God of the Living, a sermon based on Luke 20: 27-38, preached on November 9, 2025

Do you know any annoying people? People who really get on your nerves because they can’t stop moving their legs up and down? Or who chew too loudly? When I’m hiking on Kennesaw Mountain, trying to enjoy the peace and quiet, I get annoyed by the people who play music on their speakers. Do you know who I’m talking about? Why do they do that? Maybe, though, they get annoyed by people who walk around in kilts pretending to be from Scotland. What annoys you? What do people do that gets on your nerves? One of the things that most annoys me is when someone asks me a question that’s actually a test. Do you know what I mean by that? For example, when someone asks you, “Who’d you vote for?” it’s not because they’re curious. It’s because they want to know whose side you’re on. The Sadducees were asking Jesus this question in our second Scripture lesson from the Gospel of Luke for the same reason. “Whose wife will the woman be?” they ask, only they don’t want to know what Jesus thinks about this ridiculous scenario. They’re not interested in His opinion. They just want to know whose side He’s on, so they ask Him “In heaven, whose wife will this woman who was married to seven different brothers be?” That’s the question that they ask, although we know that they’re not curious about what Jesus thinks about the details of the scenario because they don’t believe in Heaven at all. Did you know that about the Sadducees? They were one of the big religious groups in ancient Israel. In the days of Jesus, there were no Democrats or Republicans, but there were Pharisees and Sadducees. Two different parties, always vying for control. The Sadducees and the Pharisees were different in ways that seemed very important to them at the time, but not everyone remembers the differences between them today, so let me refresh your memory. The Pharisees worked so hard to follow all the laws in the Old Testament from Leviticus to Deuteronomy. They took those rules seriously, and so, when we read about them in the Gospels, they were often the ones giving Jesus a hard time about eating with unclean people or not resting on the Sabbath. They heard that Jesus and His disciples were bad about not resting on the Sabbath, and Jesus said, “The Sabbath was created for man, not man for the Sabbath,” but that didn’t make much sense to them because the Pharisees loved the law, so they were fair, you see. That’s a good way to remember what the Pharisees cared about. The Pharisees loved the law, so they were fair, you see. What made them different from the Sadducees? The Sadducees didn’t believe in Heaven, so they were sad, you see. I learned that in seminary. But seriously, the Sadducees didn’t believe in Heaven, so why did they ask Jesus this question about the woman who was married to a man who died so she married his brother then that brother died so she married his other brother, on and on until she’d been married to seven different brothers? “In heaven, whose wife will that woman be?” that’s what they asked, yet they asked Jesus this question not because it was a realistic scenario that they needed His help with, not because they wanted to provide support to a woman who was about to be remarried to her husband’s brother, but because they wanted to know, “Are you with us or are you with them?” Do you know anyone who asks you that kind of question? An “Are you with me or with the idiots?” kind of question? It’s these kinds of questions that make Thanksgiving dinner so uncomfortable. Imagine you’re at Thanksgiving dinner, and your uncle asks you to pass the gravy, and then he says: Can you believe whom New York City elected for their mayor? Don’t answer that question. If your granddaughter who went to college up north interrupts the conversation at the table to ask, “Is this turkey organic?” Don’t answer. Instead, just say, “I feel sure it lived a happy life because he didn’t have to live through this awkward Thanksgiving dinner conversation.” My friends, there are questions that come up at Thanksgiving dinner that are not actually questions, and they should not be answered because they’re traps. Stay away from such topics if you want the meal to remain civil, and if you want to avoid the divisive conversations altogether, you can come volunteer at the church on Thanksgiving day. We’re hosting Thanksgiving for about 200 people. More than 50 have volunteered to help. One guy says to me, “Are you telling me that I can be away from my mother-in-law from 8:00 in the morning to 4:00 in the afternoon? Where do I sign up?” But that’s not the point of the meal. We’re trying to feed people, not help you avoid your family. Only consider with me why you may want to avoid some of your family at Thanksgiving. Consider with me why it is so hard to live in a community. The word that we use for relationships when the relationships are driving us crazy