God of the Living

Luke 20:27-38

November 9, 2025

 

            For most of my adult life I referred to my parents’ marriage as “The Bill and Jeri Show.” I didn’t say this out of disrespect but because my mom and dad were just funny to watch together.. To be fair, they were not trying to be funny. They weren’t telling jokes or putting on humorous sketches, but they’re responses to one another’s foibles and quirks just made me laugh, smile, and shake my head.

            My dad would get frustrated trying to do something and he would fuss, and sigh, and say something like, “Oh blast this darn thing!” and my mom would say, “Oh Bill.” If you were to ask my kids to repeat something that their gramma said to their grampa, they would say, “Oh Bill.”

            But it was my mom who most often stole the show. She was a very funny person in general; she was the grand dame of silly in our family. Everything I learned about being silly, I learned from her. But she also said things without meaning to be funny, and those were some of the funniest things she ever said. Two of these statements will forever live in our family lore.

            Once, when my dad had a meeting to go to, he got up, got dressed for his meeting – which meant a dress shirt and nice slacks -- then came out to drink his coffee and eat breakfast. And then he spilled on his shirt. And my mom, exasperated that he got his good clothes dirty, said,

“Oh Bill, why don’t you put your clothes on before you get dressed.”

            What? I think we all realized that what she was trying to say which was put on your everyday clothes to eat breakfast in, then change for your meeting, but that’s not what she said.

            Another Jeri classic happened when my mom was doing something in the kitchen and she didn’t hear my dad walk up behind her. When he said something he scared her without meaning to and she startled and jumped and said,

            “Oh Bill, why don’t you say something before you speak.”

            After she said things like this, my dad would tell my sister and brother and me about it, exclaiming you’re not going to believe what your mother said this time. And I would laugh and think, there’s another episode of the Bill and Jeri show for the books.

            But whatever quirks their long marriage revealed or created, in their last years my parents fell asleep holding hands every night. They did this for the obvious reason, they loved each other even when they drove each other a little nuts. But I also believe they did this because if one of them were to die during the night, they would be holding hands and not making that transition alone.

            When my mom died, our first thought was, “Well, at least she’s with dad again.” I still think that, and it gives me a great deal of comfort believing that they are with each other in the life eternal as much as they were in this life. That is my great hope.

            It is because of my hope that I find Jesus’ response to the Sadducees in today’s passage from Luke’s gospel unsettling and disconcerting story to say the least. But if it is disconcerting, then that must mean we need to work at understanding it.

            The story begins with a confrontation between Jesus and the powers that be. But this is the one time that the confronters are the Sadducees not the Pharisees. According to the text, the Sadducees come to Jesus with the firm belief that there is no resurrection. Yet their question for Jesus centered around this very topic. They questioned Jesus about resurrection, even though they did not believe in it. Clearly, this is another instance where authorities are trying to trap Jesus and put him on the spot. It was another reason to discount him and his claims about God and the kingdom. As was so often the case, they sought to make Jesus look foolish.

            The Sadducees were a faction in Jewish society. They descended from the priestly class and believed solely in the Pentateuch – the first five books of what we call the Old Testament – Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. If resurrection did not appear in these five books, then resurrection was not real.

            Unlike the Sadducees, the Pharisees did believe in the resurrection after death. They had been debating and arguing with the Sadducees about the resurrection or the lack thereof for a long, long time. I suspect that the Sadducees brought up resurrection, not only to try and trap Jesus but to provoke the Pharisees once again.

            The question the Sadducees ask Jesus was based on a law found in Deuteronomy about the perpetuation of family line. It is known as the levirate law – if a man dies and leaves his wife childless, then it is the husband’s brother’s obligation and duty to marry the widow. That way they can have children and the family name, which always came through the husband, would continue. The first husband will not be forgotten in Israel, because through his brother, he fathered children. This is not a law that I find reasonable or agree with, but that perpetuation of the family lineage, of the family name, was an essential part of that culture.

