Luke 20:27-38
When I was in the Army, another soldier started talking to me about how the world was created. It was a one-sided conversation for a while. She went on and on about how scientists are lying – lying that the world is billions of years old, that dinosaurs are a hoax, and that evolution is a demonic idea. To hear her tell it, God created the world in seven days (because that is what the Bible says), it’s only six thousand years old (not two billion), and dinosaurs are a hoax or were wiped out in the great flood of Noah’s time and that’s why they are not with us today. After she finished her monologue, she paused and then asked me, “so what do you think?”
“Well, ah,” I stumbled for a bit, unsure of where to begin. “I think that we can take Genesis seriously that God created the world and all that is seen and unseen and not believe the world is only 6,000 years old,” I started saying. She seemed confused, but I continued, “and I don’t think that evolution is demonic, it’s just how biology works.” By now, I could tell she had grown irritated that I wasn’t agreeing with her. I got about that far before she jumped in, excused herself, and left the conversation.
There is very little that she could argue to convince me that the world was created in seven days and the earth is only 6,000 years old. I take the Bible very seriously, but I don’t read all of it literally. In a similar way, there is probably very little that I could have said to her that would have caused her to change her mind. We would have just gone around in circles with one another. Such is human life and disagreement sometimes where the best you can hope for is to peacefully and respectfully agree to disagree.
That might be an extreme example, given that most of us read the Bible literally in some parts and metaphorically in others. But there are real, serious questions that can divide us. Take for example when life begins. The Scriptures, our faith teaches us that life is precious and to be respected and honored and valued and that every single human being is created in God’s image. But the Bible doesn’t tell us scientifically when that life begins. Does it begin at conception when the sperm fertilizes the egg? Does it begin when the fetus, the baby forming in a mother’s womb is viable outside of the womb? Does life begin when the baby is born? God and the writers of Scripture leave that to us as people of faith to wrestle with and to use Scripture, and church tradition, and reason, and our own experience to come up with answers.
I’m saying all this as way to introduce our gospel reading from Luke this morning. Our Scripture readings are not about creation and evolution or abortion. Our reading from Luke this morning is about a particular question that a particular group of Jewish leaders called the Sadducees had for Jesus. They had a question for Jesus about something called the resurrection. For the Sadduccees, this question about the resurrection was as heated of a question as when life begins.
Here are some important things to know about the Sadducees and where Jesus is at. First, Jesus is in Jerusalem near the Temple, the place where God Almighty is worshipped. It will be
his final time in Jerusalem before he is executed, crucified. The way Luke tells Jesus’ story, Jesus has entered Jerusalem on a donkey with the crowds shouting “hosanna” (what in the church we call the festival of Palm Sunday). Jesus is hanging around the Temple and is now in open debate and conflict with the religious authorities, among them the Sadducees. Luke hints that the Sadducees don’t accept the idea of resurrection. They might also be skeptical, maybe even outright hostile, towards Jesus’ ministry.
The Sadduccees are what we might describe as old-school biblical literalists. They only accept something called the Penteteuch, the first five books of the Bible (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) as holy Scripture. The Psalms, the Old Testament prophets like Jeremiah and Isaiah, might be spiritually rich, but for the Sadducees, they were not the word of God. God’s law, as given in the Pentateuch, was the only thing that mattered.
Here’s the question they pose to Jesus: “Teacher (notice they address Jesus as teacher, not Lord or Master as the disciples and many of the recipients of Jesus’ healings do, indicating their skepticism of Jesus as the son of God and Lord), Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies leaving a wife but not children, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for her brother.”
The Sadducees know their Bible. They are correct that Moses gave such a command. Here it is in Deuteronomy 25:5-10: “When brothers reside together and one of them dies and has no son, the wife of the deceased shall not be married outside the family to a stranger. Her husband’s brother shall go in to her, taking her in marriage and performing the duty of a husband’s brother to her, and the firstborn she bears shall succeed to the name of the deceased brother, so that his name may not be blotted out of Israel.”
In Jewish law, this is known as levirate marriage. The law’s purpose is to be a sort of an ancient insurance policy – both for the widow and the deceased brother and the family as a whole. Because women didn’t generally have rights beyond their husband, the widow needed someone to provide a home and protection. Enter the brother in law. And because family lines were important and a means of survival for ancient Jews, the brother-in-law stood in for his deceased brother.
