Luke 20:9-40

Read along as Matthew guides us through the Gospel of Luke. In these verses, Jesus tells the Parable of the Tenants, debates the validity of paying taxes to Caesar, and argues with the Sadducees about resurrection.

Matthew Schmidt is the Pastor of St. Paul's United Church of Christ located in the beautiful small town of Grand Haven, MI. Discover more about St. Paul's today. www.stpaulsgrandhaven.org

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Let's open with a prayer of illumination. Blessed Lord who caused all holy scripture to be written for our learning, grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of goodness, of everlasting life, of eternal love, which you have given us in our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. So Luke chapter 20, verse 9, Jesus is telling people a parable, but we need to remind ourselves exactly where he is and what what was happening so we get the context of this parable. So where is he? He's been traveling around, and then last week, all of a sudden, he's where? In Jerusalem. He reaches the capital city. Jerusalem is the most important city in the history of Israel. It just is. It's David's city. It's the city that has the great temple that Solomon built. Um, it has the second temple built right where Solomon's temple was built. Herod has built out this temple now in the time of Jesus to be the biggest, most glorious, you know, temple that the Jewish people have ever known. Uh, it's also because it's kind of the capital city, Rome has moved in because Rome is the empire and the overlord overseeing uh this nation. And Rome, when they took over territory, they loved to give nations permission to worship their own gods, to have their own temples, to have their own uh, you know, sacred places, precisely to control the population, right? And so Rome builds a watchtower right next to Herod's temple, and they've got quote-unquote snipers on top of this tower, Roman soldiers guarding um this area uh to make sure that no, you know, no crowds get too violent, no uh riff-raff breaks out. Um, they want to keep the peace, Pax Romana, and they do that through force with their soldiers. So Jesus is entering into not just Jerusalem, he then makes a beeline. And by the way, he enters Jerusalem in the name of peace. He rides in on a donkey, waving a white flag. I come in peace. Uh and he goes right to the temple, and he sees that the temple is corrupt, that the temple is taking money from the people, and part of that money is going right up to Caesar himself to fund the empire, right? And so the whole temple system, the high priests who are in charge of it, the priests who serve the high priests, they're they're corrupt. And uh, and the question is, is anybody gonna do anything about it? That's what the average Jewish person would be asking. Who's gonna who's gonna kick out the bad guys and reclaim this holy spot? Right. And meanwhile, they still go because it's their holy spot and they're gonna go, right? And so Jesus is talking to crowds. He draws big crowds because people are hungry for, you know, a system that doesn't oppress them. And he is uh he's going to be questioned, um, or we read last week that he was questioned by the people who have authority. Uh, and they ask him, By whose authority do you do all these things that you're doing? Trying to change the temple? Like, come on, this is our territory. We're the high priests, we're the chief leaders, we are the Phariseic class, which would be the itinerant preachers that also have seats on the Sanhedrin that govern this area. We're in charge here. Who do you think you are? Now, Jesus, as a peer, is at least equal to the Phariseeic class. He's, you know, in that sort of rabbinical category. So he has some authority. Um, but he gives an interesting answer when they ask, by whose authority do you do this? He draws on John the Baptist, who was a popular uh Jewish reformer, wanted to invite people to find forgiveness in God's presence and God's holiness outside the walls of the temple. You know, his dad was a priest, and so he knows that system really well. John the Baptist is baptizing people out in the Jordan River, free access to God over here, and it's immensely popular. It's historically true. You can read Roman documents about this. John the Baptizer. Jesus movement is picking up from John's movement. It's a populist movement that's quite popular. They ask, by whose authority are you doing the things that you're doing? And he asks a great rebuttal. He says, By whose authority was John's baptism? Was John's baptism from heaven or was John's baptism from a human hand? And then the priests and the leaders are stuck. Because if they say by human hands, there's there's gonna be a revolt on their hands because everybody liked John's free baptism of grace and forgiveness and love and repentance and goodness, and God is on the move, and right? So they're stuck. And that's that's the context. Jesus wins this argument, and then he's gonna turn to the crowds and teach. And we can imagine it's Monday or Tuesday leading up to the great Passover festival. The city is bustling and busy, a city of a hundred thousand people has swelled to a city of a million people. And and so the you can smell vendors cooking food out there. You can smell the big grill where they're roasting, you know, barbecue for the priests over in the within the sacrificial system. Um you can uh you can feel the energy with a busy, busy, crowded courtyard. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good question. The Romans did have nice bathrooms. If you go and look at Roman-designed cities, there were there were some nice, they had uh basically they they they put a bench along a wall, and then they had literally running water underneath the bench. So if you went and you you could use the yeah, right. The Romans kind of brought running water to cities, which is part of what allowed cities to grow under the Roman Empire. Now I I'm not exactly sure how they used the restroom in the ancient world uh temple system. That's a great question. Somebody Google that. But I do know that the Romans uh would have had systems like that. Yeah. Maybe they're like my mother-in-law, and they just did they don't use the bathroom, they're too polite. That is a long time, yeah. Okay, so he's here here's the context. He is in the courtyard, he's teaching, he's showing up each day to teach and to talk, and and every conversation is being watched by people who want to catch him in a trap, and every conversation is being heard by people who are desperate for some messianic figure to drive out the bad guys and reclaim the temple. And there's lots of foreign people and lots of strangers and lots of interesting ears listening to this Jesus. Okay, so now we get to Luke chapter 9, chapter 20, verse 9. Jesus went on to tell the people this parable, and I imagine hundreds of people are listening to him, that a whole crowd is around him. A man planted a vineyard, rented it to some farmers, and went away for a long time. Well, before we go any further with his story, uh if you just had to start guessing uh what this means metaphorically, who do you think this man is? Who do you think this vineyard is? Um, who do you think the farmers are?

