Pentecost
XXIV - C
Meadowvale
Lutheran Church, Mississauga
November
11th, November 2007 (Remembrance Day)
Pastor
Peter Lisinski
“LEST
WE FORGET"
It
seems somewhat strange -- at the very least, liturgically incorrect -- that our
attention should be so directly focused on the promise of resurrection at this
particular time of year. As
daylight fades and darkness deepens; as the sunny warmth of summer gives way,
finally to the frosty chill of another long, cold Canadian winter; as
flowers wilt and leaves fall and many other symbols of spring's Easter promise
become little more than a distant memory, it's easy to doubt God's resurrection
promise -- as do the Sadducees who challenge Jesus in today's Gospel
The
marriage law they cite to question belief in the resurrection is found in
Deuteronomy 25:5-6, where Moses writes:
"When
brothers reside together and one of them dies childless, his widow shall not be
married outside of the family. Her
husband's brother shall take her in marriage and their firstborn shall succeed
to the deceased brother, so that his name may not be blotted out of
Israel".
The
purpose of this particular law was to keep the family name of the deceased
alive; to provide a permanent place for it in the common memory of Israel; to
remind God's faithful people that our community life includes not only those who
live among us today, but also those who have lived before us.
Remembrance
Day serves much the same purpose in our culture.
We deliberately and consciously set aside the eleventh hour of the
eleventh day of the eleventh month of each year to remember the brutal wars that
have so deeply scarred the face of human history; to acknowledge the
sacrifices our nation's soldiers and their families have made -- and, I hope, to
lament the sacrifices we have forced our enemies and their soldiers to make; to
repent of the sin that, too often and too easily, demands such sacrifices, and
to keep alive our hope in God's vision, and promise of peace on earth.
Remembrance Day, and the ancient marriage law of Moses, each witness to the importance of a common memory or shaping a common life dedicated to the common good. God intends all people of all nations, in all times and in all places, to share eternally. It was Jesus' commitment to life in the fullness of God's holy communion that inspired him to sacrifice his life for us on the cross -- and which, in turn, inspired God to raise him up to new life on Easter Sunday. And even though spring's bright Easter promise is now fading into winter's dark discontent the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ promises that with the names of patriarchs and matriarchs; with the names of prophets and apostles; the names of our own parents, spouses, and children; and even our own names -- though perhaps forgotten or unknown in the records of human history -- are not unknown and will never be forgotten, in the mind and memory of God who, in Jesus Christ, has united his divine life with our human life, and has committed his own eternal destiny to ours. Though our life may be cut short suddenly -- by terminal illness or accident, or by the violence of terrorism or war; though the vitality of our youth, slowly but surely, fades into the frailty of old age God will not break faith with us until we and all who sleep -- whether under the poppies that blow in Flanders Fields, or under the Easter lilies planted on the graves of our own loved ones -- join together in the resurrection age where sin, evil and death no longer haunts or hurts us; and where all God's beloved children live together under the reign of God's peace, mercy, and love.