In this Sunday’s Gospel reading from Luke 20, a group of Sadducees attempts to drag Jesus into a debate over the logistics of how the afterlife will work. But as Jesus points out, the questioners are missing the point. Their concerns and so many of our own worries in life fade in comparison to the promise of the Gospel: I know that my Redeemer lives.
As the hymn we’ll sing declares, “What comfort this sweet sentence gives.” Last week, we remembered the lives of the saints of our church who have died. This week, we proclaim the good news that the end is not death, but resurrection and new life. Thanks be to God!
Today’s Scripture readings are Job 19:23-27a; Psalm 145:1-5, 17-21; and Luke 20:27-38. This sermon is largely a repeat of my sermon from November 10, 2019, for which I drew from several commentaries, including this one by Timothy Siburg, two on WorkingPreacher from Emerson Powery and David Lose, and this post from Justin Taylor at TheGospelCoalition.
Here’s the livestream and sermon audio from Living Hope:
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Earlier this fall, we did a series on wrestling with doubt and finding faith. I know you weren’t all here for that, but some of you might remember one of the questions we looked at was the idea of heaven.
Is heaven real? If so, what is heaven like?
We talked that week about some of the Biblical images and descriptions of heaven, but I know I still have lots of questions. There’s only so much we can grasp about how dwelling with God for eternity actually works, and there’s a lot to wonder about.
That’s the question the Sadducees in today’s Gospel reading from Luke 20 claim to be asking Jesus.
Before we get into their question—I hope this is obvious, but as we try to understand this story, remember that Jesus is Jewish. So are the disciples. Everybody in this story is Jewish. They all believe in the same God.
But similar to Christian denominations today, different Jewish groups have different beliefs. The group we probably hear about the most are the Pharisees. They’re generally concerned with religious purity and following God’s law correctly.
We don’t hear as much about the Sadducees, but one of their things is they only believe in the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. That’s their entire Scripture.
And since those five books don’t really talk about life after death, they don’t believe in it. They believe when you’re dead, you’re dead. That’s it. No afterlife, no resurrection. The dead stay dead. I made my Sadducee joke a few weeks ago, but remember, that’s why they’re so sad, you see.
In the book of Deuteronomy, (which is one of the parts of the Scriptures the Sadducees accept) there’s a practice known as Levirate marriage, where if a man dies without fathering a child, his brother should take the dead man’s widow as a wife.
The idea is to not let the man’s bloodline die out, which is important in that culture for things like inheritance and land ownership. I think it’s also supposed to protect the widow, make sure she has a home, but it sounds really strange to us today.
Even in the Bible, levirate marriage is never very common. Genesis refers to it in the story of Tamar and it’s alluded to in Ruth, but it’s just not something that happened much. It’s definitely not normal by Jesus’ time. But it’s part of the religious history all the Jewish people in this story are familiar with.
So the Sadducees come to Jesus and they ask him a question: “Say, Jesus, since you’re so smart, we have a question. Say there’s this woman, and she has been married seven times to brothers. In the resurrection (which by the way, we don’t believe in), whose wife will she be?”
Here’s the thing: This question is entirely hypothetical, and the Sadducees know it.
They could just as easily have asked about whether you’re stuck for eternity in the same clothes you’re buried in, or if the rules of gravity still apply in heaven. They’re not actually worried about how marriage works in the resurrection; they’re trying to disprove the entire idea of life after death.
But Jesus avoids their trap. Instead of debating afterlife logistics with them, he tells them they’re missing the point. There is a resurrection, there is life after death, but it’s not the same as this life.
We can’t explain it by the standards of this world, because the things that seem so important now, Jesus says, fade in comparison to the promise of the Gospel.
For us, this is a strange-sounding Bible story about an issue most of us are not particularly concerned with, which is exactly why this story is so believable.
How many times have you seen people get stuck on issues that don’t really matter in the grand scheme of things?