SPEAKER_00 8:28

If you had to guess.

SPEAKER_01 8:41

Potentially, potentially. Um the Old Testament uses the vineyard as a metaphor for Israel, often. That Israel is uh in the same way that a vineyard is it's not just any ordinary garden, is it? A vineyard is a very cultivated type of garden. It's a garden that takes a while to grow, and uh if it's done right, it produces fine wine. And if it's done wrong or haphazardly, is it productive? Not necessarily. So the prophets often when when Israel isn't behaving correctly, they say that the vineyard is is like wild grapes, i.e., the vineyard hasn't been pruned and tended in the appropriate way. Their culture has become influenced by pagan cultures, their culture has been influenced by other influences. Maybe they've looked at Egypt and thought we need some chariots and we need an army just like Egypt has chariots and an army. And that's not quite the way God designed Israel. God designed Israel to be a light to all nations, a blessing to be a blessing. They, you know, God designed God's people to be a conduit of God's goodness, not necessarily a uh a nation that swells to be an empire just like any other empire. And so wild grapes is a metaphor used for Israel when they're kind of off on their own and they're not being tended. The leadership has failed them. Um so this it could be, before we read any further, it could be that God is the man who planted Israel as a vineyard on God's mountain, and rented it to some farmers, who could be anyone, and went away for a long time. The farmers could be God's people, right? But the vineyard is meant to be tilled and cultivated by these farmers. Verse 10. At harvest time he sent a servant to the tenants, so they would give him some of the fruit of the vineyard. But the tenants beat him and sent him away empty-handed. Now, if you're just within the story and you're not thinking metaphorically at all, what do you think of this? Tenants beating up a guy who comes to take the harvest? I mean, it sounds kind of violent, but if you're a hard working tenant and you're the one who's doing all the labor, and then the rich guy sends some servant to come and gather all of your labor, I mean it's not surprising, is it, that they would beat up the guy who comes to take the harvest? Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yep. So at harvest time he sent a servant to the tenants, so they would give him some of the fruit from the vineyard, but the tenants beat him and sent him away empty-handed. Verse eleven, he sent another servant, but that one also they beat, and treated shamefully, and sent away empty-handed. He sent still a third, and they wounded him and threw him out. Then the owner of the vineyard said, What shall I do? I will send my son whom I love. Perhaps they will respect him. Now we're already reading this, like the owner is God, and like the farmers are Israel tending Israel's potential. They're tenants, they're planted in this area by God, and they're meant to give some of their fruit to God and some of their fruit to the world, some of the fruit for themselves. They're meant to be, you know, living in a holistic kind of way, and God is sending servant after servant after servant to try to get them to realize they have to share what doesn't belong to them. Who are these servants from a biblical or historical perspective, then? Servant after servant after servant. The prophets, Isaiah, or Jeremiah, or Ezekiel. Right?

