Grace to you and
peace from our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen
The text for our meditation is
written in the 20th Chapter of the Gospel according to St Luke:
Verses 27 – 40:
27 There came to him some Sadducees, those who deny that there is a
resurrection, 28 and 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. 29 Now
there were seven brothers. The first took a wife, and died without children. 30 And
the second 31 and the third took her, and likewise all
seven left no children and died. 32 Afterward the woman
also died. 33 In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife
will the woman be? For the seven had her as wife.”
34 And Jesus
said to them, “The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage, 35 but those who are considered worthy to attain to that age
and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage,
36 for they cannot die
anymore, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of
the resurrection. 37 But
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. 38 Now he is
not God of the dead, but of the living, for all live to him.” 39 Then
some of the scribes answered, “Teacher, you have spoken well.” 40 For
they no longer dared to ask him any question.
One of the gifts that the Holy
Spirit gives to Christians is the ability to understand the Scriptures. Unbelievers do not have this gift … as the
Holy Spirit inspired the Apostle Paul to write: [2 Corinthians 3:13–16] “We are not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face to
prevent the Israelites from seeing the end of what was passing away. 14 But
their minds were made dull, for to this day the same veil remains when the old
covenant is read. It has not been removed, because only in Christ is it taken
away. 15 Even to this day when Moses is read, a veil
covers their hearts. 16 But whenever anyone turns to the
Lord, the veil is taken away.”
The Holy Spirit also inspired Luke the Evangelist to describe the
teaching of Jesus with these words: [Luke
24:45] “Then [Jesus] opened their minds to understand the Scriptures.”
So we see that believers have minds that are
open to understanding the Scriptures and unbelievers have veiled minds toward
the Scriptures. Today’s Gospel
demonstrates the lies that the veiled mind can believe when it rejects the
teachings of the Bible.
In past readings the
Gospel according to Luke has introduced us to the veiled mind of the
Pharisee. The Pharisees had developed a
group of laws called the Tradition of the Elders. The Tradition of the Elders had over six
hundred laws based on the Laws of Moses found in Holy Scripture. At first, it might seem that the Pharisees
were making things harder than they needed to be. In fact, a careful examination of these
traditions exposes them as loop-holes.
These loop-holes gave the Pharisees the impression that they could earn
their own way into heaven.
Today’s Gospel records an
encounter between Jesus and a different group … the Sadducees. The Sadducees were very different from the
Pharisees. Instead of trying to work
their way into heaven, the Sadducees simply denied the existence of life after
death. The Sadducees denied the
existence of heaven, hell, angels, and most of the other things that belong in
the spiritual realm. They pretty much
believed that this life is all that there is.
Under ordinary circumstances, the
Pharisees and the Sadducees did not get along.
The Pharisees were busy earning their way into heaven and the Sadducees
were always trying to show that there is no heaven. Both of these groups were wrong and both of
them show the veiled thinking of those who reject the teachings of Holy
Scripture.
The encounter in today’s Gospel
is part of the account of Jesus in the temple just a few days before He died on
the cross. The temple authorities had
already decided that Jesus must die.
They just didn’t quite know how to arrest Jesus without causing a riot
among the Passover Pilgrims. For the
time being they were sending various delegations to Jesus to see if they could
get Him to make some sort of mistake that would lower His standing among the
people. If they could embarrass Him in
front of the people, then perhaps, they could arrest Him without incident. As Jesus taught in the temple, many tried to
embarrass Him in debate, but they the only thing they managed to do was
embarrass themselves. So far, no one had
been able to trip Jesus up. Today’s
Gospel tells of the last group who came to the debate with Jesus … the
Sadducees.
The Sadducees tried to show that
eternity does not make sense based on the teaching of traditional levirate
marriage. Levirate marriage has nothing
to do with the tribe of Levi. Instead,
it is part of the social and economic safety net in that culture. It was also a statute that Moses had
established for the Nation of Israel. If
a husband died without an heir, the nearest male relative was to take the widow
as his wife. The first heir born to this
union would become the legal heir of the dead husband. Ordinarily, the nearest male relative was a
brother to the dead husband. In this
way, the name and property of the dead husband would be preserved into the next
generation.
The Sadducees come up with a
rather wild hypothetical circumstance about seven brothers who are in turn
married to the same woman by virtue of the statute of levirate marriage. Then they ask Jesus to determine which
brother will be the woman’s husband in eternity.
Their question demonstrated the
veil that covered their mind. They
simply assumed that life in eternity would be the same as life is here in
time. They were unable to grasp the idea
that eternity might be totally different than their experience here on this
earth.
