Luke 20:27-38
“Wanted: Dead or Alive?”
November 6, 2022
It wasn’t long into the car trip from Chicago to New York, that the two strangers and recent college graduates on their way to beginning the rest of their lives started making sure the other knew that they were a person to be taken seriously.
In an instance of one-upmanship, Harry defends what is a key part of his persona with this line,
“When I buy a new book, I read the last pages first. That way in case I die before I finish, I know how it ends. That, my friend, is a dark side.”
Sally hits back indicating that doesn’t really categorize him as being deep.
Those words from the script of one of my favorite films, “When Harry Met Sally” gives voice to what so many of us want – answers, explanations – we want to know how the story ends.
Jesus here is talking to the spellbound crowds in the temple after he finally makes it to Jerusalem on the back of a donkey and after he flipped the tables of those trying to sell things there.
The Sadducees, seeing the power he has over the people, want to take him down a peg or two or get rid of him altogether.
They then figure the easiest way to discredit him is to use holy scripture to trick him up.
It’s important to note that Sadducees recognized only the Pentateuch or Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, the first 5 books of what we know as the Old Testament, as authoritative scripture.
And since there was no mention of resurrection in any of those books, they did not believe in it.
They also did not believe in angels or spirits.
Jesus will respond thoughtfully to the hypothetical story they paint that is reliant on Jewish law regarding marriage.
The fact that the question is so absurdly convoluted they think will only help point out how ridiculous Jesus’ teachings are.
We can just imagine them grinning and high-fiving each other at coming up with what they thought was the perfect question.
Then Jesus answers.
And the answer is that the Sadducees are assuming that life in the resurrection will be just like the present life in this world.
Death is the key concept here and Jesus’ instruction is don’t use the same mindset for what is to come as you use for your earthly life.
Marriage and all the rules surrounding it then were meant to provide for the care of folks in their old age and, especially if left widowed by death.
Children would be caring for their parents and so there was real concern for what happens to those who were childless.
The point that Jesus is making with the Sadducees is that aging and death and marriage will not exist in the era of resurrection so the issue of whose wife will she be in their question will be moot.
The only identity for that woman and everyone else is that they will be a child of God.
Resurrection will soon become very real for Jesus and his followers.
And Jesus makes his case by citing the burning bush story when God reveals Godself to Moses.
Note that Jesus recounts from Exodus that when God said this those important men he cites – Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob – had all been dead for centuries.
God does not say “I was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”
What God said was, “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”
This speaks to the idea that God still considers them alive.
God is God of the living.
Death does happen as we all know and feel and grieve and will honor together in two weeks during our time together on the 20th when we will have our annual Service of Remembrance and Thanksgiving for those who have left this world.
What Jesus wants them to know is that death can be acknowledged as deeply painful, but it doesn’t separate us from God. We do not stop existing. There is life after death.
What Jesus is sharing here is the revelation that God is so committed to life that death will not have the last word.
We cannot give death more power than God.
Death is not eternal, but God is.
And with God we go on living, just in a way we don’t understand because we are so rooted in this earthly life, the only one we can touch right now.
If we go back to that wish to know how the story ends, this knowledge of resurrection is wonderful, but it still leaves us wanting more details.
That is the stuff of so much imagining on the part of humankind through the ages.
Maybe what Jesus did for the awe-struck crowd and the Sadducees that day was to let them and us know that we may not fully understand or have all the answers we yearn for and yet God is present now and for all eternity.
We dwell here and beyond in the place of God’s love.
A more fruitful response to this mystery is to focus on how God is moving in our lives and what are we doing as a result of the knowledge of that love?
Wonder and awe and mystery are gifts but not the kind that come in neat packages tied up perfectly with a bow.
Jesus is saying the resurrected life will look very different from this one.
And still we are called to love as God loves – unconditionally and forever.
That love then, spread out to as many lives as we can touch, is our testament to the power of God’s love in our own life.
Let us then raise this prayer from Noel Schoonmaker:
We acknowledge our frailty before the power of death, O God, yet we believe your power is greater still. Help us by your Holy Spirit to follow Christ with integrity, courage, and hope until the day we are raised with him to the everlasting life in glory. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. (day1.org)