We joke and shake our heads and say, "In this life, nothing is certain except death and taxes." Lately that old saying has taken on a harsher sound. For now, beyond all the customary political posturing about taxes, and beyond the usual sorrows of this existence, it seems that death and doom are every where. Gone is our American sense of immunity from the terrors much of the rest of the world has had to face for decades. Now, death walks our streets, lurks in mail, flies in our airplanes, and waits for the next opportunity to sear our souls with unforeseen outrage.

Our president has told us to try to get back normal activities, and we share his hope for that, but this is something hard to do, especially now that the anthrax scare hangs over us—and the threat of other biological or even nuclear weapons in the hands of madmen. I don’t know when or even if we will get over the horror of "9/11". The images of the flaming towers collapsing and the screaming terror and profound searching sorrow resulting from those few hours of insanity may recede from our consciousness, but like an old war wound, will always afflict us. It’s hard to get on with life in a culture drenched with death.

The world as we are experiencing it now is close in spirit to the world of Jesus’ day. His critics the Sadducees were only too convinced of the reality of death and taxes. The Roman overlords ruled by domination, and every domination system uses taxes and the threat of death to control the population. Crucifixion—death on the Cross as Jesus suffered—was the execution of choice used by the Romans. It caused such terrible suffering and was public in its horror. The Sadducees were doubly troubled because they did not believe in life after death. They rejected the resurrection, a belief that in their day was gaining more and more followers; and they did not believe there was an immortal soul. In the tradition of their ancestors, they believed that death was the end. For them existence was bounded by death—death had the final word.

Except! Except for one way out: having children! In this they affirmed also the tradition handed on to them via the Old Testament ancestors: One gained "eternal life" by living on through one’s children, especially, of course, given their patriarchal culture, one’s name lived on through their sons. That’s why, in what may look to us like a silly problem about the woman married to seven brothers and remaining childless, could even be raised: having children was, for the men at least, a way to gain a kind of immortality. Not believing in anything but a child-born immorality, in posing the marriage problem, the Sadducees were mocking Jesus.

In St. Matthew’s version of this encounter, he records Jesus as answering the Sadducees that they are "completely wrong. You understand neither the Scriptures nor the power of God!" The problem of the Sadducees was not really the scholastic issue of marriage in an after life they didn’t believe in the first place, but the issue was, for all their religion, they didn’t have a clue about who and what God really was! God isn’t a god of the dead, he is the God of the living!

So, when Jesus tells the Sadducees that they are completely wrong, "he is not telling them that they have made a mistake, for example, with respect to some detail, but that their whole perception is radically wrong, distorted, and it is so because it is stuck in a vision which flows from death to death." [Alison, Raising Abel]

Given the bitter circumstances we are facing we might easily fall into the false belief that nothing is certain but death and taxes--that we live under the domination of death, when Christ, offers us a right relationship with God: meaning, a relationship with the Living God. Some years ago I heard of a life-long active church member, an example of faith to others. Then came the diagnosis of terminal cancer. As the end neared, it turned out that he was terrified of death! His church friends were shocked! To end up a life of faith terrified of death is a sad thing, sad like the Sadducees, because knowledge of the God of Life never seeped down into his soul.

In these trying times, when many are quick to ask of 9/11, "Where was God?" we need to practice the presence of the Living God. Someone sent me via email a piece written as letter from God, titled, "MEET ME IN THE STAIRWELL". It addresses the question of "Where was God?" this way: "You say you will never forget where you were when you heard the news on September 11, 2001. Neither will I. I was on the 110th floor in a smoke filled room with a man who called his wife to say "Good-Bye." I held his fingers steady as he dialed. I gave him the peace to say, "Honey, I am not going to make it, but it is OK...I am ready to go." I was with his wife when he called as she fed breakfast to their children. I held her up as she tried to understand his words and as she realized he wasn't coming home that night…

"I was at the base of the building with the Priest ministering to the injured and devastated souls. I took him home to tend to his Flock in Heaven. He heard my voice and answered. I was on all four of those planes, in every seat, with every prayer. I was with the crew as they were overtaken. I was in the very hearts of the believers there, comforting and assuring them that their faith has saved them. I was in Texas, Kansas, London, [California]. I was standing next to you when you heard the terrible news. Did you sense Me?

"I want you to know that I saw every face. I knew every name - though not all know Me. Some met Me for the first time on the 86th floor. Some sought Me with their last breath. Some couldn't hear Me calling to them through the smoke and flames; "Come to Me... this way... take my hand." Some chose, for the final time, to ignore Me. But, I was there.

"I did not place you in the Tower that day. You may not know why, but I do. However, if you were there in that explosive moment in time, would you have reached for Me? September 11, 2001 was not the end of the journey for you. But someday your journey will end. And I will be there for you as well. Seek Me now while I may be found. Then, at any moment, you know you are ‘ready to go.’" I will be in the stairwell of your final moments. –God"

Today, what’s in your soul about life, death, and God? In this time of terror, let us not become mere cynics, convinced that nothing is certain but death and taxes. Our existence is not bounded by death, but is embraced by the Eternal Life of God. When Martin Luther, like most good spiritual leaders of the church in his day, urged his parishioners to get up in the morning and make the sign of the Cross over themselves in remembrance of baptism—that holy Sacrament by which we pass through realm of death into God’s joyous life--he was encouraging them to trust in the Living Presence of God. His advice still holds today.

Begin and end every day remembering who God is—the God of Life we meet in Jesus Christ, risen from the dead. In him, death has no more dominion, and if that faith gets into our hearts, we are free at last to really live! Amen.