Adiaphora

Text: Luke 20:27-38

On a scale from the most radical and strange to the most reactionary and predictable, worship at Faith is pretty much to the right, to the traditional. We follow a predetermined order from a Lutheran guide to worship, we pick songs from a Lutheran hymnal, we confess our sins in a Lutheran confession. If you were visiting here from most of the other Lutheran churches in the world, you’d feel pretty much at home.

A lot of the things that happen in worship have meaning. It is not just a bunch of arbitrary events strung together in a row. Someone, including theologians and liturgists, has thought the thing through. You might really like the way worship goes here; it might be one of the reasons you are here today. Or you might not like it so much; you might be here in spite of, not because of, the way this church worships. We do all these things in worship here, and each might add to your experience or it might not. We do all these things, but none of them is going to keep you out of heaven or get you into it. They are, I hope, great and helpful and comforting and thought-provoking and nourishing to your life and soul, but they are not the main thing. Not the main thing with God.

In the Gospel reading today Jesus gets into a discussion with some folks, some Sadducees. It seems like an argument. The Sadducees do not believe in the resurrection of the dead. Some other Jews that we read about in the Gospels, the Pharisees, for example, do. But the Sadducees do not. So they present an argument of the absurd. If the husband of a woman dies without her having had a child, the brother of the husband is to marry her. That was the rule. No doubt partly this is to foster growth of the community, but it also protects the woman who otherwise would be left out in the cold without family protection and care. So the Sadducees simply extend this rule. What if she has seven husbands in a row, and then she herself dies. If they all are resurrected, who will be her husband then? Instead of dismissing this as foolishness, instead of saying “OK, next question,” Jesus answers them.

It seems on the face of it that this passage is an argument about resurrection. But really, resurrection has nothing to do with it. That is, the point of the passage is not to tell us more about the resurrection than we already knew. None of the Sadducees would have been convinced by Jesus response, none of Jesus' supporters would have needed convincing, and modern readers bring two thousand years of previous thought to the passage.

The resurrection is the occasion of the discussion between the Sadducees and Jesus, but not the heart of the discussion. They could be talking about the Sabbath, or about how to pray, or about what to eat when. The things that Jesus argues about all the time, and that the Sadducees and the Pharisees and others get all incensed about.

Jesus is a man of his time. Partly. He is a Jew, knows about the law, and respects it, by and large. But he is a man out of his time, too. What he respects is the way the law draws people closer to God. What he does not respect is the way the observance of the law keeps people from God. The argument that Jesus and the Sadducees are having is deep and wide: they are arguing about what God is and what God wants.

Worship and observing the law are things people do to come closer to God. Martin Luther and the reformers talked a lot about the essence of worship. He said the essence of the church—what makes the church be the church—is that the sacraments be rightly administered and the Gospel be rightly preached. Everything else was extra. Not bad, not worthless, just not essential. He used the word “adiaphora” to describe these things. The word means “no difference,” or “it doesn’t matter.”

What Jesus says to the Sadducees is that what they are so worried about doesn’t matter. It is not the main point. Luther once said, when asked a theological question about the Eucharist, Leave that to the philosophers. Jesus is saying pretty much the same thing to the Sadducees.

God is the God of the living, Jesus says in his answer. He also says that people are God’s children. He also says that God is the same God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. This is not the answer the Sadducees seek, yet it is the answer to their question. We worship one God, who embraces us as God’s children, and is on the side of life. The question you are asking is silly. Even if it had an answer, it would be adiaphora.

It is easy to confuse things that are good and helpful with things that are necessary. We think sometimes that praying in a certain way makes God like us better. We think sometimes that if we are more observant, or more ethical, or more something, that God will be more inclined to do what we want God to do. But this is a little arrogant and it makes for misery. We are neither so bad nor so powerful. God is already on our side. We are only children of God, not God’s adviser, attorney, or supervisor. Or employee. Nor is God our client, needing gentle care and from time to time a little persuasion.

In the same way, the future of the church does not depend on our ability to do everything right. What we do in worship and the many other things we do for the church are good and helpful, but it is not our job to save the church. It is God’s church.

We think sometimes that the faithful life is a life of jumping through hoops. Theological hoops (that is, about doctrine), liturgical hoops (that is, about worship) or devotional hoops (that is, about our own personal practices). But those chores are not ones that God assigns us.

It is impossible to say exactly what God wants of us. But I suspect it has little to do with marriage laws and how widows greet their long-dead husbands. Or with how we dress, or how we worship, or how exactly we pray. Or even whether we believe the right thing.

The essence of the church, said Luther, was simple: the sharing of the Lord’s supper and the sharing of God’s word. The essence of faith is even simpler: love God with all your heart and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself. Simple and hard. God is both simpler and more demanding than we sometimes imagine God to be.

We are good at worrying. We worry about all sorts of things. Are we acting right, thinking right, worshipping right, talking right. I once made a sign for my office years ago when I was in business that said “Everything Counts.” But it is not true. Everything does not count. There is adiaphora in life, too.

As Jesus tells the Sadducees, don’t sweat the small stuff. Don’t let it consume you. God is the God of the living, says Jesus. It takes away life to attend so much to the inessentials, in what we do or what we think others do. Choose life over death, says Moses, the man of the burning bush. That is the main thing. As for the rest, it doesn’t matter.