Written by Pastor John Eich
Good Shepherd Lutheran Church Alma, MI
Jesus Gives Us Certain Hope
Luke 20:27-38
27 Some of the Sadducees (who say there is no resurrection) came to him. 28 They asked him a question, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies leaving a wife but no children, his brother should take the wife and raise up children for his brother. 29 So there were seven brothers. The first took a wife and died childless. 30 The second took her as a wife, 31and so did the third, and in the same way the seven died and left no children. 32 Finally the woman died too. 33 So in the resurrection, whose wife will she be? For the seven had her as a wife.” 34 Jesus said to them, “The people of this age marry and are given in marriage. 35 But those who are considered worthy to experience that age and the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. 36 In fact, they cannot die any more, for they are like the angels. They are sons of God, because they are sons of the resurrection. 37“Even Moses showed in the account about the burning bush that the dead are raised, when he called the Lord: ‘The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ 38He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for all are alive to him.”
What happens after death? Everybody agrees that something happens. But what?
Despite all of its advances, science has stripped away any reassurances about life after death. Most people in the modern world accept the scientific model. In doing so it logically follows that when the physical body dies, in all likelihood the immaterial aspects of being human — mind, soul, memory personality, thoughts, and feelings, etc. — are extinguished at the same time.
Or one asks, “Where do we go after we die?” the two main ideas — we go to heaven/hell or we vanish into a cloud of atoms and energy waves. They confront a mystery that refuses to reveal its secrets.
And as people do, when they don’t know or when they reject the facts, they make up their own. That’s what the Sadducees did.
First things first, who were the Sadducees? The Sadducees were the elites, the 1%, the super-rich and super-powerful of Jesus’ day. They controlled the temple and ran the Sanhedrin, the governing body of Israel (Acts 23:6). They were also “fundamentalists” of a sort, meaning that while they may have paid lip-service to the entire Old Testament, they really only considered the books of Moses, Genesis through Deuteronomy, to be authoritative. That’s why they didn’t believe in an afterlife or the resurrection or angels and demons (Acts 23:8). They didn’t think there was anything in those books which supported those doctrines. Thus, they set out to destroy Jesus’ teaching about the resurrection and confirm that this life is all there is.
So the Sadducees come with a life after death question for Jesus. It may be a sincere question on the minds of some, but it was not a sincere question from them. This is the question about the widow who married her seven brother-in-laws, and whose wife would she be in the resurrection on The Last Day. They were using the Levirate Law of the Old Testament. By like all those “hypothetical” questions posed trying to trap someone, it was an extreme distortion of the issue. They hoped to make Jesus look foolish.
The answer that Jesus gave the Sadducees all those years ago is just as important to us today as it was then.
Jesus answers, “The people of this age marry and are given in marriage. 35But those who are considered worthy to experience that age and the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. 36In fact, they cannot die any more, for they are like the angels.” They are like the angels. I want to be sure you heard that right. Jesus doesn’t say that we will become angels. So you can shake the images of floating around in the clouds and halos and wings and harps out of your head. He says we will be like the angels. Meaning that 1) we will not die; and 2) we will no longer marry. We like the not dying part. But that second part, that we will no longer marry can be disturbing. “Well, what if I kind of like my spouse? Does God intend to tear marriages and families apart in the resurrection?” While those questions may seem innocent, they actually come from a heart that doubts God’s goodness and love. God wouldn’t do away with marriage without a good reason and Jesus gives us the reason: Marriage is only for this age. Marriage is God’s gift to build closeness, unity and family. In heaven we won’t miss marriage because we will all be members of God’s perfect family. In heaven all things will be made right, everything that disrupts and destroys our relationships in this life will be gone (Isaiah 65:17). Because through faith we will enjoy the perfect unity in God’s family where the only marriage that matters is the marriage of Christ and his Church (Ephesians 5:25-33). That will make our relationships in heaven even more wonderful than our marriage relationships on earth.
Then Jesus addresses the Sadducees’ real problem. They denied the resurrection and the afterlife. He reminds them 37“Even Moses showed in the account about the burning bush that the dead are raised, when he called the Lord: ‘The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ 38 He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for all are alive to him.” God didn’t use the past tense, “I was the God of…” He used the present tense “I am the God of…” indicating that to God those patriarchs were still alive.
But what is eternal life and how does one achieve it? Achieve is not exactly the right word: The baby just baptized, the teenager, the adult, the old man or woman just baptized receive this resurrection of Jesus as a guarantee and gift. In the combination of the water and the Word of God, it is not just plain water but a blessed Sacrament where sin is forgiven, where the Holy Spirit enters in and gives the gift of faith in Christ Jesus. It folds them into Jesus’ side on the cross in His death, burying them into Jesus’ death in the tomb, and raising them with Him in His resurrection. And since God has declared us alive in Christ He sees us already seated with Christ at the Father’s right hand until the Last Day. Are you baptized? This gift is yours from your Heavenly Father, in Christ, through the working of the Holy Spirit. He gives you lips to confess this faith to be true, your very possession by grace through faith.
That’s why it is called a living hope. This new life, God’s promise of eternal life, lives and breathes in us now on earth. If fills our hearts with peace and joy. It fills our lives with a hope that this world is not all there is.
In the midst of grief this can be hard to see, even sometimes for the Christian. The World says, ‘dead is dead.” The World says, ‘you are no different than an animal, all that awaits you is nothingness and decomposition.” The World says that once the water is dried off after your baptism if you still believe what was promised to you there then you are a complete fool.” These are not new complaints. That’s what the Sadducees believed. So Jesus proclaims to them and to you and me that our Father in Heaven is not the God of the dead but of the living.
This new Life, this Eternal Life involves your personal resurrection from the dead. What is this resurrection going to be like? Listen carefully: All your dear ones who have had a recent surgery, those of you who are going for surgery, all of you that are even now suffering with illness, suffering with chronic pain, you who face your coming physical death, you who deal with abnormalities, and diseases, sicknesses of all sorts, conditions of the mind - frailties of the body, corruption of the soul by sin. Listen carefully.
When we become alive in Christ – when our sin is washed away in the blood of Jesus, when this happens God also had, and has, a plan for our bodies – for in The End we will be made whole: body and soul made perfect on The Last Day, and sin will never touch your soul again for the rest of eternity. Arthritis will be gone, germs and viruses will never kill or injure again, our eyes will see perfectly, our hearts will pump perfectly, our nerves will feel and operate perfectly. If a loved one has wasted away with cancer leaving them a shell of their former self, they will be made perfect on that Day by the power of Christ Jesus. If their bodies have turned to dust, they will be made new. Look at your hands; these hands you will see on that day, missing fingers restored, broken tendons made perfect, swollen knuckles relived from their suffering, wrinkles and liver spots washed away.
Again the ascended Lord Jesus also promises this from the Father’s throne in heaven when He says, “Behold, I am making all things new.
“Death is swallowed up in victory.” “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
The Sadducees may not have been looking for a real answer to their question but once they received Jesus’ answer that day and then ultimately in Jesus’ Easter morning bodily resurrection from the dead. They couldn’t deny it without lying to themselves and calling God a liar.
We trust in God our Heavenly Father and we trust in His Son Jesus, we confess every Sunday, week in and week out, that the Resurrection of the body is real and forthcoming, the promise of it is true for you and for me and it is part of our great Christian hope. With confidence, by the grace of God, we then confess together: “I look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.”
Amen.