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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. (Amen.)
Our observance of All Saints’ Day last Sunday provided what has been called a “natural turning point”, as we then considered our connection in the Body of Christ to those who have gone before us in the faith and looked forward to the blessed reunion in heaven, and as we today and the next two final Sundays of the Church Year direct our attention to the Lord’s fulfillment of all things on the Last Day (Stuckwisch, LSB:CttS, 261-262; Pfatteicher, Journey, 322). One of those things that the Lord fulfills on the Last Day is the resurrection of the body, something Jesus addresses in today’s Gospel Reading. So, considering primarily today’s Gospel Reading, with the help of the Holy Spirit, this morning we realize that “The dead are raised”.
Today’s Gospel Reading of St. Luke’s Divinely‑inspired account of the Sadducees and Jesus’s confrontation over the resurrection has essential parallels in the Divinely‑inspired Gospel accounts of St. Matthew and St. Mark (Matthew 22:23-33; Mark 12:18-27), where this confrontation over the resurrection is also one of several confrontations with various Jewish groups reported to have taken place on the Tuesday before Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection for us. Since we hear only St. Luke’s account in our Three‑Year series of Readings, we perhaps should note that in some ways the accounts of St. Matthew and St. Mark are more‑sharply critical of the Sadducees, reporting Jesus’s saying both that the Sadducees knew “neither the Scriptures nor the power of God” and that the Sadducees were “quite wrong”, and reporting that the crowd hearing Jesus was astonished at His teaching.
The Sadducees are said to have been the theological liberals of their day (Just, ad loc Luke 20:27-40, pp.774-775), rejecting not only the resurrection of the dead but also the existence of angels (confer Acts 23:8). The Sadducees recognized the authority of fewer books of the Old Testament, but, as is clear in today’s Gospel Reading, they also mis‑used and so mis‑understood the few books of which they did recognize the authority. The Sadducees’ lengthy mocking question based on so‑called “levirate marriage”, the responsibility of a brother‑in-law to raise up an heir in order to keep land in the family (see Deuteronomy 25:5; Genesis 38:8; Ruth 3:9-4:12), ultimately ridicules the resurrection, and so Jesus does not directly answer the Sadducees’ question, but, using today’s Old Testament Reading (Exodus 3:1-15), a passage of which the Sadducees also would have recognized the authority, Jesus does explicitly make clear that “The dead are raised”.
Right at the beginning of today’s Gospel Reading, we are essentially told that the Sadducees “spoke against” the resurrection, saying that the resurrection “is not”, what amounts to a double negative in the Greek that does not reverse the negative but arguably intensifies the negative. Apparently the Sadducees’ rival party of the Pharisees also had a misconception of the world to come, which Jesus also addressed in what He said to the Sadducees (Roehrs‑Franzmann, ad loc Matthew 22:30, p.36, cross‑referenced at Luke 20:27-40, p.78). People today can be quite like those Jewish parties! The latest poll that I could find online indicated that about only one‑third of Americans believe in the resurrection of the body (Mohler)—one third—despite ancient creedal statements, such as that of the Apostles’ Creed that we used this morning, confessing belief in the resurrection of the body. We may mis‑understand what Jesus said about departed believers being “like” angels and wrongly speak of God’s taking believers from this world because He “needed another angel”, even as we may wrongly picture departed believers and angels with such things as wings and halos. We also may mis‑use and so mis‑understand other Holy Scripture, falsely reasoning to wrong conclusions. On our own we are not, as Jesus put it, “worthy to attain to that age”. Because of our sinful nature and all of our actual sin we deserve death’s separation of our soul and body in this age and eternal torment in the coming age, unless, as the Holy Spirit calls and so enables us to, we repent.
Sadducees and Pharisees had somewhat different expectations of the Messiah, the Christ, the anointed Savior, but neither party recognized Jesus as such. In today’s Gospel Reading, the Son of God in the human flesh of the man Jesus referred back to when presumably He Himself, the Angel of the Lord, appeared to Moses in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. Then, He identified Himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Who had heard the cry of His people and had come to deliver them and lead them to worship Him. Likewise, out of God’s great love, the Son of God came to deliver us and to lead us to worship Him. On the cross, Jesus died for the sins of the world. He died for us, in our place, the death that we otherwise deserve, and then He, Who had raised others, Himself rose from the dead. Jesus, God the Son, was glorified by God the Father (confer Acts 3:13), and by the power of God the Holy Spirit, we turn from our sin and trust God the Father to forgive us for Jesus’s sake. As we heard in today’s Epistle Reading (2 Thessalonians 2:1-8, 13-17), we are saved by the Spirit and belief in the truth. So, we have God’s peace and joy! God forgives our sinful nature and all our actual sins, not because we are in any way worthy of His forgiveness on our own, but God forgives us out of His mercy and grace for Jesus’s sake. God forgives us through His Word and Sacraments.
As the Epistle Reading said, we are called through the Gospel, rightly used and rightly understood, read and preached to groups such as this group. That Gospel is applied to individuals with water in Holy Baptism, which makes us “inheriting children” both of God and so also of the resurrection. That Gospel is applied to individuals, who privately confess the sins that they know and feel in their hearts, with a pastor’s touch in Holy Absolution, forgiveness from the pastor as from God Himself. And, that Gospel is applied to baptized and so absolved individuals with the bread and wine of the Holy Supper that are the Body and Blood of Christ given and shed for us for the forgiveness of our sins and so also for life and salvation. We join with angels and archangels and with all the company of heaven in lauding and magnifying God’s glorious name, but we are joined with those who already are living before God especially in the Body of Christ Himself.
In part on the basis of today’s Gospel Reading we truly believe that not only the Jewish patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob but also the patriarchs of this congregation such as George and Gwen, Danny, and Jeanette are living before God, as well as are all departed believers, including our own families’ patriarchs. We believe in what is called the “intermediate state”, though we hardly understand the “intermediate state”, such as why souls in heaven that are thought to be dis‑embodied would need white robes (Revelation 6:9-11; confer Luther, ad loc Matthew 10:28, AE 67:106). But, the main point of today’s Gospel Reading is not about the temporary “intermediate state” but that “The dead are raised”, and they are raised permanently. On the Last Day, souls will be reunited with their bodies, as God intended and created, even if not all of the body’s members or parts will be put to their full use for all eternity. Procreation gives way, as it were, to new levels of personal relationships. While men will not take new wives, and women will not be given to new husbands then, today’s Gospel Reading does not explicitly say that one’s state of being married in this age will not continue in that age (Galler, Marriage and Divorce in Light of Law and Gospel, 174 n.380). To be sure, one’s joy in God’s presence will not be diminished by the absence or presence of a spouse. All believers will be flesh and bones and again will be able to touch and embrace their believing loved ones in their flesh and bones (confer Luke 24:39).
Introducing the theme of the day, today’s Introit (Psalm 115:2-4, 8, 17-18; antiphon: v.11) reminded us that “The dead do not praise the Lord, nor do any who go down into silence. But”, the Introit went on to say, “we will bless the Lord from this time forth and forevermore. Praise the Lord!”
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. (Amen.)
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +