Family is important. It’s also a part of the Covenant that God made with Abraham: he’ll be the father of many nations. So, why is it a good thing when the lady in today’s reading doesn’t have children?
The Temple authorities, the Sadducees, try to trap Jesus.
They don’t believe in a resurrection, so they think they can trap Jesus with a question about a woman who doesn’t have any children and many husbands.
In other words, they were thinking about God’s promise to Abraham.
If this woman doesn’t have any children, then how is God fulfilling his promise? After all, Jesus says that God is doing what he said he would do through him.
But, how?
Jesus turns the tables on them: God isn’t fulfilling his promise through biological means.
Instead, one becomes a member of God’s family through faith. It’s by trusting in Jesus one is made a child of God and has Abraham as his or her father.
After all, Isaac, Abraham’s son wasn’t even begotten biologically. Instead of the normal “and the husband knew his wife” language we find in scripture, it says that Isaac is born because God did what he said he would do.
Isaac, in other words, is the son of the promise.
So, the Sadducees were wrong.
God’s Covenant isn’t fulfilled through biological means.
Instead, it’s fulfilled through faith. One is resurrected into God’s family.
And this means everyone is invited into the Kingdom!
The Reading
And some of the Sadducees, those who speak against the reality of the resurrection, approached and questioned him, Saying, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if anyone’s brother dies having a wife, and this brother is childless, that his brother should take his wife and raise up seed for his brother. Now there were seven brothers; and the first, having taken a wife, died childless, And the second And the third took her, and in the same way the seven left no children behind and died. Lastly the woman died also. The woman, then, in the resurrection will become the wife of which of them?” And Jesus said to them, “The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage, But those accounted worthy of sharing in that Age and in the resurrection of the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, For they cannot even die any more, for they are the equals of angels, for they are God’s sons, being sons of the resurrection. But that the dead are raised even Moses reported in regard to the bush, as he calls the Lord the God of Abraham and God of Isaac and God of Jacob, But he is God not of the dead but of the living; for to him all are alive.” And in reply some of the scribes said, “Teacher, you speak well.” For they did not again dare to ask him anything.And he said to them, “How is it that they say the Anointed is David’s son? For David himself says in the book of Psalms, ‘The Lord said to my lord, “Sit at my right, Until I set your enemies as a footstool for your feet.”’ David then calls him ‘Lord,’ so how is he his son?” (Luke 20:27-44)
Interesting.
“. . .it’s fulfilled through faith.”
I work at a library, and just this very day two books have come across my path. They both attempt to convey the massage that “we must use our reason and not faith. Faith is for those who do not use their reasoning capabilities.”
Basically we are stupid if we don’t believe totally in evolution, that chance created everything. We are stupid if we have a faith that says things were created by a larger, more powerful being, a being who loves us and wishes us to be with him through all eternity.
Faith in Christ, faith in the Triune God, gives way more purpose to the meaning of life than does faith in the evolutionary chance theory. For the chance theory (evolution) dictates that we’re on this Earth a measly 70-80 odds years. After that nothing, nada, no existence anywhere. If life is merely that, what point is it to do anything productive, to give any kind of kindness to others, to show mercy. Why not just grab everything you can in this short, meaningless life if that is all life is.
Faith in our Triune God makes us His children, as Father Dustin was telling us, children of a spectacularly loving and merciful God. Faith gives the true purpose of life, the true reason for life. It changes lives, and that can be historically proven. In faith we use our reasoning powers to bring comfort, mercy, love, and even beauty to others. All because we are trying to live lives that closely resemble the life of Christ Jesus, The True Man and the True God. His life shows why we live in faith, to live lives that hopefully attract others to Christ, then they can also share in the love of God and in eternal life.
Amen!