Good Monday morning to you. As we start the new week we continue our reading through the New Testament in a Year. We are getting close to the end of April, and the end of the third Gospel, Luke, which will finish the readings of the Synoptic Gospels: Matthew, Mark and Luke. Today, our reading is from Luke 20:27 - 21:4. Again, we ignore the chapter division to keep the context clear. After you finish reading, please come back and we'll think some more about what we've read.
It's fairly obvious that Jesus' last week on earth is full of tension and confrontation with religious authorities. They have tried to trick him with a question on taxes (we read last time), and previously had challenged his authority in his teaching. The two main ruling groups at the time are the Pharisees and the Sadducees. They do not like each other, but together they find Jesus more of a threat.
Next in line to try to trap Jesus in a hypothetical question is the Sadducees. The Sadducees were the wealthy religious rulers who dominated the Sanhedrin - The Jewish rulers of the day.
They were different from the Pharisees in that they did not believe in eternal life, the resurrection (vs 27) or angels, or heaven, and believed only in the first five books of Moses, rejecting the rest of the Old Testament Scriptures as having any authority in Jewish life.
The Sadducees came up with a silly question from the Old Testament Law that originated in Deuteronomy 25. It concerns the death of a brother who never produced an heir. According to the Law, (vs 28), “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." It might seem ridiculous to force a brother to take a widowed sister-in-law and produce offspring for his brother, but it is actually still done in many countries. Biblically, this kind of marriage serves as the backdrop to Ruth and Boaz's marriage in the book of Ruth.
The Sadducees must have thought of Jesus as a Galilean country preacher - popular, but not very sharp. The riddle they told him went beyond the first brother to include seven brothers. I can't help but smile as I read it, for all I can think of is "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers"...sorry. Since these Sadducees didn't believe in the resurrection, their hypothetical story and question about "in the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be?" is filled with hypocrisy. The Sadducees asked the riddled question to try to make Jesus realize the nonsense of the doctrine of the resurrection.
Jesus' answer gives us insight into heaven. First, there is no marriage in heaven. Contrary to Mormon theology that believes in celestial marriages with multiple wives, Jesus says that marriage is an entirely proper and good creation of God for this world. For many who, like me, are happily married, this doesn't seem that great, but what Jesus makes clear is that Heaven is a place of the greatest love without the burden of a sinful nature. In Heaven, there is no death, and in Heaven our state of existence is like the angels. We are the children of God, not angels, but like angels, we cannot die, cannot sin, and are children of the resurrected God. All three of those phrases concerning our exalted being: "like angels, children of God, children of the resurrection" are interconnected as one. How are we like the angels? We will be like them in their eternal relationship with God, and in their beauty and abilities from God. It is as Paul writes later to the Corinthians: "We have been sown in weakness, but will be raised in power." (1 Corinthians 15:43). For me, the greatest thought of Heaven is not seeing loved ones who have passed on before me - as important and lovely that is - but to see Jesus face to face...to see the Heavenly glory of God and to behold the wonder of all of Heaven's beauty. That in itself would be enough.
The Sadducees' question is destroyed by Jesus' insight. This is not country preacher, this is the Son of God who came from Heaven to earth - Immanuel, God with us! Jesus goes back to the Torah (5 books of Moses) and reminds them that the Lord God they claim to worship is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and therefore is not the God of the dead, but God of the living, for in him, all those who die, live! (vss 37,38). It was a demonstrative rebuke. If Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob died, and now merely dust, God cannot be their God. Drop the mike, walk away and leave them standing there wondering what just happened!
The resurrection is a mystery, yes, but the Lord God who created the earth, and made a way for us to live on it, is also the God of the eternal life he lives in. So many passages of Old Testament scripture point to the truth of what Jesus is proclaiming. Job said (19:25-27),
"I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last, he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh, I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another..."
The Sadducees failed to believe what was plain in the word of God. They also failed to see the connection between Jesus and God. So, after they stand in silence, Jesus turns the table and asks them a question: Luke 20:41-44
“How can they say that the Christ is David’s son? For David himself says in the Book of Psalms, “‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.”’ David thus calls him Lord, so how is he his son?”
With shuffling feet and murmuring among themselves, I believe the Sadducees turn and begin to walk away. They have no defense of no resurrection, and they have no answer for Jesus' question. Many people struggle with the idea of the Trinity. Christians believe in God, and they believe in Jesus, and they even believe there is the Holy Spirit but struggle with the mystery of God as three-in-one. Here, Jesus quotes from Psalm 110, and makes the case for that mystery:
The Messiah is a descendant of David (Luke made that case in chpt. 1) and
David called his future descendant, the Messiah, My Lord.
David also called God "the LORD".
Therefore David saw the Messiah as equal to the LORD.
Luke says they had no response, they walked away. Jesus entered the city on a King's donkey. He asserted his Messianic authority in the Temple, and claimed his role as the Messiah - God's Son and God incarnate.
As they walk away, Jesus turns to his followers and makes a contrast. "There go, rulers who crave the applause, love their long expensive, well-tailored robes, and seek public places of honor, take their wealth from the least deserving and for that will receive God's condemnation." Beware, and be not like them. It's a warning for us as Church leaders even to today.
The contrast to them is provided in the four verses that begin chapter 21. Contrary to the wealthy who put their gifts into the offering boxes at the Temple stands this poor widow who puts in her 2 cents... She gave all she had...they gave a bit of their abundance. What she gave would not sustain the ongoing function of the Temple. Yet what she gave was far more impressive to Jesus than what the wealthy had given. She gave out of her worship, not out of her surplus. Sacrifice cannot come from left-overs, it must come from gratefulness. The contrast could not be any more clear.
Peace
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