Episcopal Church of the Messiah

Worship Service Sermons

November 11, 2007

 The Reverend Canon Brad Karelius

Proper 27C

The Gospel presents a debate between the conservative, traditionalist Sadducees and Jesus. The Sadducees assume that the Law of Moses must be fulfilled in the continuance of the clan. A widow must marry the brother in law for children to carry on the family name.

Jesus teaches about the age to come, imagining lively possibilities. In the life to come people will be more like angels in a new order of existence. The Sadducees dig in their heals and hold on to tradition. The hold on to what they believe is certain and true.

It is human to want to hold on to what we believe must be true and unquestionable. We need to know what we are dealing with. We can calm down and have a good night’s sleep, when we know what is going on. Jesus invites us to another place: to live with ambiguity, where everything is not tied up in a nice knot, but you have to live in mystery.

Patricia Monahan is a scientist. Her husband died and her life was torn upside down by waves of grief. She asked her friend how he dealt with the death of his partner. Her friend, also a scientist, responded: "Physics." Before I get into what he meant, Patricia lost her keys.

She looked everywhere in the house and could not find them. She collapsed to her knees in frustration and waves of grief slammed her and tears poured out. Then suddenly she was angry with her dead husband.

"I wanted so desperately to believe that Bob, and Bob’s love of me, still existed somewhere in the universe, that in my furious pain I flung down a challenge…Find my keys. Find my damned keys! If there’s anyone out there, if there’s any love left in this universe of me, find my keys!"

Patricia calmed down and tore her house apart looking for those keys. Still no keys. So she went back to a world familiar to her mind: physics.

"I adamantly refused to settle for those happy visions that religion held out, of dreamy heavens full of harps, of other lives to come, of eventual reunion in some cosmic voice…I had been reading a lot of spiritual literature. But I only grew more isolated, angry at the serenity that seemed forever beyond my grasp, despairing at my continuing inability to find any sense in death’s senselessness. It was not that the answers which spiritual literature offered seemed implausible or incorrect; it was simply that I could not believe them, could not make the leap into not doubting. The more rigidly codified their religious insight, the more it seemed to exclude---event to mock---my anguished confusion."

Religion was not helpful to her, because it was so sure of itself and she was so unsure of herself.

But physics painted a universe of mysterious uncertainty. She immersed herself in the works of great physicists: Heisenberg, Born, Einstein, Bohm:

"Einstein spoke to me like a voice from a burning bush. I, who lived in a time and space from which my love had disappeared, found respite in considering the ways that time and space were linked. ‘Any two points in space and time are both separate and not separate.’ David Bohm said. As incomprehensible as this new space-time was, it was more lively with possibilities than liner and planar realities. My separateness from Bob was real, but in some way, we were also together. In some way---this was most important to me."

She began to find hope in not knowing. Then surprise: she found her keys in a most surprising place: peeking through a hole in a poster that hangs on the inside door of her office. She could not explain the physics of finding these lost keys.

"Were this a court of law, I would argue that there was no motive for anyone else to hide the keys, and no evidence that I have either before or since gone into a state of mindless fugue. That my beloved Bob had somehow answered my request seems as likely as any of these interpretations. Also: Bob had a unique sense of humor, and he tended to procrastinate. So it would be in character for him to have taken a year to get around to giving me the keys back, and then it would be in a suitably clever fashion.

Patricia resists taking this experience of the keys as some proof that the man she loves still exists and is coming to her in her time of need. Instead she uses the experience to help her grow an ability to live with ambiguity, with questions and situations unresolved.

&#"If there was uncertainty at the basis of the universe, there was also ravishing mystery."

When I remember the spirit of the sermons I have preached on Easter Day, I think I was trying to make a clear case to prove the certainty of the resurrection, the bedrock of our Christian faith.

But I think Jesus may be suggesting another path in this morning’s Gospel reading. When we can step back from systematic theology, creeds, proofs of the existence of God, catechisms, dogma, certainties, we can see the universe as ravishing mystery, filled with possibility we cannot predict or manipulate. When we can step into a faith that is open to ambiguity, mystery and possibility, then hope takes on a humble stance.

Jesus argues today with the literally minded, blindly certain Sadducees and also those who need to desperately hold on to their God in a box. They were so caught up in their sense of a limited reality, they could not conceive of God doing something radically new.

When you go to bed tonight, let go of your struggle for certainty, or a definitive answer in prayer to some problem in your life. In the darkness, imagine those loved ones who have died. Imagine them standing next to Jesus and Mary, in a place we call Heaven, as they embrace you in your struggles, grief, confusion. Open yourself to this inviting mystery. Amen.

Sources used:

The Relenteless Widow, John Shea

"Physics and Grief," Patricia Monaghan