Bible Text: St Matthew 22:34–46 | Preacher: Rev. Dr. Christian Preus
Jesus had just silenced the Sadducees. The Sadducees denied the resurrection, eternal life, and the immortality of the soul. And yet they were the religious leaders in Jerusalem: influential, powerful. That should sound familiar. The Anglican Church, you may have read this, just split in two. The conservatives who actually believe the Bible is the Word of God, are on the one side, with almost all the people (something like 80% of regular church attenders), but none of the money or influence. The liberal Anglicans who promote every societal immoral fad – abortion, transgenderism, feminism – and who for the most part deny the literal resurrection of Jesus from the dead, are on the other side, and they have all the money and influence, but a tiny minority of the actual people. That was the Sadducees. They had the power and influence and elite status, involved in all sorts of political causes. But they looked down on the common people who in simple faith believed in silly, unscientific things like eternal life and resurrection from the dead. And so they scoff at Jesus, this upstart teacher from podunk Nazareth, and they ask him a question to mock the idea of the resurrection and eternal life.
A woman is widowed repeatedly, ends up having seven husbands before she dies, so whose wife will she be in the resurrection? That’s their gotcha-question, but it backfires, because you can’t “gotcha” Jesus. He’s God. Jesus tells them that there won’t be marriage as we know it in the resurrection, it will be a different kind of existence, we’ll be like the angels (and saying we’ll be like the angels is a dig at the Sadducees, because they didn’t believe in angels either). Now Jesus doesn’t say that you won’t know your husband and wife and family and friends in heaven: that’s not the point; there’s not going to be a memory sweep in the resurrection, where you forget everything that came before. You have already started eternal life now; it doesn’t begin when you get to heaven; it started at your Baptism, when God put His name on you and claimed you as His own; He is eternal life, and you are His, and so you have it already. And all the good things you do and enjoy on earth and thank God for now, will continue into heaven. This is what the Holy Spirit says in Revelation, “Their works do follow them,” and we sing this, “Soon years on earth are past, but time we spend expressing the love of God brings blessing that will forever last.” Jesus’ point isn’t about marriage. It’s about the resurrection. God is the God of the living, not of the dead. It is God’s honor at stake here. He has created us for eternal life, and when we lost that life, so that we all have to face death and the vanity of this sinful existence, He won that life back for us by the life and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, His only Son our Lord. He is the God of the living, and we who worship Him live, not only now, but forever, in Jesus.
The Pharisees were no unbelieving scoffers like the Sadducees. They were actually the popular movement of the day. They had the ear of the people. They believed in eternal life, they took seriously teaching the people from the whole Bible, and they insisted on the resurrection of the dead. And they looked for the coming of the Christ.
But they thought that you could attain to the resurrection, to eternal life, by obeying the Law. So the question that this Pharisee lawyer asks of Jesus to test Him, “Which is the great commandment in the Law?” Now the Law is good. God gives it. We talk about the Law having three uses or functions. There’s three things it does. First, it’s a curb, it keeps bad people from doing bad stuff. When the law broke down in Minneapolis a few years ago, when people were encouraged to break it, and loot Targets and burn down buildings, we saw just how important to society the law is. If you don’t have it in place and enforce it, there will be chaos and violence and destruction of property, because bad people do bad things. Then the Law is a guide, it shows us what the happy life is, what the good life is. You want to live a good life, obey the Ten Commandments. Be faithful to your spouse, be respectful of authority, don’t steal, work hard instead and don’t be lazy, speak well of others, and daily thank God for everything He’s given you, and you’ll lead a good life. Or at least a better life than if you don’t. And then the Law is a mirror. It shows you your sin. You look into it and it reflects back what you are, a sinner.
This is what Jesus is stressing in His response to the Pharisee’s question. Love God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind. Love your neighbor as yourself. On these hangs all the Bible, all the Law and the Prophets. But you can’t do it. If we broke up the Law into a bunch of outward rules, you could do it. That’s what the Pharisees did. 613 rules. Follow those, and you’re keeping the law perfectly. It might be hard, but you can do it. But Jesus blows it up. And He does it by quoting the Bible. It’s not about rule-obeying. It’s about your heart. Love God with all your heart, with no selfish impulse, wholly completely, and your neighbor as yourself. That’s not just hard. It’s impossible. You fail at it every day. And you’re a Christian. You have the Holy Spirit. Literally the almighty God working in you. And you still fail.
So the one thing the Law cannot do is what the Pharisees tried to use it to do. It cannot get you the resurrection of the dead.
So Jesus asks the question that needs asking. If there is eternal life, if there is a resurrection, then how do you get it? And the question at first has nothing to do with us or with the law. It’s the question of identity. Who is the Christ? The Pharisees say David’s son. But Jesus says, then how does David, in the Spirit (by the way, that’s another instance of Jesus Himself saying that the Bible is inspired by the Holy Spirit), how does David say, “The Lord said to my Lord, ‘sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.’ If the Christ is David’s son, how can he also be his Lord?
The Pharisees can’t answer. But you can. This is the Christian confession. The Confession of your Baptism. Jesus is Lord.
We need a Savior. And we cannot save ourselves. God is the God of the living, but we die. We have death in us, in our very existence. And we die because we sin. God is Life, and we separate ourselves from that Life by the evil in which we participate, which bursts out of our hearts in too many ways to count, in what we think and do and desire, and in what we don’t think and we don’t do and we don’t desire. David’s son is David’s Lord. This is the only solution to our problem, it is the guarantee of our resurrection. And it is outside of us. Thank God. Not in anything we do or could do. Our Savior needed to be God, because only God could conquer our sin and our death. And our Savior had to be man, because He had to live and to die in our place. That is Jesus. He is the resurrection and the life. He is David’s Son and David’s Lord. He is true God and true man. And He is our Savior.
Jesus’ insistence on the resurrection is first of all an insistence on His own resurrection. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, you and I, we live and we will live forever, because God is the God of the living and not the dead. That’s an assertion and a promise. He is God of the living, because He took our death on Himself. He is the God of the living, because He took away from us and put on Himself the sin that was killing us. He is the God of the living, because His life was love for His Father with His whole heart and complete love for us. And He gives that life to us, because He’s our Brother. We will attain to the resurrection, because He rose from the dead.
This is where love of God and love of neighbor start for us. We can’t conjure them up from our hearts. We look to Him who loved us and gives us life and heaven and resurrection and everything good. We adore Him because He has conquered our enemies and is our great Redeemer from every evil. We love our God and our neighbor from a pure heart, only when we have first asked Him for a clean heart and he has washed us pure by His blood. In the name of Jesus. Amen.