Over the past
few Sundays, we have been working our way through a series of snippets from the
Gospel of Luke. We heard a parable about a Pharisee and a Tax collector. Last
week, we heard the story of Zacchaeus the tax collector and how he changed his
life for the better after he met Jesus.
This week, we follow with a story from the next chapter in Luke.
We are approaching Luke’s account of Jesus’ arrest, trial and crucifixion. Before Jesus’ arrest, the temple authorities
and Sadducees were seeking ways to trick Jesus into saying or doing something
that would be grounds for his arrest. In today’s account, the Sadducees laid
out an elaborate question for Jesus designed to get him to say something
heretical or scandalous. Hear the account of their question and Jesus’ answer
as it is recorded in Luke, chapter 20, verses twenty-seven through
thirty-eight:
Proclamation of the Scripture Luke 20: 27-38
Some of the Sadducees, who say there is no
resurrection, came to Jesus with a question.
“Teacher,” they said, “Moses wrote for us that if a man’s
brother dies and leaves a wife but no children, the man must marry the widow
and raise up offspring for his brother.
Now there were seven brothers. The first one married a
woman and died childless.
The second and then the third married her, and in the same way the seven died,
leaving no children.
Finally, the woman died too.
Now then, at the resurrection whose wife will she be,
since the seven were married to her?”
Jesus replied, “The people of this age marry and are given in marriage.
But those who are considered worthy of taking part in the
age to come and in the resurrection from the dead will neither marry nor
be given in marriage,
and they can no longer die; for they are like the angels.
They are God’s children, since they are children of the resurrection.
But in the account of the burning bush, even Moses showed
that the dead rise, for he calls the Lord ‘the God of Abraham, and the God of
Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’
He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to
him all are alive.”
Some of the teachers of the law responded, “Well said,
teacher!”
And no one dared to ask him any more questions.
Here
ends this reading of the Word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God.
Amen.
Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of hearts be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Jesus poised a problem to the
leaders in Jerusalem. He was too popular. People clamored to see him everywhere
he went. Crowds of people followed him from town to town. He performed miracles
– healed the sick, expelled demons, restored sight to the blind, raised the
dead. And, he didn’t conform to the theology of the wealthy leaders of the
Temple, priests of the Sadducee branch of Judaism. They made compromises and
concessions with the Roman’s in order to maintain their power and wealth. And, Jesus was not interested in appeasing
the Romans or helping the powerful maintain their power. So, Jesus poised a
problem for the Sadducees and the Temple Authorities. They wanted to get Jesus
out of the way.
Before his arrest, there were
several occasions when the Sadducees tried to trick Jesus into saying something
that would be considered blasphemy.
Unlike the Pharisee branch of Judaism, the Sadducees didn’t believe that
people would be resurrected in the afterlife. So, when they approached Jesus
with a rambling rhetorical question about a woman which several husbands who
she would be married to in the afterlife, they were waiting to pounce on Jesus
for saying something wrong.
Instead, Jesus told the Sadducees
who asked the question, and the rest of the people listening to his answer that
what happens in the afterlife is so entirely different than what happens in
this life that we don’t have to worry about marriage after we die. Marriage is
an earthly concern – when this life is over and we have moved on to the next,
our earthly concerns will melt away.
With an answer like that, Jesus
didn’t get into trouble. The Sadducees had to bide their time and come up with
a different way to entrap Jesus and get him arrested – they unfortunately succeeded, causing the death of Jesus,
which led to the resurrection of Jesus, which was a fortunate event for us
and all humanity.
Human beings are experts at being unkind
and hurting each other. Every middle school student in this room, and everyone
who has ever been a middle school student, can tell tales of strange conniving
choices people made that ultimately backfired on them. Every episode of Days of
Our Lives or General Hospital has people plotting against one another and then
their plans turning on their head. The
Sadducees were being self-centered and plotting against Jesus. Yet, God is
good, and justice prevails, and in the Easter resurrection Goodness prevailed
over evil. Even death couldn’t keep Jesus down.
Although the tendency to cause harm
to others, and to be cruel, is something we have corral within ourselves, Jesus
shows us a different way. We are followers of Jesus and we must work to be like
Jesus. Instead of being a jerk like the Sadducees who came to trap Jesus, Jesus
chose to be kind and thoughtful in his response to them. Instead of harnessing
the power of heaven and earth, and trampling down his persecutors, Jesus chose
to allow them to crucify him. Jesus resisted the human-impulse to respond to
cruelty with cruelty, and hate with hate. Instead, Jesus told us to love our
enemies, to bless those who curse us, and to pray for those who persecute us.
So, my
friends, we must work to be like Jesus: To respond to hate with love. To
respond to curses with blessings. To respond to our own persecution with
prayers for our enemies. We are followers of the God of grace and love, and we
are called to respond in kind.
May
we do so with joy! Amen.
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