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This Week's Sermon THE TWENTY FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST 11 November 2007 "The Sons of This/That Age" Luke 20:27-40 LSB Series C Pastor Philip G. Meyer Soli Deo Gloria!

With the celebration of All Saints' Day, the Church turns her attention to the things of the end of the age. The church year is soon over in two more Sundays. It's like the bell lap in a race, the last mile of the grueling marathon. The end is in sight, and so is the prize. It is appropriate that the Church turns her eyes from the things of this age to the reality of the age to come.

Our Gospel is set on Tuesday of Holy Week. The Sadducees approached Jesus to ask him a question, a kind of religious question. Sometimes pastors and vicars get difficult questions in a Bible class, the question that may stump him. Not all questions are asked for information. Some are malignant in their intent, as was this particular question. As Luke explains, the Sadducees denied that there was a resurrection of the body. For them, the soul and the body died, never to live again. Neither did they believe in the existence of angels. They held that the soul perishes with the body and that this life is the only life that there was, yet they asked Jesus a question about the resurrection of the body, hoping to catch him in a contradiction. Right up to the end, our Lord's enemies kept after him, taunting him. They inaccurately cited a passage from Deuteronomy 25 concerning Levirate marriage. Basically, God gave this law so that a man's family would not die out. If a man died without an heir, then it was his brother's duty to marry the widow and raise a son for his dead brother. It was from this law that the Sadducees made up a rather ridiculous example.

I. THE SONS OF THIS AGE

In attempting to catch Jesus in a hopeless contradiction, the Sadducees found themselves trapped by Jesus' answer. They had equated "The Sons of This Age" to "The Sons of That Age," meaning the age to come where there was a resurrection of the body. Not only did they deny the resurrection, but they denied the power of God himself. Essentially, the Sadducees have confused the kingdom of this world with the kingdom of heaven, something that has been done over and over again in the history of the world.

First of all, we live an earthborn, finite existence. The form of this world does not continue in the next age. Everything will be transformed, changed, but the Sadducees thought that if there were a next age, then it would merely be a continuation of this one. For this reason many people invest heavily in the things of this age as though it were the only one that there will be. As we pass All Saints' Day our focus becomes more and more centered on the things of heaven, the things eternal, the things that are infinite. In some ways, the aging process reflects this. In our younger years we think only of making a comfortable life for ourselves in this age, but when the aches and pains of age, the maladies and afflictions that beset us become more and more prominent, our gaze is steered away from this life to the next. Consider how William W. How expressed it in his famous hymn, For All the Saints:

4 Oh, blest communion, fellowship divine!
We feebly struggle, they in glory shine;
Yet all are one in Thee, for all are Thine.
Alleluia! Alleluia!

5 And when the fight is fierce, the warfare long,
Steals on the ear the distant triumph song,
And hearts are brave again, and arms are strong.
Alleluia! Alleluia!
Text and Music: Public domain
Created by Lutheran Service Builder © 2006 Concordia Publishing House.

Increasing years brings increasing troubles and we come to realize that our time in this finite world is also finite. We begin to long for the age to come, for the promised rest that God has promised the faithful. We hear the distant triumph song being whispered.

"The Sons of This Age" are subject to sin because we were born in sin. From our mother's wombs we have been sinful. Sin sticks to us and we cannot free ourselves from it. And because we are sinful, our bodies must die, just as God said at the beginning to Adam and Eve:

"You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die." (Genesis 2:16-17, ESV)

What the Sadducees failed to realize is that at death all earthly categories cease. As for the example of the poor woman who had to endure marriage to seven brothers, they accused Jesus of believing something totally contradictory, something that could not be sustained by the Five Books of Moses. It was a trick question, but it was the wrong question! They were attempting to put God into a box. It was not about God after all, but about themselves.

