A Sermon Prepared by the Rev. Jeffrey A. Packard	For the congregation of Christ Church, Spotsylvania, Virginia
To Be Delivered on November 11, 2007	On the Occasion of the Twenty-fourth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 27C

Text: Luke 20:27-38

Eternal Inheritance

The Sadducees try to catch Jesus in a verbal trap. One of the major sects within Judaism at the turn of the century, the Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection of the dead, or in angels. Paul exploited this difference between sects when he was taken before the council of the chief priests in the book of Acts. He noticed that some of them were Sadducees and some were Pharisees and he got them to argue with each other about the matter of resurrection.

In our Gospel reading today, the Sadducees that were listening to Jesus ask him a question. It is a detailed question on the fine points of Moses’ law, one worthy of debate in any law school. It may sound to us like a silly question about men marrying their brother’s widow, but it was an important matter. The transmittal of property from one generation to the next was not just a legal issue, it was a theological one. Notice how the question is put. “Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies, leaving a wife but no children, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother…” Knowing what we do about how genetic material is passed from father to child, we know that it is impossible for an uncle to “raise up children for” his brother. They would be his children, of course. But the point is that the family land would have passed from father to son. If the man dies with no sons, he has no heirs. It was the brother’s family duty to provide heirs for his brother’s land. The question of land and inheritance was about following God’s will.

Remember the source of the land we are talking about. This was land that had been promised to Abraham generations ago. God had called him to leave his family and his land to go to a land that God would show him. And, in faith, that is what Abraham did. God showed him the land that he would give him and his descendants. The promise of descendants was a significant one too, for this couple who was too old to have children of their own. But God came through on both of those promises. He gave Abraham a place, the promised land, and a future, generations and generations, a whole nation of people. The tribes of the twelve sons of Israel finally took possession of the land and settled there. Each tribe was given its land, each family within each tribe was given its land. So the stewardship of that land was a sacred trust, and its ownership could never change. Even if the land was sold, it would eventually return to the original family that owned it. That was what the jubilee year was about every fifty years: debts were forgiven and land was returned.

So you see the question of land, its ownership, and its transmission from generation to generation was a very important one. It was the land that God had given to fulfill his promise. It was holy land. Still, the question was indeed meant to trip Jesus up. It’s the kind of complicated, hypothetical question a teenager might ask to test the soundness of the rules he’s been given.

The first thing Jesus does is reject the premise of the question. Marriage is a matter for this world, not the next. For, “those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage.” Jesus, in his response, assumes that there is a life available after this life, in fact he suggests that only those who are worthy will have a place there.

As it turns out, this really is a question of land inheritance, but the Sadducees have missed the point entirely. They are so focused on this world, and the land they can feel under their feet, that they have missed the true fulfillment of the promise to Abraham. The promised land is something beyond our reach in this life. Like Moses, we may only get a glimpse of it while we walk in this world. But by our faith we are assured a place there.

Jesus’ final point is the most convincing one. He throws Moses back in their faces by quoting him at the burning bush where he writes that God is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. How could this be if all of them were dead to God? They were all certainly dead at that time, but to God they were all alive. “He is God not of the dead, but of the living.”

By focusing on the things of this world –land and its inheritance, marriage, not to mention their attempts to hold onto their own power and wealth by tripping up Jesus– the Sadducees have been found unworthy of a place in the resurrection with God. Their lack of faith has doomed them to living for this world only, and they are of all most to be pitied. They themselves are dead, spiritually dead, and dead to the God of the living. They have deprived themselves of the promises that they claim to be the inheritors of. They have their place in this world, but not in the next. They have their future through their own flesh and family, but have been cut off from eternity.

The God that Jesus proclaims is the God of this world and the next. He proved in his own resurrection that God is more powerful than death. He places before us the choice: life or death, and he begs us to choose life. By believing in and following Jesus we do choose life. He has promised to return and take us to where he is, with his Father, where a special place has been prepared just for us. That is the promised land, the holy land that we seek. As we commit ourselves to this belief and work in this life we are welcomed into the nearer presence of God. We are given life by the God of the living, abundant life, eternal life.

AMEN