            So the Sadducees are referring to this law when they pose this question to Jesus. But they use an example that pushes the law to the level of ridiculousness. Seven brothers marry the same woman. The brothers are fulfilling their duty to the law and to the first brother. But all of them die without fathering children. Then the woman dies. Here is the sticking point. In this so-called resurrection of which you speak, Jesus, to whom will this woman, the wife of seven brothers, be married?

            We know that this is not the first time Jesus has been baited. In Luke’s gospel, this is the third and final question asked of Jesus that ultimately sets the wheels in motion to put him to death. But with each example of baiting, Jesus models how to answer the true intent of the question without giving way to frustration and anger over the questioner’s methods or reasons for asking.

            Which means that Jesus knows they are trying to set him up, but he does not take the bait. He does not evade the question or dismiss it for being ridiculous. He says,

            “Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage, but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage.”

            It’s apples to oranges, Jesus tells them. In this age, in this life, on this earth, marriage is a part of life. At that time, marriage was an absolute necessity, not only for continuing the family name and for remembrance of that name in Israel, but also for the protection of the woman. A woman or a child alone, a widow and an orphan, were among the most vulnerable. But in the age to come, marriage will not be a part of that life. Therefore, their question about which brother is the true husband of the woman will not be an issue. It will not matter in the age to come.

            With their question, the Sadducees imply that if resurrection is real than it is merely a continuation of life as usual. We live this life, we die, then we are resurrected to more of the same. One commentator said that their question really means that they saw resurrection as “an eternity of more of the same.” But Jesus discounts that understanding. This age, this reality that we live in now is nothing like the age to come. There won’t be marriage. More importantly there won’t be death. The people of that age will be like the angels. They will be children of God. Death will no longer be a consequence of living.

            Death will no longer be a consequence of living.

            But Jesus does not stop there. He turns the law of Moses back on the Sadducees. You can look to Moses for proof of the resurrection. You can look to the very Pentateuch that you hold onto so tightly. Moses himself said that God was the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. We know that these three patriarchs died long ago, but God is the God of the living. These patriarchs live on through God, the God of the living.

            Jesus answered their question by pointing out the error in their thinking about the resurrection. He answered it by appealing to the very scripture they thought proved the resurrection false, which is great but where does that leave us?

            Where does that leave us when we wonder about who will be waiting for us when we cross from this life to the next? Will husbands be waiting for their wives and wives waiting for their husbands? When my mom was dying, she saw people in the room we could not see. Were those people loved ones gathered there to help her with her journey? I think so. And I want to believe that I will one day be reunited with the people I have loved and lost, with the saints of my life, on whose shoulders of faith I stand. Will someone be waiting for me as the gospel song says, when I cross to that far side bank of Jordan?  

            It seems to me that Jesus does not deny this about the resurrection, but he also will not make resurrection sound like an eternity of more of the same either. What I do think Jesus makes profoundly and pointedly clear is that resurrected life will not just be a continuation of what we have now. It will be fundamentally different. It will be fundamentally better.

            But does fundamentally better mean no relationship? It is hard from this passage alone to know how to answer that. But here’s the thing, what do we know about Jesus? What do we know about God the Father through the Son?

            We know that God cared and cares about relationship. God has been trying to get us back into right relationship with God since Adam and Eve heard from a talking snake in the garden.  

            Jesus came to restore our right relationship with God and with one another. No, none of our earthly relationships are perfect. They are all flawed because we are all flawed. But we believe that our God is a God of love and justice and mercy. God cares about souls, but Jesus came because God also cares about our bodies, our lives here and now. Jesus said that the kingdom was not some far off place, but right here in our midst. So I think, no I believe, that the love we have here, the relationships we have here, will be with us in the kingdom. They will be perfected and better and changed, but that love will be there. It won’t be gone. It will be complete. God is the God of the living, the living now and the living eternal. In that we place our hope, our trust, our relationship, our future, our past, and our present. God is the God of the living. Thanks be to God.

            Let all of God’s children say, “Alleluia.”

            Amen.