The Sadducees, knowing the law and being skeptical of the resurrection and Jesus’ announcement of the kingdom of God having drawn near, set-up a ridiculous example to trap him. It’s like if we were going to argue about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. It’s a fruitless argument. Here is the Sadduccees:
Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies leaving a wife but not children, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for her brother. Now there were seven brothers; the first married a woman and died childless; then the second and the third, so in the same way all seven died childless. Finally the woman also died. In the resurrection, whose wife will the woman be?
For me, this whole exchange between Jesus and the Sadducees and whose wife the woman ultimately is is both a warning and an encouragement. It’s a warning against taking everything in the bible literally and to its extreme end. Here’s an example: in the Old Testament book of Joshua, there are wars of conquest (meaning, the ancient Israelites went to war to get land at God’s command). That’s in the Bible, it happened, and it may have been a necessity at the time. But we shouldn’t take Joshua literally and assume therefore that we as 21st century Americans (or anyone else for that matter) should also go to war to grab and take land or something that doesn’t belong to us.
That’s the warning. The encouragement is that Jesus invites us as part of the spiritual life to use what we might call our imaginations. Here’s what I mean: a big part of the Christian spiritual DNA is hope. We hope in things unseen, that one day, in Christ, God will make all things well and set to right what is wrong inside us and in the whole world around us. That takes hope, that takes imagination. But here is also the thing: hope is not about day-dreaming and sitting around like bumps on a log waiting for God. Done correctly, hope and spiritual imagination propels us to work towards that ultimate end when God will make all things well and set right what is wrong. You see a glimpse of that with the groundswell of support for food banks as SNAP benefits are shut off. No matter your politics, a core Christian conviction is that no one should go hungry.
Jesus handles the Sadducees extreme example by essentially telling them that they don’t understand the Scriptures or the purposes of God. Marriage, he says, is something for this age. Marriage is good and can be a wonderful and righteous thing. If someone feels called to get married, they should. But in the age of the resurrection (think here of the apostle’s creed “I believe in the resurrection of the dead and the life everlasting) where there will be no more death and sorrow, things will be fundamentally different.
The other way Jesus handles the Sadducees’ extreme example is by pointing them to the Bible itself. They tried to trap Jesus with the legal teachings of Moses. Jesus points them to Moses’ own example when he encounters the burning bush in the wilderness. That’s the story where Moses comes across the burning bush that speaks to him and it is the voice of God. In that encounter, God tells Moses “I AM WHO I AM” or “I WILL BE WHO I WILL BE.” The key point for Jesus is that God is not something from history. God is not dead or an ancient idea. God is a living, active reality in the past, present, and future. Here’s what he says to the Sadduccees, “Now he is God not of the dead but of the living, for to him all of them are alive.”
That verse struck me this week. “No he is God not of the dead but of the living, for to him all of them are alive.” I think it struck me because it seems that one of the things that is happening all around us (and inside of us, myself included), is that we don’t feel alive. Rather, maybe we feel numb or tired or distracted (or all three of those things).
I was with a few UCC ministers mid-week this past week (one of whom came down with COVID the next day, which I why I’m wearing my mask so that I don’t inadvertently pass it along to you). We did a Bible study to prepare for Advent. Pastor Leigh Pick, who was the pastor of the UCC church in Spring Mills asked the question, “Do we know that we have a soul?” So much of
modern life like 24/7 television, our phones, facebook and instagram, email – it’s designed to distract us, get us worked up about things, and sell us something. It can be very very easy to lose yourself in it. And to forget that you have a soul.
But our soul is what makes us a living person, it’s what makes you, you and me, me. Our soul (and heart and mind) is what loves and falls in love, it’s what holds our hopes and dreams, it’s what helps us know right and wrong, it’s what makes us sing and be full of joy and feel alive. Sure, our soul can also be downcast and full of sorrow and shame. We human beings can feel and experience multiple things at the same time. But when we lose our soul or forget that we have one, we end up feeling numb, being distracted, and so tired we can’t think beyond ourself at the present moment.
Maybe the word of the Lord for us this morning is that we have a soul. That God is the God of the living and not the dead. That God is alive and working in you and for you. That God in Christ has forgiven and is forgiving you, that God in Christ has given you gifts to use, and that the Spirit of God and Jesus Christ, that same Spirit lives and works inside of you such that we all live, and move, and have our being in God.
Don’t forget you have a soul (and heart and mind). If you are full of shame, receive God’s mercy. If you have sinned and erred, receive God’s forgiveness. If you are weary, hope in God. If you are angry, turn to God and be angry but do not sin. If you are full of sorrow, remember that the promises of God that weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes in the morning.
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.