Sermon for November 9, 2025
Pentecost 22 C
Luke 20:27-38
Rev. Karl-John N. Stone
I had a professor in seminary, Walt Bouman. Dr. Bouman was famous among students for many reasons, but one of them was that he loved to read mystery novels. The thing is, he always read the end of the novel first! You’re probably thinking “wouldn’t that ruin the whole story?” But Dr. Bouman didn’t see it like that. Rather than ruining the story for him, his method opened up a whole new way of understanding and enjoying the mystery. When you know the end ahead of time, you can see how the story’s author drops hints along the way about how the mystery will unfold. Details that seem important in the moment might end up leading nowhere. Other details that seem minor might end up being the key to the whole thing. When you already know the end ahead of time, you’re better able to see how the author is unwrapping the mystery—things that you might have missed otherwise.
Dr. Bouman’s unusual reading method is actually a pretty good analogy of what Jesus is up to in today’s gospel. The Sadducees are “reading” life as if they are in the middle of a great mystery, and they think they’ve got it all figured out. The way Jesus responds to them, it’s like he’s saying “you’ve got yourselves caught up in something that seems really important, but it doesn’t really take the story towards its conclusion. And along the way you’ve missed what looks like a minor detail—but that little thing is what will really unwrap the mystery!”
But why does Jesus even have this conflict with the Sadducees? And why at this point in Luke’s gospel? Well, just a few days before their conversation, Jesus had entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, riding on a donkey. And soon after that he kicked the moneychangers out of the Temple saying, “my house shall be a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of robbers”. And for the icing on the cake, “all the people were spellbound by what they heard him saying.” Meanwhile, the Sadducees themselves were the ones in charge of the Temple! Of course they were mad at Jesus! He was criticizing them. And to top it off, one of the things Jesus talked about with his disciples (although they didn’t quite understand it) was the promise of his resurrection. The Sadducees, on the other hand, didn’t believe in the resurrection because they only accepted the “5 Books of Moses”—the first 5 books of the bible—as being authoritative for their faith, and resurrection is not mentioned there. At least not directly. But Jesus—knowing how the story will turn out—catches a little detail in the story of Moses that turns out to be a key that is easily overlooked.
In the story about the burning bush, Moses hears a message from God coming from the bush: “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob”. Of course, these three ancestors in faith had died long before Moses ever came along. But, Jesus tells the Sadducees, notice that God says “I am” their God, not “I was” their God. So, what is the point of that little turn of phrase? Even though they have died, in God all of them are still somehow alive. The living God brings life out of death! I am their God…not I was their God: and in even that little detail, we see a hints of where God’s plan is leading, and how those hints often come hidden in things that seem small and insignificant.
The Sadducees are also trying to make Jesus look foolish, asking him to answer a ridiculous question about levirate marriage. Levirate marriage was the practice in those days where a widow, if she died childless leaving no heir or child to care for her in her old age, she was supposed to marry her husband’s brother. This custom seems…strange, at best, to us and would not work in the present day to say the least. But in the culture of that time, this was a way for widows to avoid living in utter poverty. But the Sadducees are not really interested in the reasons behind this custom, as much as they want to present a hypothetical case study and take it to an absurd level—implying that the hope of resurrection Jesus promises is also absurd.
Jesus avoids their trap by answering with his version of Dr. Bouman’s “read the end of the mystery novel first” method. The Sadducees are looking at things as if no change is possible. As if this life is all there could possibly be, and that the way things are now is the way they will always have to be. As Jesus answers them, he’s basically saying “look—resurrection is not about life as you’ve always known it simply continuing forever in the way you’ve always experienced it. Instead it’s something completely new, yet still in continuity with what’s come before. And you can only begin to get a feel for what God’s promise of resurrection is about by looking at the end of the story first.”
And the end of the story God is writing in our lives is also the beginning of an entirely new story that’s fulfilled in the risen Christ. Trying to wrap our minds around what exactly this resurrection life looks like stretches the limits of our imagination and assumptions. It’s not simply “going to heaven when you die” though that is a wonderful part of the journey. It’s not simply being reunited with our dear departed loved ones, even though yes, they will also be a wonderful part of the journey. Whatever resurrection is, it involves your whole self; everything that makes you who God created you to be will be fulfilled. And it will be something we’ve never fully experienced before, and won’t experience in full until we get there.
In the meantime Jesus drops hints, and these hints help us catch fleeting glimpses of resurrection life ahead of time. When we see a community where people are being welcomed as they are, loved for who they are, cared for according to their need, fed so that no one goes hungry, and where everyone has enough—there Jesus is dropping hints about the end, ahead of time.
When we see examples of each person you meet being honored and valued as a beloved child of God, who’s been created in God’s own image—there Jesus is dropping hints about the end, ahead of time. When we see people reaching out across their differences to build relationships, offer and receive forgiveness, and seek redemption for the broken places of life and the world—there Jesus is dropping hints about the end, ahead of time. When we realize that there’s more to living a meaningful life than simply trying to preserve “what’s mine”, and we respond to human need with compassion and generosity—there Jesus is dropping hints about the end, ahead of time.
But even though the fulfillment of resurrection in Christ is a promise that we are waiting for in the future, it is also something that God allows us to begin living in today—as the Holy Spirit inspires our faith, and our faith allows us to trade fear of death for the embrace of life that is rooted in love. Because that is the end of the story—and that is what Jesus is letting us in on ahead of time. Amen.