Luke 20:27-38
Do we believe in the resurrection of the dead?
And if we do, what difference does it make in how we live our lives each day?
The Sadducees who confront Jesus in our Gospel lesson today were a small but influential group within first-century Judea. Unlike Jesus and the rest of their fellow Jews, the Sadducees believed that only the first five books of the Bible constituted the Word of God. These five books--Genesis, Exodus, Levitcus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy--are what the scholars call, the Pentateuch and are also referred to as, the books of Moses. The resurrection of the dead isn’t specifically mentioned in those five books. And so the Sadducees rejected the whole idea of a resurrection of the dead.
In doing so, they were rejecting what many passages in the other thirty-four books of the Old Testament teach about the resurrection of those who believe in the God that you and I have met in Jesus Christ, including those of Job in today’s Old Testament lesson. In spite of Job’s anger with God for letting a profusion of tragedies come his way and anger with friends who claimed that all of his misfortunes were Job’s fault, Job trusted God and said, “...I know that my Redeemer lives and...at the last he will stand upon the earth; and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then in my flesh I shall see God...”
We might think that people who refuse to believe that God can bring new life to dead bones just lack faith. But the Sadducees did believe in God. Their problem was that their faith was in a God they’d whittled down to human size.
Maybe their wealth and influence--because the Sadducees were a wealthy and influential bunch--had stunted their imaginations.
Maybe they couldn’t imagine God being any bigger or more powerful than they were. It limited their faith.
There are people in our churches today who have a similarly limited faith. Recently, a man told me about the reaction of an elderly family member to the decision of another family member, who had just died, to be cremated. “It’s too bad John won’t rise again,” the older woman said. “What makes you think that John won’t rise?” the man asked. “Well, he’s just going to be ashes,” the woman replied. “There won’t be anything left of him.” To this, the man said, “It seems to me that it was from dust that God first created human beings. If He did it once, He can do it again!”
In rejecting the idea that God could resurrect the dead, the Sadducees were doing more than just forgetting that God is able to do what seems impossible, though. They were also ignoring the evidence staring them in the face: Jesus Himself.
The confrontation recounted in today’s Gospel lesson happens in the temple in Jerusalem on the Tuesday before Jesus’ crucifixion. By this point in Jesus’ activities, He had already fed 5000 people with a few fish and scraps of bread, cast out demons, declared forgiveness to people alienated from God, healed the lame, and even brought a dead girl back to life. All these signs should have told the Sadducees that Jesus possessed power over life and death. And yet, from the perspective of their limited faith, all the Sadducees could think to do when they spoke with Jesus was start a religious argument.
Intent on making Jesus look ridiculous for saying that those who believe in Him will rise, they present Jesus with an imaginary case study meant to cause Him to stumble. It’s all rooted in something called levirate law, which is discussed in the Old Testament books of Genesis and Deuteronomy. Under this law, among the ancient Jews, property could only be inherited by a firstborn son. If a woman was widowed before giving birth to a child and her father wouldn’t take her back into his home, she had nothing. To help the woman and to ensure that the deceased husband’s family line continued, levirate law said that his next unmarried brother had to take the widow as his wife. Their first son would be considered the dead man’s heir. In their fictional case study, the Sadducees tell Jesus, there was a woman who married a procession of seven brothers, each of them dying and leaving her childless. “In the resurrection of the dead,” the Sadducees asked, “whose wife will this woman be?”
It’s a gotcha question to which the Sadducees were sure there was no answer. But Jesus answers them in two ways:
- First, with the facts. In heaven, He says, marriage won’t happen. Marriage is designed for life in this limited world. But in heaven, those Jesus describes as “the children of the resurrection” will live as loving sisters and brothers, with God as our Father. The joys there will be better than those experienced in the best marriages here.
- Second, Jesus points out that even Moses himself, the traditional author of the first five books of the Bible which the Sadducees held dear, believed in the resurrection of the dead. After all, Jesus tells them, Moses, at the burning bush, called the Lord, “the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” and then pointed out that “he is not God of the dead, but of the living.”
But left unanswered are two questions:
- Whether the Sadducees came to believe that the resurrection is real?
- And whether that belief made any difference in their lives?
Each week when we recite the Apostles’ Creed, we affirm our belief in “the resurrection of the dead.” But what exactly does it mean to believe that as followers of Jesus Christ, we can look forward to a physical resurrection? Above all, I think it means that God gives us the power to live each day here to its fullest!
One of the heroes of the twentieth century, a man who’s still living, is Desmond Tutu. Tutu, a black South African who served as an archbishop of the Anglican Church, won the Nobel Peace Prize for opposing the system of apartheid which once existed in his country. Under apartheid something like 90% of the country was essentially enslaved. Throughout the struggle which led to the liberation of South Africa, Tutu daily received death threats.
Someone once asked him why he kept up his peaceful fight for freedom. He was an educated man. He could have served quietly as a simple clergyman. Why, the questioner asked, did he willfully face the possibility of assassination to continue the struggle? I can’t help it, Tutu said. When I see injustice, I must fight it. “Besides, death is not the worst thing that can happen to a Christian!”
After the racist government of South Africa fell and a new one was established under the presidency of Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu once more forsook safety and comfort to head a reconciliation task force that saw South Africa’s formerly persecuted Black majority forgive and seek vengeance from the many members of the White minority which had for so many years oppressed them.
When you belong to Jesus Christ and you know that His grace and forgiveness have given you life beyond the grave, you can live this life to the full. You can fight for what’s right. You can share the Good News of Jesus even with those who may oppose or ridicule you. You can dare to serve others in Jesus’ Name!
And you don't have to be a Nobel Peace Prize winner to live in such daring ways! I once read the true story of two men I’ll call John and Joe. They worked in a real estate office together. John somehow stole a commission from Joe. Joe was understandably furious and that began an unspoken feud, the two men separated by a wall of surly silence. One day, Joe learned that John’s wife had just been diagnosed with a life-threatening illness. Joe was conscience-struck. Although he was sure that John had wronged him, he was equally sure that he needed to strive for reconciliation. So, Joe did something he hadn’t done in months. When he saw John had arrived at the office, Joe walked into his cubicle and said, “I hear that Mary’s having some health problems. How’s she doing?” When you know that one day you will rise and be with Jesus, you can forget about keeping score in this life. You can dare to do things like forgive, forbear, and love others.
A seminary professor of mine loved reading murder mysteries. But he had the strange habit of always reading the last chapter first. By doing so, he said, he not only knew how the story would end, he also knew how to read the book. He knew what facts were important and what weren’t, what to pay attention to and what to ignore.
Through Jesus, we know how the story will end. All who believe in Him will never perish. They’ll live with God forever. Because this is true, we can be filled with the power to live life God’s way and to focus on what’s important: to love God and neighbor; to worship God with our whole lives; to serve others in Jesus’ Name; to make disciples by telling others the Good News of new and everlasting life for all who turn from sin and follow Christ; to forgive and get on with the business of living.
For the Christian, the resurrection of the dead is no mere abstraction. It’s a reality Jesus has secured for us through His own death and resurrection. And it’s what frees us from our fears and hang-ups in this life. The resurrection frees us to live not only in eternity, it also frees us to live today!
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