SPEAKER_00 13:19

Maybe Elisha or Elijah.

SPEAKER_01 13:30

The owner of the vineyard said, What shall I do? Verse 13, I will send my son whom I love. Perhaps they will respect him. In the ancient world, we have to remind ourselves that the son is the same thing as the father. If somebody's son shows up and he's got the ring of the family crest, guess what? What he says is the same thing that his father says. It just he's the same person, shares the same blood, shares the same authority. Right? So here God is sending his own son. Jesus is talking about himself. This is the heir, they said, let's kill him, and the inheritance will be ours. So they threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.

SPEAKER_00 14:19

What then will the owner of the vineyard do to them? What then will the owner of the vineyard do to them?

SPEAKER_01 14:31

If Jesus is telling the story about himself, and these leaders are listening and they know the metaphor of vineyard, and they're starting to sense what he's saying, how would they answer this question? What would be the right thing to do if you're the owner of the vineyard? The tenants just murdered your son. What would God's justice look like in a scenario where you murder God's own son? In an eye for an eye society, then you deserve the death penalty. For murder? What will the owner of the vineyard do to them? He will come and kill the tenants and give the vineyard to others. When the people heard this, they said, God forbid. They know exactly what he's talking about. The idea that we could lose this mountain, we could lose this temple, we could lose this area because we weren't faithful to God. I mean, it's the same thing that Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel all preach about. If you're not faithful to God, God won't protect you against the enemies. If you're not faithful to God, if you don't turn and repent, give to God what belongs to God, watch and see what happens to your society. It will crumble with insert whatever calamity, earthquakes or volcanic eruptions, or a warring army that comes through, or just the slow decay of society. When the people heard this, they said, God forbid, Jesus looked directly at them and asked, Then what is the meaning of that which is written, the stone the builders rejected has become the corner stone? The builders who are building Jerusalem, who are building the temple, who are building this society on their own terms, discard a stone, thinking they can discard a stone that isn't quite the right shape or isn't quite the right thing. And what would it look like for God to take the misshapen and make it the center point of Israel? For God to take what's broken and make it the center gravitationally significant heartbeat of Israel. The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces, anyone who falls on whom it falls will be crushed. And the teachers of the law and the chief priests looked for a way to arrest him immediately because he knew that they had spoken this parable against them, but they were afraid of the people.

SPEAKER_00 17:53

Is Jesus threatening the priests? Is he threatening the leaders? Shape up or you're getting shipped out.

SPEAKER_01 18:13

Shape up or you're getting shipped out. What he's saying, the people are hearing. What he means by this, they're understanding. This is the opportunity. The king, the messianic figure, God's very own son, has entered Jerusalem riding on the donkey, like all the prophecies predict. He steps into the temple, and the whole nation could turn to him and have God in their midst, and have goodness and have light and have forgiveness and have grace and have mercy. But the denial of grace, the denial of mercy will heap judgment upon yourself. The denial of God's goodness will bring about your own falling. So is he threatening them? Maybe on a certain level it might feel like a threat to some people. It's a warning. It's certainly a warning. The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. Psalm 118, it's the same psalm that we were quoting when he entered in the tri in triumph. Here comes David's son, right? Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord. Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces. You know, there's a way to read that and realize, you know, it's true for all of us. When I fall on that stone, when I have fallen on that stone, I'm broken to pieces. And that's a good thing for me. It's humbling. Uh my pride is shattered. But in the humble soil that grows from that, God brings goodness and love and mercy and tenderness and light and fresh opportunity. I go over here and try to build the life I think that I need to build, or I pursue my own desires or my own dreams. But if they're not the desires and the dreams that God has for me, those dreams fall apart. I stumble on the stone. Christ recenters my life, and I build it back out from that center point, which is always the place of mercy, the place of grace. What does it look like to build a life on grace and compassion and mercy and peace? You can't build a life that is violent and be a person of peace. Your violent ways need to be shattered and broken and crushed. And who will do that for you? The invitation is to do that yourself. That's not self-harm, that's self-correction. That's what repentance means, to turn from a way that is actually harming you towards a way that is actually healthy for you, that is actually merciful and good and true. We all have this false self. We all have this true self. Your true self is your safe, beloved self created in God's image. Your false self is what you project into the world to protect that true self that has been wounded throughout your life. When you were a kid, your parents didn't love you the way that you deserve to be loved, the way that God loves you, because parents fail. And then you grow up with a chip on your shoulder, or you grew up with a whatever, you overcompensate. But sometimes that overcompensating can lead you into a path that doesn't actually help anybody. It can be downright harmful.

