Sunday, November 9, 2025
First Congregational Church of Cheshire
© the Rev. Dr. James Campbell
Luke 20: 27-38
Some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came to him and asked him a question: “Teacher, 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. Now there were seven brothers; the first married a woman and died childless; then the second and the third married her, and so in the same way all seven died childless. Finally, the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her.”
Jesus said to them, “Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage, but 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. Indeed, they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection. 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.”
What do you think of when you hear the phrase “family values?” Does it make you feel like an insider or an outsider?
The folks who first came up with that phrase were trying to emphasize a traditional and relatively modern view of what makes a family. And they often pointed to the Bible as the basis of their definition of what a traditional family should look like.
But if you read the Bible seriously (which, by the way, I highly recommend), then you are going to hard pressed to find family values that are even remotely related to what we understand today. Instead, in the pages of our holy book, we find God’s people engaged in things like plural marriages, relations with concubines, daughters bought and sold like property. Those were their family values.
Those values are front and center in the Gospel lesson of the day. And like today, folks on one side of the argument were using their definition of family values to score major political points.
But before we get there, we need to understand who the players are. In the Judaism of Jesus’s day, the clerics were divided into two major parties: the Pharisees and the Sadducees. The Sadducees were the priestly class who controlled the Temple rituals. They were sticklers for proper liturgy and worship. And when it came to what books they viewed as the word of God, they were very conservative in their approach. The Sadducees only accepted the first five books of Moses: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. Collectively these five books are known as the Pentateuch. And since the Pentateuch makes no mention of life after death, the Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection.
The Pharisees were the scholars of the Law, parsing its meaning and seeing to its application in daily life. And the Pharisees did accept other books as being part of Scripture – books like the Prophets and Psalms. And since those other books do refer to a life beyond this life, the Pharisees believed in the concept of Resurrection. And so did Jesus.
And this made the Sadducees nervous because Jesus was very popular. People traveled great distances to listen to Jesus teach. And so, the Sadducees decided to lay a theological trap for Jesus and to expose him in front of the adoring crowds, and thus to score one for their team.
In a sly move worthy of any modern politician, the Sadducees got Jesus into a public place. Then they posed what they thought was a difficult question and waited for him to misspeak so that they could pounce.
They referenced a Law of Moses that states that if a man dies childless, his brother should marry the widow and have children with her. In that way, the dead brother’s name would live on, and the wife would continue to be provided for. It’s not exactly a modern feminist model but remember that childless widows were often left to fend for themselves, having no rights to their dead husband’s estate.
So, the spokesman for the Sadducees said: “Rabbi Jesus, there was a woman who had a husband, but one day the husband died and there were no children from the union. So, according to the Law, the husband’s brother married the widow. But he died too, and there were no children from that union either. Then the third brother married her and died, same story. And on and on it went, all seven brothers marrying her, all dying childless and then finally the woman died.” (Probably from exhaustion!) “So, Jesus,” he said, “in the resurrection, whose wife will she be, for all seven had married her?”
The crowd fell silent. This was the moment of truth. All ears were tuned to hear what Jesus would say in regard to family values and the age to come.
But Jesus was very adept at slipping out of other people’s traps. And instead of answering the question they posed, Jesus told them that they didn’t even begin to understand what they were asking. He told them that they were using the Scriptures to justify what they already wanted to believe – which is never a good way to use the Bible.
“So, Jesus, whose wife will she be?”
And Jesus replied, “No one’s! Because in the age to come marriage will be superfluous. In the age to come, people won’t marry, and no one will be given away in marriage. It will be beside the point because we’ll all be like angels, children of God, children of the resurrection.”
Well, what on earth was that supposed to mean?
Well, first of all, we must remember that in Jesus’ day, a woman had no rights. A woman was a second-class citizen at best. Women were bought and sold. Women could not inherit money or property. And everyone assumed that this was the will of God.
But Jesus turned their whole worldview and their sincerely held religious beliefs on their heads.
“This woman won’t belong to anyone,” Jesus declared. “Instead, she will be on equal footing before God. No one will own her. No one will give her away. She will not be called by her husband’s name. Instead, she will have her own name; her true name: a child of God, a child of the resurrection.
Well, I’m not sure that Jesus changed any Sadducee minds that day. Political arguments rarely change anybody’s mind. Have you noticed? But maybe Jesus wasn’t even really talking to the Sadducees at all.
Maybe all of this political theater was for the benefit of that one woman, on the edge of the crowd that day, who before that very moment had never considered herself as having any worth on her own. Or maybe Jesus was talking to that widow right there in the front, dressed in rags, who had been left on her own to beg and to borrow just to survive. Maybe Jesus’s words fell on the ears of a disabled man who would never get married because of the way he was born. Or maybe those words were for that childless couple who had lost all hope of ever having a family. Or maybe it was the gay man in the crowd that day, or the foreigner, or the outsider. Maybe, for all of those folks, this was the first time they had ever thought of themselves as individuals, and as having invaluable worth.
What happened that day was a manifesto of the values of the Kingdom of God. And what Jesus said that day is the message of his church. Because friends, this world is still full of people on the edge, on the margins, excluded, unseen unheard. Maybe you are one of them.
And if the church doesn’t tell folks who they really are, who will? If the church doesn’t speak and work and sacrifice for the full humanity of every single human, who will? If the church does not march and protest and use our considerable influence for the good of the least, the last, and the lost, who will? Who will tell the people that they are Children of the Resurrection?
