Between Sundays for the Week of November 10, 2025

Like the Sadducees in Luke 20:27-38, when it comes to resurrection, we tend to ask the wrong questions. They come up with an outrageous scenario about resurrection hoping to goad Jesus into saying something equally outrageous. In the resurrection, they ask, whose wife will a woman be if in this life she has been married to seven brothers and left childless by all of them?

That’s not our question, but we also ask questions about resurrection….will I be reunited with my family? Will my beloved pet be there? Will I still be married to my spouse? And if I’ve remarried, what will happen in the resurrection? Will [name the worst person you can think of] be there?

We ask the wrong questions for good reasons. We want to know. We want to alleviate our fears or uncertainties about the life to come. We hope that by gaining some understanding, we might feel more secure in our belief as we near our end.

While we might admire the Sadducees who are bold enough to ask a question of Jesus, they weren’t actually interested in Jesus’ answer. They were focused on scoring points, winning an argument, proving their point, setting a trap. But even in that moment, Jesus was interested in a hypothetical women who is passed around like property in a patriarchal system.

What if Jesus wants us to not get caught up in the details of what resurrection looks like, but to instead consider what resurrection promises us. God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. And in our baptism into Christ’s death and resurrection, God has promised us an eternal inheritance of life!

None of us knows what eternity, or heaven, or resurrection life will look like, only that it is an eternal mystery that enfolds us at the time of death. We cannot know what the mystery entails, only that it belongs to God and will one day include each and every one of us, and our beloved ones.

In Luke’s gospel, Jesus assures that just as God will not let a forgotten women go, God will not let us go. Our eternal future belongs to God and God’s eternal mystery is our inheritance. The wrong question attempts to nail down the specifics. The right question asks: Given this promise, what difference will it make in my life today?

P.S. Listen to the gospel reading and full sermon from Sunday here (starting at 19:11). Links to previous worship videos on Facebook and YouTube are always available on our website.

Faith Connection at Home

With it being the month in which Thanksgiving falls, November provides us a natural time to focus on gratitude. Giving thanks for blessings in our lives is a spiritual practice that not only serves our hearts and minds but serves others as well. Every day this week, identify those who provide services to you and your family. Brainstorm together a place that you will visit each day or if that is not possible, a single place you will visit during the week. Take the time to speak to the service workers you see. If appropriate, ask their name and say thank you to them. If you have older teens or only adults in your family, challenge each other to seek out someone or some place different each day that you can thank and then share your stories of who and why you thanked those people. After sharing your stories, pray together:

Dear God, we thank you for the people who serve us in our lives. Today, we thank you for (say the names of the people or places that served you here). We thank you for food, for water, for shelter, for family, and for friends. Help us to share your bounty, love, and good news with the world around us. Amen.

Between Sundays… Stay connected in the middle space of each week on our podcast. Find past episodes on the website or wherever you like to listen to podcasts!

Click here to listen

Ponderings

In the resurrection

(Read or listen to Steve Garnaas-Holmes entire poem, excerpted below.)

They asked: In the resurrection, whose wife will the woman be? —Luke 20.33

Jesus says: No one’s.
We are all children of the resurrection,
children of God—siblings.
What that means for us after we die,
we’ll have to see.
But even now: we are all siblings,
all one, which the final revealing will reveal.
. . .
Stand among trees and say “We are kin.”
Go to a river and greet your sister.
Behold the crowd on the street
and declare “I am yours.”
Thus will you know a bit
of the mystery of resurrection.