The Rev. Frank Logue
King of Peace Episcopal Church
Kingsland, Georgia
November 11, 2001

Whose Child Are You?
Luke 20:27-40

Conversations are not always what they appear to be. Sometimes we find a deeper meaning hiding under the words being said. Growing up in the Deep South, I have seen this time and again. Examine southern gentility. It has a dark side. The person smiling so sweetly at the dinner party may be cutting you down to bite-sized pieces.  

It goes something like this. Imagine one woman coming up to another at a party. “Where did you ever get that dress? Why I have never seen anyone put together an outfit quite like you.” Trust me. That is saccharine sweet. The sweetness you hear is definitely artificial, and you have not just been paid a compliment. What the so-called compliment really meant to do was underscore, “You are not one of us.” 

In this week’s Gospel reading, we see Jesus in a conversation like this. This time it is in a confrontation with some Sadducees. The words of the text, the surface of the story is all about resurrection. But underneath this veneer, the Sadducees are attacking Jesus, and he challenges them to consider the question, “Whose child are you?” The passage will challenge each of us with the same question, “Whose child are you?”

We are told that some Sadducees come to ask Jesus a question. The Sadducees were among the elite of Jerusalem. They controlled the worship at the Temple. They were the real religious movers and shakers in town. The Sadducees cut deals with the Romans to make sure that the worship in the Temple continued under Roman rule. Every male Jew over the age of 20 paid a half-shekel tax to the Temple. The Sadducees were in so tight with the Romans that the Roman government helped with transporting the tax from the Empire’s hinterlands to Jerusalem. The wealth of the Temple was at its peak, and these guys were on the top of that heap.

As religious leaders, they should have been well connected to God. Doubtless many Sadducees were. But there were other connections as well. By making deals with Rome, the Sadducees allied themselves with the powers of this age—the powers of the world—instead of God. They were concerned with the here and now and had neither the time nor the inclination to consider the sweet by and by. 

The Sadducees were connected. The Sadducees had the power. The Sadducees had the influence. The Sadducees had the money. The Sadducees had a lot to lose. The Sadducees were not going to risk everything on some hick. No country bumpkin from Nazareth or anywhere else was going to disrupt the way things worked. The Roman Governor Pontius Pilate was in town. The Sadducees needed to contain this Jesus of Nazareth before everything got out of hand. They knew where their loyalties lay—the Temple. And if Rome would protect the Temple, then they would fall in line and work for Rome, too. 

The Sadducees come to Jesus and say, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that 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 brother; 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.” 

The question they brought was more of an answer than a question. The Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection. They used questions like the seven brothers for one bride story  they brought to Jesus to poke fun at those who believed in resurrection. This question about the seven brothers was their proof of the ridiculousness of belief in resurrection. It presents a case so extreme that it would likely never arise.  

Jesus cut through the confusion of the question to the heart of the matter. But at first reading, his reply is not so comforting. Jesus said, “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.” 

Hold everything. Run that by me again. Those who are considered worthy of that age neither marry nor are given in marriage. You can't get to heaven if you are married? Well [point at wedding band] I’ve got a little problem here. As a matter of fact, I’ve got a BIG problem here. Say it ain’t so Jesus.  

Jesus can’t mean that I’m shut out of the resurrection because I’m married, can he? No, we all know better than that. But we can’t just ignore these words. So we have to look deeper to see what Jesus was really saying. Remember the context of Jesus’ words. He is not just telling his views on resurrection. Jesus is answering the question posed by the Sadducees. The Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection. They believed that the only way we have eternal life is through our children. If there was such a thing as the resurrection, they assumed that the next life would be just like this one.  

For the Sadducees, the way to achieve eternal life is through marrying (or for women, to be given in marriage) and having children. That is the idea to which Jesus is responding. Jesus counters this notion saying that we don’t have eternal life through our children, rather we have eternal life through the resurrection. So there is nothing wrong with getting married as long as you don’t pin your hopes of eternal life to marriage and your children. How many children you have is not the concern. What matters is whether you are a child of God.  

Whose child you are often matters. Looking at how that works may help us better understand the Gospel reading. For better or worse, people often decide what kind of person you will be because of your parents. In big cities, its not quite the same. But in small towns and rural areas it can make quite a difference. Think about the time-honored ritual many girls have gone through of asking their parents for permission to go on a date. A key question at this point is, “Who’s his Daddy?” The character of the boy’s father could decide whether permission will be given for the date. After all, the way a child acts will depend a lot on the parents.

It’s like a farmer looking down in the pasture and seeing kids playing in his cow pond. He rides down and looks them all over. If they were strangers, he might tell them to get out of his pond. But for a bunch of neighbor kids, where he knows the parents, he might let them swim. Calling the kids up on the bank, he announces, “I know who your Daddies are. Y’all don’t get into trouble.” The message is two sided. He has an idea how the kids will act because he knows the parents. He also knows who to talk to if they need pulling back in line. 

That’s something like what is going on here. Jesus listened to the Sadducees question. He looked at the way they ran the business of the Temple, and found that it showed them to be more concerned with the here and now than with God. Jesus in effect says to the Sadducees, “The way you fellows talk you know who you sound like? You sound just like one of Caesar’s boys. As a matter of fact, I think he is your Daddy.” The religious leaders must have felt like a bunch of wet kids standing on the bank of a neighbors cow pond. Those are fighting words and the message came through loud and clear to the Sadducees. They knew that Jesus was saying they were children of this age instead of God’s children. We know that because this is the last time they questioned Jesus in public. The next thing they would do is work behind the scenes to have Jesus arrested and crucified.

This passage challenges us to look at the choices we make. Are we siding with this age—the considerations the world puts on us—or do we side with God? In the decisions we make, are we thinking like a child of this age or a child of God? When we make choices as individuals is God a factor? How often do you pray about the decisions you make? How often do you ask yourself where is God working in a given situation. 

The time we live in—this age—is hard and cold. This world can grind you up and spit you out. But we are God’s children, not children of this age. We are God’s children both in the here and now and in the life to come. Jesus said he was going to prepare a place for us and that he would come to take us there. The afterlife is real. This age is not all there is to life.

As a loving parent, God calls us into relationship. Through living with God, day in and day out in prayer and Bible study, through the fellowship of a church, we learn to act more and more as children of God. Make God an essential part of the decisions you make. Pray for God's guidance and expect it. You can pray that God opens doors of opportunity for you while closing others.

But don't feel you have to get everything just right all the time to be a child of God. If we make mistakes, we can say we are sorry and try again. God will pick us up, dust us off, and set us back on the path. Even though you don't always make all the right decisions, God loves you. The main thing is not to be perfect. The main thing is to remember whose child you are. 

Amen.