Over this post Easter Week, I have been looking at texts that relate to the resurrection, and stating, over and over again, that the core of Christian faith is that Christ rose from the dead. It is not that hew as a moral teacher, or about love, or good things.

It is not that we are involved in social work, or political process: the refugee situation is one where the political process has led to human tragedy. It is not that we are proclaiming something new. It is quite simple. That Christ rose from the dead. That there is a resurrection.

We are not, in Christ, an abstract human philosophy. We are one with Christ, who taught the resurrection.

And we must avoid the Sadducee. If the Pharisees are actors, legalists and hypocrites at least they did not change their message to accede to the spirit of the age. The Sadducees had taken a little too much Greek philosophy, and saw the resurrection as just a myth, and tried to get Jesus with a “gotcha” question.

And Sadducees came to him, who say that there is no resurrection. And they asked him a question, saying, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies and leaves a wife, but leaves no child, the man must take the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. There were seven brothers; the first took a wife, and when he died left no offspring. And the second took her, and died, leaving no offspring. And the third likewise. And the seven left no offspring. Last of all the woman also died. In the resurrection, when they rise again, whose wife will she be? For the seven had her as wife.”

Jesus said to them, “Is this not the reason you are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God? For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. And as for the dead being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, how God spoke to him, saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not God of the dead, but of the living. You are quite wrong.”

(Mark 12:18-27 ESV)

You don’t have to be a member of Twitter to look at it. And the PCUSA has gone towards the Unitarian Convergence, towards acceding far too much to the social issues and progressivism, thinking not as much of this world and politics, as of the gospel it is our duty to preach.

We are spending too much time creating sins that offend the elite, despite knowing that the elite are corrupt, and foolish, and promote evil. There is no sin called homophobia. There is no sin called Islamophobia. One could argue that the gospel contains hatefacts — around living righteously and without sexual immorality, and that Christ is the only way to salvation — that are Islamophobic and Homophobic.

We have to be careful here. The Belhar declaration, which said that no person is unable to accept the gospel, and that our churches should not be divided on racial lines, can not be extended to allow those who are quite mistaken to claim the right to correct sound doctrine.

Or turn our churches into a praying arm of a godless progressivism. Which has now failed.

Follow not the Sadducee. They want to be part of the elite. Do not be them. Do not be like them.