The date of Remembrance Day coincides, of course, with the WW1 Armistice, and the cessation of hostilities in November 1918. But November also seems the right season for this solemn occasion, doesn’t it? [We are lucky today, but] typically this time of year is associated with mournful grey skies, short days and a chill in the air.
The November climate in this country seems to evoke the right emotions for Remembrance Day. Yes, we are hugely grateful for the victory won in two world wars, but we mourn the huge loss of life that victory entailed. We grieve for all those young men and women whose lives were cut short by armed warfare. And we are ‘chilled to the bone’ as we contemplate the scale of the death and destruction caused by two world wars – not to mention more recent conflicts around the globe.
Confronted by such tragedy, is there any hope? To continue the seasonal metaphor, are there any ‘signs of Spring’ we can cling to in the face of such mortality? Whilst we undoubtedly remember the fallen, is there also any hope of resurrection for them – and for us? Well, this was very much the hope that Job expressed in our Old Testament reading this morning: “I know that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand on the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God.”
In other words, it was Job’s hope that one day his mortal body would be raised to a new and better mode of existence. A resurrection life in which he would see God – his Creator and Redeemer – face to face.
It’s a wonderful hope, but is it credible? Is it true? The Sadducees of Jesus’ time certainly thought not – they were the spiritual sceptics of their day. The Sadducees believed in God but had little appetite for the supernatural – and certainly had no hope beyond the grave – this life, they asserted, is all there is to be had.
And so one day some of them approached the Lord Jesus with a hypothetical scenario designed to expose the ridiculousness of belief in the resurrection of the dead:
“Teacher,” they said to Jesus, “Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies and leaves a wife but no children, the man must marry the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. Now there were seven brothers. The first one married a woman and died childless. The second and then the third married her, and in the same way the seven died, leaving no children. Finally, the woman died too. Now then, at the resurrection whose wife will she be, since the seven were married to her?”
So in this hypothetical scenario described by the Sadducees, seven brothers in succession all married the same childless widow before their deaths. In the supposed age to come, ask the Sadducees, whose wife would she be? It seemed to them that the very possibility of such tangled post-resurrection relationships rendered the whole idea ridiculous!
But Jesus disagreed. His reply to the sceptical Sadducees began by challenging their mistaken assumptions: “The people of this age marry and are given in marriage. But those who are considered worthy of taking part in the age to come and in the resurrection from the dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage, and they can no longer die; for they are like the angels. They are God’s children.”
There will be no need for marriage in the world to come, says Jesus, so the Sadducees’ ridiculous scenario could never arise. Marriage partners are necessary for procreation in this world, but not in the new creation. Mortality means new generations are always needed in this age, but not in the age to come. There will be no need for more children in the coming Kingdom, Jesus explains, because everyone there will already be a child of God.
So the Sadducees had failed to see that marriage would be redundant in the post-resurrection age. But they had also committed a more serious error – their entrenched scepticism had blinded them to the power of God. They had failed to see the evidence for resurrection in their own sacred Scriptures. That’s why Jesus says to them: “in the account of the burning bush, even Moses showed that the dead rise, for he calls the Lord ‘the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.” In short, when they read their Old Testament the Sadducees had failed to spot that the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were spoken of in the present tense. They may be long deceased in this world, but were very much alive in the presence of God himself.
Now we shouldn’t be too hard on the Sadducees. Indeed, we may well be tempted to sympathise with them. Isn’t such Scriptural evidence of resurrection rather obscure? Surely the ancient words of Moses quoted by Christ are insufficient grounds for a confident hope beyond the grave? Thankfully, we are in a far more fortunate position than the Sadducees! For we live this side of the resurrection of Christ himself. Our hope can rest on the historical resurrection of Jesus on the first Easter Sunday. A resurrection reported by reliable eyewitnesses and carefully recorded for us the New Testament.
November is the season of fireworks as well as remembrance – and Christ’s resurrection was the big bang that gave birth to the Church – it was the explosive event that explains the expansion of the Christian faith from twelve men two millennia ago to over two billion believers worldwide today. The Christian hope is built on solid historical foundations, not a combination of wishful thinking and make-believe. Like the first flowers of Spring, Jesus’ resurrection was the first sign of death’s defeat, a first glimpse of the new life that all God’s children will enjoy in the world to come.
So, as I finish, the central question is this – are you and I among the children of God? Because, as Jesus says in our passage, we need to be among the children of God to have a sure and certain hope beyond the grave. Resurrection life is a gift of God for his adopted children – a status Christ alone can grant us, when we put our faith and trust in him. For when we turn to God’s Son we find ourselves adopted into God’s family – we become one of God’s beloved sons or daughters, destined for glory and full of hope.
On this Remembrance Sunday it is right and proper to remember all those who have lost their lives in war. But the Christian response to mortality is not merely the remembrance of the dead. Rather, as Christ himself has taught us, we are to hold on to – and hold out – the hope of resurrection life as well.