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Sermon for the Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost – November 9, 2025
Luke 20:27-38
Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
Today we are introduced to a new sparring partner for our Lord Jesus. Jesus usually goes toe-to-toe with the scribes and the Pharisees or the chief priests. Today it is the Sadducees. The Sadducees were a small but powerful group in Jesus’ time. They were religious scholars of a sort. They were the elites who ran the Temple system. They were religious aristocrats who rubbed elbows with the wealthy and the powerful. They even hob-nobbed with Roman authorities as part of the upper class. Luther called them “the smug.”
One distinct feature about the Sadducees, which St. Luke is quick to point out to us, is that they didn’t believe in a resurrection. They didn’t believe in any kind of life after death. The Pharisees did. Most Jews did. The Sadducees did not. This might sound strange to have people so embedded in a religion’s leadership who don’t believe in something so central to it, something so widely held by its adherents, but that’s how it was. The Sadducees considered themselves too sophisticated to believe in something like life after death. Believing themselves to be smarter than God, they abandoned the best part of what their religion taught!
These types of religious leaders are still with us, by the way. The current president of Union Seminary in New York made waves a few years ago when she admitted in an interview that she didn’t believe in the resurrection. She said, “My faith is not tied to some divine promise about the afterlife.” There was a prominent Episcopal priest who sold a ton of books in the Nineties who openly denied that Jesus was really raised from the dead. I even heard a high-ranking clergyman from our own denomination once say that he wasn’t too sure about life after death.
You would think that if you can’t affirm the basic tenets of the Christian creeds that you would have the integrity to go find a new job, but instead these people somehow manage to work their way into the highest echelons of various religious institutions. They are the Sadducees of our own time. This is who the Sadducees were.
These Sadducees came to Jesus with what they thought was a sophisticated argument against the resurrection. They described a scenario in which a woman was married seven times, to seven brothers in a row, before she herself died. Then, no doubt with smug grins on their faces, they asked Jesus, “In the resurrection, whose wife will she be?”
It is important to say more about this before we go on to Jesus’ response. The Sadducees were referring to what Moses had written in Deuteronomy about an ancient practice called levirate marriage. If a woman was widowed without a child, according to this practice it was the responsibility of the brother of the man who died to take in his sister-in-law, marry her, and have a child with her. This sounds completely bonkers in our time, but the function of this was to provide care and support for widows. It was less about marriage as a relationship and more about basic life insurance. A childless widow in that time had no means of supporting herself other than begging or prostitution. And so in a time where there was no life insurance, no social security, no safety net of any sort, this levirate marriage system was essentially life insurance. It was a way to provide ongoing support and protection to widows. The Sadducees thought they were so smart in citing this practice from the law of Moses as a way of ridiculing the idea of the resurrection. What if she ends up going through seven brothers? In the resurrection, whose wife will she be? This background is important to note, because it shapes Jesus’ response to them. Jesus tells them that in the resurrection from the dead, people neither marry nor are given in marriage. Which, by itself, might not be a very satisfying response.
I’ve heard people who are in happy, loving marriages say that this response from Jesus makes them sad. “Is Jesus saying I won’t be with my husband or wife in heaven?” This is especially confusing and painful and difficult for the many widows and widowers in our congregation. When this reading has come around in the past, I’ve had widows come to me in a fury, with tears in their eyes, saying, “What do you mean there’s no marriage in heaven? If I won’t be married to my husband in heaven, then I don’t want to be there!” And I get it. I do. I adore my wife, and while we technically only signed up “until death parts us,” I would love to go extra innings with her. She is the best part of my life, and I want to spend eternity married to her. I can’t imagine heaven being heaven without her there as my wife. So I understand completely.
But we need to be careful about isolating these words and jumping to conclusions.
