Transforming our Tyranny? God’s Grace in our Human World
Preacher: Rt Revd Andrew Swift, Bishop of Brechin, Scottish Episcopal Church
Readings: Job 19:23-27a; Luke 20:27-38
It is a joy to be with you this morning, as a visiting preacher. I hope that I can adapt my preaching style and length to not offend! It is unusual for me to be asked for a title for a sermon beforehand – I tend to just turn up at a church in my diocese most Sundays and give them something with no warning! That means that I can flex to what is happening in the world, but also sometimes that the final writing is taking place at rather short notice! But your custom and practice is to ask for something a few weeks before – so my title was chosen in a time of political upheaval and human travail in this country and the world – always a threat of tyranny – seemed a safe option – I think we are still there in terms of political shenanigans!
Tyranny is a fact of human society, it seems – whether it is literal dictatorship as we see in autocratic regimes, like in the Middle East with concerns over women’s or LGBTQI rights, or in Russia, with the present-day war in Ukraine, or in the harsh application of rules and structures to control people and their lives in any human context. Examples: The rules that politicians can seek to apply to asylum seekers or refugees coming to the UK can start to look rather like a tyranny. Financial decisions made that don’t protect the most vulnerable in the cost-of-living crisis – that can feel tyrannical. We feel we are very free, here in Scotland, compared to much of the world – but fail to pay a fine, speed in your motor-car, and the state has the power to charge you, to fine you, to throw you in jail! Tyranny seems to be part of all human society.
The tiny slice of Luke’s gospel we met today has a slant on tyranny. The text seems to be a clash to do with doctrinal matters: resurrection. An important matter in the early church, in the gospels, as Christianity forms around a resurrected Messiah!
But this is also a text about human power, political influence, class divides and wrangles over money and property! Jesus always meets the human context of 1st century Israel-Palestine, and we see the build-up of opposition to him and his ministry as he encounters the powers-that-be.
The Sadducees, the complainers in this passage, are one of the powerful groups in Judaism: but we don’t hear a lot about. They are mentioned a few times in the gospels, a couple of times in Acts: we often see them, because of this text, through the lens of those who don’t believe in a resurrection, unlike (we assume) the Pharisees. That’s a caricature that we can easily live with. So what do we know about these minor characters?
The few scriptural references place them as political and religious leaders, closely linked to the temple in Jerusalem. Josephus, the Jewish-Roman historian, also describes the Sadducees as these temple-based political elites, lay aristocrats, linked to the temple priests. They were conservative on matters such as interpretation of scripture, hence no life after death – that is not orthodox Judaism, where Kings ‘rest with their ancestors’ and no Hellenic development of punishment or reward after death. They were the conservative party (with a small ‘c’) of their time. Whether they texted each other with expletives or chose to go the 1st century version of ‘I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here’ is not recorded. (current events with MPs in Westminster that week)
The Sadducees were part of the political power struggles with that other party, the Pharisees, who were still very orthodox but had a broader view on interpretation and adaptation on the Torah and scripture. It all seems to come down to politics and survival of Judaism under the tyrannical Roman regime. The Sadducees are tyrannical in the literal application of scripture: in hanging on to their own political power and influence.
We gather that the Sadducees evaporated after the temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70AD (the stones you can still see today in Jerusalem, lying where the Roman soldiers threw them down) in retaliation for one Jewish rebel uprising too many, and the flexible-but-conservative Pharisees adapted and morphed into the synagogue-based Rabbinic Judaism that we see today. At this point I expect someone here has done a PhD that directly contradicts that horrendously simplistic analysis!
So Jesus is being questioned, attacked by powerful people with a tyrannical agenda. The question of resurrection makes one party different from another. Jesus is a charismatic preacher and prophet – maybe a threat to their stable conservatism, maybe a popular ally who could be recruited in an ongoing conflict within the establishment.
Jesus rejects their view on resurrection – a harsh, literal grasping at the law of Moses, and broadens the answer out to God being the living God of ALL the living. God is beyond any narrow attempts of interpretation, and God is not recruitable to any particular human tyranny or power struggle that we might favour.
So Jesus is not a recruit to any human position or party. He is a threat only to darkness and evil. He has a view that goes beyond the human tyranny of political squabbles, the tyranny of doctrinal positioning. Jesus is the Word of God. He IS God’s view: the God of all the living, the God of all humanity, the God whose grace gives salvation, healing and restoration for every single human being in the world.
Through Jesus, through the Word of God, empowered by the Spirit, God’s grace and love transforms the world and all reality: and whatever tyranny we might fear, or whatever tyranny we might wish to impose – is transformed and swept away in the Good News of that grace and love.
In Jesus name.
Amen