Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost [Proper 32], rcl yr c, 2025
HAGGAI 1:15b-2:9; PSALM 98; 2 THESSALONIANS 2:1-5, 13-17; LUKE 20:27-38
I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land
I offer you today a word of peace, a peace that reaches beyond the end of war, a peace offered to all God’s creatures.
In the coverage of Hurricane Melissa, and the effects of Hurricane Melissa on Jamaica and other parts of the Caribbean, it is not hard at all to find language similar to what we find in Psalm 98. Melissa wreaked havoc and left a trail of heartbreak. Melissa’s wind had savage strength, Melissa hit Cuba, Melissa’s rainfall pounded and slammed into Jamaica, and lashed Haiti.
This sort of language doesn’t sound unusual to us, I think because we are already comfortable with the notion that the natural world is a living thing, a living thing that has has its own force and power, and though we have influence over it— that is, through climate action or inaction, the natural world is less or more volatile— we nevertheless do not have anything near complete control over it. Winds will howl, the sea will froth, and the land will quake.
And while the language of Psalm 98 is in a different register—being less about destructive power and more about the praise of God—the psalm still imagines the natural world as having a life of its own. The lands are urged to “Shout with joy to the Lord … [and to] rejoice and sing.” The sea is urged to “make a noise,” “the rivers [to] clap their hands,” and the “hills [to] ring out with joy,” and all this “before the Lord, when he comes to judge the earth.” Other parts of Scripture speak of the natural world similarly; Isaiah writes of mountains and hills breaking into song and the trees of the field clapping their hands, and St. Paul will write of a creation that groans with eager longing for the redemption of God’s people.
All of creation is alive, it seems, with the power to destroy and the power to praise.
When Jesus gets into his argument with the Sadducees today, it’s easy to miss what’s at the centre of the disagreement. On the surface appears to be about marriage. The Sadducees offer a scenario about the custom of a widow remarrying her husband’s brother. In this scenario the poor widow’s new husbands keep dying, and the poor widow has to keep marrying another brother, right up until the seventh brother dies, as does the poor multiply married widow.
The question that the Sadducees pose, though, is not about whether this is a wholesome marriage custom. Because unlike what Jesus was teaching about resurrection, the Sadducees didn’t believe in the resurrection, and are attempting to point out the absurdity of it. So when they ask their question as to who the widow would be married to in the life to come if she were already married seven times in this age, it’s an attempt to say, “see, Jesus, you silly man? You can’t say that she will be married to seven men in the age to come, so the idea of resurrection life is absurd!”
At which point Jesus does three things. First, he tells the Sadducees that they don’t understand what resurrection life will be like, in that it will be more like being single than it will be like being married; second, in what amounts to a jibe at the Sadducees—who didn’t believe in angels—Jesus says the life to come, the children of the resurrection will be more like angels, who neither marry nor are given in marriage; and third, that of course the dead are raised, because Moses was told at the burning bush that God is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Joseph, three men who would have been dead to Moses, but alive to God, because God “is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.” Jesus, in his own way, doubles and triples down: resurrection is real.
So on one level, this is good news for thus of us who mourn, including and especially around Remembrance Day and All Souls, because what we hear, through Jesus’s argument with the Sadducees, is that even those who appear to die, if they die in the Lord, are in fact alive to God, and that the resurrection is real, right now, to God.
Our readings, though, don’t simply speak to those who we mourn now, but point us to the day of the Lord. Second Thessalonians speaks of “the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to him;” and that between now, and the day of the Lord when he will gather us all up to himself, we will experience hardship in the form of rebellion and destruction, but that the Lord, even in this time of destruction and death, offers us a grace, comfort, and a good hope that transforms us, a Lord who will comfort our hearts and strengthen us in good word and deed.
Haggai brings even greater breadth to the peace that is promised on the day of the Lord that is to come, and speaks of the ways God “will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land,” too. In this way, not even creation itself will be left to its own devices in the redemption of the world on the last day.
And so, in the end, we have a story about a redemption and a peace that is as big as the universe. In the same way Jesus takes up his own body in his resurrection, he is the first fruits of our resurrection, when our bodies too will be gathered to him, and we will be restored to peaceful relations with one another.
But this bodily resurrection is not limited only to us, because in the resurrection of Jesus, a greater redemption is taking seed: the redemption of the whole world, the natural world included. Just as we are caught up in sin, the natural world is too—creation rebels, it wreaks havoc and leaves trails of heartbreak, a natural world with savage strength, that can hit, pound, slam, and lash against us and itself. The whole world, having fallen, leads us into destructive relationships, not just amongst us as human beings—such as war—but into destructive relationships with the natural world itself.
But God, in God’s wisdom, does not leave us alone in our redemption. In the face of this challenge of destruction, we are invited into grace, comfort, and good hope, by a Lord who comforts our hearts, strengthening us in good word and deed. That is, we are not left at the mercy of destruction, but given the tools of redemptive care for one another, and for the natural world, even now.
God does not leave us hopeless, or without the hope of a transformed world, cosmos and universe: because in the resurrection promise, we will join with the land and the sea in shouting with joy to the Lord, we will clap our hands with the rivers and the trees, and the hills and mountains will ring out with their joy and ours before the Lord, when he comes to judge the earth.
We long for this with the whole of creation; we groan as we wait; and we work, according to God’s grace, comfort, and good hope, with strengthened hearts, according to the vision not only of a life of peace for us, or for those who have died in the Lord, but according to a vision of a creation, too, that will be at peace with us, with God, and with itself.
The Revd Canon Preston DS Parsons, PhD
Rector, St John’s, Kitchener
Angus Sinclair was appointed Director of Music of St. John the Evangelist on February 1, 2023. Having graduated in 1981 (Honours B.Mus.) in organ performance from Wilfrid Laurier University, he went on to distinguish himself as a church musician, recitalist and accompanist touring in both Canada and the UK. For over 40 years Angus has served parishes and congregations throughout Southwestern Ontario as director of music. He experiences his present appointment to St. John’s as a welcome homecoming, both spiritually and musically.
As our parish musician, he provides both support and leadership so that a variety of parish programs can find musical expression and attract participation. When our handbell choir is in season, he is one of our ringers. At parish dinners, he provides popular piano music for the guests to dine by. For both worship services and concerts, he will rehearse and accompany vocal and instrumental soloists from our congregation on piano, organ, or even accordion.
Angus Sinclair was appointed Director of Music of St. John the Evangelist on February 1, 2023. Having graduated in 1981 (Honours B.Mus.) in organ performance from Wilfrid Laurier University, he went on to distinguish himself as a church musician, recitalist and accompanist touring in both Canada and the UK. For over 40 years Angus has served parishes and congregations throughout Southwestern Ontario as director of music. He experiences his present appointment to St. John’s as a welcome homecoming, both spiritually and musically.