God of the Living

The Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost
November 9, 2025
Luke 20:27-40
“God of the Living”

In my office, I keep a small container filled with earth. What’s up with that? No, it’s not soil from my home state of Iowa. So what’s it for, then? It’s for a specific purpose, and that is for graveside committal services. Conducted at the cemetery, in this rite the pastor pours earth on the casket or urn in the sign of the cross as these words are spoken: “We now commit the earthly remains of our brother/sister to their final resting place: earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust…” Like the imposition of ashes on our foreheads at the beginning of the Lenten season on Ash Wednesday, this is a graphic reminder of our own mortality, calling to mind God’s words to Adam following the fall into sin: “You are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Genesis 3:19). There is a conversation about mortality in today’s Gospel lesson between Jesus and the Sadducees, which closes with these beautiful words of Jesus: “Now he is not God of the dead, but of the living, for all live to him” (Luke 20:38). The message for today is based on this and entitled “God of the Living.” May the Lord’s rich and abundant blessing rest upon the preaching, the hearing, and the living of his Word for Jesus’ sake.

The context of today’s Gospel lesson is that Jesus has entered into Jerusalem, riding on a donkey on that day we call Palm Sunday. And now in the week before he is crucified, Jesus encounters great hostility as he engaged with the religious leaders who challenged him and his teaching. It would all come to a head later in that same week when Jesus would be betrayed by one of his own, arrested, convicted of blasphemy by the Sanhedrin, sentenced to death by Pontius Pilate, and executed on a cross on the day we call Good Friday. That is Jesus’ own mortality as the Son of man, but that’s not the end of the story. Good Friday leads to Easter Sunday. Jesus’ human mortality as the Son of man leads to his divine immortality as the eternal Son of God. And that is where our hope lies; in the death and resurrection of Jesus.

So, who were the Sadducees and what was their deal? This is the only place in Luke’s Gospel where the Sadducees appear. Like the Pharisees, they were one of the sects, or parties, within Judaism. The Sadducees rejected any teaching not found in the Torah, the five books of Moses, and so they did not believe in the resurrection or in angels. They were part of the ruling class of priests at the temple in Jerusalem, and they had made their peace with their Roman overlords. So the question that these Sadducees came up with to ask Jesus is more than ironic: “In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had her as wife” (Luke 20:33). They didn’t even believe there was a resurrection, so what’s going on here? It was a trap, of course, as they sought to trip up Jesus in his own words. But maybe our own contemporary culture is not so far removed from the Sadducees. Among people today, there is a growing uncertainty, and even disbelief, in the resurrection. We use words and phrases like: YOLO, “You only live once,” meaning that life is short and risks need to be taken so you don’t miss out on anything in life. More and more, it’s not a memorial service or a funeral, but a celebration of life. Yes, these are only words, and there is truth in them, but the words convey a deeper meaning. What they reveal is that our focus can easily become on this life only, and that to the detriment of the life that is to come. Paul the apostle had something to say about this when he wrote: “If we have put our hope in Christ for this life only, we should be pitied more than anyone” (1 Corinthians 15:19).

The question that the Sadducees asked Jesus was not pulled out of thin air, but was rooted in the Law of Moses (Deuteronomy 25:5-10). This was called Levirate marriage. But what the Sadducees did was to a mockery of God’s Law delivered through Moses. Without hope in the resurrection, we read God’s Word in a very different way; in a way that leads to death and condemnation, not to life and salvation. We can try to manipulate and twist the Word of God to fit whatever it is that we’re trying to do. But when all is said and done, it is God’s Word, not ours. We need to be mindful of this whenever we approach the Scriptures; reading, marking, learning and inwardly digest the Scriptures in a spirit of humility and repentance. That Word of God has power to do what it says. As Luther once remarked: “The Word of God is alive. It has a mouth that speaks to me; feet that run after me; hands that reach out and take hold of me.” The written Word makes known to us the living Word, the Word-made-flesh, Jesus Christ who is the Word of Life.

There may be all sorts of questions that we have from what Jesus said to the Sadducees. So, what is the state of marriage in the resurrection? Remember that Jesus’ answer was in response to a ridiculous question. The close intimacy and sharing within the covenant of marriage this side of heaven will be brought to perfection in that true and eternal covenant community between God and his people when Christ shall come again. Jesus’ reply to the Sadducees is rooted in today’s Old Testament lesson (Exodus 3:1-15), in which God appears to Moses from the burning bush and calls him to lead his people from slavery into freedom. God reveals his Name to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM” (Exodus 3:14), and makes clear that He is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, those long-dead patriarchs of Israel. They may be physically dead, but they are very much alive in the Lord who created them and made them his own. Just a few months before Jesus entered into Jerusalem, Moses and Elijah appeared with him on the mountain top at his transfiguration and was talking with them (Luke 9:28-36). Moses the Law-giver pointed ahead to the Promised One who came to fulfill all that is written in the Law and the Prophets and the Psalms (Luke 24:44). “For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (John 1:17), who by his birth and life, his innocent suffering and death, his glorious resurrection from the dead has given us forgiveness of sins, eternal life and salvation.

That graveside committal service and the pouring of earth on the casket or urn doesn’t end with those words: “Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” Even there – especially there – at the graveside, the good news of Jesus’ victory over death and the grave are proclaimed, giving us comfort and blessed hope. That cemetery rite goes on with these words: “In the sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ, who will change our lowly bodies so that they will be like His glorious body by the power that enables Him to subdue all things to Himself.” Thanks be to God that we worship and serve the One who is God of the living, now and forever. Amen.