Jesus comes to us from eternity with His Father and He walks among us as one who remembers that home. This life is not the end.
I have noticed a shift in how Americans approach funerals. Rather than having a traditional funeral service, some people are opting for a celebration of life. People gather not so much to mourn as to remember. They remember wonderful things about a person’s life. Stories are told, memories are shared, pictures are displayed, and people turn toward the future by remembering the past and treasuring those things they will carry with them now that their loved one is gone.
I appreciate the practice of remembering a person’s life. God has filled our lives with meaning. He works through our vocations. And remembering the good God did in and through a person’s life is, indeed, a way of remembering the saints.
But, in all this remembering, we need to be careful not to forget. That is, as we remember the life a person had, we do not want to forget the life that a person has because God promises His children a resurrection from the dead and life in the Kingdom to come.
In our text this morning, the Sadducees come to Jesus. This is the only time the Sadducees appear in Luke’s gospel and the only thing Luke tells us about them is that they “deny there is a resurrection” (20:27). Whether you deny the resurrection or forget the resurrection, you end up reading the Word of God differently. You read God’s Word for the promises it gives you for this life, not the promise it holds for the life to come.
This explains why the Sadducees ask Jesus about the law of levirate marriage. For them, this law proved that Moses did not believe in the resurrection. His law addressed life in this world. People die and need to have children to preserve their name. When a man marries a woman and dies without having a child, his brother is to take this woman as his wife and raise up a child in his brother’s name (Deuteronomy 25:5-6). If there were such a thing as a resurrection, imagine how confusing the resurrection would be! A woman could have seven husbands, all brothers, all of whom knew her, and yet, none of whom produced a child. Whose wife, then, would she be?
For the Sadducees, there is only life in this world and Moses, who is dead, has given us a way to carry on. But Jesus comes to us from eternity with His Father and He walks among us as one who remembers that home. This life is not the end. It is merely the beginning. Jesus will raise God’s people from the dead and bring them into a new creation.
This life is not the end. It is merely the beginning. Jesus will raise God’s people from the dead and bring them into a new creation.
So, Jesus reminds the Sadducees of Moses encountering God at the burning bush. There, Moses called 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” (20:37-38).
With Jesus’ words, suddenly the bush at Mount Sinai begins to burn again. You can hear God’s voice: “I Am who I Am.” That voice echoes through the ages and the God who is eternally present is suddenly present again.
Jesus was there at creation. He was there as God the Father took the dust of the earth and fashioned it into a person and breathed into it the breath of life. Yes, in death we turn to dust, but Jesus will gather our dust and bring us to life. We are a people who believe in the resurrection, Christ’s resurrection and our own.
Jesus has the power to conquer death and to raise us to life eternal. Nothing can keep Jesus in the grave. Nothing can take the hope of a new creation away from us.
Today, Jesus comes to break the silence of our graves. He invites us to trust in Him; to live today knowing we will live forever in Him. When this world is all you have, there is a pressure to make life meaningful. You only live once, and you try to hold on to what gives your life meaning.
But when you know that God gives you not only life now but life eternally, your life is part of something greater. You live in joyful hope of the world to come. Rather than forgetting about the resurrection, you remember it with joy.
John Donne once put the hope of our resurrection into words. He said, “I shall not live until I see my Lord, and when I see Him, I shall never die.” Even with all of the joy of this world, the joy of marrying and being given in marriage, the joy of children, the joy of life, one knows that, “I shall not live until I see my Lord... and when I see Him, I shall never die.”
When I see Him, when the heavens open and my Savior comes, when He takes the power and the glory, when He claims the Kingdom as His own, when He opens our graves and raises our bodies incorruptible, when He changes those who are living in the twinkling of an eye, when we see thousands upon thousands of angels gathered in worship before the throne, when we hear thousands upon thousands of voices singing the victory of our God, when creation finally sees what it has been longing for, the revelation of us, the children of God, when we shall finally be what God has always intended us to be, when we shall receive life in all of its fullness, life that never ends, when we see Jesus face to face, and are gathered in the arms of our Father, we shall never die. Because our God is not a God of the dead but of the living, and for Christ, all of you in Him are alive.
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Additional Resources:
Craft of Preaching-Check out out 1517’s resources on Luke 20:27-40.
Concordia Theology-Various helps from Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, MO to assist you in preaching Luke 20:27-40.
Lectionary Kick-Start-Check out this fantastic podcast from Craft of Preaching authors Peter Nafzger and David Schmitt as they dig into the texts for this Sunday!
The Pastor’s Workshop-Check out all the great preaching resources from our friends at the Pastor’s Workshop!