How often we have heard people ask those difficult questions about God's existence. These supposed atheists would convince us that they are the only sharp knives in the drawer of human thinking and that the rest of us are duller than butter knives! Christians who believe in Jesus and the inspiration and inerrancy of the Bible are considered by them to have IQs lower than that of rocks. Julian Huxley, the grandson of Darwin's friend and ally Thomas Henry Huxley, said: "The sense of spiritual relief which comes from rejecting the idea of God as a supernatural being is enormous." Hence, there is no guilt with which to deal. His brother, Aldous Huxley, was even more pointed. He said: "For myself as no doubt for most of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation . . . liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom" [quoted in "Atheism: An Intellectual Revolt or Pelvic Revolution?" by Doug Giles. Townhall.com. Saturday, October 27, 2007]. To put it more simply, an atheist doesn't want to find God any more than a thief wants to find a policeman. Such persons are simply in rebellion against God and look for clever ways to justify themselves. Not only that but in order to further that justification, they need to enlist an army of sycophants or toadies to tell them how smart they are. A trilogy of books by the militant atheist Phillip Pullman, has been aimed at young children. One has been made into a movie which will soon hit the theaters. It's called "The Golden Compass." It tries to kill God in a popular way, now especially for children.

For others God is in a different kind of box. God does not transcend this finite order. Here we find the Muslims and the Mormons with their distinctive doctrines about marriage in heaven. For Muslims a man may have 72 virgins in heaven to pleasure him at will. Heaven is a very sensual, earthy kind of place. For Mormons, things have been elevated a bit. From their polygamous roots where a man may have many wives, there is "celestial marriage," in which husbands and wives are married for all eternity. Pity the Son of this Age who made a mistake in this life and married the wrong woman or women! Likewise, for women! Those marriages go on forever!

II. THE SONS OF THAT AGE

"The Sons of That Age" [the sons of heaven] are born of water and of the Spirit, that is, they are baptized into Christ's death and resurrection. They are born into an existence that is infinite, an existence unaffected by earthly limitations. The error of the Sadducees and every other atheist or heretic places limits on God or defines God in ways that make sense only to them.

"And Jesus said to them, "The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage, but those who are considered worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, for they cannot die anymore, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection." (Luke 20:34-36, ESV)

As we sit here in this age, an age beset with conflict, tears, and sorrow, we look forward to that age where these things shall be no more.

7 But, lo, there breaks a yet more glorious day:
The saints triumphant rise in bright array;
The King of Glory passes on His way.
Alleluia! Alleluia!

Sin, death, and hell are no more in That Age because our Lord Jesus Christ has done away with them in his innocent, life, suffering, and death. He has won the victory over all that would enslave us and make our lives miserable. In "That Age" is the life immortal. It is not a life defined by death. It is a life without death standing at the end. In Christ's death and resurrection the last enemy has been defeated.

If Holy Baptism brings us the beginning of that life immortal, then death is the gateway to it. That is what the Sadducees did not understand at all. They were blinded by unbelief about God and also about Christ. That the dead are raised lies at the heart of their unbelief. They thought only in finite categories. But Jesus teaches us that God is not the God of the dead but of the living. In so doing Jesus referred to the passage about Moses and the burning bush where Moses confessed God to be the God of the living, for at that time Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were all dead in an earthly sense, but they lived already in "That Age" to come.

"The Sons of That Age" do not die anymore. Death is no longer part of them. The saints live in Christ who has conquered death. You, dear friends, are also "The Sons of That Age" because you have been baptized into Christ's death and resurrection. You are "sons of the resurrection . . . who cannot die anymore . . . who are equal to the angels" who are immortal.

Earthly marriage is time bound. We are not married "forever and ever," but for as long as God allows us life in "This Age." Yet, you are married to Christ forever in a much greater mystery, that of Christ and his Bride, the Church. This is the only true, lasting marriage. Everything wrong Christ took into himself, into his holy body, and by this he washed you, cleansed you, made you without spot or wrinkle or any such thing so that you would be holy and blameless [Ephesians 5.25-27]. Everything that is without sin, death, and hell he has given to you in Holy Baptism. And now, at his Table he nourishes you with his true body and blood so that you will be kept as a "Son of That Age."

8 From earth's wide bounds, from ocean's farthest coast,
Through gates of pearl streams in the countless host,
Singing to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost:
Alleluia! Alleluia!