I’ve heard of major church committee fights over mowing a tiny section of lawn next to a cemetery. I’ve heard of people leaving churches because of fights over a piano. There are many, many stories of churches fighting over paint colors or carpet.
Whole denominations have been distinguished by being opposed to card-playing and dancing. Churches are split today over whether the Holy Spirit can only speak through pastors who have certain body parts. I can’t imagine God’s happy about that.
We talked last week about the Lutheran idea of sinner and saint; well, I have another Lutheran word you should all know, “Adiaphora.”
Adiaphora means “Things that are not essential, things neither commanded nor forbidden in the Word of God.”
Things like whether or not the pastor wears a robe, pews versus chairs, or whether the music in worship comes from an organ or a piano or a band, all of those are adiaphora. They’re not essential to who we are as God’s people, or to the mission Jesus calls us to.
Look at the amount of time and energy so many churches have spent worrying and fighting about things that are not the Gospel, and imagine the good that could be done if we used that energy to love our neighbors like Jesus said.
The color of paint or the sinfulness of playing cards has precious little to do with what Jesus died for. Learn to distinguish the things that are adiaphora from the things that matter.
Jesus’ point to the Sadducees is that reality includes more than this earthly world. The point is we are children of God, and death cannot end that relationship. As Jesus says, “To God, all are alive.” We can expect to be reunited with our loved ones and with all the saints like we talked about last week, but the details of how those relationships will work are a mystery.
But the promise is it will be good. We’ll be with God. We’ll be with our Redeemer.
We have lots of questions, but as Christians, we know—as Job proclaimed—we know our Redeemer lives. We know Jesus has defeated death; the tomb is empty on Easter. We know God has claimed us and is giving us eternal life, and that affects the way we live.
Faith gives us the strength to persevere through the trials of life knowing that even when it’s hard to see, we are living in God’s kingdom now and for eternity.
That doesn’t mean we can ignore the world around us. Sometimes Christians get a reputation for only caring about getting to heaven and ignoring the needs of the world around us. Eternal life can become an excuse to not care for the planet, an excuse for ignoring others’ suffering because, after all, it’ll all come out right in the end. I’m sorry you’re starving, but do you know Jesus?
We’re really good at finding excuses to let ourselves off the hook from those pesky commands to love our neighbors, to take care of God’s creation, all that.
And yet, as C.S. Lewis writes in Mere Christianity,
“A continual looking forward to the eternal world is not (as some modern people think) a form of escapism or wishful thinking, but one of the things a Christian is meant to do. It does not mean we are to leave the present world as it is.
If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next. The Apostles themselves, who set on foot the conversion of the Roman Empire, the great [leaders] who built up the Middle Ages, the English Evangelicals who abolished the Slave Trade, all left their mark on Earth, precisely because their minds were occupied with Heaven.”
Instead of spending our time and energy asking, “How is our future in heaven going to be like this world we know?” we followers of Jesus are called to ask, “How can this world we know become more like heaven?”
Rather than trying to grasp heaven through the lens of this world, we seek to understand this world in light of the reality of heaven, praying for God’s kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven.
We know the promise of eternal life. We don’t know the details, and that’s ok, yet we believe and confess the reality of the resurrection.
In the light of the resurrection, so many of our other worries and fears fade away.
We don’t have to worry about carving our legacy into stone with an iron pen to be remembered.
We don’t have to worry about whether we have an enduring legacy if our bloodlines don’t continue.
Instead, because we know our eternal future, we are set free to live and serve and worship together. We can live with a healthy perspective on what matters, not getting hung up on adiaphora.
We are set free to be good stewards of what God has trusted to us, to use our gifts to bless others.
You are free to care about the needs in this world, to work for the needs of your neighbors. You are set free to be Christ’s body, to be God’s hands and feet in the world.
Beloved of God, may you believe in the promise of eternal life. May you know that your Redeemer lives. And may the Holy Spirit work through you to bless the world and build the kingdom of God. Amen