Sermon on Luke 20:27-38

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

What happens after death is one of the big questions humanity has wrestled with since the beginning of time.

Some see religion as the byproduct of humanity needing reassurance that death isn’t as scary as it seems.

There’s the saying that “there are no atheists in foxholes,” which is certainly not true, but it speaks to the way humans sometimes put off the anxiety of what happens after death until we can’t put it off anymore.

Our society tries really hard to ignore death. We hide death in hospitals and funeral homes and try to get back to normal as quickly as possible after funerals, which we try to cheer up by calling them “celebrations of life.” We pretend that we get closure at funerals instead of recognizing that they’re just the beginning of grief.

Our society reveres youth and tries to prevent any signs of aging, and in the process, loses out on the gifts of wisdom, experience, and discernment that come with each additional trip around the sun.

The Bible is frustratingly unclear about the specifics of what happens after death. There are metaphors, parables, and cryptic statements. Tradition has pieced together those bits and art and popular culture to form an idea of what might happen: pearly gates, haloes, harps, clouds, etc.

But when it comes down to it, we know very little for sure, and that can be uncomfortable and anxiety inducing.

I’ve talked with people before who are deeply troubled by our Gospel reading today. People who are grieving their spouse of fifty years understandably don’t want to hear that they won’t be married to their spouse in heaven.

For a Gospel reading, it doesn’t necessarily seem like good news.

But let’s remember why Jesus said these things.

Jesus didn’t decide this was an important thing for his disciples to know and sat them down one day to tell them this.

He was responding to a “gotcha” question from a group of religious leaders.

This was only days after Palm Sunday and the cleansing of the Temple. Jesus had made some really public, in your face, theatrical statements that he was against the unjust, oppressive systems of the people in power—the occupying Roman Empire and the religious leaders who were trying to keep the status quo to stay on the right side of the Romans.

Jesus had gotten people’s attention—not just the poor, the suffering, and the marginalized. He was in Jerusalem, the religious and political center, stirring up trouble.

So,some of the religious leaders of different groups were trying to trap him into saying something they could use to discredit him or arrest him.

In our story today, it was the Sadducees who came up to Jesus and took to the extreme the laws about levirate marriage, meant to maintain bloodlines and secure legacies when men died prematurely.

They weren’t coming in good faith, wondering about their deceased loved ones or beloved spouses. They were ridiculing the idea of an afterlife and wanted to trap Jesus into saying something incriminating.

And in Jesus’ typical manner, he was able to outwit them and sidestep their trap.

By invoking the story of Moses calling God“the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,” he was using scriptures important to the Sadducees to show them that there is life after death in a way that wouldn’t seem absurd like their hypothetical story of a woman with seven husbands.

The concept of death is at least as important as the concept of marriage in this story, because the two were related.

Marriage was differentthen. Marrying for romantic love is a fairly new concept.

Marriage then was a business contract between two men: the groom and the father-in-law. The bride was often in her early teens and was an asset to be bargained over.

The law about levirate marriage was to protect the lineage of a man who had died.

If there is no death, there’s no need for protecting lineage.

If God is the God of the living, if there is no death, then we are each beloved children of God, whole unto ourselves, not anyone’s property.

That is what it means to neither marry nor be given in marriage. It means our relationships will be as complete individuals without social systems that benefit some and oppress others.

We will be equals in the love of God.

I don’t know the specifics of what our relationships with each other will look like in the next life, and neither does anyone else, not for sure.

But we can trust that our God of the living will continue to be the God of love and peace and justice and mercy that we know now.

And we can trust that in the next life, not clouded by the ways we hurt each other, the cruelty and selfishness and violence that distort our world, we will experience complete union with God, and that will satisfy our needs for connection, community, and love in ways we can’t begin to imagine now.

This isn’t a situation where I’m telling you not to ask questions, just believe the right things, or just trust me. No, please, ask questions, wonder about God and this world and the next. Be curious. Think deeply. Question everything. That’s an important part of a life of faith.

Just recognize that there are a lot of answers we don’t have access to yet. It doesn’t mean the questions aren’t worth asking. But when the limits of our understanding run up against the infiniteness of God, that’s when we have to trust our relationship with God, that God is good and faithful and loving and won’t let us down.

So, while we ask those good questions and trust that God will abundantly satisfy every need and desire of ours in the next life, let’s spend this life living out love as best we can.

We can show the character of God in the world around us.

God’s love is for everyone, and we don’t have to worry about who’s “in” and who’s “out.” Just like this Table, the eternal banquet is for everyone, and we can trust that our loving God will work out the details. Too many Christians get caught up in the details of the next life and show the world their own judgment instead of God’s love.

Let’s make ourselves known for something different.

Let’s make ourselves known for caring for our neighbor in this life.

Let’s make ourselves known for who we include and embrace and empower.

Let’s make ourselves known for showing the world the love of our living God.

Let’s trust the future to God and make God’s love known in the present.