Rochester, MN UCC - "To Him They Are All Alive" - Luke 20:27-38
Like many folks today, the Sadducees didn’t believe in the resurrection. They viewed it as an odd, late, and unfortunate addition to Jewish belief. The Sadducees believed in the Torah, the books of Moses, and they found no evidence there for the resurrection of the dead. Theirs was a this-worldly faith, focused on the laws God had given them to follow in the here and now. There are Christians today who feel quite similarly- folks who are happy to follow Jesus as a teacher, and find all the supernatural resurrection stuff to be a bit much. I think following the teachings of Jesus is important; so important that I spend my life encouraging people to do so. It's for exactly this reason that I think it's worth considering what Jesus taught the Sadducees about the resurrection of the dead.
Jesus responds to a question from the Sadducees about the resurrection by saying, “And the fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed, in the story about the bush, where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Now he is God not of the dead but of the living, for to him all of them are alive." By the time of the burning bush, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, have all been dead for generations. Yet Jesus insists that these patriarchs are “alive to God.” This language is reminiscent of Paul’s words in Romans 6 when he speaks of being “dead to sin, and alive to Christ Jesus.” Paul is talking of the new life that he has found in Jesus Christ. He has left behind his old life: he has died to sin. At the same time, he has found a new life, a life of a totally different order and kind: the eternal life of God made available to him through the risen life of Jesus Christ. Paul is “alive to Christ Jesus,” in that Jesus is the source of his union and new life with God. Later in Romans chapter 8, Paul confidently declares that nothing, not even death itself, could ever separate him from the love of God in Jesus Christ. Just as Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, are alive to God, so too will Paul ever remain alive to God in the eternal risen life of Christ Jesus.
The resurrection is the promise that nothing in this world or the next will separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ. It may be an odd belief, but it is hardly incidental or unimportant. The resurrection of the dead is the belief that your salvation is real. You have been saved from sin and death. You are being joined in love to the eternal life of God in Jesus Christ. You can experience, and relish, and grow in the life of Christ here and now. And you can trust that God’s love for you and desire to share life with you is not for this life only; it is for all of eternity. May we all grow in our faith in the depth and breadth of God’s love and may we come together with joy this Sunday to celebrate the joyous good news of the resurrection. Amen.
Rev. Andrew Greenhaw