+ 22nd Sunday after Pentecost – November 10, 2019 +
Series C: Exodus 3:1-15; 2 Thessalonians 2:1-8, 13-17; Luke 20:27-40
Beautiful Savior Lutheran
Milton, WA
In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
What if? We’ve all heard that question before. “What if I ate all my Halloween candy?” “What if the moon was made of Tillamook extra sharp cheddar?” Parents, grandparents, and teachers from Sunday school to Seminary are familiar with the “what if”, hypothetical question.
This is what the Sadducees bring to Jesus in Luke 20, a “gotcha”, “what if?” question. It’s important to remember that the Sadducees were the religious aristocrats of Jesus’ day. The elite, upper echelons of society. They controlled the temple and politics in Jerusalem. And being the good storyteller that he is, St. Luke clues us in on the Sadducees’ true theological motivations right from the start.
There came to him some Sadducees, those who deny that there is a resurrection.
The Sadducees denied the resurrection of the body, life after death. They also held to a strict Torah-only authority of Scripture. Only Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. Everything else was rabbinic rubbish, which is why when the Sadducees weren’t teaming up with the Pharisees against Jesus, they were busy arguing with the Pharisees.
Here’s the set-up of their hypothetical scenario: they asked Jesus a question, saying, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies, having a wife but no children, the man must take the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. Being good Sadducees, they quote Deuteronomy 25 on the laws concerning levirate marriage. It was the obligation of a brother to marry his brother’s widow if he has no heirs. It sounds odd to us. But it was connected to the importance of family lineage, offspring, inheritance, and the promised seed, going all the way back to Abraham.
But of course, the Sadducees weren’t really interested in Mosaic Laws on levirate marriage at all. Remember, the Sadducees denied the resurrection. For they didn’t come to Jesus asking out of genuine curiosity. They toss Jesus a hypothetical hand grenade to trip Jesus up, trap him in his words, and dismiss his crazy teachings about the resurrection of the dead. If Sadducees were on Facebook or Twitter today, we’d call them trolls.
So, what do you think, Jesus? There were seven brothers. The first took a wife, and died without children. And the second and the third took her, and likewise all seven left no children and died. Afterward the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had her as wife.”
I’m sure the Sadducees thought they were being clever. “If Jesus denies Moses and the Law, marriage, or the resurrection, well then, clearly he’s not the rabbi everyone claims he is. All the more if his teaching on the resurrection sounds absurd.”
But like a chess master, Jesus is steps ahead of the their game. He moves straight through the absurd question to the unbelieving heart of the questioner. It’s not about marriage or the Law of Moses; it’s about the resurrection, and faith in God’s promise to raise the dead.
And Jesus said to them, “The sons of this age – that is, people in this life – marry and are given in marriage, but those who are considered worthy (understand Jesus’ words here as declared worthy in by grace through faith in Christ); it is they who attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead, and there in that life after death, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, for they cannot die anymore, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection.
Now, this doesn’t mean we become angels, it simply means that like the angels we rise never to die again. That’s the hope and comfort of the resurrection, not that we become bodiless angels, but that by God’s grace, through all the twists and turns, suffering and sorrow of this life, that in Jesus’ death and resurrection we too will be raised up. A glorified new creation, and yet a real, resurrected body.
It’s hard to underestimate just how remarkable Jesus’ words are. For we live in a world obsessed with death. Either it’s glorified and idolized as our right to choose. Or it’s denied and we idolize ourselves. “YOLO,” you hear people say. “You only live once.” So, do whatever feels good.
This isn’t too different from the Sadducees, really. No resurrection. No life after death. All that matters is now. By exposing the Sadducees’ selfishness and unbelief in God’s promises, Jesus also exposes our sin. That within each of us lives a little Sadducee who clings to the stuff of this world as if this life is all there is; that we live as if I mattered most, and that no one and nothing else matters.
The Sadducees were right about one thing, however. If the resurrection is just a repetition of this world, then it would be ridiculous. But the resurrection is something completely different. It’s a world without death. Think about that. A world where no one will die.
Hard to imagine, no doubt. We might even think it absurd at times too. Which is why eternal life, faith, trust in his promise, the resurrection – all of it – it’s all gift from God through Jesus’ death and resurrection for you.
Jesus makes his checkmate by quoting the Torah, Exodus 3. But that the dead are raised, even Moses showed, in the passage about the bush, where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. Now he is not God of the dead, but of the living, for all live to him.”
God is the God of life. True, God gives laws through Moses to preserve life in this world. But He also gives a promise to Moses about life in another world, a world without end. Notice what Jesus says. Not, “I was their God”, but “I AM” the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Present tense. They are alive to Him as He is to them.
You see, a hypothetical resurrection gives us no hope. For we do not have hypothetical sins, but real ones. Real sin. Real suffering. Real death. For which we have a real Savior from sin in Jesus. A real, historical, reliable and true death resurrection won accomplished for us by Jesus. In a world immersed in death, Jesus brings the promise of life: eternal, never-ending life.
For Jesus is the God of the living: crucified, risen, and living for you. Present with his promises for you as surely as he is with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and all who live in Christ awaiting the resurrection of the dead. I AM the God who was in the burning bush for Moses. In the cloud and pillar of fire for Israel. In the womb of Mary for you. In human flesh for you. On the cross and in the grave and ascended in the body for you. In the water and Word of your Baptism. In the bread and wine with my body and blood given and shed for you. In my Word and promise, even now today,
For Jesus is not the God of the dead, but of the living, and you are alive in him.
In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment