In the Name of Jesus
23. Sunday after Trinity (Proper 27C)
Willibrord, Apostle of Frisia in the Frankish Empire (Netherlands) 738.
7. November 2010
As the deer longs after the water brooks, so our lives long after You, O God. Our lives thirst for God, for the Living God: when will we arrive and appear before God? O Fountain of Life and Well of Living Waters, when will we leave this miserable, erring, pathless, and desert world to arrive at the sweet waters of Your beauty so that we may behold Your power and majesty and quench our thirst in the fountain of Your grace and mercy? O that glorious and happy day which knows no night nor waning, when we will enter into the beautiful mansions of our God and into His joy and the enjoyment of His unfathomed miracles without number! There will be no enemy, neither opposition, nor vexation. No evil and deceptive temptation will come nigh, but only harmless, continuing safety to the body, holy rest, pure, peaceful joy, a blessed eternity, and everlasting blessedness; yes, the Most Holy Trinity, and the blessed beholding of the Deity of God Himself, which is the joy of the Lord our God. O when will we arrive and appear before God? We rejoice that our days on earth are declining. Hasten the evening, O Lord Jesus. Arrive and lead us forth from this our prison house unto eternal joys; out of the darkness of this life to the light of never ending day. Arrive, O Desire of the Gentiles, make us to behold Your countenance, so that our hearts may revive from the sorrows of this life, and we live forever. Amen. (Löhe 312-14).
Our sermon text for this morning, dear brothers and sisters, is from the Gospel according to St. Luke where the holy evangelist writes: 27There came to Jesus some Sadducees, those who deny that there is a resurrection, 28and they asked Him a question, saying, ,,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. 29Now there were seven brothers. The first took a wife, and died without children. 30And the second 31and the third took her, and likewise all seven left no children and died. 32Afterward the woman also died. 33In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had her as wife.“ 34And Jesus said to them, ,,The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage, 35but those who were made worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, 36for they cannot die anymore, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection. 37But that the dead are raised, even Moses showed, in the passage about the bush, where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. 38Now He is not God of the dead, but of the living, for all live to Him.“ 39Then some of the scribes answered, ,,Teacher, you have spoken well.“ 40For they no longer dared to ask Him any question. This is our text.
Who were the Sadducees? The Sadducees were liberals and freethinkers. The Sadducees took their name, and were descended from, the priest Zadok who supported Solomon when Adonijah attempted to appoint himself King of Israel (1 Chronicles 1). In Jesus’ day, the Sadducees were the priests who ran the temple and were responsible for all the temple sacrifices and rituals; when Jesus was arrested, the priest Annas, father-in-law of Caiaphas, was the head of the Sadducees. In Jesus’ day, the Roman governor appointed the Jewish high priest instead of allowing the Levitical process that dictated the high priesthood descends from father to son. The Sadducees also had a group within them known as the Herodians, who had ties to King Herod. They favored the Herodian polity and enjoyed the culture of the Greco-Roman society. They probably had respect for the emperor who had been a childhood friend of Herod the Great. While the Sadducees were few in number, their control of the temple and their wealth, gave them an important position of authority.
Although the Sadducees controlled the temple, the Pharisees with their rabbis, scribes, and lawyers had supplanted the priests in the synagogues, and these synagogues were the local congregations where men and women gathered to worship each Sabbath. They regulated the synagogues wherein they taught and interpreted the Law. The Pharisees were solidly devoted to the daily application and observance of the Mosaic law and the ,,oral law,“ known as the Oral Torah. While the Pharisees believed that the entire Law and the Prophets were Divinely inspired, the Sadducees only believed Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy (the Torah; the Pentateuch) were inspired.
The Sadducees rejected the oral laws of the Pharisees (although they kept their own), and the Sadducees had a number of unbiblical and heretical beliefs, including: a denial of angels and demons, a denial of the arrival of the promised Messiah, a denial of Satan’s existence, a denial of the supernatural and miracles, a denial of the last judgment, and a denial of the resurrection in favor of Sheol as the universal abode of the dead.
Jesus’ answer affirms the fact of the resurrection. In this earthly life, death is a daily reality and experience. On account of our sinful nature, men and women die and are buried in a grave. Markers and tombstones witness to their existence.