First Congregational Church of Cheshire
© the Rev. Dr. James Campbell
Luke 20: 27-38
Some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came to him and asked him a question: “Teacher, 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. Now there were seven brothers; the first married a woman and died childless; then the second and the third married her, and so in the same way all seven died childless. Finally, the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her.”
Jesus said to them, “Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage, but 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. Indeed, they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection. 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.”
What do you think of when you hear the phrase “family values?” Does it make you feel like an insider or an outsider?
The folks who first came up with that phrase were trying to emphasize a traditional and relatively modern view of what makes a family. And they often pointed to the Bible as the basis of their definition of what a traditional family should look like.
But if you read the Bible seriously (which, by the way, I highly recommend), then you are going to hard pressed to find family values that are even remotely related to what we understand today. Instead, in the pages of our holy book, we find God’s people engaged in things like plural marriages, relations with concubines, daughters bought and sold like property. Those were their family values.
Those values are front and center in the Gospel lesson of the day. And like today, folks on one side of the argument were using their definition of family values to score major political points.
But before we get there, we need to understand who the players are. In the Judaism of Jesus’s day, the clerics were divided into two major parties: the Pharisees and the Sadducees. The Sadducees were the priestly class who controlled the Temple rituals. They were sticklers for proper liturgy and worship. And when it came to what books they viewed as the word of God, they were very conservative in their approach. The Sadducees only accepted the first five books of Moses: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. Collectively these five books are known as the Pentateuch. And since the Pentateuch makes no mention of life after death, the Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection.
The Pharisees were the scholars of the Law, parsing its meaning and seeing to its application in daily life. And the Pharisees did accept other books as being part of Scripture – books like the Prophets and Psalms. And since those other books do refer to a life beyond this life, the Pharisees believed in the concept of Resurrection. And so did Jesus.
And this made the Sadducees nervous because Jesus was very popular. People traveled great distances to listen to Jesus teach. And so, the Sadducees decided to lay a theological trap for Jesus and to expose him in front of the adoring crowds, and thus to score one for their team.
In a sly move worthy of any modern politician, the Sadducees got Jesus into a public place. Then they posed what they thought was a difficult question and waited for him to misspeak so that they could pounce.
They referenced a Law of Moses that states that if a man dies childless, his brother should marry the widow and have children with her. In that way, the dead brother’s name would live on, and the wife would continue to be provided for. It’s not exactly a modern feminist model but remember that childless widows were often left to fend for themselves, having no rights to their dead husband’s estate.
So, the spokesman for the Sadducees said: “Rabbi Jesus, there was a woman who had a husband, but one day the husband died and there were no children from the union. So, according to the Law, the husband’s brother married the widow. But he died too, and there were no children from that union either. Then the third brother married her and died, same story. And on and on it went, all seven brothers marrying her, all dying childless and then finally the woman died.” (Probably from exhaustion!) “So, Jesus,” he said, “in the resurrection, whose wife will she be, for all seven had married her?”
The crowd fell silent. This was the moment of truth. All ears were tuned to hear what Jesus would say in regard to family values and the age to come.
But Jesus was very adept at slipping out of other people’s traps. And instead of answering the question they posed, Jesus told them that they didn’t even begin to understand what they were asking. He told them that they were using the Scriptures to justify what they already wanted to believe – which is never a good way to use the Bible.
“So, Jesus, whose wife will she be?”
And Jesus replied, “No one’s! Because in the age to come marriage will be superfluous. In the age to come, people won’t marry, and no one will be given away in marriage. It will be beside the point because we’ll all be like angels, children of God, children of the resurrection.”
Well, what on earth was that supposed to mean?
Well, first of all, we must remember that in Jesus’ day, a woman had no rights. A woman was a second-class citizen at best. Women were bought and sold. Women could not inherit money or property. And everyone assumed that this was the will of God.
But Jesus turned their whole worldview and their sincerely held religious beliefs on their heads.
“This woman won’t belong to anyone,” Jesus declared. “Instead, she will be on equal footing before God. No one will own her. No one will give her away. She will not be called by her husband’s name. Instead, she will have her own name; her true name: a child of God, a child of the resurrection.
Well, I’m not sure that Jesus changed any Sadducee minds that day. Political arguments rarely change anybody’s mind. Have you noticed? But maybe Jesus wasn’t even really talking to the Sadducees at all.
Maybe all of this political theater was for the benefit of that one woman, on the edge of the crowd that day, who before that very moment had never considered herself as having any worth on her own. Or maybe Jesus was talking to that widow right there in the front, dressed in rags, who had been left on her own to beg and to borrow just to survive. Maybe Jesus’s words fell on the ears of a disabled man who would never get married because of the way he was born. Or maybe those words were for that childless couple who had lost all hope of ever having a family. Or maybe it was the gay man in the crowd that day, or the foreigner, or the outsider. Maybe, for all of those folks, this was the first time they had ever thought of themselves as individuals, and as having invaluable worth.
What happened that day was a manifesto of the values of the Kingdom of God. And what Jesus said that day is the message of his church. Because friends, this world is still full of people on the edge, on the margins, excluded, unseen unheard. Maybe you are one of them.
And if the church doesn’t tell folks who they really are, who will? If the church doesn’t speak and work and sacrifice for the full humanity of every single human, who will? If the church does not march and protest and use our considerable influence for the good of the least, the last, and the lost, who will? Who will tell the people that they are Children of the Resurrection?
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