Jesus is talking about something really specific here in this reading, so we need to pay close attention to him. Jesus is not giving a full-fledged description of heaven. Jesus is countering the Sadducees and their argument. Jesus is saying that the life insurance program which is levirate marriage won’t be a thing in the afterlife. It won’t be needed because in the resurrection there will be no death! Jesus isn’t saying we won’t know each other. He isn’t saying we won’t recognize each other. He isn’t saying we won’t be together. Jesus is telling the Sadducees that their scenario is irrelevant, because in heaven none of those earth-bound concerns for support or protection will matter anymore.
What Jesus goes on to say should provide encouragement and hope for all of us. Jesus cites the story of Moses and the burning bush to point out that God identified himself as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob. Jesus points out that although all three of them are long dead, God speaks of them in that story in the present tense. God calls them by their name. And so they are still themselves. They are still recognized as Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. Jesus then says, “Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.”
I don’t know what marriage, or any of our relationships for that matter, will look like in heaven. But we have a divine promise from our Lord Jesus that our God is the God of the living. We have a divine promise that to him, all of our loved ones whom he has called to himself are alive. We have a divine promise that we will be alive with them – still recognizable, still known by name. We cannot possibly understand what this new state of being with God will be like, but Jesus assures us that it is real, and that it will be good.
You might have heard the modern parable of the two unborn twins in their mother’s womb. The first unborn baby says to the other, “Do you believe in life after delivery?”
The second one replies, “Yes, of course! Don’t you?” And the first twin scoffs and says, “No! That’s a silly idea. What we are experiencing here and now in this womb, this is all there is. What would life after delivery even be like, anyway?” And the second replies, “Well, maybe there are senses that we don’t even know about yet, senses that we don’t use here. What if our eyes open and we begin to see things we can’t even imagine yet?” The first baby says, “You’re being ridiculous. Don’t you see this umbilical cord? Don’t you know this is what is keeping us alive? It’s a scientific fact.” And the second says, “Well, maybe it will be different out there. Whatever it is, I’m sure our mother will take care of us.” The first twin starts to laugh, “Ha! You believe there’s a mother? What gives you that idea? Where is this mother now?” And the second says, “She’s all around us. In her we live and move and have our being. I believe that in life after delivery, she will be there to hold us and care for us. But even now, if you listen, you can hear her heartbeat. Even now, you can hear her voice.”
My friends, in Jesus Christ we can hear the heartbeat of the One in whom we live and move and have our being. Through the Word of God we can hear the voice of God telling us that there is indeed a life beyond this one. I can’t tell you exactly what it will be like. Our eyes haven’t yet been opened to that. There are senses that won’t be awakened until then. I can’t tell you what our relationships will be like either, but based on the divine promise we have from our Lord Jesus, I can assure you that we will recognize each other. I can assure you that we will be alive and together in ways that we can’t begin to imagine now. I can assure you that the resurrection is real, and that it will be good.
To you widows or widowers, or anyone who is in a happy, loving marriage and feels saddened by Jesus’ words, know this: the scriptures promise us that love never ends. And so all the things you currently enjoy about your spouse, or all the things you miss about them – the companionship, the closeness, the love – it will all be there in the afterlife. We will be recognizably reunited with them in heaven. The scriptures teach us that a loving marriage is a sign, a faint reflection, of Christ’s love for the church, and that reflection can only come into sharper focus in the life to come.
To those whose relationship status or relationship history is more complicated, know this: in the life to come all those complicated scenarios will be resolved by God in ways you can’t begin to imagine, so don’t worry about it. All will be sorted out. All will be perfected.
To those who feel alone, know this: in the life to come, all will be loved and held and cherished and cared for forever.
For those who are missing any loved ones, whether they are friends, parents, children, other family members, know this: because of Jesus, we have the hope of living with them forever as children of the resurrection.
Don’t let anything rob you of that hope. Don’t let anyone try to tell you otherwise or try to distract you from it, even if they’re wearing a clerical collar. Our God is the God of the living. To him, all of them are alive, and one day we will be delivered into a new life too.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer
Oak Harbor Lutheran Church