He is the God of the Living (Resurrection)

November 10. 2013

Luke 20:27-40
There came to him some Sadducees, those who deny that there is a resurrection, and they asked him a question, saying, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies, having a wife but no children, the man must take the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. Now there were seven brothers. The first took a wife, and died without children. And the second and the third took her, and likewise all seven left no children and died. Afterward the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had her as wife.”

And Jesus said to them, “The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage, but those who are b considered worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, for they cannot die anymore, because they are f equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection. But that the dead are raised, even Moses showed, in the passage about the bush, where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. Now he is not God of the dead, but of the living, for all live to him.”

Then some of the scribes answered, “Teacher, you have spoken well.” For they no longer dared to ask him any question.

First, a little bit of Bible background. At the time of Jesus, there was a political/religious group called the Sadducees. They only accepted the first five books of the Bible [Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy] as Holy Scripture, and so they stressed the Law of Moses and didn't accept the prophetic books [such as Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, etc.]. And so they didn't accept some of the teachings that are clearer in the prophetic books, such as angels, spirits, and the resurrection of the dead (see Acts 23:8). Whereas the Pharisees believed in and hoped for the coming of the Messiah; the Sadducees did not. They did not pray for the Messiah to come, because for them the coming of the Messiah would have been a disturbance of their ruling the country. They did not want Jesus or anyone to be the Messiah who would upset their control of things in the country. And so they wanted to disgrace Jesus publicly. To do that, they chose the topic of the Resurrection of the dead in order to catch him in a trap.

In order to challenge Jesus and in order to make fun of the idea of the resurrection, they bring in a ridiculous situation. It is based on a Biblical law called "the levirate law of marriage." The Law of Moses in Deuteronomy 25:5 says. "If brothers are living together and one of them dies without a son, his widow must not marry outside the family. Her husband's brother shall take her and marry her and fulfill the duty of a brother-in-law to her. The first son she bears shall carry on the name of the dead brother so that his name will not be blotted out from Israel." (An example of this is in the Book of Ruth. After Ruth’s husband died, she returns to Bethlehem where she marries Boaz who is a relative.) So, in the example that the Sadducees give there is one woman whose husbands keep dying one after another. If seven brothers marry the same successive widow, they ask, “Now then, at the resurrection whose wife will she be, since the seven were married to her?"

Jesus answers first that the family structure in heaven is different. And that a younger brother doesn't need to marry an elder brother's widow because there is no death in heaven, and so the family name will never die out. Then Jesus answers the main question about the existence of the resurrection. In the first five books of the Old Testament, known as the Pentateuch, there doesn't seem to be a clear teaching about the after-life. The Sadducees only accepted the Pentateuch, and so Jesus had to prove that there is a resurrection based on the words of Moses, because then they could accept it. And so, Jesus reminds them of the famous words when God talked to Moses from the burning bush at Mt. Sinai. The Lord said, "I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob." When God speaks, he uses the present tense, not the past tense. If Father Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were dead, then he should have said, "I was the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob." But, if he is their God at that present time, then they must be alive. It is true that they had been buried about 400 years earlier, but they were still alive! Or that they will live again! Then Jesus concluded, “He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive." In this way, Jesus refuted the Sadducees.

If there is no resurrection, then religion is something to help us only right now. It is faith healing [health and wealth], it is like magic, or medicine, or as Karl Marx said, an opiate. Religion becomes just one more way to control our lives and the lives of others. Not only the Sadducees, but throughout history religion has been used to control people. That is the way some dictators and some politicians use religion in the world even today. If there is no resurrection, I don't think Christianity has anything for this world. If there were no eternal life, then there would be no need for forgiveness of sin. There would be no need for Jesus to die on the cross. There would be no reason to love our neighbors, except as a useful tool to get something out of them.

The resurrection is a very important thing in Christianity. It gives us hope when our life is bad right now. It gives us hope to see our loved ones again. It gives us hope to see Jesus whom we worship and adore. But because we are already alive with Christ, for now and for ever, our life right now becomes important. We don't give up on life and wait to get to heaven for things to get better. Eternal life has started. God is our God now. As Jesus said, “He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive." God cares about us. He loves us so much that he sent His Son to live and die for us. That is why our Christianity holds life so important. We want to protect the life of all living things: even plants and animals, and especially people who are vulnerable, the young, the old, the unborn, the weak, the sick, the oppressed.

Because God is the God of the living, we rejoice today. We thank Him for the many wonderful blessings that he has given us. We rejoice because he is our Living God today.

Amen.

Michael Nearhood, Pastor
Okinawa Lutheran Church


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