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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
People often ask pastors “hypothetical” questions about how the Bible’s teaching applies to a given situation. Perhaps even you have asked another pastor or me such a question. People want to know what our teaching means for how they are supposed to live their lives. Sometimes, people even use how we are supposed to live our lives to infer what our teaching is. Such is the case in today’s Third Reading, as the Sadducees essentially tried to infer from a practice known as “levirate marriage” that there is no resurrection. The Sadducees do not really care whose wife the woman is in the resurrection, because they do not really think that there is a resurrection. Jesus both answers their question and refutes their bad logic. In the process, Jesus teaches His hearers then and us today about the “God of the Living”.
Marriage in the resurrection is not really the Sadducees’ main point, nor is it really Jesus’s main point, nor does it really appear to be St. Luke’s main point in telling us about this particular conversation, and so it is not really our main point as we reflect on it. So near to the end of the Church Year our focus is on the end times and the last things. Although this is the only occasion in our three‑year cycle of readings that we hear this particular conversation, God inspired St. Matthew, St. Mark, and St. Luke to tell us about it. For St. Luke, the conversation both is the climax of Jesus’s disputes with His opponents three days before His death and enables Jesus to speak about the resurrection of all people five days before He would rise from the dead.
The resurrection of all people is the main point, mentioned four times in the Third Reading and, as Jesus reasons, an implication of God’s being “God of the Living”. The theological liberals of their day, the Sadducees denied that there is a resurrection; similarly theological liberals and others in our day deny that there is a resurrection. Oh, some may grant that there is a spiritual resurrection of some sort, as if the souls and not the bodies are what are buried and need to be resurrected. You and I may not deny the resurrection of the body outright, but we may deny it in other ways. We may think that instead of being like the angels that we become angels. We may live as if this life matters most. We may see difficulties or death in our own lives and think that the resurrection has no implications for us. We may grieve inconsolably when someone we love or care about dies in this world. From our perspective, we see dead bodies and think that is the end, but, from God’s perspective, Jesus says that the people are still alive and that, reunited with their bodies on the last day, they will be alive forever—and far more “alive” than our simply “keeping them alive in our hearts”. You and I may even grant that there is a resurrection of the body, but we may think that in the age to come life pretty‑much just goes on as it does now, only maybe in a more splendid way.
When it comes down to it, you and I may be little better than the Sadducees; we may need to hear what Jesus says about the resurrection just as much as they did. By nature we all are “sons of this age”; we all are sinful by nature. Far from being “worthy to attain” to the resurrection, we all by nature are worthy of nothing but dying and death. Once human beings were able not to die (Genesis 2:17), but since the fall into sin we are no longer able not to die (Romans 5:12). Yet, Jesus called the Sadducees—and He calls us—to repentance. He calls us to turn in sorrow from our sin of denying the resurrection in various ways and from all our sin. He calls us to trust God to forgive our sin, and He calls us to want to do better. When we so repent, then God forgives our sin. By grace, through faith in Jesus Christ, God forgives all our sin, whatever our sin might be.
Three days after Jesus had the conversation with the Sadducees that we heard as our Third Reading, He was crucified on the cross for your sin and for mine. And, on the third day after that, He rose again from the dead. If there were no redemption in Jesus Christ, then God in fact would be God of the dead, but, since God in Jesus Christ has redeemed all those who put their trust in Him and so considered them “worthy to attain” to the resurrection, He is God of the living. Jesus Himself may well have been the Angel of the Lord Who in today’s First Reading before His incarnation identified Himself as the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob (Exodus 3:1-15). As the Lord saw the affliction of the Israelites in Egypt, heard their cry, knew their sufferings, and came down to deliver them, so He sees our affliction, hears our cry, knows our sufferings, and delivers us. Jesus Himself is the resurrection and the life (John 11:25), and the Sadducees’ speaking against the resurrection in today’s Third Reading can be said to fulfill Simeon’s prophecy that Jesus would be a sign spoken against (Luke 2:34). Despite their speaking against Him, Jesus’s resurrection is proof to the Sadducees that there is a bodily resurrection from the dead, and Jesus’s resurrection is proof to us that we, too, will be bodily resurrected from the dead. And, all those who believe are resurrected to eternal life with Him.
In the Third Reading, the Sadducees at least appeared to have gotten something right: they seem to have recognized the authority of at least some of the Old Testament writings for their lives. God spoke the words, and Moses wrote them down for them. Similarly, in the Second Reading, St. Paul encourages the Thessalonians to stand firm and hold to what was passed on to them, what they were taught by the Word preached in person or written as an epistle, that is, a letter (2 Thessalonians 2:1-8, 13-17). You and I likewise do well to have the right regard for the Word of God in all its forms, for it continues to have authority and apply to us. Through St. Paul God says the Gospel in all its forms enables us to obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. The Word with water in Holy Baptism makes us children of God and so children of the resurrection. The Word spoken to an individual in Holy Absolution is as valid and certain forgiveness as if Christ, our dear Lord, dealt with us Himself. The Word with bread and wine in Holy Communion gives us life and salvation, incorporating us into Christ and connecting us with all those who are alive in Him. Truly at this altar and its rail we join with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven—those who remain alive to God, Who is “God of the Living”. God’s Word in all its forms continues to have authority and apply to us.
Sadducees reasoned falsely from the practice known as “levirate marriage”, so called from the Latin word levir, which means “a husband’s brother”. The practice is found first in Genesis when Er died, and Er’s father Judah told Er’s brother Onan to raise up an offspring for Er with Er’s wife Tamar (38:6-8). The practice is later given as a general command by God through Moses in Deuteronomy (25:5-10), and we see it again in Ruth (for example, 3:9-4:12). The Sadducees missed the practice’s point of keeping property in the family by keeping a family line from dying out. They thought, for example, that Onan and Tamar would actually become “married”, when in fact, in that example, Er and Tamar arguably remained married, for Er was still alive from God’s perspective. The practice of levirate marriage no longer obtains for us whose inheritance from God is tied not to lines of human blood but to the blood of Christ. Nevertheless, we can similarly reason falsely from today’s Third Reading that the married state of those who are husband and wife here and now will not continue in that age, when, in fact, Jesus seems to say only that they will not need to have children then, since they cannot die anymore. Resurrected and glorified bodies will be restored to those now living with the Lord, but they will not put those bodies to the same use (see also 1 Corinthians 15:42-57).
Just this past week a brother pastor and I were discussing today’s Third Reading as it pertained to a couple that had come to him seeking to be married. Our teaching has practical implications for how people are supposed to live their lives, and how we are supposed to live our lives can lead to generalizations about our teaching. But, too much consideration of what the Reading teaches about marriage is to misses its main point that God is the “God of the Living” and that therefore there is a resurrection of the body from the dead. More important than how we are to live our lives is God’s giving us new life in Christ. As we have seen, God in Christ Jesus considers us who believe worthy to attain to that age of the resurrection. Those who have gone before us are alive with Him even now. When our Lord comes to judge the living and the dead, all who are so with Him and all believers who are here will live with Him for eternity, for He is “God of the Living”. May God grant that we are among them, for Jesus’s sake.
Amen.
peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +