Sermon for November 9, 2025, Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost

Luke 20:27-40 (Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost/Proper 28—Series C)

“In the Lord, the God of the Living, We Have Life Forever ”

Lutheran Church of Our Redeemer, Enfield, CT

November 9, 2025

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Our text today is the Holy Gospel recorded in Luke 20:

²⁷And some of the Sadducees, who say that there is no resurrection, came and asked [Jesus], ²⁸saying, “Teacher, Moses wrote to us, if a man’s brother should die having a wife, and he is childless, that he brother should take his wife and raise up offspring for his brother. ²⁹Now, there were seven brothers, and the first, taking a wife, died childless. ³⁰And the second ³¹and the third took her, and likewise also the seven did not leave children and died.³²Afterward, the woman also died. ³³Therefore, the woman in the resurrection becomes the wife of which one of them? For the seven had her as a wife.” ³⁴And Jesus said to them, “The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage, ³⁵but those who are considered worthy to attain to that age and the resurrection of the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. ³⁶For they are not able to die anymore, for they are like angels, they are sons of God being sons of the resurrection. ³⁷And that the dead ones are raised, even Moses made known in the passage about the bush when he says, ‘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.” ³⁹And some of the scribes answered and said, “Teacher, you have spoken well.” ⁴⁰For they no longer dared to ask Him anything.

           Let’s imagine that there’s a new gameshow craze sweeping the globe called, “Choose Your God.” On this show contestants compete for the chance to pick the god of their choice. We are told that there is a pantheon of deities from which they can choose. There is the always popular Baal of the Canaanites, a god of weather and fertility. The Egyptian sun god Ra is available to “brighten” your day. Perhaps your choice might be Dagon of the Philistines, half-man and half fish, a god of agriculture and the sea. That one seems a little “fishy” to me. Maybe the chief god of the Babylonians, Marduk, is more your style, the chief of their gods on your side is always a plus.

          But don’t worry if these seem too old fashioned to you, “Choose your God” has many modern options available. There are countless deities of Hinduism available, one of the Vedas perhaps or the sutras of the Buddha. Allah of Islam could be yours or just the god called “It,” kind of an impersonal Force that is with you. Whatever deity you look for could be yours when you “Choose Your God.”

          Sounds a little far fetched for a game show, doesn’t it? But in reality, it’s a game that people play every day of their lives. The psalmist said in the Introit verses today from Psalm 115, “Their idols are silver and gold, the work of human hands. Those who make them become like them; so do all who trust in them. The dead do not praise the Lord, nor do any who go down into silence.” Playing “Choose Your God” results in people selecting a dead deity. Allah does not exist. The Force is not real. Baal, Marduk, Zeus, or Artimis of the Ephesians are human creations fashioned of silver or gold. They are nothing.

          Proof of this is seen in one of my most favorite accounts in 1 Kings 18:25-29. There was a dramatic confrontation between the prophet Elijah and the prophets of the idol Baal. Elijah challenged the prophets of Baal to a contest: they were each to prepare a bull for sacrifice on an altar but were not allowed to light a fire. The true God would send fire from heaven to consume the offering. The prophets of Baal went first. They selected their bull and spent from morning until noon calling loudly upon Baal to send fire. When nothing happened, they grew desperate, “limping around the altar” and crying out even louder. At midday, Elijah began to mock them, suggesting that perhaps Baal was busy, in the restroom, traveling, or asleep and needed to be woken up. Despite their efforts, “there was no voice. No one answered; no one paid attention.” Their god remained silent because their god was a dead deity, a non-existent god.

          Of course, the God of Elijah answered quickly with fire. “Then the fire of [Yahweh] fell and consumed the burnt offering and the wood and the stones and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench. And when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces and said, “[Yahweh], he is God; [Yahweh], he is God” (1 Kings 18:38-39 ESV).

          In God or in a god, someone has either life or death. “Those who make [those idols] become like them,” the psalmist says. They are as dead as their deity. And the dead do not praise the Lord because they do not fear, love, and trust in Him above all things. Martin Luther rightly says in the Large Catechism, “A god means that from which we are to expect all good and in which we are to take refuge in all distress. So, to have a God is nothing other than trusting and believing Him with the heart. I have often said that the confidence and faith of the heart alone make both God and an idol. If your faith and trust is right, then your god is also true. On the other hand, if your trust is false and wrong, then you do not have the true God. For these two belong together, faith and God. Now, I say that whatever you set your heart on and put your trust in is truly your god.”^[1]

          It is the Living God, who made heaven and earth, Who gives life. False gods and idols are dead deities and cannot give life but leave their followers in the death of unbelief, without eternal life. The Living God is set apart from all false gods. And God living is the only basis on which we have life and new life. In the Lord God, our Savior Jesus Christ, and only in Him, is life. Speaking of Christ, John writes in the prolog of his Gospel, “In him was life, and the life was the light of men” (John 1:4 ESV). In 1 John 5 the apostle wrote, “And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true; and we are in him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life” (1 John 5:20 ESV).

          The true God Himself who is life, standing before the Sadducees in our Gospel text today, was put to the test. “Moses wrote to us, if a man’s brother should die having a wife, and he is childless, that he brother should take his wife and raise up offspring for his brother. Now, there were seven brothers, and the first, taking a wife, died childless. And the second and the third took her, and likewise also the seven did not leave children and died. Afterward, the woman also died. Therefore, the woman in the resurrection becomes the wife of which one of them? For the seven had her as a wife.” So, Jesus, if you are a true Teacher, you have to side with Moses on this and realize the ridiculousness of “the resurrection.”

          What the Sadducees described was called levirate marriage. We find it recorded in Deuteronomy 25, in one of the Books of Moses. The purpose of levirate marriage was to continue the name of the deceased husband and to give him an “afterlife” through the children that his wife and his brother would conceive. The firstborn son from this levirate marriage would represent his dead brother’s name. He would be the legal equivalent to the son of the deceased. The Sadducees were arguing their case before Jesus, that if He took Moses’ instructions here seriously, He would have to deny the belief in a future resurrection of the dead as a fantasy because the reality of levirate marriage potentially leads to a complex web of family relationships that would be impossible to sustain in the life to come. So, Jesus, will you side with Moses here and deny along with us the resurrection of the dead?

          What the Sadducees did not understand was that they were speaking with the very author of Deuteronomy 25. Jesus is the Word of God made flesh. He is the Living God incarnate. Matthew includes a few words from Jesus to the Sadducees that Luke did not. “But Jesus answered them, ‘You are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God” (Matt. 22:29). The body, as the Sadducees claimed, was not bad or evil. They believed that death was the escape from the evil body, therefore, to raise the body would be evil. Wrong, Jesus says. At death, the soul and body are separated, but that is not the end of life. The soul of the person with faith in Jesus, the Living God, lives with the Lord, awaiting the resurrection of the body to live with the Lord forevermore in body and soul.

          The Sadducees’ whole story about the seven brothers who all died childless was almost impossible to imagine. Didn’t anyone find it odd that brother after brother who married this woman died? The rabbis argued that a woman who had been widowed repeatedly was to be considered dangerous. One said that twice was enough to set up the presumption that she had killed her husbands, and another said that three dead husbands established the presumption and prohibited a fourth marriage. The Sadducees’ story was what the fantasy, not the resurrection of the dead, which is the whole point of their engagement with Jesus.

          Notice that Jesus ignored the levirate marriage issue but addressed the question about the resurrection. He said, “The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage, but those who are considered worthy to attain to that age and the resurrection of the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. For they are not able to die anymore, for they are like angels, they are sons of God being sons of the resurrection. And that the dead ones are raised, even Moses made known in the passage about the bush when he says, ‘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.” To which Mark records Jesus saying, “You are quite wrong” (Mark 12:27). 

          In this creation, God established marriage so that humanity could reflect the communion of the Living God, multiply and fill the earth, and receive the post-fall promise of a Savior. Christian marriage reflects the mystical union of Christ and His bride, the Church, who now waits for the Lord Jesus’ return. In the age to come, there will be no marriage, for those who God deems worthy—the faithful hearers of His Word who receive Jesus’ reign and rule by faith—will live forever as sons of God, sons of the resurrection—inheritors of the very life of their living God and Lord.

          God is the God of the living and not the dead because He alone is the Living God. And it is this Living God, God the Son, who took to Himself human life in body and soul so that He might give eternal life to those once spiritually dead in their sins and trespasses. Paul has written in Ephesian 2, “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus” (Eph. 2:4-7 ESV).

          The Living God, Jesus Christ, standing before the Sadducees that day would soon after be killed on a cross. Jesus’ death for the forgiveness of our sins guarantees our new life, our eternal life, because He is risen from the dead. Jesus said, “For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world” (John 6:33 ESV). “I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand” (John 10:28 ESV). Jesus’ death and resurrection has restored for us the day when we “cannot die anymore, . . . being sons [and daughters] of the resurrection.” Jesus came in human flesh so that we “may have life and have it abundantly” (John 10:10 ESV).

          The God who has claimed you as His own child in Baptism is the Living God. He gave to you His Son, Jesus, to give you life in abundance with Him in body and soul in the resurrection on the Last Day. The same Jesus who appeared to Moses at the bush is “I Am.” He is present with you now through His Spirit by means of the Word and the Sacraments and gives you forgiveness and eternal life. This is the very life of the Living God Himself breathed into you by the Spirit in Baptism and Gospel Word, real life, abundant life forever. “I am the resurrection and the life,” says the Lord. “He who believes in Me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in Me will never die.” Amen.

     ^[1] Paul Timothy McCain, ed., Concordia: The Lutheran Confessions (St. Louis: Concordia, 2005), 359.