Riddle Me This, Jesus!

2025-55
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
by the Rev. Anna Lynn, Deacon
The Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 27C-Tr1), November 9, 2025

Haggai 1:15b-2:9 ; Psalm 145:1-5, 18-22 ; 2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17 ; Luke 20:27-38

I feel like the Gospel reading today includes a riddle from the Riddler! (You know the character from Batman?) But instead of “Riddle me this, Batman”—it’s “Riddle me this, Jesus!” It is a religious riddle.

As we just heard, the Sadducees’ question for Jesus: “Moses wrote for us: if a man’s brother dies, leaving a wife but no children, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother. Now there were seven brothers; the first married, and died childless, then the second and the third married her, and so in the same way all seven died childless. Finally, the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her.”

Do you know the answer to this riddle? Well, neither do I! And that is okay, because this elaborate hypothetical question asked of Jesus was a trap. And we know it was a trap because it was asked by the Sadducees, who do not believe in the resurrection—therefore, they were trying to ask the most preposterous question, to Jesus, to make him look foolish and the resurrection to seem unbelievable.

To put this reading in context, this exchange takes place during Jesus’ final week in Jerusalem, days prior to his crucifixion, following his pubic ministry, but prior to his arrest, death, and resurrection.

This passage is significant, as it is a specific theological teaching by Jesus about the nature of the afterlife and the resurrection, rather than just a chronological account of his life. N.T. Wright, the great biblical scholar and bishop in the Anglican Church, stated, “Far and away the most important passage about resurrection in the whole Gospel tradition, is the answer Jesus gives to the Sadducees’ question.”

So, a little more about the Sadducees: They were a group of aristocratic elites in their day, consisting largely of priests, and they were closely linked with Temple leadership. And unlike the Pharisees who were much more aligned with Jesus in everything that is relevant to this passage, the Sadducees seemed to accept only the Torah—the Books of Moses—the first five books of the bible, as authoritative—as scripture.

Therefore, they did not feel bound by anything else in the Hebrew Bible except those first five books. And so, because there is no explicit, straightforward mention of resurrection in those texts, they did not adopt that idea. And likewise in the Acts of the Apostles, it says that they did not believe in angels or in the afterlife. Considering that the Sadducees do not believe in the resurrection, they have a remarkably conventional notion of it in their question. They assumed the next age would be a simple, continuous extension of their current life, complete with their elevated status and marriage customs. Do you think they would have wanted it any other way?

But Jesus throws convention right out the window and radically reframes the nature of the life to come, shifting the focus from our earthly structures of power, inheritance, and status to being “children of God.” Jesus responds: “Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry, nor are given in marriage. Indeed, they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection.” 

Andrew McGowan, Dean and President of the Berkeley Divinity School at Yale, notes: “Regarding the matter of the Sadducees’ comfort by virtue of their power and privilege in the world, they speak of the woman in this scenario, this imaginary scenario, and to them she is just a prop – right? As a person, she does not really matter; she is merely a vessel for the continuation of this patriarchal line and household.” So, as it says in the Deuteronomy passage, this practice is based on making sure that the name of the first man who dies may not be blotted out of Israel. It was all out of concern for the man’s lineage; women had no agency. 

I appreciate the way that Jesus took his time in this part of the passage to allow for not just the woman married to the Sadducees to be liberated, but for the liberation of all women through resurrection. 

This is a good example of how Jesus and his vision of the resurrection completely overturn these ways of relating: man to woman and several differing power dynamics! And the key element, I think, is in the last verse: “that for God, all of them [he’s talking about the patriarchs – Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob] are alive. And McGowan notes “that this can also be translated as ‘all live for God,’ and that in the resurrected life, our life is precisely a life that is referred to God, with reference to God, it’s not just a life for ourselves to do what we want and have fun. It is a life for God and from God, and because God is love, and God is justice, and God is peace. All the ways we currently mistreat one another will not stand. They will be cancelled out and transformed in the resurrection.”

There used to be a show on television called “Inside the Actor’s Studio,” and the host, James Lipton, would interview famous actors. At the end of each interview, he would ask a series of questions’ and the last question was always, “If heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the pearly gates?” You can imagine the answers!

I wonder how each of you would answer that question. And I wonder how often you think about your own death or maybe the death of a loved one, and if you find comfort in the knowledge of the resurrected life? Or maybe you find that it causes you anxiety?

Personally, I have the sense of God as a presence. Jesus mentions Moses at the burning bush – in that scene God says, “I am who I am” – it is a present tense being. And to be in relationship with God—to be in God and for God and of God—death is just an event. I do not think it changes our grounding in this divine presence.

So, if folks are anxious about what happens when they die or when their loved one dies, I try to remind them that God is the God of the living and they are all living. We are all in communion. There is a spiritual transcendence to everything physical and temporary about our lives. I consider death to be a turning point where we continue in some other way—maybe like a rebirth.

So, I do not have anxiety per se, but I think the anxiety around death is what Jesus is always trying to quell. That his presence on earth was to reveal our participation or our preoccupation with death that keeps us from life. Living in the joy of being in God now—right here where we are—I think that is the hard work that Jesus challenges us to do.



So, as we go forth, let us not be bound by the fears and limitations of this world, but by the joyful hope of the world to come. Let us live as children of the resurrection, not in fear of what lies beyond, but in anticipation of the day when we will be in God’s presence. For when this life ends, our story will have only just begun. It is the beginning of the chapter that is more beautiful, fuller of love, and more real than we can ever imagine. Thanks be to God! Amen.