The Living Waters November 8, 1998

The Living Waters

A Sermon for the Twenty-third Sunday After Pentecost
The Reverend Pat Gillespie
2 Thessalonians 2:13--3:5
Luke 20:27-38

It's a Trick

As I was going to Saint Ives,
I met a man with seven wives.
Every wife had seven sacks,
Every sack had seven cats,
Every cat had seven kits.
Kits, cats, sacks, wives;
How many were going to Saint Ives?
It's a trick, isn't it? You know the answer to that old riddle. And you don't get there by figuring 1 + 7 + 7x7 + 7x7x7 + 7x7x7x7 The answer, of course, is one. The speaker is going to Saint Ives and meets the rest of them who are probably going the other direction.
It's a trick, isn't it? And that is just like what the Sadducees are doing to Jesus. They set him up to look at the little stuff, hoping to distract him from the bigger stuff. They try to get him to answer a question about Levirate marriage -- that's where a childless dead man is supposed to get kids "of his own" by requiring his brother to marry the widow. What the Sadducees are really trying to do is to trick Jesus into giving the "wrong" answer about the resurrection -- because they don't believe in the resurrection.
The Sadducees hope that Jesus will be so busy calculating seven brothers and who really owns the woman that he'll miss the big picture. "Let's get distracted by the details -- brothers & sacks and laws & cats -- and ignore just what's going on here."
"Let's look at little pieces of the law and miss God at work." It's a great trick. Today people play it on me all the time and I get caught by the trick. It works best around the current hotly debated issue. It usually goes something like this:
They say: "You shall not lie with a male as with a women: it is an abomination" (Lev 18:22).
I say "You shall not eat shellfish: it is an abomination" (Lev 11:12).
They say: "Sodom& Gomorrah is about homosexual acts and it is a really bad sin, even Jesus says so."
I say: "Sure it's a sin -- the sin of lack of hospitality, it's about rape. If men raping men makes all homosexual acts sinful, Then men raping women makes all heterosexual acts sinful."
They say: "Homosexuals will not inherit the kingdom of God" (1 Corinthians 6:9).
I say "Male temple prostitutes (homosexual or heterosexual is not clear) will not inherit the kingdom is what it means; that's not the same as homosexuality. Anyway, there are lots of things on Paul's list there that are closer to home than ritual prostitutes: like adulterers, greedy people, thieves, and such."
And on it goes. I'm caught up in the details and God is forgotten. So which brother owns her? And just how many are going to St. Ives?
It's a trick. What would Jesus do? He doesn't get distracted by the details. He looks at the bigger picture, at the real question. Whose wife is this? None of the brothers owns her. She is free. Remember the bigger picture; that's what's really important: She belongs to God. All are children of God. This is the Living God and in God all are alive.
So, are homosexual acts sinful? Sometimes. Just like heterosexual acts -- they can be sinful when they turn people away from the Living God. And I think that just like heterosexual acts -- they can bring people to love and closer to God. Remember the bigger picture; that's what's really important All are children of God: dead brothers and widows, Sadducees and literalists, saints and sinners of whatever sexual orientation. This is the Living God and in God all are alive.
"We must always give thinks to God for you, brothers and sisters, beloved by the Lord, ... May God comfort your hearts and strengthen them in every good work and word." Amen

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