Physical death, however, is not the end. Jesus confesses what is clear in the Old Testament: the dead are raised. Jesus had many Biblical passages at His disposal to prove the Scriptural teaching of the resurrection of the dead, but in His discussion with the Sadducees He chose a unique passage to affirm the resurrection. Jesus refers to Moses and the Burning Bush (Exodus 3). At the Burning Bush, Yahweh tells Moses that He is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, showing that during the lifetime of Moses, the three great patriarchs who had died several hundred years prior to Moses’ birth are nonetheless (dennoch) still alive in Yahweh.
Given this Biblical truth, how does one be considered worthy to attain the age of the resurrection (v.35)? The discussion that St. Luke records in this 20th chapter of his Gospel is the Lucan equivalent to Jesus’ dialog with the Jews in John 6 where Jesus declares with full Divine authority: »I am the Bread of Life. For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him shall have eternal life, and I Myself will raise him up on the last day« (John 6,35.40). Every person who believes upon Jesus as his or her savior from sin, death, and the devil is considered worthy to attain the age of the resurrection. Faith trusts in the gospel which proclaims Christ Jesus alone makes us worthy of the resurrection. »For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed from faith upon faith, as it is written, ,,The righteous will live by faith.“« (Romans 1,17). »Faith comes by hearing the word of Christ« (Romans 10,17).
Jesus Himself makes us worthy of the resurrection unto eternal life. The Apostle Paul boldly proclaims: »But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man death arrived, by a man the resurrection of the dead has also arrived. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then at His advent those who belong to Christ.« (1 Corinthians 15,20-23). At the return of Christ, He will reunite our resurrected body with our soul. Christ will make us equal to the angels, in that we will never suffer or die. At the present time we are sons of God by faith, and on the last day when Christ returns we will be sons of God in our physical, resurrected body. God is not the God of the dead, but He is the God of the living.
When Christ fulfills the age of the resurrection, we will enjoy eternal life in His presence. Eternal life is a grand and glorious fellowship of all believers in Christ. The patriarchs will be there, including Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. We will join all the Old Testament believers in the eternal fellowship of heaven, including such believers as Adam and Eve, Abel and Seth, David, Moses and Elijah, and all the rest. We will join the New Testament believers in everlasting communion, including John the Baptizer, Stephen the Archmartyr, and ever Christian born till Christ’s return. Yahweh is the God of the living. We live, and will live eternally, through the merits of Christ Jesus who is the Living One. By Christ’s merits on the cross and at the empty tomb we now live. We live by faith in Christ which receives His merits. We live by Holy Baptism in which God brought us into His family. We live by the Lord’s Supper wherein Christ gives us His body and blood for our everlasting life. Jesus says, »I am the Living Bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is My flesh« (John 6,51). At the Last Supper »Jesus took bread, and when He had given thanks, He broke it and gave it to them, saying, ,,This is My body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of Me.“ And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, ,,This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in My blood.“« (Luke 22,19-20). Hear and believe, take and receive, for you are sons of God and heirs of the resurrection through Christ. Amen.
Let us pray. O Heavenly Father, the God of the living, You have given us Your beloved only Son who for our sakes died and rose again for the forgiveness of our sins and our salvation so that by His glorious and Divine merit we are accounted children of the resurrection. Amen.
One Message: Christ crucified and risen for you!
All Scriptural quotations are translations done by The Rev. Peter A. Bauernfeind using the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, 4th Edition © 1990 by the Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart, the Novum Testamentum Graece, Nestle-Aland 27th Edition © 1993 by Deutsch Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart, and the New Testament Greek Manuscripts, Luke © 1995 by Reuben Joseph Swanson.
http://www.centralcal.com/crist2.htm
http://www.come-and-hear.com/dilling/chapt01.html
http://catholic-resources.org/Bible/
Löhe, Wilhelm. Seed-Grains of Prayer: A Manual for Evangelical Christians. Wartburg Publishing House, Chicago circa 1912. Concordia Publishing House; Concordia on Demand.
Luther, Martin. WA I:353-4. ,,Theses for the Heidelberg Disputation“ (April 1518). Karlfried Frö hlich, Tr.
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