Resurrection: What's it all about

“Our Lord has written the promise of resurrection, not in books alone, but in every leaf in springtime.” Attributed to Martin Luther:

Resurrection: What’s it all about. November 9 2025 Scripture: Luke 20:27–38

This week our nation pauses to remember and thank its veterans — women and men who have served and sacrificed, carrying the burdens of war. In their stories we hear both courage and cost, both devotion and deep longing for peace. Jesus’ words about “children of the resurrection” speak directly into that longing. They remind us that God’s final word for humanity is not conflict, but life.

As we move to our scripture today, I have to admit that it is quite complicated.

Lutheran pastor Kendra Mohl reminds us that for Luke, this conversation takes place amid political fear and loss. Resurrection is not just future hope — it’s the promise that even empires and death cannot cancel God’s justice.

We have in our text, The Sadducees coming to Jesus, not seeking truth but trying to trip him up. They present an absurd story: seven brothers, one woman, and a question — “In the resurrection, whose wife will she be?”

The Sadducees were mocking the very idea of life beyond death. The Sadducees were trying to trap Jesus in an argument about property and inheritance and to force him to expose how ludicrous the idea of resurrection is.

But Jesus refuses the trap. Instead, he lifts the conversation higher. With his response, Jesus demonstrates how it is, in fact, ludicrous to try to understand the resurrection in terms of this life. He asserts that the rules we put in place to deal with this world are not important, or even relevant, in the next one, because it is so fundamentally different from what we normally experience.

And this is exactly why I have trouble comprehending this. I am limited by human imagination.

The Sadducees were stuck thinking of heaven as a continuation of earthly systems — property, lineage, ownership. In Revelation 21:5 we read: He who is seated on the throne” said, Behold, 'I am making everything new!'" This is Jesus, speaking.

Jesus invites us to imagine something better, different: a world where love is purified, not erased. Where war does not exist. That promise, for us today, doesn’t erase the wounds of war, but it plants a deeper hope: that God’s reign of peace is already breaking in.

Yet, we still don’t have a clear answer to “In the resurrection, whose wife will she be.” Jesus responds, and it is confusing.

Jesus answers the Sadducees:

“Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are considered worthy of that age and the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage

Jesus first highlights Marriage is appropriate for those in “this” age but not in “that” one. But he points to something bigger here. It’s not just that people don’t need to be married in heaven, but that those who are children of the resurrection cannot die anymore. Indeed they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God.” (vv. 34-36)

For me, when Jesus says that in the resurrection we “neither marry nor are given in marriage,” it sounds disturbing. I wonder what this could mean?

This phrase distracts me from what Jesus says next. We are children of God, we are like angels, we cannot die any more. Because my immediate concern is  But will I still know the people I love? Will I still be part of my family?

The short answer, from Bishop Wright’s point of view, is “Yes — but more so. Kendra Mohl interprets Jesus’ answer as “expanding love beyond human boundaries.”

In this passage, Jesus is not rejecting our love for one another on this earth. But these relationships- marriage, birth, inheritance — belong to a world where death still exists and rules over us. In resurrection life, death no longer drives the story. We cannot die. We are children of God.

The love that is genuine now — the love that reflects God’s own — will remain, refined and widened. The family of God will include everyone. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob — they are alive to God. And so will we be.Resurrection life doesn’t cancel our human love; it completes it.

So when we picture resurrection life, we shouldn’t imagine a crowd of strangers. Our faith isn’t about leaving relationships behind; it’s about their transformation into something bigger, brighter, and eternal — what Paul calls “the fullness of love that never ends.” (1 Corinthians 13)

Jesus first tries to address the challenge of the Sadducees. Yet, the main goal seems to be expanding the conversation and our understanding, beyond the constraints of the present to a future not yet imagined.

Can we really imagine this? What is it like to live without the threat of death? What do you think?

My answer. Heaven

Because death is not the end, we can live with courage.

Because resurrection is real, we can love without fear of loss.

Resurrection isn’t just what happens later; it’s the power we live by now, because Jesus is now.

Jesus is calling us to imagine what it is like to live without the fear of death so that we can approach our lives differently. To not waste our energy in anxiety and fear, but to use our energy to live out and share the Gospel. Listen to what Jesus told Martha after her brother Lazarus has died in John 11:25-26

25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life.[a] Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, 26 and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”

That is the question. Do we believe what Jesus says? Or are we cafeteria Christians, picking and choosing what we believe. We say we believe in the Apostle’s Creed most Sundays. If we do it can change our lives.

Living as resurrection people, we can be confident, compassionate, fearless in hope. Because our God is the God of the living —and in God, all of us — are alive.

Amen