SPEAKER_00 22:00

God is saying, return to your true self, fully loved, fully known, fully blessed.

SPEAKER_01 22:10

And sometimes that false self, that shadow self, has to be wrestled with, or has to be deconstructed, or has to be, you gotta go to therapy for 10 years to kind of dissemble it once in a while, you know. That that's what he means by everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces. You can read that as a threat, you can read that as a warning, you can also read it as wisdom that everybody has to deconstruct their false self. Richard Rohr calls it shadow boxing. You box with your shadow and you wrestle with that and you and you try throughout your life to claim your true self, your good self. You're created in God's image, fully loved self. So is he threatening, maybe? Is he warning, maybe? Is he blessing? Absolutely. Jesus never wants to bring about destruction for destruction's sake. Jesus is absolutely in the business of promoting beauty and goodness and peace. But sometimes to get to peace, people actually need to change. And that change can feel destructive. But it's for a purpose. Anyone on whom it falls will be crushed. And if you're crushed by the grace of Jesus, I say, Lord let us be crushed and and and then take that dust and remake us, reanimate us into your image. Now the teachers of the law and the chief priests looked for a way to arrest him immediately. They do not like this. You think a priest wants to be told he needs to deconstruct his worldview or give up some of his power or transform the system that he has been in charge of for 50 years? Thank you very much. So they look for a way to arrest him immediately. They're hearing the threat, but they're not hearing the grace. They're not hearing the good news. What causes someone to encounter Jesus and just feel threatened and not hear good news?

SPEAKER_00 24:30

Or why? I guess same question.

SPEAKER_01 24:33

Why do these chief priests and these leaders want to arrest Jesus immediately? Yeah. Right. He's threatening their power. They're really only hearing the threat. And they lack the imagination. What? To imagine a world that's not governed by them. If you lack the imagination to imagine a world that's not governed by you or your favorite leader, you you might need that cornerstone to come and chip away or recarve or transform or change.

SPEAKER_00 25:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:21

So they want to arrest him immediately because he had spoken this parable against them. They know he's talking against them. They know they're the ones that are gonna kill him. Yeah, we are gonna reject this cornerstone, but you're not really the cornerstone, right? But what prevents them from doing that? They are afraid of the people. Why are they afraid of the people? Jesus is popular. They love what he's saying. There's a whole lot of them, which means they don't actually have the power that they think that they have, do they? And that is true of every toxic leader. Every narcissistic toxic leader is actually afraid. They know that their power is only so limited. And so they puff up and get more powerful out of fear of losing power.

SPEAKER_00 26:30

And we all do that in certain ways, right?

