job’s cries to God for justice culminate in these few lines with a remarkable defiance
given everything that he has lost.
Job is way past prayer
—
in f
act Job has clearly rejected prayer’s
language, even
mocked its usefulness. His c
ries for justice go una
nswered
—
he sees that, he knows
that.
And so he comes to this statement
—
four short verses that could easily stand as a
manifesto for all who have been falsely accused
, all who have felt their lives unravel
from injustice
.
We Christians often misunders
tand this passage
. The easiest way
for us
to read th
is
passage is as a
profession of
Job’s belief in bodily resurrection.
