We are approaching the end, including the end of the Church Year. Towards the end of our Lord’s public ministry, people were gathering to try to discredit our Lord; religious leaders tried to trap Him. Tomorrow’s text is about one of these instances, but through it the Lord Jesus — before His glorious resurrection — taught about our resurrection, aboutyour resurrection.

This teaching, however, is not limited to impacting only your future, but also most definitely your NOW. There is law from Luke 20 to reveal what threatens you today; and there is amazing Gospel from Luke 20 to encourage and strengthen you today. I hope you’ll come to be fed through Word and Sacrament as you receive this sermon “The God of the Living” and the life-giving Holy Communion.

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In the face of the typhoon that has taken at least 1,200 lives in the Philippines, I reached out to and have already heard back from Rev. James Cerdenola, president of The Lutheran Church in the Philippines. The typhoon struck the central island of the three main islands where there are three LCP congregations. Please keep these in prayer. At tomorrow’s parish council meeting we will discuss how we might extend help to LCP.

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Dr. Charles Manske, the founding president of Concordia University Irvine (when it was founded as Christ College), preached before a packed-chapel at CUI yesterday. In his sermon he shared his diagnosis of pancreatic cancer and it was obvious that he was physically weak. However, he was amazingly strong in spirit and in the Holy Spirit! His proclamation was tremendously inspirational as he encouraged all of us to make the most of the short time we have here to serve the Lord and to share the Gospel. In the sermon he shared about the long process to establish the university. Against many odds, one of the first priorities he enacted was the formation of a prayer team. I sat there realizing that this is something we should be doing as we seek our own facility at Saint Paul’s. Effective immediately, I would like to form — apart from the site committee — a team whose sole focus is prayer for our future facility. 

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Our “stewardship program” has not been about time, treasures, and talents…the typical approach to many programs, but has been about our stewardship in the Word of Christ. My interest is for you to experience the benefit of being in the Word more often (which includes the possible formation of more Small Group Bible Studies). What might follow is to grow in our stewardship of vocation, thinking more about our service to the Lord in our everyday life, without putting more on your plate so that you can feel more religious. Let’s celebrate our vocations today: loving your spouse, your children, your grandchildren, your neighbors, your co-workers…these are the golden opportunities to love and share Christ’s Gospel right now…all of this comes as the Word of God fills us more and more.

Here is an excerpt from tomorrow’s sermon:

“The God of the Living” (Luke 20:27-40)

Twenty-five Sunday after Pentecost

Pastor Espinosa

 

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. We are quickly moving towards the end of the Church Year and today is the 25^th Sunday after Pentecost and also the third-to-last Sunday of the Church Year. Themes of the end are properly put before us and our Gospel this morning from Luke chapter 20 records some of the events before the end of our Lord’s public ministry. It seems surreal that the precious Son of God sent to save all people, full of love and mercy; full of compassion and grace would be attacked by so many trying to trip Him up, trap Him in his words, and discredit Him. The assaulters of the Lord line up in this section of Saint Luke’s Gospel. And though the scribes or Pharisees opposed the teaching of the chief priests or Sadducees; the two parties nevertheless found common ground in their goal to kill Jesus.

 

In our particular Gospel at Luke 20:27-40, it is the Sadducees who are taking their shot at Jesus. These particular Jews traced a proud lineage to the high priest under King David, they included lay people from wealthy and privileged families devoted to the temple cult and cut off from other Jews. At the same time they had a tendency to be “free thinkers” and “loose livers” (Lenski, 992), embracing Greek culture and were at the end of the day theological liberals. As a result of their weak Scriptural understanding they rejected the teaching of the bodily resurrection after death and they also rejected the teaching of the existence of angels, both of which of course are major teachings of the Christian faith.

 

Why would they reject such things? That’s a good question, but the ancient testimony of Ephrem the Syrian states that as “Sadducees” meant “the just [ones],” they had a tendency to take pride in their self-image that did not need a reward in order to trust in God (Ancient Christian Commentary, New Testament III, 312). Resurrection is a reward. It is also certainly true that angels are of great benefit.  The Sadducees prided themselves, however, on needing none of this. They were the just ones who believed in God without needing any reward or benefit!
That is to say they were very proud of themselves and it is this of course that is the basic reason for their rejecting Christ and the teaching of God’s Word. They considered themselves above the Lord and above His Word!

 

But the more specific explanation for their rejection of the resurrection is revealed in the way they tested Jesus as recorded in Luke 20. The basis for their hypothetical scenario about the woman and the seven brothers all of whom became her husband was for them to be able to ask Jesus a climatic question which they believed was unanswerable and would in the final analysis demonstrate why Jesus was not be followed: “In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be?”

 

Furthermore, the other characteristic of the Sadducees was to hold to the code of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old Testament, the books of Moses). Moses was authoritative, not Jesus. They had in mind Deuteronomy 25:5-6 which is part of the Mosaic Law that was simply given to not allow the dead, childless brother’s line to die out; the first son of the new marriage would be regarded as the dead man’s child and thus his name and heritage would be preserved. But the Sadducees stretched this teaching out to the extent that they made a grand assumption and this is the real problem revealed: they assumed that the conditions of this world dictate the conditions of the next. If all seven husbands rise from the dead, then you face a ludicrous situation because the woman would have seven husbands after the resurrection! They therefore rejected the bodily resurrection.

 

Fast forward to the 21^st century and you soaking all of this in today: In a way, who can blame us for feeling extraordinary detached from this text in God’s Word? After all, the last time I checked our church roster, none of us here are Sadducees and if you really are, then please see me after divine service, but wait a minute, it may be possible that all of us will need to see me after divine service and I’ll need to see my pastor this week as well. Why? Because it is clear that our sinful nature shares all of the key points of concern this Word of God reveals about the Sadducees:

 

1)      They were fundamentally proud and regardless of their peculiar cultural and biblical positions, their sinful nature is a reflection of our own: we look for ways to qualify God’s Word in order to justify ourselves…both our core beliefs and our core behaviors. Ancient Sadducees aren’t the only human beings who have ever done this. We do this whenever we decide that defending our pride is more important than following God’s Word. I once had a parishioner who did not remain a parishioner for long who very carefully and sincerely explained to me why it was ok for her to commit adultery since she loved the man she was having an affair with and did not in fact (feel) love for her husband. Our flesh engages in this insanity. We are all in this respect happy Sadducees by a different name in 21^st century America.

 

2)      But this isn’t the only way that we relate to their situation: once God’s Word is qualified to suit our own agenda: we miss out in the power of God that is intended to be known and lived out through His Word. For example when the teaching of the forgiveness of sins is embraced, we experience “the power” and the liberation to share that forgiveness with those who offend us, and even if they do not confess their sin — and we are forced to wait until we can give absolution — we can still rid ourselves of the bitterness in our hearts and forgive them in our hearts as we pray this liberating power coming from our Living Lord who forgives us every day: “and forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.” But when we change the Word, we forsake its power. In the case of the Sadducees, their pride against God’s Word caused them to reject the resurrection! Does this happen anymore? I would like to suggest that it happens more often than we care to admit. No, we cannot say that this is always the manifestation of the sinful flesh, but it is certainly a very common one, because to reject the resurrected Christ is to accept compromises of what happens after death.