“The God of the Living”

When I was studying at Pilgrim Theological College as a ministerial candidate, there was an open seminar of the historical Jesus session. A retired doctor asked the professor a question. “Is the physical resurrection of Jesus actually a fact?” The classroom fell silent.

The thing is, this question isn’t new. In Luke 20, which we read today, the Sadducees came to Jesus with the exact same question. The Sadducees were the religious elite of their time. According to the first-century Jewish historian Josephus, they didn’t believe in the resurrection of the dead or in any afterlife with rewards and punishments. The Talmud also records that they rejected resurrection because they could find no evidence for it in the Torah, the five books of Moses.

ppt So they brought what they thought was an “unsolvable” problem to Jesus to prove that resurrection was impossible. But Jesus doesn’t answer their question head-on. Instead, he gives a different kind of answer. Not whether resurrection is real, but what resurrection is. And in his answer, we see who God is. So, what was their ‘unsolvable’ problem?

The Sadducees present Jesus with a riddle: A woman marries seven brothers, one after another. Each husband dies. So when the dead rise which is resurrection, whose wife will she be? They think they’ve trapped Jesus and proven how absurd this resurrection idea is.

To us today, this question sounds ridiculous. But to the Sadducees, this was a serious theological challenge. Their question is clearly meant to embarrass Jesus. But why did it have to be about a woman? There’s no awareness of her personhood at all. This woman is treated like ‘property’. If someone talked like this today, they’d be in serious trouble. Listen to Jesus’ response… Jesus says the people of this age marry and are given in marriage. But in the resurrection? It’s a different reality. They won’t marry or be given in marriage.

Notice what Jesus does here. The Sadducees ask, “Whose wife will she be?” But Jesus doesn’t answer their question. He reframes the question. The Sadducees make a mistake. They try to squeeze resurrection into the social logic of this world—a world where women are “given in marriage,” passed from brother to brother like property. But Jesus says: resurrection isn’t about tweaking the rules of this world. It’s another reality altogether. A new way of being. Why? Because they’re children of God. Children of the resurrection.

Did the Sadducees understand what Jesus was saying? Jesus does something brilliant, he goes straight to their own scriptures, back to the burning bush. Moses is standing there, sandals off, face to the ground. And God speaks: “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” Notice the verb. Not “I was.” I am. Present tense. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had been dead for centuries.

But God says, “I am their God”—right now. Jesus says: “He is not the God of the dead, but of the living.” This is the heart of it. If God is still Abraham’s God, then Abraham must still be alive to God. This isn’t about proving a doctrine. This is about revealing who God is. Think about what this means. Abraham’s been dead for centuries. Yet God doesn’t say, “I was their God—back in the good old days.” God says, “I am.” Active relationship. God doesn’t do past tense with people he loves.

These words about God and the living bring us to another story, the story of Job. God himself boasted about Job to Satan. Job was a righteous man, blameless, God-fearing. He had everything: wealth, family, health. And then, in a single day, it all collapses. His children die. His wealth is gone. His body breaks down with painful sores.  His friends come with their moral law: you reap what you sow. It must be his fault—God must be punishing him for some secret sin.

Job is sitting there in the ashes, his body covered in sores, everything stripped away. Yet in that darkness, Job refuses to let go of God. He trusts God is alive, that somehow he will see God. Even in his deepest suffering, Job trusts. He will see God. In his flesh.

Job declares this with confidence. Then, after the endless arguments, after God’s silence, finally God shows up. God doesn’t explain Job’s suffering. Instead, God asks Job questions: “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Have you ever given orders to the morning? Can you pull in Leviathan—the sea monster—with a fishhook?”

Question after question. The universe in all its wonder—the vastness, the beauty, the incomprehensible mystery of creation. Through these questions, something shifts. God’s presence overwhelms him—his heart, his body, his very being. Job sees. How little he understands. How vast God is. How much he doesn’t know. In that moment of surrender, Job sees God. Not just hears about God—sees God.  “I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you.” Out of the whirlwind, Job encounters the living God.

This is what Job discovered—and it’s what Jesus is showing the Sadducees: Resurrection isn’t a puzzle to solve. It’s about a God who meets us in the middle of our mess. In our grief. In our doubt.

Not someday. Not only after death. Now. This is what Jesus means when he says, “He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. As resurrection people, we don’t wait for some distant future. When we live toward God—when we practice justice, when we love generously, when we stand in awe before the mystery of creation—we already taste that glory. We become children of the resurrection, children of God. We live toward the living God.

The Sadducees asked the wrong question. They wanted proof. But resurrection isn’t about proof. It’s about presence. God’s presence. Holding the universe. Holding us. Making all things new—including us. He is not the God of the dead, but of the living.