Pentecost 25 (Proper 27), Year C

The LCA provides this sermon edited for lay-reading, with thanks to the original author.

Pentecost 25 (Proper 27), Year C Luke 20:27-38

Have you ever looked at a person and said, “Doesn’t she look just like her mother”? Or you see how a young man walks just like his father – and even speaks just the same way his father speaks? There are ways that parents live on in their children.

The Sadducees were a religious group in Jesus’ day who claimed there was no after life – no resurrection. They claimed the only way one could continue to live on was through their children. Therefore, if a woman couldn’t bear a child, it was like the end of history for that woman. So they had special laws: if a woman’s husband died young, this was not only the tragedy of becoming a widow, but she could be the end of the line if she had no children. So any brother of her dead husband was under an obligation to marry her so they could have children, and this way the man’s family and the woman continued on through their descendants.

It is worth noting that even today, for the Jewish people, it is through the mother that one is counted as a Jew. If one’s mother is a Jewess, one is considered a person of the Jewish race. That explains the importance of the woman in today’s text. She is more important than the males!

The Sadducees now pose to Jesus the hypothetical case of the seven brothers. [The number seven is considered the complete number]. The seven brothers each marry the widow, but have no children. They ask Jesus: if there is an after-life, whose wife will she be? They asked this question about this unlikely scenario to try and ridicule the idea of the resurrection and an after-life. They share the same idea as some people in our day who claim, “When you’re dead, you’re dead! That is the end!” This is an old idea.

So what can one say to people who claim, “When you’re dead, you’re dead?” We can do no better than to go to an expert in this field and see what answer Jesus gives. Can you think of anyone else who is a more reliable and a greater authority on life after death than Jesus Christ? Jesus actually comes from the other side. He knows what he is talking about.

Jesus tells the Sadducees that the people in heaven are not married! Marriage to a partner is special to this life here on earth. God himself designed us for marriage. “For this cause a man shall leave father and mother…,” the Scriptures say. In the marriage service it is traditional to promise to be faithful “Until death do us part!” When death comes, the special union of a marriage ends. The surviving partner is free to marry again.

But just because there are no marriages in heaven doesn’t mean that heaven doesn’t exist! There is still an after-life. Jesus has told us so. The New Testament speaks loudly and clearly about the importance of the resurrection of Jesus. In 1 Corinthians 15 it says, (from verse 12 onwards) “But tell me this – since we preach that Christ rose from the dead, why are some of you saying there will be no resurrection of the dead? For if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ was not raised, then all our preaching is useless, and your trust in God is useless. And we apostles would all be lying about God, for we have said that God raised Jesus from the grave, but that can’t be true if there is no 1 resurrection of the dead. If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised, then your faith is useless, and you are still under condemnation for your sins. In that case, all who have died believing in Christ have perished! And if we have hope in Christ only for this life, we are the most miserable people in the world.”

If Jesus made a big mistake about the resurrection and life in heaven, then what about everything else he said? What about the promise that “God so loved the world ..” [in John 3;16]; or his command to “Love your neighbour”; or the promise that we only need to say “Our Father in heaven” and we are tuned in to God; or how could one explain the great missionary Saint Paul? He hunted down the followers of Jesus, until the risen Jesus met him personally on his way to Damascus. Saint Paul spent the rest of his life devoted to Jesus. If this life is all there is, then you and I have no judgment to face. Why be loving and caring to people?

Jesus knows how much the Father cares about you and me and our future. Jesus faced our judgment when he was crucified. When Jesus set off for Jerusalem for the last time, his followers tried to talk him out of going. “You could get killed going there” they warned him. But Jesus was determined to go to Jerusalem and wouldn’t be put off. Jesus went to the cross so God can have many children to call his own. Jesus defeated death so God can be like a heavenly Father to uncountable numbers of people. Jesus makes everything about the after-life true for you and me.

The after-life is so different from life here on earth that we don’t have human words to describe it. Jesus compares the new life to living in a mansion with the best Father one could ever have. It is like finally coming home after being away for a very long time. Our heavenly Father welcomes us out of love. According to the Scriptures, all God’s children bear a striking resemblance to their brother Jesus. We will resemble Jesus in nature and personality. He has been hidden in us – held closely in our hearts by a living faith. Without realising it we have been growing up to be like him!

Jesus came to give people hope where there was no hope. He came to open a door into the Father’s house and take us through when we would have no hope of making it on our own. When we are most helpless, as in death, then Jesus is strongest. Saint Paul assures us, “But the fact is that Christ has been raised from the dead. He has become the first of a great harvest of those who will be raised to life again.”

There is always room for one more in the Father’s house! Jesus makes sure of that. He is the Door. And he prepares a room for you and me.

And the peace of God, which surpasses all human understanding, guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.