Several years ago my son Nathan was really into an internet channel called VSauce and its creator Michael Stevens. Wikipedia describes the channel as, “initially released video game-related content until the popularity of his educational series DOT saw discussions of general interest become the focus of Vsauce, encompassing explanations of science, philosophy, culture, and illusion. As it turns out Michael Stevens teamed up with Adam Savage to take a science show on the road called Brain Candy Live! It was going to be in a town near us really close to Nathan’s birthday. Awesome! So Nathan and I went and we got to go and meet Adam and Michael after the show. It was a total bonus for me because I was a huge Mythbusters fan. When we got to the front of the meet line, Michael, the VSauce guy, looked at Nathan’s T-shirt which had what is called the “Standard Formula” or what’s been called the formula of the universe that neatly sums up our current understanding of fundamental particles and forces. It was really cool, because Michael took Nathan aside and started asking him questions about the formula and Nathan’s visit to the super collider. That left me standing there with Adam Savage. I told him about the episode that made me a mythbusters fan and his excited reaction made me feel like a million bucks. Little did I know at that time that the Mythbusters crew would test some myths that would work so well to make Jesus’ point for today. In one they questioned the wisdom of the statement, “that will go over like a lead balloon.” That statement was said in a derogatory fashion by other musicians toward Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Bonham and John Paul Jones when they said that they were going to form a band. So the four took it in stride named themselves Led Zeppelin and made history. So in this case, lead balloon… good? The Mythbusters actually made a lead balloon and floated it all around a warehouse. So, it can be done. Or how about one of my favorite episodes after dropping an elevator and blowing up a cement truck… You can’t polish a…let’s just say manure. The meaning is that something inherently bad cannot be improved. The Mythbusters were like “Challenge accepted.” They did some research and employed a Japanese hobby called Hikaru Dorodango, which means shiny balls of mud, as the polishing technique. They were absolutely successful and it was amazing how lustrous the orbs turned out. So myth busted… technically. During filming the crew wore biohazard gear to manipulate and do the dorodango. Their media could obviously contain E. coli, a bacteria and other things that can cause some significant health problems and even death. Also in a more recent question answer internet segment, Adam confirmed that the orb still had an ostrich manure odor. Given these things, I think it begs the question, sure you can do it, but why would you want to? So, in the Gospel for today Jesus has obviously been teaching about the resurrection from the dead and the Sadducees are trying to make him look foolish, ignorant or maybe even stupid. Here’s an interesting tidbit. The Pharisees believed in angels and the resurrection, but the Sadducees did not. Some Sadducees confronted Jesus with this question, “Now there were seven brothers; the first married, and died childless; then the second and the third married her, and so in the same way all seven died childless. Finally the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be?” Jesus rebuffs the question and I think we need to understand that his response was an answer that fits the intent of the question. Jesus was not addressing the anxieties that we might have of seeing a beloved spouse, family members or friends again. Those are relationships that bring light and life. Here Jesus is addressing the customs of the day and the graceless assumptions of this group. Women at that time were considered to be a means by which a man’s future may be secured—his life project vicariously perpetuated through male offspring. The woman is totally disregarded. In order to carry on the first brother’s bloodline, or to continue his legacy or life, so to speak, there needed to be a son, so the woman would be passed on to the next oldest brother down the line. That’s why widows with no son, family to return to or a husband’s family to step in were outside of society and were in incredible danger. They couldn’t own property and were dependent on the charity of others. Jesus’ feet are firmly planted in the kingdom of God, not this world’s way of doing things. He attacks their assumption. He attacks the premise that in the resurrection, God is simply going to take up a flawed pile of hurtful, merciless “tradition” and through Hikaru Dorodango, polish it up. Remember, no matter how shiny it is, it’s still ostrich manure. Tim Knauff Jr. commented that, “Jesus is not interested in the Sadducees’ logical convulsions and assumption that whatever follows this world must be a shined-up version of what’s here. Instead he points to the resurrection from the dead as something entirely new—a new age, a new reality, a new identity as children of God and of the resurrection. Our assumptions, our casual cruelties, the things we hardly bother to notice (like a system that can pawn off a widow to seven brothers) have nothing in common with God’s purpose. God is breaking in with mercy and justice, not shining things up as they are, and God’s intentions are far better than anything we can come up with.” End quote. This is the God of which the prophet Isaiah said, “Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” We are here or we are listening on this All Saints day and we are thinking of those that have gone on before us and I think many have deep questions and anxiety. What promise can I hold on to for my loved ones who have died? As I grow older or am near death, is there something I can expect, something I can hope for? Jesus reminds us that God speaks to us in the present tense and is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, three that had long since died but God speaks of as living. Jesus said, “God not of the dead, but of the living” We are called to a living faith. That living faith grows from our hope that is based on nothing less than the righteousness of Jesus Christ. The old song recognizes our anxiety, “When darkness veils his lovely face I rest on His unchanging grace In every high and stormy gale My anchor holds within the veil His oath, his covenant, his blood Supports me in the ‘whelming flood When all around my soul gives way He then is all my hope and stay On Christ the solid rock I stand All other ground is sinking sand.” It’s that imagery of an unyielding, unsinking rock in the midst of the terribleness that the world has to throw at us. Life and light in a sea of death and darkness. God’s very character is that of love, mercy, grace, hope and above all, life, and God in Christ came that we might have life and have it abundantly. So often we find ourselves clinging to the old, trying the same old things expecting different results. We yearn for control and self determination and plod our way through sinking sand. In the Bible, we find that God’s people tend to wander out into the sand and wilderness quite frequently and that is where God meets them. That is where God meets us, always doing a new thing, making a way, standing with us in the storms, forgiving us, loving us, strengthening us, encouraging us, dying and rising for us so that we may work in God’s kingdom here and now, breaking barriers and striving for the justice that brings the outcasts, the widows and orphans out from the dark, unseen corners to which they have been relegated and walk with them in the light of hope, joy and resurrection. Maybe it all comes down to seeing ourselves as a lead balloon. All the old conventional wisdom said impossible and no until…new thing. All the anxiety, the doubt, those that refuse to see you, the voices of those and that inner voice of ours that says, “Not you!” and “impossible!” Those are myths, myths that bind you and deny you life and only bring darkness and death. God is not about death but life. It says in 2 Corinthians, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away, and look, new things have come” So in the spirit of Mythbusters, let’s call those myths BUSTED! Amen
Leave a Reply