Sermon for November 9th

Sermon for November 9th

Have you ever noticed that the finest athletes are the ones who have to think about it the least? They are the ones who put endless hours into training, who know exactly what their sport requires of them and then perform their role day in and day out. Their actions have become muscle memory and instinct takes over, an instinct borne of intentionality and hard work.

The death of athletic excellence is logic. Logic, that invaluable tool that has helped us build the world we know, is also the thing that destroys something like the athletic pursuit of greatness. Logic would tell a person that the idea of hitting a small baseball, pitched at 95 miles an hour, with a small wooden bat, was highly unlikely. The more likely thing would be that the batter would miss and make a fool of themselves. Or logic might probe deeper and ask why anyone would take a sport anymore seriously than as a simple game, meant for enjoyment and nothing else. Athletic excellence, in the face of other worldly issues, seems rather ridiculous.

When the worm of logic digs in, good athletes go sideways. I remember Oilers goal tender, Tommy Salo, who let in an incredibly soft goal through Sweden’s Olympic run in 2002. The goal should not have happened, and it led Sweden to defeat at the hands of Belarus in the Quarter finals. Sweden was out of the tournament and Salo never recovered. His career in the NHL quickly faded away. In his mind, he couldn’t do his job anymore. Logic informed him that if he could make that mistake once, he could do it again, and his confidence disappeared.

Why go on about sports? What does that have to do with the Gospel? Well, the same thing that can destroy the work of an athlete can also destroy the work of faith.

Let’s face it. Faith makes no sense. We can’t prove it in any empirical fashion. It defies rational explanation. Someone rising from the dead? Someone cleansing their leprosy in the water of the Jordan? A sea that splits in half and lets the Israelites through safely? Eternal life? Or even love being the most powerful force in the world, when it seems like hate is winning the day? Sure. Whatever. It doesn’t make sense. Its not rational.

But like with sport, so logic is the death of faith. If we follow the line of logical thought, then faith doesn’t make sense. It should be jettisoned and left behind. There is no place for it in a finite, materialist world.

The Sadducees have always puzzled me. They didn’t believe in the after life. They seemed nearly atheistic in their approach to faith, denying many of the tenants that even the Pharisees still held to. For them, Judaism was more of a cultural identity rather than a religious one. It helped define the people and give them a sense of self over against the greater powers of the world, like Rome, or Babylon before that. Their role as “religious leaders” was what confused me. Better to call them cultural leaders, as that is why they seemed to exist.

So, their questions to Jesus are not meant for any development of religious thought, but to show the ridiculous nature of Jesus’ claims using the farther limits of logic. That is a fairly common ploy when logic is used to de-bunk an argument. One takes the argument to the farthest extreme to show how absurd the argument really is and how it eventually breaks down under the scrutiny of logic. The Sadducees, confident they have caught Jesus in a logical fallacy, triumphantly put their argument to Jesus.

And how does Jesus respond? As Jesus always responds. By flipping the script. By changing the conversation. By showing that faith, like God, like love, is something that transcends the mortal bounds of our understanding.

In essence, Jesus responds to the trap by telling them that their question is irrelevant. They are basing their supposition on human understanding, namely the institute of marriage. Their impossible logical knot is undone by the fact that in the next life, something far greater than our human institutions will exist. They are not given in marriage. Rather, they exist in the full glory of God’s love, as angels in God’s presence.

In essence, he is telling them that the resurrection is something they simply can’t quantify. And that becomes the message involving so much of our faith. When we apply our human standards to it, faith falls apart. But it falls apart because it is so much greater than our limited human understanding. We are applying the laws of our limited framework to something that transcends anything we can comprehend. It is not a cop out. It is a humbling truth. Our logic simply can’t explain faith. It can’t explain God.

Perhaps that is no where more present than in this community of faith. It doesn’t make any sense. We are different age groups, different political bends. We have had different career paths and different family lives. Yet, somehow, we are here, in this place, worshipping and giving thanks to God. We are united in a common cause and we love God, singing that love together, in our various ways. It is a miracle every Sunday that such a disparate group of people could come together and do this, willing, Sunday in and Sunday out. It doesn’t make sense. But in the words of a movie I just watched and will never admit to having watched for probably the fiftieth time “It doesn’t make sense. That’s why I trust it.”

Logic may tell us that faith is an empty, hollow pursuit, yet faith had and will continue to do miracles. In eyes of faith, we can see God’s love everywhere around us, animating our best selves and pushing us to do amazing things that we would not otherwise be capable of doing. Like the teacher who gives their time and talents for the good of the children they teach, year after year. Or the farmer, who with faith, puts in their crop, trusting that God’s good world will nourish and bring forth abundance. Or police officers, who put their lives on the line each moment they go on duty to not just uphold the law, but to help make their communities a better place. Whether named or not, these actions and thousand others, are animated by God’s love when they are truly functioning for the sake of the world. One could argue that none of these make sense in light of how the world is, but these individuals diligently carry on, upheld by God in their actions.

Logic would tell the athlete that they can’t do the impossible and hit a ball consistently and effectively, and yet they do. I have seen some truly miraculous things watching sport, things that defy explanation.

In a far greater way, faith has done the same. We are all standing here, worshipping the one who is love, so we in turn can be agents of that love in our life. I can’t think of anything that is more miraculous, illogical, and absolutely true than that.

Amen