Many people still have this
problem today. They may not even know
what levirate marriage is, but they still tend to make up their own truth based
on their own ideas and feelings. We hear
people say something like, “A loving god wouldn’t really let people suffer in
hell forever.” Then they try to come up
with alternative ideas. “Maybe there
isn’t a hell.” “Maybe we only suffer in
hell for a short time and then all people go to heaven.” Some people promise their followers that they
will become gods in their own right and rule over their own planet. All of this is just the imagination of those
who reject Scripture. Their problem is
that they are trying to learn about eternity based on their experience in this
world of time. They are stuck because
their minds are covered by a veil just as much as the Sadducees who challenged
Jesus. This is nothing other than the
blind leading the blind.
The worst thing about our veiled
minds is that they do not just affect us here in time, but they also affect us
for eternity. The Word of God teaches
that our veiled minds place us under the power of the devil. It teaches that our veiled minds deliver us
up to sin, death, and everlasting condemnation.
It teaches that those who live with veiled minds in time will suffer
forever in eternity.
We all begin our life in time
with a veil over our minds. This is the
sad reality of our inheritance of sin from Adam and Eve. When they sinned in Eden, they corrupted the
human race. We enter this world with minds that are already veiled. We are stuck with veiled minds until someone
or something comes to remove the veil … to open our minds to understand the
Scriptures.
The only one who can open our
minds is the one who comes from eternity into our time; God the Holy Spirit. It
is only through Holy Baptism does the Holy Spirit open our minds to the truth
that Jesus Christ is the eternal Son of God who entered our time by taking on
our human flesh. He is the one who gives
us true understanding of the message of the Holy Scriptures.
Jesus replied to the Sadducees by
reminding them of the instructions that God gave, not only to Adam and Eve, but
also to Noah and his family: [Genesis
1:28; Genesis 9:1] “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.” The primary objective of marriage is to
propagate the human race. The husband
and wife are not only to produce children, but the husband is to sacrifice
himself for the well-being of his wife and children so that his children will
grow up in a God-pleasing, loving, nurturing, and safe environment. (Ephesians 5:25) The wife in turn is to
receive her husband’s service with thanksgiving and respect (Ephesians 5:22) so that parents may
work together to bring their children up in the discipline and instruction of
the Lord. (Ephesians 6:4)
Since the human race multiplies
here in time, the role of marriage is fulfilled here in time. There is no need for marriage in
eternity. The Sadducees elaborate
scenario is irrelevant. It is a groundless
hypothetical case. It simply shows how
their minds are veiled.
Jesus then went on to answer their
theory with Scriptural truth. He
demonstrated the reasonable nature of the resurrection from the dead. He recalled the words that He spoke to Moses
from the burning bush. The pre-incarnate
Son of God spoke to Moses and said, “I am
the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of
Jacob.” Then Jesus proclaimed that
the true God is God of the living, not the God of the dead. With these words, He not only refuted the
Sadducees question, but He also showed that their rejection of the resurrection
did not make sense given how God identified Himself to Moses.
Just a few days after this debate
with the Sadducees, Jesus would demonstrate the reality of the resurrection by
rising from the dead Himself. Jesus is
the only figure in all of history to predict not only His death, but also His
resurrection from the dead. Jesus
regularly and clearly taught that evil men would arrest Him and kill Him. It is not all that unusual for a martyr to
predict his own death. But the promise
that Jesus then gave was unusual. He
promised that He would rise from the dead and He kept His promise.
The temple authorities were never
able to embarrass Jesus in debate, but they did get their wish. One of Jesus’ own disciples, Judas, offered
to betray Jesus to them. Finally, they
had a way to arrest Jesus without causing a riot. Judas betrayed Jesus into their hands. They quickly convicted Jesus in a “kangaroo
court,” and backed the Roman governor into a political corner so that on the
Friday after Jesus encountered the Sadducees, He was hanging on a cross. As He hung on that cross, He paid for the
sins that veil our minds. He redeemed us
from the power of the devil and claimed us as His own. He surrendered His life to save us from
eternal death.
Then, on the first day of the week,
He demonstrated the truth of the resurrection.
He rose from the dead and showed Himself to His disciples. With His resurrection, He demonstrated that
He is indeed the God of the living. He
gave us the eternal promise that those who die in Him will rise again and live
with Him forever. We who trust in Jesus
have already joined Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Though we die, we shall live again with Jesus in eternity. Amen
The love and peace of our Great
Triune God that is beyond all human understanding. Keep your hearts and minds
in Christ Jesus. Amen
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