is “politics.” Have you heard that before? When relationships are complicated and stressful, we call them politics, so when I hear someone say, “I loved my job, but I couldn’t stand the office politics,” I know what the real problem is. Likewise, when someone says, “I love the club, but the politics are getting to me,” I know that they’re not talking about the rising fees or the quality of greens on the golf course, but unnecessary stress between the board members. No one likes it when relationships become political. No one likes it when religion turns political, so folks back out of church when they have to choose between one side or the other. How many people have loved a church until some issue came along and the peaceful sanctuary felt just like everywhere else: a den of divisive issues in a world where it’s already so difficult to get along? It’s a tale as old as time. In the time of Jesus, there were the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and the Sadducees asked Jesus a question about Heaven because whether Heaven existed or not was the hot topic of the day, and Jesus responds, “What makes you think this issue has any eternal significance?” What He’s leading us to see is the way that we do permanent damage to relationships over issues that will not matter in Heaven. If you want to make it there, don’t invest all your time and energy into the divisive issues of today. Jesus says to the Sadducees: Stop fighting and listen. In Heaven, there are bigger issues than who is married to whom. Listen to this: Years ago, I went to visit a woman named Wanda Turner in the hospital. I walked into her hospital room, and the air was a little too still. I had gotten there too late. She had already died. A few days later was her funeral, and this all happened in a small town in Tennessee where Wanda knew the funeral home director and the man who managed the cemetery, so when I arrived at the cemetery for the graveside service, there were two graves dug, but I didn’t know why. I asked the funeral home director why there were two open graves. He told me that Wanda was Mr. Turner’s second wife. She paid extra to have the grave digger dig up his first wife and to move her one spot over so that Wanda could be buried next to Mr. Turner. I promise that’s a true story, and I bring it up today just to remind you that it can seem like this kind of thing really matters. It can seem like all kinds of issues have real and lasting significance. Who will be buried next to whom? Who will this woman be married to in the Kingdom of Heaven? Imagine that the issues that divide us today will take a back seat to what matters most in the Kingdom of Heaven. Don’t imagine that what we are arguing over right now has any eternal significance. Don’t jeopardize your place there by getting locked into a debate here on earth, for in Heaven, Christ is King and He will not tell the Republicans and the Democrats whose side He’s on. Instead, He will ask them why they thought fighting over issues was worthy of denying hungry children their food. Will any excuse be good enough when Jesus asks them why they stopped feeding hungry children? When it comes to this government shut down and the suspension of SNAP benefits on the eve of Thanksgiving, the suspension of pay to members of our armed forces on the eve of Veteran’s Day, I don’t know which side you think is worse than the other, but I do know that I want to be on Jesus’ side far more than anyone else’s. Don’t get trapped by the Sadducees. Don’t fall into thinking that the debates of today have eternal significance. In Heaven, what will matter most? My 7th grade Sunday school teacher, Ken Farrar, told a joke the other day about Heaven. A young Presbyterian died, and one of the first people he saw in Heaven was his father. When this son saw his father, he shouted out with joy. “Dad!” but his dad said, “Son, I’m so happy to see you, too, but please keep your voice down. The Baptists are right over that hill. They think they’re the only ones who made it up here. We don’t want to spoil it for them.” Jokes like that are funny because churches used to fight just like the Pharisees and the Sadducees, but this last week, the Baptist Church, the Episcopal Church, MacLand Presbyterian Church, and Highlands Church have all sent money and volunteers to this church to help with our Tuesday food distribution. In the wake of SNAP benefits denied, churches are helping our community remember what ultimately matters, and there is hope for our community. There is hope for Thanksgiving dinner. There is hope for our world, our nation, our republic, if we would give up our infighting to kneel before the cross. It’s not about who is worse and who is better, whose fault it is and who has done wrong. Salvation comes not through comparison but through confession. Bow before Jesus to confess. Come to Jesus. Listen to Jesus. Follow Jesus, who is the God of the living. Amen.