SPEAKER_01 26:34

I tell my kids to do something and they don't do it. Then I double down. Oh, you really do have to brush your teeth before you go to bed. Because I'm smarter than you. You're gonna get rotten teeth. You have to go to the dentist next week, you have to scrub the backs. I know it hurts your gums sometimes, but you have to scrub all sides of your teeth. Trust me, I'm the one with power in this scenario, and you are just a child, right? And pretty soon my house has a little baby dictator dad and a child who he's actually afraid might have rotten teeth. And he's trying to fix what he's afraid of by asserting power. So we all do it in little ways. Let's not just blame our big leaders. They were afraid of the people. So if this is Monday or Tuesday of what we now call holy week, they need to kill Jesus. They can't do it yet. They need to arrest Jesus, they need to find a reason to do this that will not disrupt the crowds. And you know the story. They're gonna come at night, they're gonna do it in secret, they're gonna cultivate a sham trial and bring about false witnesses, and then they're gonna hand it off to Rome so that Rome does it and not them. And the crowds will turn. So they're afraid of the people, but these are also the same people that are participating in systems that are oppressing others, right? So the crowd is not perfect. The crowd flickers, like maybe, maybe they will turn to God, maybe, but by the end of the week, this is the crowd that is chanting, crucify him, crucify him. So, what happens to the human heart that makes us go from, oh, we can actually do the right thing here, to somehow we just have the wrong idea about what matters in this world. And the honest truth is that the crowd is just as afraid as the leaders are. They hoped to catch Jesus in something that he said, so that they might hand him over to the power and authority of the governor. A reminder that the priests aren't actually in charge. Rome is. So the spies questioned him. Teacher, we know that you speak and teach what is right. Ha ha ha they're lying. Uh and that you do not show partiality, but teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. Oh, here's a good one that we can trap him with. Is it right for us to pay taxes to Caesar or not? So now they're recognizing that it's not just the temple that's an issue here. They know who has ultimate power, Caesar, Rome. Uh, we could get him in legal trouble with Rome. Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not? What a tough question. You know, if you are a zealous Jewish man in 6 AD or 10 AD or 20 AD, how do you answer this? If you're zealous, if you are a if you are a human being after God's own heart, and and money is belongs to God, it doesn't belong to an evil king. How do you answer this? You say, no, it's not right. It's not right to give taxes to the pagans. I should give a tenth of what I earn to God. That's what scripture says. That's what you know Abraham does in Genesis. He gives 10%, a holy tithe, to God. So that's the easy answer. Is that what Jesus is gonna say? No, it's not right. That's what they think he's gonna say. He saw through their duplicity, verse 23, and he said to them, Show me a denarius. So they pull out a coin, and just like our coins, we put faces of leaders on coins. So they pull out a quarter and it's got who? Kennedy? Well, who's on a quarter? Washington's on a quarter? Who's on a dime? I thought Kennedy was on a quarter. He's on the 50 cent piece? Okay, so they pull out a 50 cent piece and it's got a Kennedy picture on it. Who's on the who's on the penny? Lincoln? The pennies so Lincoln. Okay, so in the ancient world, they pull out their coins, and guess whose face is on the coins, right? Exactly. So whose image and description are on it? Caesar's, they replied. And he said to them, then give back to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's. I mean, come on. That is such a radical claim. Like if you get into what Jesus is really saying here, he's saying if the system is corrupt, then give all that corruption back to the corrupt system and live an alternative lifestyle. Don't participate in the SP 500 if the Big Ten are corrupt. Whoa. When Jesus says that the cost of discipleship is so great it will feel like burying your own cross. I mean, a statement like this gets real. When we talked yesterday in church, we talked about kind of some of the problems that people are facing in in whether they're kids or young adults or elderly folks. And I was struck by, I got, I kept thinking about it all day. So many of the problems are directly connected to money. Our entire society in the West is governed by money.

SPEAKER_00 32:40

What if we didn't live within that system?

SPEAKER_01 32:45

That's such a terribly hard question to even ask. What if you give it all back to Caesar, what belongs to Caesar, and you give to God what belongs to God? Now, you can overanalyze that and say God is even God of Caesar, that all belongs to God, right? So that even the invention of money itself is a system governed by a high and supremely omnipotent and providential and sovereign God. So it it's not a nice, neat, clean e answer either way. But it also, you know, you could pause and use some serious imagination. How would we live without Lincoln and Kennedy in our lives?

SPEAKER_00 33:28

What would we do for food? What would we do for homes? What would we do for retirement?

SPEAKER_01 33:38

How would we function? The honest truth about Jesus Christ is he is inviting humanity to live a different way. And that's really hard. But he wants us to be creatures that love each other and love God. He wants us to be creatures that are radically egalitarian and equal and harmonious with ourselves and with creation, with others and with God. I mean, is money gonna get us there? Is money gonna solve our problems? Is money gonna bring safety and security? It's certainly gonna fix a lot of problems. But we can't figure out how to make it equal for everyone. We just can't figure that out. Right?

SPEAKER_00 34:31

Right. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:40

Then give back to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's. Verse 26. They were unable to trap him in what he had said there in public, and astonished by his answer, they became silent. What does Caesar think about that answer? If that answer floated up to Caesar, what would he think? Sounds great. I'll take it all. Bring it on, baby, right? Ironically, Caesar would be entirely blind to what is happening if the entire population gave off and gave back to him his form of power and then began participating in an entirely alternate society. The only power that Caesar would have over them is look at this beautiful building you can use. We have running toilets, but it costs 50 cents to use the toilet. Oh, you don't have 50 cents? Get a job. Then you can get access to this beautiful amenity that I have invented. Look at those barbarians that want to attack you. You want our army to protect you? Give me money. Participate back in my system, and you will get the benefits of the empire. Give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's, and they were unable to trap him. Ha. They'll keep trying. The whole week is about them trying to trap Jesus. Here's another one. Verse 27. Some of the Sadducees who say there is no resurrection came to Jesus with a question. Now, why do the Sadducees say there is no resurrection? Pharisees believe in resurrection. Sadducees do not believe in resurrection. And the difference comes from what is the word of God? They have different books. The Sadducee class only cares about Torah, the first five books, what we would call the Pentateuch, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. Because within those books, they have their law, thank you very much, which cultivates the temple system, the tabernacle system, which becomes the temple system, all those Levitical, priestly laws, that's what governs their system. They only need those five laws. Guess how much resurrection talk there is in those five books? Not much. Not much. There's not much talk of anything about an afterlife or about what happens after we die. There's just not much theological conversation about that. It's more about how to form a nation that will become a priestly nation called to bless others. That's the primary identity in those first five books. A priestly, holy people called by God to become a nation that doles out God's blessings to all the other nations. So they don't believe in resurrection because it's not in their book. The Pharisees, who appreciate those first five books, the Torah, they love the Torah, they also appreciate these prophetic texts and the poetry that we would call the Psalms, or the Songs of Solomon, or Isaiah, the scrolls of Isaiah, right? And uh, or Ezekiel or Daniel or Jonah. They love these books. And guess where you find instances of resurrection? You find them in those scrolls. Like in Ezekiel, when Ezekiel prophesies to the dry bones. Dry bones become living human beings again. And there's this beautiful little poem where these dead soldiers, an army of skeletons, starts to strap on flesh, and the and the bone marrow floods with blood, and the sinews connect, and muscles form around the bones, and flesh forms around the muscles, and and these dry bones stand up, and all of a sudden God's got a resurrected army on his hands, which would terrify something like Rome, if every soldier that Rome ever killed could be brought back to life. I mean, so Ezekiel's got a pretty powerful prophecy when he talks about the dry bones coming alive again. Now, of course, uh, rabbinical tradition, the Pharisees that flow into the rabbinical tradition, they develop that with their own ideas and their own theologies, and they say someday God will resurrect every human being who has died. And every human being who has died will come back to life. Their bones will strap on flesh, they will have breath in their lungs again, and they will stand before God for one final ultimate judgment. That's what the Pharisees believed. And so you have Sadducees, the priestly class, they don't care about resurrection. They don't even talk about it. It's not a thing that they're involved in. You have the Pharisees, also a powerful class within Judaism, that does absolutely believe in resurrection. And so who's going to try to trap Jesus and what's the question they ask? Some of the Sadducees, the side who doesn't believe in 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. It's a way of making sure that families are taken care of if there is a widow within the village. Now there were seven brothers. Here's a silly example. The first one married a woman and died childless. The second, then and the third married her, and in the same way, all the way to the seventh, died, leaving no children. Finally, the woman died too. Now then, at the resurrection, you know, when she comes back to life and all seven of her husbands come back to life, who were married to her. Now then, at the resurrection, whose wife will she be since the seven were married to her? It's a way of turning up their nose on the Pharisees. How ridiculous is it that you think every human being who has ever lived is going to come back to life? That would create a lot of problems, wouldn't it? Lots of problems. And Jesus replied, Well, 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, already there's a question. You think you can so simply define the age to come? That's beyond your control. So 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 angels. They are God's children, since they are children of the resurrection. What he basically says is it's not gonna matter. The afterlife that you're so narrowly defining by the terms of this life will not be defined by those terms. The resurrection will be a kind of transformation, a kind of goodness and beauty and light, where whatever we thought marriage was back there, it won't even matter. You know, another way of thinking about that, I I walk with so many people who uh after a loved one dies, they come to me and they talk and they're so grieving and they're so sad. And they one of the most common phrases they say is, well, at least they're with their husband, or at least they're with their, they're reunited with their daughter. Or that so there are there are real things at stake when we talk about the afterlife, real human beings. I don't want to just brush by this with a silly question like you know the Sadducees were asking Jesus. They're trying to trap Jesus with a bad question.

SPEAKER_00 42:57

Now I want to ask a good question.

SPEAKER_01 43:02

What kind of heaven would it be if what Jesus appears to be saying here is like a person dies and they don't see their beloved? You know? If Joey were here, she's not gonna see Mikey, she's not gonna be married to Mike? Really? That was her husband, he died in bed with her. She loved him her whole life long and misses him still to this day. And you're telling me by this paradigm? No. I'm saying no to that. I'm saying whatever lacking that we're identifying with the grieving person reunited with a person, that won't be there. What Jesus is saying is people will not lack. There will be no more crying, there will be no more pain, there will be no more weeping and no more mourning. And that means everything good. That you could imagine about your loved one is true. And you will be united in a way beyond what you can possibly imagine with your loved one. And that is exactly what Jesus is saying. What he's saying is a silly question about who gets married lawfully, that is not even a thing. He swats that away like a fly. What he is saying is that side of life, when you go from the land of the living to the land of the dead, and then the God who brings dead things to life does God's work and brings dead things to life, then death won't be in the equation anymore. Mourning and crying and pain and our human systems, even, won't be a part of the equation anymore. What will be is goodness and light and God's steadfast love and God's glory. And it's entirely possible when I imagine that that I won't know my friends the way I knew my friends back there. Instead, I'll just see shimmering faces reflecting the very light of God. But I know that I won't miss people because that kind of incompleteness is not available when God's abiding love is fully consuming us. Does that make sense? It gets really weird. It gets really out there. We don't really understand or really know. But I don't like when people overinterpret what Jesus is saying and then say, like, well, you're not gonna know your spouse in heaven. That's not what he's saying. He's saying you will, and also it'll be better than you're imagining, right? Even better than you're imagining. Something that can buoy our spirits, fill us with hope and love and goodness. Uh a balm for the wound of grief. Does that make sense? They can no longer die, for they are like angels. This is a good future. This is a good, trustworthy after death future. They are God's children, since they are children of the resurrection, and God will love and take care of all God's children. All of humanity is God's children. Verse 37. But in the account of the burning bush, even Moses showed that the dead rise, for he calls the Lord the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob. He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive. Do you see what he's saying there? He goes back to the scriptures that the Sadducees claim to be their most holy scriptures. When does Moses encounter the burning bush? Is that in Isaiah or Ezekiel or Jonah?

SPEAKER_00 47:07

Exodus. It's in those first five books.

SPEAKER_01 47:13

Moses and the burning bush. And when Moses encounters the burning bush, he identifies this God as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, using present tense language. And Jesus is saying, God is not the God of the dead, God is the God of the living, i.e., Abraham and Isaac and Jacob cannot be simultaneously dead and separated from God and in a place of darkness, and also be with God. God is the God not of the dead, but of the living. It makes me walk away saying, Whoa, I don't understand what happens after we die, but I trust this that God is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive. I love that. I think about my grandpa Paul, named after Paul.

SPEAKER_00 48:22

To God, my grandpa Paul is alive.

SPEAKER_01 48:28

With God, Abraham Lincoln is alive. And Lincoln's little boy that he held in his arms, who was dead, is alive. And everyone throughout history, God loves us. God has no desire to abandon us to the grave. And so when we talk about death and resurrection, uh, we can splice the hairs, we can overanalyze, we can parse out verbs, but also we need to step back and just recognize there is profound mystery here. And there's an invitation to trust that God is not the God of dead ends and bad endings. God is the God where there is a good after the end. There is life beyond our categories of life. There is hope and there is love and there is mercy moving forward. Some of the teachers of the law responded, Well said, teacher, and no one dared to ask him any more questions. They keep coming to him to challenge him, to trap him. He keeps having really profound, thoughtful, challenging answers that we can't fully answer today, that we can't fully understand today, but they're worth listening to, aren't they? They're worth gleaming some wisdom to from. And that's where we leave it today. God in your wisdom, illuminate our hearts in the hearing of this word. Grace and peace, everybody.